Spent a small fortune on QX9770 P182 etc and need final bits

[dgerol]

Hi all,

I recently purchased the following components for my new PC and would greatly appreciate some thoughts from you experts on some final bits and pieces...

- Asus P5E3 Premium WiFi mothrboard
- Corsair TW3X4G1800C8DF (2 x 2GB sticks)
- Antec Signature 850W Power Supply
- Intel QX9770
- 1 x WD VelociRaptor WD3000GLFS (used for OS partitions)
- 4 x Seagate ST3320620AS (from previous PC, used for data/swap in RAID 5 config)
- Adaptec 5405 for the Seagates above
- Antec P182SE Case
- Asus DRW-1814BL ATA DVD burner (from previous PC)
- Graphics card not yet bought. Thinking of an ATI 4800 series, but which one? Which brand is the best/coolest/quietest etc? I'm not much of a gamer so I don't need crossfire, but I will be doing a lot of video recoding so I want something good and fast...

I've got some questions on the extra bits and pieces...

1. What heatsink should I get? I was thinking of the Skythe Ninja Plus Revision B...

2. Is Arctic Silver compound still the best choice?

3. What about fans? How many? What's the quietest/best choice for my build?

4. Should I get Acoustipack, or would there not be much benefit for the effort if I choose the right fans?

5. Should I keep the Asus ATA DVD burner, or change to a SATA one? I guess one benefit is that I could disable the ATA controller in the BIOS altogether if I do, but is there really much point?

6. Any suggestions on cables? The Adaptec 5405 comes with an internal mini-SAS to SATA fan-out (for the 4 Seagates). I don't suppose there's any need to change this...? What about the SATA cable for the VeliciRaptor? Or the DVD (if I change to a SATA drive)?

7. Any other things I should consider to make this the best possible build?

Cheers,

Dennis.

[thejamppa]

Hey, you seem to have some really nice hardware there so I don't think money is problem.

Well, current Thermal solutions for 4870 suck. Better ones are expected come from His ( but they're hardly SPCR quiet ) and Asustek very soon and later for other brands. I'd consider getting some basic HD 4870 and put Accelero S1 with low RPM fan like Scliptstream 500 on it. Cool, Quiet and Fast. You may consider getting some extra ramsinks to cover the VRM's in HD 4870 just in case when / if you do cooler change.

1) I recomend Thermalright HR-01 Plus for your heatsink paired with Either Scythe S-flex or Slipstream series fan ( 1200 rpm fan ) on mobo control.

2) AS5 is still very good choice. So its safe one to use.

3) Scythe Slipstreams 800 - 1200 versions are good. You can also use 500 rpm versions in place where you just want to secure small air flow with minimal noise, like in bottom case with 1 or 2 HDD's. 800 and 1200 are still bit safer as they push more air. 800 is practically inaudiable at 12v.

4) Personally I don't think Acoustic pack really does much difference as side panels of P18x dampen noise really well. Besides with high tower cooler you cannot be fully cover side panel or else acoustic pack will press against the cooler. Like with Thermalright eXtreme there is just few MM's space between heatpipe ends and side panel.

5) I think there is. When you can disable Ide fully, you can have more resources and and get ridd of that big ugly flat cable and use much smaller sata cable.

6) Any sata cable you can get with Motherboard is good enough. There really is no matter with brand unless you want bling-cables.

7) Consider getting Scythe kama-bay, install it witout fan and thus get 50% more filtered intake area for top chamber. QX9770 is pretty heavy CPU so that helps it quite alot I believe.

[Jokoto]

Some SATA cables are of the locking kind, like the ones that came with my current Gigabyte board. They are great since they are held in place very securely. The cables of my previous motherboard, an Asus, didn't have those clips. They might in some cases be too loose. Otherwise, as long as the cables are long or short enough to route well and stay connected, don't worry about them.

[cb95014]

4. Should I get Acoustipack, or would there not be much benefit for the effort if I choose the right fans?

The one place where Acoustipack helped me was on the inside of the P180/P182 door. It is not a huge change, but I could definitely could tell the difference.

My guess is that the Seagate drives are going to dominate for noise.

[victorhortalives]

4. Should I get Acoustipack, or would there not be much benefit for the effort if I choose the right fans?

The one place where Acoustipack helped me was on the inside of the P180/P182 door. It is not a huge change, but I could definitely could tell the difference.

My guess is that the Seagate drives are going to dominate for noise.

I suggest adding Acoustipack for the lower section of the two side panels. This will add to isolating the noise from the drives in the bottom drive cage. I have this in place for two P182s - one for a Raptor 74GB in a GrowUpJapan box (almost inaudible except for occasional grunting) - the other for a RAID5 of 80GB Western Digitals (not quiet enough) I'm going to replace all of these with VRaptor 74s when they are out (as well as the 3Ware RAID card).

