Core 2 Duo-based, quiet gaming rig

b-org · Post by **b-org** » Wed Aug 02, 2006 11:11 pm

Hey!

I haven't updated my computer for last 6 years so now it is most definetely the time!

I'm aiming to build a quiet rig that i could play the newest games at least for some time. The price is aimed at 1500-1800â‚¬ (which is about.. 2000$ i guess?)

After seeking rather numerous forums for information, i've come to conclusion that conroe could well be my choice, offering good performance in power and heat for nice price.

I'd need your opinion on following package:

Antec P180
Antec NeoHE 430w (I've been thinking of Seasonic S12-430 but is it well compatible with P180?)
Conroe E6400 + Ninja Scythe
MSI M965 Neo-F
Nvidia 9700GT + Zalman VF900-CU
2x1Gb of RAM
Samsung Spinpoint P120 250Gb

Should i go for E6400 or E6600? What would be the best choice for motherboard, i'm not planning to do any overclocking at least yet and there's no need for SLI/Crossfire. How about 3d-card?

I'm very open to all kind of suggestion considering this setup, please let me hear your opinion!

cAPSLOCK · Post by **cAPSLOCK** » Thu Aug 03, 2006 1:39 am

Welcome to SPCR!

Looks like a pretty good setup to me. I would go for the E6400, if you go higher than that, I would also get a more powerful graphics card to balance out the power (for a gaming pc). For the motherboard, I'm not a fan of the placement of the ATX power plug on the MSI board. For a decent layout, I would go for the Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3. It's a matter of preference. The 7900GT is a good choice for a gamer that doesn't want to go too insane on the power consumption (and budget consumption

), you could even try to passively cool it. And finally, I think the NeoHE's straight-through airflow is a good choice for the P180.

niels007 · Post by **niels007** » Thu Aug 03, 2006 1:49 am

I would say the p180 is slightly overkill. I would consider a P150, with a DIY powersupply air intake 'tunnel' going to the front top 5.25 bay. IMO the case looks better, is smaller, and most importantly, suspends your HD properly. At first I don't even think you need to do the PSU duct, Its likely to be quiet enough..

For fans I would get one 120mm nexus, one 92 and one 80mm.. You can 5 volt the 92 and 80mm ones, with the 92mm going in front of the hd. The 80mm to replace the one on the zalman vga cooler. At somewhere below 12 volt, the 120mm fan will cool the cpu and exhaust some air so that the PSU doesn't have all the work to do..

The system isn't powerhungry enough imo to go for a p180.. My 2 cents

b-org · Post by **b-org** » Thu Aug 03, 2006 10:01 am

capslock:

thanks, i've been browsing these pages for a while and finally got registered and posting

e6400 might well be better choice, after all most games aren't limited by cpu performance as much as gpu-performance.. and leap from 800 Mhz Thunderbird and geforce 2 (that i have nowadays) to e6400 and 7900gt will feel pretty like pretty long leap, playing all the new games with quiet computer, ahh..

niels007:

I've thought of p150 too, but i somehow like the separated sections-idea of p180. That case is most certainly big, but i don't need to move it too much so size or weight is not a problem.

My plan was to suspend harddrives in the lower section of p180 with elastic cord, hopefully it'll quiet down all the whines and cracks completely

Anvar · Post by **Anvar** » Thu Aug 03, 2006 2:54 pm

I'm not sure how you'd go about suspending your hard drives in the lower chamber of the P180, there are only 3,5" bays down there. Unless of course you take them out and do some crazy modding.

jaQa · Post by **jaQa** » Thu Aug 03, 2006 3:59 pm

Hello,

My plan was to suspend harddrives in the lower section of p180 with elastic cord, hopefully it'll quiet down all the whines and cracks completely

this wouldn't work, there are three kinds of harddrive noise which can stress your nerves

1. whine caused by the motor
2. seek/read/write noise caused by the HD heads
3. a constant hum which is caused by the vibration of the harddrive, amplyfied by the case

suspending a HD with elastic cord can eliminate only the constant hum, and lower the seek/read/write noise a little bit

depending on the drive the whine noise can really be nervy - i bought two Samsung P80 (80GB) drives in the last weeks and both had this annoying whine.

I managed to get them truly (dead) silent by putting them into a Scythe Quiet Drive (5 1/4" harddrive enclosure) and mounting that decoupled with foam and doublesided adhesive tape into the case basement or bottom of the 5 1/4 drive cage.

Christian

b-org · Post by **b-org** » Fri Aug 04, 2006 8:21 am

Anvar:

Crazy modding sounds just good for me, i guess i'll be able to put up some kinda steady elastic cord-mounting rack for couple of Spinpoints

I'll post pics if results are satisfying.

jaQa:

Yep, i know from experience that hard drives really can be true biatches (sorry, hopefully not an insulting word

) to quiet up.. But i hope that elastic cord and p180 will do the trick and bring soothing quietness to my ears

And then one thing that crossed my mind.. the type of memory to get?
If i haven't understood all wrong, DDR2 will be my choice, but how much will the Mhz-reading affect the overall performance of my computer? I guess more expensive memory is better for overclocking, which i ain't too interested of, so i don't feel like paying too much for overclockability...

Anvar · Post by **Anvar** » Sat Aug 05, 2006 3:29 pm

Anandtech ran a story on the Core 2, and with regards to RAM found that the fastest RAM yielded very small increases in frame rates, somewhere along the lines of 4 frames/sec compared to standard RAM. Not worth the price premium at all to my way of thinking. I'd post the link, but now I can't find it.

vine-au · Post by **vine-au** » Sun Aug 06, 2006 12:52 am

you really don't need to worry about elastic suspension on the HDD's if you're going for the P180 (which i highly recommend, a brilliant, quiet, sexy case). The rubber suspension grommets in the P180 will isolate all the vibrations from the HDD's, plus the noise isolation in the case will eliminate the higher pitched seek noise.

Also - go for a better graphics card. a 6800 at LEAST. if you're going to upgrade, go all the way. A 9700 will barely play current titles.

Anvar · Post by **Anvar** » Sun Aug 06, 2006 1:01 am

Errm, I think you got confused, he's getting a 7900GT. I know it says in the first post that it's a 9700, but it also says Nvidia

I doubt you could even find a 9700 for sale these days, and they're definitely not PCI-E.

hapveg · Post by **hapveg** » Sun Aug 06, 2006 8:59 am

I too can recommend the P180, 4 Spinpoint HDD's in the lower chamber are barely noticeable, and they are usually the loudest thing in my system (temp controlled fans).

If you have a PATA SpinPoint check out AAM, it'll make your drive a lot quieter. It doesn't seem to make any difference with my SATA drives though.

Can't really give advice on the rest since I'm in the process of checking myself.