Hey all,
I'm getting tired of my rig's noise. I built it a few years ago, back when all the cool kids had 8800's. Of course, wanting to be a cool kid myself, guess what I got? An 8800, and a slow athlon dual core to sort of match. With all the loud fans and extra cooling I have to overclock, this thing runs really loud. I'm trying to sell it off, craigslist and the like, and I want to replace it with something that performs similarly without all the noise.
The only parts that I would like to keep are my new WD Caviar Black 500gb hard drives and my sound blaster x-fi. I plan on using this system for gaming and multimedia, and am looking to spend under $800. Can I get a build suggestion?
Thanks!
~Human Story
Help with a build?
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Human Story
- Posts: 4
- Joined: Fri Jul 17, 2009 12:33 pm
I'm planning on gaming at 1680x1050. I have a x-fi which can drive my simple promedia speakers and doesn't even need a heatsink. I have other parts I could use, but I'd kind of like to replace my box with something new, and I'd like to sell off the box to someone else to finance my new machine.
There was a passively cooled 4850 that I read a review of a while ago, that seems like a pretty good price/performance match. I've heard that the amd 720 is solid in terms of price/performance, but I really have no idea about noise or passive cooling with that.
Thanks!
~Human Story
There was a passively cooled 4850 that I read a review of a while ago, that seems like a pretty good price/performance match. I've heard that the amd 720 is solid in terms of price/performance, but I really have no idea about noise or passive cooling with that.
Thanks!
~Human Story
Please post complete specs of your current system. Like psiu said, a lot of it is probably salvageable. The 4850 you mentioned is roughly equivalent to the 8800 series in performance, so you won't see too much of a gain there (most of the FPS gain will be due to a much better new CPU).
My gaming PC still has my 8800GTX in it. At 1680 x 1050 and as long as I don't try to max everything out, the only game I've had to turn down the visual quality a little on is Crysis.
My tip - buy a reasonably priced P45 motherboard, Intel E8400 or E8500, whack one one of the 120mm tower style coolers from the SPCR Recommended heatsink list (Xigmatek S1283 + crossbow bolt through kit would be reasonably priced) and if you can't salvage the RAM from your current PC, throw in 2Gb or 4Gb of DDR2-800.
Re-use everything else from your current system. If necessary, swap your current case fans for quiet Scythe or Nexus fans, do a fan swap on your PSU if it is really loud, then use RivaTuner to manage the fan speeds of your 8800.
Hopefully this would work a treat and you should have a reasonable amount of cash to spare from your budget of $800. E.g:
CORSAIR XMS2 4GB (2 x 2GB) TWIN2X4096-6400C5C: $54.99
GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX: $134.99
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core: $179.99
XIGMATEK HDT-S1283 120mm Rifle CPU Cooler: $39.60
XIGMATEK ACK-I7361 CPU Cooler bolt through kit: $9.98
Total: $407.55.
With some quiet fans, you should be pretty good. Plus if you want, you can overclock the CPU a bit.
If you're not sold on keeping your current case and want to go for a passive graphics card, you've still got plenty of room in your budget for that.
I'm an unashamed Antec fan when it comes to cases, so if you want a new case you might want to look at whatever suits your budget from the following Antec cases:
- Antec Three Hundred (reasonably basic case, quite open, needs some damping)
- Antec Nine Hundred / 902 (more of a gamer's case, even harder to make quiet, not really recommended at all)
- Antec Solo (very good out-of-the-box quiet case, check whatever graphics card you go with will fit)
- Antec P18x series (2 chamber design, good airflow potential if quiet fans are used)
Otherwise, have a look around the General Gallery section and get some ideas.
My gaming PC still has my 8800GTX in it. At 1680 x 1050 and as long as I don't try to max everything out, the only game I've had to turn down the visual quality a little on is Crysis.
My tip - buy a reasonably priced P45 motherboard, Intel E8400 or E8500, whack one one of the 120mm tower style coolers from the SPCR Recommended heatsink list (Xigmatek S1283 + crossbow bolt through kit would be reasonably priced) and if you can't salvage the RAM from your current PC, throw in 2Gb or 4Gb of DDR2-800.
Re-use everything else from your current system. If necessary, swap your current case fans for quiet Scythe or Nexus fans, do a fan swap on your PSU if it is really loud, then use RivaTuner to manage the fan speeds of your 8800.
Hopefully this would work a treat and you should have a reasonable amount of cash to spare from your budget of $800. E.g:
CORSAIR XMS2 4GB (2 x 2GB) TWIN2X4096-6400C5C: $54.99
GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX: $134.99
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core: $179.99
XIGMATEK HDT-S1283 120mm Rifle CPU Cooler: $39.60
XIGMATEK ACK-I7361 CPU Cooler bolt through kit: $9.98
Total: $407.55.
With some quiet fans, you should be pretty good. Plus if you want, you can overclock the CPU a bit.
If you're not sold on keeping your current case and want to go for a passive graphics card, you've still got plenty of room in your budget for that.
