My Quiet [but not silent] Silentium Rig

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sanse
Posts: 399
Joined: Thu Dec 22, 2005 9:48 am
Location: Netherlands

My Quiet [but not silent] Silentium Rig

Post by sanse » Fri Jan 27, 2006 12:27 pm

hi,

some of you already might know a bit about my amd x2-rig. here's a picture of it.

Image

it's the first computer i ever built myself and compared to what i use at work or compared to my acer aspire notebook it's a very quiet machine. however it's not silent.

as noted most noise remaining in this computer comes from the psu-fans. the stock amd-cooler that came with the dualcore amd 4400 x2 is very good and unaudible at idle or when playing music. cpu runs around 33 at idle.

there are 2 harddiscs in the system; a 74gb wd raptor in the silentium alu-box and a 250gb spinpoint in the lowest 3.5' bay. the latter is a very quiet harddisc, but a slight hum is noticable cause it's not isolated from the case. both harddiscs run at around 33 at idle.

the videocard is a 256mb geforce 6600 gigabyte silentpipe fanless one. doing fine and running at around 50c at idle.

the lowest pci-slot in the meantime after taking this picture now contains a xifi xtreme soundcard.

motherboard is a fanless asus a8n-sli premium with 4gb corsair ddr400 memory. i added an extra passive cooler to the chipset. mobo-temp is about 30c.

rest of the system: a plextor dvd-writer on top; a 3.5' mobile rack underneath the dvd-writer for backups and a legacy floppy-drive with cardreaders.

great machine. superfast and very comfortable. the xifi with the 24-bit crystallizer gives great sounding music.

to quiet the machine more i glued damping material to the removable sidepanel and put lots of foam wherever possible. some of that is visible on the picture. especially filling up the front-bezel with foam made a lot of resonance of this bezel disappear.

cool&quiet is enabled and the cpu-fan is controlled by bios-feature q-fan.

more silencing with this case will be pretty difficult, i think. improving cable-management, which blocks the air-flow to the psu-fans is also not very possible. the xifi-card makes it harder now for the psu-fans to suck in air through the bottom-vent.

in an effort to get the rpm of the psu-fans down i added an extra 80mm fan to the back of the case sucking in air. it's sitting on the inside of the backpanel at the hight of the cpu. mounted it with tie-straps as seen somewhere on this site. this fan, running at about 700 to 900 rpm, is also regulated by q-fan on the cha1-connector. the result of this mod is minimal, i think...

taken the above in consideration i'm contemplating another case with room for more 'silenced' harddiscs, better cable-management and a better airflow. on top of that i think using a passively cooled videocard is not so smart afterall. it might be better to remove the heatsink from the gigabyte and put an arctic cooling silencer on it. to make the machine more quiet at high cpu-loads a better cpu-hsf with a 120 mm fan is being considered.

please ventilate your thoughts, suggestions and ideas. :)

Image

sanse
Posts: 399
Joined: Thu Dec 22, 2005 9:48 am
Location: Netherlands

Re: My Quiet [but not silent] Silentium Rig

Post by sanse » Sat Feb 04, 2006 5:43 am

sanse wrote:please ventilate your thoughts, suggestions and ideas. :)
this week i executed another mod, besides the extra 'push'-fan in the back. i underclocked the passive geforce 6600 videocard to 25% of the default speed values for memory and gpu.

the card is now running with the gpu at 125mhz (was 500 mhz) and the memory now runs at 110mhz (was 450mhz).

this gives a considerable drop of heat-production in the t2 and less current-draw too probably; thereby slowing down the psu-fans a bit. the system has become quieter.

now the slight hum of the samsung sp2504c in the lower 3.5' bay is more audible. ;-)

sanse
Posts: 399
Joined: Thu Dec 22, 2005 9:48 am
Location: Netherlands

Re: My Quiet [but not silent] Silentium Rig

Post by sanse » Sat Feb 04, 2006 11:35 am

sanse wrote:please ventilate your thoughts, suggestions and ideas. :)
and added a second 'push'-fan to the t2. at the bottom-intake on the inside. i moved the xifi-card one pci-slot up to make room for that second 80mm fan.

added bonus: the xifi-card no longer shares irq 18 with the videocard. it has it's own irq 17 now as long as the marvell lan controller is set to disabled.

the result in noise-terms of this second fan is also minimal, i think...

