P180, Thermalright Ultra-120, SilverStone ST30NF, 3xNF-S12

Sygmoral · Post by **Sygmoral** » Sun Feb 04, 2007 3:55 pm

Greetings! Been reading the SPCR site for a while, but I must confess I've never really visited the forum. But here I am!..

I spent about two years deciding on what my new system would consist of, and here's the list. Most of it has already been ordered and will arrive next week; those that are already ordered are marked by a =.

= Antec P180 case
= MSI P965 NEO-F
= INTEL CORE2 Duo E6400
= Corsair Twinx DDR2 2048MB PC6400 XMS (2X1024MB) [edited]
= MSI NX7950GT (passively cooled) [edited]
= Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB (WD5000KS)
-- SilverStone ST30NF
-- Three of these: Noctua NF-S12-1200
-- Thermalright Ultra-120

These last three will only be ordered in a month or two when I can spare the money for it. They are of course rather important parts of the set up, so it's mainly about these components that I am opening this topic. Just for the record, I intend to use the stock cooler, stock fans and my 'old' Seasonic S12-430 until I can replace them with what I actually want.

The 'plan' is to install the Thermalright Ultra-120 with a Noctua fan sucking the air from it, right to the back of the case through a duct. Another fan would be placed on the front, taking air into the case and hopefully making it run over the motherboard (?). The third one is in the PSU chamber, providing airflow for the passively cooled PSU (er, so, no longer passively cooled then). I intend to run all of the fans at 5V. I'll also be sure to shut off the top 'hole'. The harddrive would be installed in the PSU chamber; I may get "NoiseMagic NoVibes III" if it seems necessary (or should I get something like that whatsoever?).

Result "should" be I can barely hear a thing from that computer

I think my 'plan' is pretty okay, so I'd love to hear some details I may not have thought about (and of course, reactions to the things I mentioned I'm not entirely sure about). The components marked with a = are however already purchased, so I'd obviously like to keep these.
I'm a little bit worried about whether the motherboard, VGA card and memory would get enough airflow from this setup.

I do not intend to overclock (except maybe a tiny little bit, but without raising voltages), thought I should mention that.

Sygmoral

Dodgexander · Post by **Dodgexander** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 11:21 am

Is it not worth going for 6400 ram and not 5400?Even if you dont want to overclock much it should allow you to lower the latency considerably to make it run faster at lower speeds.
In a few months time maybe a release of the 8600 will be out-whether it will be passively cooled or not i doubt.It ofcourse will also have direct x 10
As for the noctua fans, i didnt hear much about them yet, i saw they were being sold on quietpc.net and seem to be very quiet.
Maybe get a samsung spin point instead of the wd, i beleive they are the quietest yet, but im not sure it will make a difference.
The case seems to be a good choice.
The cooler is a good choice, im not sure how efficiant and quiet the case will be, is it made of steel or aliminium?or part/part?
Are you going to have any kind of fan controll?fan volt modding?because this may strain your older psu and you may run into trouble.

Sygmoral · Post by **Sygmoral** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 11:46 am

Hi,
thanks for your comments.

I decided to quickly email the store and asked them to replace the 5400 RAM set with a 6400 RAM set. The reason I chose the 5400 was because it had lower timings, and I wasn't actually sure whether I would be able to take down the timings for the 6400..

The WD 5000KS came out as the most silent HD in a recent SPCR (well, half a year ago), so that's why I chose that one... the "Recommended Hard Drives" als says "# June 30, 2006: A number of minor changes and added the WD5000KS as the quietest currently available drive."

About fan control, I will probably just connect the stock fans as they are usually connected. Or maybe I'll try to put 5V on them. Once I get the Noctua fans, I will definately also let them run on 5V, simply using a red and black wire from a power cable. That doesn't strain the PSU does it? I thought only getting 7V should be done carefully.

Sygmoral

Dodgexander · Post by **Dodgexander** » Tue Feb 06, 2007 1:19 pm

Ofcourse modding them just to 5v wont be a problem, however i wouldnt permantly mod my power cable, i would either get a volt switch(ive seem them in some stores) where you can click between 12,5 or even 7v, failing that just a standard pwm fan control unit-as they can be bought quite cheap, as i believe our fans will be quiet at full speed you may not need to alter them atall, however you can always use speed fan to turn the speed down on your pc, if your motherboard will work with software fan control.
Search on the net to see if anyone with your board type has managed to get speed fan to work.
It would be a great idea if motherboard makers could alter the voltage of the 3 pin connectors between 5 and 12, just like asus have with theyre cpu voltage jumper.
Glad to see you ordered that ram instead!I suggest i increase your bus speed over latency times, as it will greatley increase performance compared to having even the slimmist timings.Of course you can either not over clock, over clock just a bit or over clock to max(you may not even have to increase voltage) any how, test your rams max bus speed by increasing it slowly according to the spd timings,then when you reach your satisfactory limit, you can then work on the timings.