I'm an unashamed Antec fan when it comes to cases, so if you want a new case you might want to look at whatever suits your budget from the following Antec cases:
- Antec Three Hundred (reasonably basic case, quite open, needs some damping)
- Antec Nine Hundred / 902 (more of a gamer's case, even harder to make quiet, not really recommended at all)
- Antec Solo (very good out-of-the-box quiet case, check whatever graphics card you go with will fit)
- Antec P18x series (2 chamber design, good airflow potential if quiet fans are used)
Otherwise, have a look around the General Gallery section and get some ideas.
If you like their gaming/led style, I would only recommend their P18x series, make sure the door opens correctly for your position. You might also be interested in a silverstone TJ01. I say this only because you are considering a passively cooled graphics card and without positive air pressure in your case your temps are going to be insane. On a recent build of mine my 9600GT was idle at 72C with the door off( aka no pressure ). I put the door back on and it quickly dropped down to 60C, then 55C, then 50C then after 10 minutes or so it stayed at 47C. With a 4850 it will be much worse without a proper case. If you read comments some people are reporting 100C + load. Their cards will be dead soon...
You can also have positive air pressure by facing fans inward but I'm not sure how it compares to a case designed for it. I currently am running a negative pressure atcs 840 which is pretty bad without the GPU duct. If you use the GPU duct it's fantastic and I would definitely recommend it. If you lower the fanspeed the negative air pressure isn't as big of an issue and the fan duct alone is impressive. It clips onto the back of the case and allows you to mount a slow moving 120MM fan. If you control it, it will be inaudible. I can run a gtx260 at 25% fanspeed with a noctua NF P12 @ 17db.
If you're looking for better gaming performance, the upgrade from the 8800GTX to the 4850 won't be significant. The 8800GTX is still a pretty fast card. The 4850's advantage will be acoustics and that's about it.
If the guy wants to buy a sound card as well, I'd sell it. Onboard sound these days is just as good as dedicated. Try using onboard sound compared to dedicated in blind tests, you'd be surprised. I'm talking about movies and music only here. If you play games that use EAX 3.0 and higher I suppose the x-fi makes some sense.
Note: Antec's other cases are great, but I don't really feel that they're good for silent PCs. The tricool fans are good for most average gamers, but if you're on spcr you're interested in silence, not low noise.
You can also have positive air pressure by facing fans inward but I'm not sure how it compares to a case designed for it. I currently am running a negative pressure atcs 840 which is pretty bad without the GPU duct. If you use the GPU duct it's fantastic and I would definitely recommend it. If you lower the fanspeed the negative air pressure isn't as big of an issue and the fan duct alone is impressive. It clips onto the back of the case and allows you to mount a slow moving 120MM fan. If you control it, it will be inaudible. I can run a gtx260 at 25% fanspeed with a noctua NF P12 @ 17db.
If you're looking for better gaming performance, the upgrade from the 8800GTX to the 4850 won't be significant. The 8800GTX is still a pretty fast card. The 4850's advantage will be acoustics and that's about it.
If the guy wants to buy a sound card as well, I'd sell it. Onboard sound these days is just as good as dedicated. Try using onboard sound compared to dedicated in blind tests, you'd be surprised. I'm talking about movies and music only here. If you play games that use EAX 3.0 and higher I suppose the x-fi makes some sense.
Note: Antec's other cases are great, but I don't really feel that they're good for silent PCs. The tricool fans are good for most average gamers, but if you're on spcr you're interested in silence, not low noise.
under 800 bucks?
i would get an intel e8400 (beats some quad cores for gaming and can easily be overclocked to 4.2ghz) and a good cpu cooler for it like a thermalright hr-01 (or any other lga 775 socket cpu hs in the spcr recommended section), 4 gb ram (gskill's good bang for your buck), a 4850 would be good for gaming (for low noise on these get an accelero s1 rev2 with a 120mm fan like scythe), a gigabyte mobo's good bang for your buck too and finally the case...
i got a good deal on an antec solo last year (got it for 59 bucks) but i guess they realized how good it was and it's back at 99.99 right now, if you're spending that much, you might as well drop an extra 30 or so and get a p183.
But since it's a case, you could just get a used one from ebay or craigslist
good luck!
i would get an intel e8400 (beats some quad cores for gaming and can easily be overclocked to 4.2ghz) and a good cpu cooler for it like a thermalright hr-01 (or any other lga 775 socket cpu hs in the spcr recommended section), 4 gb ram (gskill's good bang for your buck), a 4850 would be good for gaming (for low noise on these get an accelero s1 rev2 with a 120mm fan like scythe), a gigabyte mobo's good bang for your buck too and finally the case...
i got a good deal on an antec solo last year (got it for 59 bucks) but i guess they realized how good it was and it's back at 99.99 right now, if you're spending that much, you might as well drop an extra 30 or so and get a p183.
But since it's a case, you could just get a used one from ebay or craigslist
good luck!