Yet another quiet SLK3000B setup

[Red Valdez]

G'day

A while ago I made a thread asking how to quieten down my PC. Well, time's passed, and I now have a quiet computer which I'm happy with I changed my Antec 1080AMG case to an Antec SLK3000B (which I proceeded to modify), and a few months after that I also upgraded some of the hardware inside.

My hardware specs are as follows:
AMD Athlon64 3500+ with Zalman CNPS9500LED
Gigabyte GA-K8N Pro-SLI motherboard (comes standard with a passive heatsink on the chipset )
2x 512mb Corsair XMS3200C2 RAM
160+200gig Seagate 'Cuda 7 7200rpm 8mb PATA HDDs
NEC ND3500A DVD Burner / LiteOn 4012S CD Burner
256mb GeCube Radeon X850 Pro PCI-E (stock HSF)
SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro
Antec SLK3000B case with 430watt Antec TruePower PSU and three 120mm Yate Loon fans

I was previously running a XP2500+/NF7-S/GeForce FX5900XT combo. It was getting a bit long in tooth, so I decided to upgrade


Now let's take a tour of my case.


Here it is, sitting on my desk. As you can see, it's a pretty standard looking SLK3000B. However, I added a side window to it, because I don't mind having one, plus I've always wanted to do some basic mods to a case I later added that side fan to the window, as I was concerned that there wasn't enough fresh air being sucked into the case.


Side panel off. As you can see, I've done my best to conceal wiring. It's not as good as what I'd like, but I'll live with it


Here it is again. You'll see that I've removed the rear fan grill. While it wasn't terribly restrictive, I saw no harm in removing it and replacing it with a standard wire grill.


From the front. I also removed the grille here too. I also ditched the purple fan holder. Also note the Zalman fanmate for the CNPS9500LED. I think it's a pretty good location, it's out of the way, but on the offchance I have to change fan speed it's not hard to get to.


Whole bunch of hidden wiring You'll also notice that I cut off the rolled edge at the end of the motherboard tray. I did this in hope that it'd make it easier to route wires behind the tray. Unfortunately, now the motherboard tray bends very easily Oh well, you live you learn


I'm very happy with the noise level of my computer. It's quiet, but not silent. The Zalman CNPS9500LED is louder than what I had hoped (I run it at minimum speed on the Fanmate), but I'll live with it. The video card I'm impressed with. I actually bought a Zalman VF700CU for it, but I haven't installed it yet. The stock fan on the video card, while in Windows, is actually quieter than the 9500LED. It ramps up in speed during games, but that doesn't matter since my audio drowns it out anyway. The PSU/case fans just blend into the background of it all. I'm impressed by the grommets of the SLK3000B's HDD cage. I can only hear HDD seeks if I stick my head right to the case - a huge improvement over the old 1080AMG.

So how quiet is my computer exactly? Well, it actually makes a fair bit of noise when you stick your ear to it. So it's far from silent, and I don't know if it'd even be considered quiet by SPRC standards However, sitting at my desk, I can't hear it over my ceiling fan (which is on the lowest speed). Lying in bed at night, it's no louder than my air-conditioner/ceiling fan. I've found that the perceived noise of the computer is a lot less when it sits on the ground, compared to sitting on my desk.

I'm content with this as there's always a lot of ambient noise in my room. As I come from the tropics I just about always have a ceiling fan going, and I have an air-con on for a lot of the year - right now, it's not even 10am, and it's 32 degrees C with 65% humidity outside. I also live near a small airport, and live on a busy-ish residential road. Quite simply, I reckon it'd be a waste of money to make my computer any quieter, because I can't reduce the ambient noise any more

And how does it perform? Well right now, it's number-crunching for Folding@Home, and with the ambient temperature about 28 degrees (got the air-con set on 25 for now), the CPU's sitting at 41 degrees C / 105 degrees F.

So all in all, I'm very happy with how my computer has turned out - both noise-wise, and performance-wise


Here's a few more photos for the sake of it.


Cold cathodes turned off


Cold cathodes turned on


Cold cathodes turned on (again)


The setup.

[Badger]

Very nice.

Perhaps you could get away without the intake? Maybe swap the fan on your Zalman CPU cooler for a Nexus, and stick a Zalman or Aerocool cooler on your video card. That's all I can think of, oh wait, hard drive enclosures (make your own - cheaper and better!). Alright that's enough peer pressure to get you to spend more money on your machine. I love the window and tidy wiring.

[Weldingheart]

Pretty cool, and nice temp too,the first system with 9500 here
Do you really need that fan on the side panel?
looks like that X850 haven't annoy you yet,so the 9500 is still clearly audible on its lowest setting?

You must have conquered the whole Aussie land as Rob/Steve does,so be able to put those guide book to elevate the LCD

[Red Valdez]

I don't *need* the side fan. But it doesn't add any noticable noise, and it knocked five degrees or so off my CPU temperature when I was running my 2500+, so I think I'll keep it

And yeah, the 9500 is clearly audible on its lowest setting. It's not bad enough to annoy me (so I won't bother with a fan swap), but I imagine it'd be too loud for the more deedicated silencers. I mean, just for comparison's sake, I have Yate Loon fans running at full speed and it doesn't worry me.... I imagine that'd be enough to annoy many of the members here

Up close at low speed, there's definitely a bit of a groan/rumble/something annoying to the CNPS9500. It's even more disappointing considering the reputation Zalman has for low noise products too :/

I actually still have my VF700Cu sitting under my bed Badger, I tried to remove the stock HSF from my video card but it won't budge. I imagine it'd come off with a bit of effort, but like I said the noise isn't enough to worry me at the moment


Conquered Australia? I wish Cheers for the comments.

[AHjota]

I noticed you have a bunch of other towers next to your desk. Do you use those computers still, say with a KVM? Are they for folding? Or are they just office decoration?

[Red Valdez]

The silver one is a Pentium 3 500mhz beast. It hasn't been turned on in at least a year and a half. I only keep it there because it makes a good speaker stand I used to use it ages ago as a Folding box and a dialup internet gateway, but that was ages ago

The black one is an AthlonXP [email protected]. I primarily bring it to LANs for other people to game on. I don't use it much at home, when I do it's mainly for Folding.

I used RealVNC to admin these PCs. A KVM would be nice, but I think I'd prefer to spend the money on other stuff

[Fat_bloater_dave]

Realy nice setup, but if you can stop at it being quiet you are a better man than me, if you keep comeing back to this website you wont be able to stop. Its gotta be Silent man.

Anyway as i said, looks good and your happy, so nice one.

[=assassin=]

Cool - very nice setup indeed.

[diver]

If your bios supports it, try using it to slow down the Zalman fan. Otherwise, try Speedfan. Its a free program that allows for fine tuning fan speeds if the motherboard supports it, and many do.

[sun.moon]

I'm impressed by the grommets of the SLK3000B's HDD cage. I can only hear HDD seeks if I stick my head right to the case - a huge improvement over the old 1080AMG.

Have you thought about suspending your drives? At first I also had mine mounted in the case as yours are (also the SLK3000B), and the grommets definitely were an improvement to the case I had before. But nevertheless, suspending the drive made a HUGE difference. I must admit, I really was surprised and impressed with the difference.