3 mods left:

- some way to isolate the spinpoint;
- a psu-mod to bring the rpm of the psu-fans down;
- isolating the case/psu-fans better from the t2.

sanse
Posts: 399
Joined: Thu Dec 22, 2005 9:48 am
Location: Netherlands

Re: My Quiet [but not silent] Silentium Rig

Post by sanse » Mon Feb 06, 2006 1:58 pm

sanse wrote:please ventilate your thoughts, suggestions and ideas. :)
tonight busy working out a way of isolating the second harddrive in the lower 3.5 bay. a picture gives it all:

Image

i used a bottomplate of a broken floppydrive and turned that upside down. then i mounted the case-rails and on the metal of the bottomplate along the rails i glued rubber-strips. put the harddrive on the rubber-strips and the disc is isolated from the case, while it is still possible to mount it easily, because of the standard rails.

i used elastic-bands to secure the drive on top of the floppy-bottom. i'm not so happy with that yet. it is not tight enough. if anyone has a better way of making sure the drive stays on top of the rubber-strips without disturbing the isolation i would be much obliged.

Tibors
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Post by Tibors » Mon Feb 06, 2006 2:31 pm

That looks like "post elastiek". That is a closed loop you can't variate the tension of. On top of that it is not heat resistant and will deteriorate rather fast (a few months in this hot application).

Use clothing elastic in stead. It is heat resistant. You can make the loop as large (or as tight) as you want and it costs next to nothing.

sanse
Posts: 399
Joined: Thu Dec 22, 2005 9:48 am
Location: Netherlands

Post by sanse » Mon Feb 06, 2006 2:49 pm

it is 'clothing elastic'; at least i bought it this afternoon in a clothing shop (zeeman). it is not a closed loop, but it is a rather weak type of elastic. not very firm. i'll give it another try tomorrow; maybe i can find something better.

that 15mm elastic on that site you refer to might be better, giving more tension. maybe choose even wider elastic.

if another idea pops up, please let me know. it should be possible to put the case on it's side without this 'isolated' drive falling off it's rubber-strips.

case upside down is not a requirement, but would be great. ;-)

sanse
Posts: 399
Joined: Thu Dec 22, 2005 9:48 am
Location: Netherlands

Post by sanse » Tue Feb 07, 2006 1:10 pm

oh boy, the floppydrive-silencer-plan failed.

i managed to construct a nice harddisc-silencer with 'button-elastic'. i secured the elastic with tie-straps. strong enough to even hold the drive with the silencer upside down.

the first 2 pictures show the homebrew-silencer. then the third picture shows why the plan failed. material in the case just above the rails makes it impossible to slide the silencer + disc in...

silencer side-view:
Image
silencer bottom-view:
Image
silencer killer-view:
Image

as a reprise 2 pictures of the 2 push-fans and the xifi-card:
Image
Image

i removed the drive from the silencer and put pretty thick duct-tape on the sides before attaching the case-rails again. with the idea this gives enough damping of any vibrations, before they reach the rails and the case. the drive sits very tight in it's bay now and the hum has decreased. or even dissapeared. i can only hear the psu-fans now. there is no more slack between the drive, the rails and the case.

so a little succes afterall.

oh well, back to the drawingboard, i guess, and think about the psu-mod.

or just buy a p150...

epiphane
Posts: 60
Joined: Tue Jul 19, 2005 12:50 pm
Location: No.Calif, USA

Post by epiphane » Wed Feb 08, 2006 4:43 pm

Wasn't sure from u'r post if u licked the drive suspension problem yet. If not, is Stretch Magic 1.8mm available in u'r part of the world?

It worked like a champ for my 2 puters & looks sharp at the same time.

Cheers
peter

sanse
Posts: 399
Joined: Thu Dec 22, 2005 9:48 am
Location: Netherlands

Post by sanse » Thu Feb 09, 2006 12:57 am

epiphane wrote:Wasn't sure from u'r post if u licked the drive suspension problem yet. If not, is Stretch Magic 1.8mm available in u'r part of the world?
ok, thanks. the elastic was not the problem, but the lack of space to accomodate for the raised harddrive in the case.

but in the meantime i have another idea about this harddisk-silencing. i'll be back.

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