My original build back in 2005 was this:
It used a Scythe FCS-50 for cooling the CPU and it worked well but I was always looking for something quieter and more efficient. This was the Scythe Ninja which only just fits (in terms of height).
The Radeon 9800 with VGA Silencer Rev.3 was taken from my old system but I replaced it with a Radeon X800XL a couple of months later. The X800XL ran a lot cooler and with a VGA BIOS modification was able to run quieter, even with the stock ATI heatsink/fan. The motherboard's stock heatsink had a noisy little fan on it so I replaced that with a Zalman NB47J. Originally due to the VGA Silencer I had to bend some of the fins on the Zalman heatsink to fit but when I replaced with the X800XL I replaced the Zalman with a new one and left it in stock form.
Since the initial build it has been ripped apart and rebuilt many times and the final result is this:
Obviously the Corsair HX-620 is complete overkill in terms of power but I really wanted a modular Seasonic and the 520W model wasn't available.
The original hard drive mounting was basically tying them onto the drive cage with shoe-lace. I had tried the Evercase rubber grommits but they didn't really reduce vibration enough for my liking. The shoe-lace method worked well but it didn't reduce airborne noise and was also a bit risky if the machine was moved. So I replaced one of the 3.5" Hitachi 7K250's with a Toshiba 200GB 2.5" drive and put the other 7K250 into a Scythe QuietDrive enclosure. It isn't ideal - I can hear a small amount of vibration from the 7K250 being transferred somewhere, but it is very low level. I may end up placing the enclosure on the floor of the case.
I have tried to keep all cables out of the way, which is quite difficult in the ECE-4252 but I think it is quite successful.
The exhaust fan is temperature controlled by the CPU temperature and generally runs at ~550RPM which is very quiet with a Nexus 120mm. Once the CPU hits 50C the fan begins to speed up until it reaches 1100RPM. Once there it manages to maintain a steady 50C temperature and if the CPU load drops, the CPU temperature quickly drops right down followed by the fan RPM.
