P183 Sandy Bridge system

[JayBee]

After about 7 years of loyal service, it was time to part with my old P4 Prescott based system, which was - at the time - fairly quiet. Last month, I used the following parts to build a new rig to be used mainly for office apps, some photo, audio and video editing and light gaming. Due to the SSD I'm not sure whether this one will last 7 years, but you never know...

- Asus P8P67
- Intel Core i5-2500K
- Intel X-25M 120GB (I chose reliability over speed with this one)
- Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB silenced with my old SilentMaxx 5.25" HDD enclosure
- 8GB (2x4GB) of Kingston DDR3-1333 ValueRAM
- Antec P183
- Seasonic X-560 (turned upside down)
- XFX ATI Radeon HD5670 (silent)
- Asus DRW-24B3ST
- CoolerMaster HyperTX3
- Scythe Gentle Typhoon D1225C12B3AP-13 120mm (front, unobstructed middle chamber, with manual fan controller set to lowest setting)
- Scythe Kama PWM 92 mm (cpu, on the HyperTX3)
- Noiseblocker M12-PS NB-Multiframe 120mm PWM (rear)

My old system had 2 (old yet) excellent Papst fans, but having read some very positive reviews of Scythe's products, I thought it was time for a change. I was 'forced' to order the Noiseblocker because none of the local retailers had the Scythe Kama PWM 120mm, and I have to say: I was pleasantly surprised by the excellent build quality! The combination of PWM and Asus' software Suite does the job of keeping everything cool & quiet. With an ambient temperature of 25C, SpeedFan shows the Samsung's temp at 33C, Asus shows the cpu at 37C and the mainboard at 36C. PWM fan speeds are at 620 rpm for the 92mm fan, 710 rpm for the rear fan. More than quiet enough for me.

Thoughts, ideas, suggestions are more than welcome
JJN

[JayBee]

@Mods: I built this pc about 4 weeks ago, but readers' afterthoughts on how to completely silence the HDD are more than welcome. Despite the Silentmaxx HDD Silencer the initial startup (read&write) and the idle spinning are still audible, be it barely. Together with the cpu fan it's the loudest (or rather: least quiet) component in the case.

Cheers,
JJN

[billdcat4]

Nice specs. Have you taken any pics?

[kuzzia]

nice built. What do you need advice on?

[netmask254]

It's a nice build, except the CPU cooler doesn't belong to the top class

BTW, have you tried to load CPU (Prime95) and GPU (Furmark) simultaneously? Only in this condition, we know the worst case noise and temperature. Since you are using PWM for case fan and CPU cooler (I suppose), the noise should be very good during idle.

Do you really need front fans? It may cool HDDs efficiently, but I'm wondering whether they do make sense to the overall system temperature. You may do the test with and without front fans turned on.

[JayBee]

@netmask, thanks for the advice! I ran both Furmark (which pushed the GPU to about 58C after 60s) and Prime 95 (cpu at 52C and - obviously - a noisier system, but back at 34-35C immediately after the test). The treshold I set for higher rpms on the PWM fans are 40C for the cpu and 38C for the mainboard, which it only hits during real stress, such as prolonged video encoding/recoding or the stress tests you sent me. As for the front 120mm fan: it's inaudible. It's a Scythe (max 1150 rpm, I believe) set to the lowest possible speed or just above that. I've removed the top 3.5" HDD box anyway, which means the airflow behind it is unobstructed (and hence, even less noisy). It should help cool the passively cooled graphics card which is right behind it. My SSD is in the bottom compartment (near the PSU), the HDD is in one of the 5" bays. And that's the one 'audible constant' that I'm trying to silence completely... The Silentmaxx HDD Silencer (that I got from my old P4 build) makes a difference but it doesn't do the trick.

I'll try to take a picture as soon as I have time. I'm not great at cable management, but hey

JJN