Isolating the inside of the door makes a BIG difference as you will want to have a fan working in the bottom section.

I have a mixture of Sharkoons (not my favourite) and Scythe 800rpms (best) all working from Zalman ZM-MFC1s

As you have enough funds to spend, why didn't you go for SSD as the system drive ? Too small plus limited Write/Rewrite lifetimes ?

[ntavlas]

Γειά χαÏ

[dgerol]

Hi All,

Thank you for your detailed comments / suggestions.

I've decided on the following:

- ASUS SATA DVD burner, thus disabling ATA altogether
- PowerColor HD4850
- Scythe PWM fan for the CPU
- Scythe 1200 fans for the top, back, and lower HDD chamber (I'll see how they run using the on-board fan control, and if it is not good enough I may decide to put in a mCubed Tbalancer I have lying around)
- Thermalright HR-01 Plus
- some locking SATA cables as I like the security idea

In answer to the comment on the Seagates being loud, I currently have 4 of them in a P180 (original version) which I can't hear at all, although this case has Acoustipak. Perhaps I will hear them in the new case, and if so I'll Acoustipak the lower chamber and door as suggested.

I don't like SSD yet because of the size/price ratio. I'm an IT professional and always run many OS's both physical and virtual, so I just need a fast and relatively large primary disk so the VelociRaptor suits me fine. I may decide to RAID 1 this later on...

I see no-one commented on the Adaptec 5405... I know it's not a silencing compopnent, but does anyone use this and have any experiences worth mentioning?

[victorhortalives]

I see no-one commented on the Adaptec 5405... I know it's not a silencing compopnent, but does anyone use this and have any experiences worth mentioning?

My experences with RAID have been with 3ware. When there is a 74gb VRaptor then I'll upgrade my 8506 to a newer PCIe version to use as a RAID0 for local data files. I have a Mtron SSD as a system disc.

Most data files are in a RAID5 on the end of a Cat6 wire.

Luck

[dgerol]

Well, the system has been put together, and yes - it if fast, and no - it is not quiet!

I guess I have some tweaking to do...

The initial environment was: a fan on the CPU heatsink, and a fan behind it for extraction - no top fan

Temps were at idle:
- CPU: 35 degrees (!)
- Motherboard: 45 degrees
- HD4850: 80 degrees (!)

CPU Fan was running at 1300 rpm, case fan at 1200 rpm and both loud!

I changed the case fan speed with with the Asus Q-Fan control to 700 rpm and the noise level was better, but when I tried changing the CPU fan, I was unable to. I suspect this is because the 3-pin fan is connected to a 4-pin header on the motherboard - would this be correct?

The motherboard and video card temps were too high for me, so I added another fan in front of the hard disk in the upper chamber to blow some air over the MB to the Video card. The lower chamber is not populated with any hard drives or fan just yet. Only a VeliciRaptor in the upper...

The temps after this:
- CPU 35 degrees
- Motherboard: 42 degrees
- Video Card: 80 degrees

As you can see, not much improvement. Also, the VelociRaptor in the upper chamber is very loud. I ordered a NoVibes III from Germany and will remove the IcePack and put it in this as recommended by the review.

Questions:
- What do I do to decrease my fan noise/decrease my MB and Video temps?
- Should I put in a fan at the top of the P182? Blowing in or blowing out?
- Do I need to change my CPU fan to a 4-pin version? If so, which fan?
- Should I keep the fan in front of the upper HDD cage?

Any other suggestions/tips would really help, because as far as I know I bought the best silencing components, so I should be able to get the noise below jet-engine levels!

[victorhortalives]

I suspect that much of your noise is from the 4 Seagates growling away. See what the noise is without them.

You may be better off, (if you can afford this), to junk the Seagates and go with 4 VRaptors in Scythe boxes (see post by Xuestor in : viewtopic.php?t=48650&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=60 )

I can't advise you wrt the other fans as my systems are much cooler than your's and I only need 1 fan in normal mode. I do have another fan in the top that I only use when gaming (both run at 700rpm)

[dgerol]

Hi, thanks for your reply.

I do not have the seagates in the case at this time. the will all go in the lower chamber once I get the RAID card.

[FartingBob]

I agree that the seagates aren't going to be quiet, no matter what you do to them.
For the 4870 Get an aftermarket cooler. The S1 comes highly recommended by silencers and overclockers (a rare thing!) and although the install instructions could be better explained it only took me 20 minutes to take the stock cooler off and put the S1 on. Make sure you've got room for a standard width fan to zip tie on as well, or get theturbo module fans designed to slot onto the S1 which are thinner and surprisingly quiet.

Dont bother with a fan in the top of the case, your CPU temps are great without it. MAke sure the hole is blocked up though.

[ntavlas]

This fan will work with the 4 pin connector on your mobo.

http://www.e-shop.gr/show_per.phtml?id=PER.650103

I`m also going to recommend the accelero s1.