System temperatures of silent gaming PC

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Psychoman
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed Apr 04, 2012 2:33 am

System temperatures of silent gaming PC

Post by Psychoman » Mon Apr 30, 2012 9:05 am

Hi all,

After reading a lot of reviews and comparison data I treated myself to a brand new PC. The system had to be silent during daily tasks but was allowed to be audible during gaming. I was eager to spend some money on the components to silence the PC but the hardware was chosen on price/performance base and had to be future proof. It also needed the possible to extend the PC with a second graphic card in the future and leave the option open for water cooling.

Based on those criteria I chose following hardware:

Code: Select all

Case:      Silverstone FT02 (UBS3)
PSU:       Seasonic X-1050
MB:        Asus P9X79 Pro
Processor: Intel i7-3820
Heatsink:  Noctua NH-D14 (SE2011)
GPU:       Saphire Radeon 7850 (2G)
SSD:       Samsung 830 (128G Desktop)
HD:        Western Digital Caviar Blue (500G)
Memory:    G.Skill Ares Blue Series (16 G)
Burner:    Plextor PX-L890SA
OS:        Windows 7 Ultimate (64b)
After having assembled and installed the PC I noticed it made quite some noise. The headers of the 6 fans (2 for the CPU each with 4 pins, 4 for the case each with 3 pins) are plugged in the motherboard so I had to make some adjustments in the BIOS to improve the noise level of the system. Unfortunately I still couldn't get to the noise level described in the review of the Silverstone FT02 (inaudible in a living room during daytime).

The MB is delivered with software to handle the fans: AI Suite II. With the switches of the 3 bottom fans set to high, it seems impossible to get the fans spin under 40% of their speed with AI Suite. This causes the system to be to loud when idling. If I put the switches on low, the fans won't spin under 78% of their speed, which leaves little room for extra cooling. Also, I believe the AI Suite only takes into account the CPU temperature (picture)and might not be able to handle the second CPU cooler (picture) .

Could anyone recommend a better way to control fan speeds without the usage of a fan controller?
I might actually consider buying a fan controller but with almost all fans connected to the MB I believe it's a shame. The idea of a tweak-able system which autocratically adapts to internal temperatures seems very appealing to me.

During testing of system temperatures I used several applications and I noticed big differences between them. The applications reported following inconsistencies for the idling system (in °C):
- MB: Speccy=55, SpeedFan=25, FanXpert=26
- CPU: SpeedFan=55, CoreTemp=25, FanXpert=26, Speccy=24
A temperature of 55°C for an idling system seems extremely high to me.
Should I be concerned about the high temperatures reported by some of the tools?
Could anyone tell me which of the tools I can trust?

I hope to keep the hardware for a long time and I believe temperatures plays a role.
(coretemp, fanxpert, speccy, speedfan)

Another thing I also noticed is that the HD makes some annoying noise. After a while the OS takes care of putting the HD to sleep (might even shut it down) but in the meanwhile I have to tolerate sound of a drive I don't even use.
Any trick I could apply to make the HD go to sleep a bit faster?


Thanks to all people who are reading this and are willing to help me out.
I really appreciate your help.


PS: The packing of the case surprised me with the SPCR logo :)

Psychoman
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed Apr 04, 2012 2:33 am

Re: System temperatures of silent gaming PC

Post by Psychoman » Sun May 06, 2012 3:48 am

Any trick I could apply to make the HD go to sleep a bit faster?
At least I found a way to manually put the HD to sleep: revoSleep.
While today it's still in beta fase (v0.2 Beta) it seems to work just fine.
I still have to find answers to the other questions but I'll post them here if I get an answer somewhere.

kuzzia
Friend of SPCR
Posts: 709
Joined: Fri Jul 02, 2010 4:41 am
Location: Denmark

Re: System temperatures of silent gaming PC

Post by kuzzia » Sun May 06, 2012 7:51 am

In FanXpert you should be able to create your own temperature/rpm graph, i.e. you can let your fans run all the way down to 40% (5 V). Try creating a "Custom Profile" or something similar.

HD to sleep:
Write "power options" in the start menu and push enter. There, you can change power settings (press a blue link). Then push "change advanced power options". Under "hard drive" you can change when to turn off the harddrive. Though I don't know if this applies the primary or secondary hard drive.

paapaa
Posts: 198
Joined: Wed May 04, 2005 1:24 am
Location: Finland

Re: System temperatures of silent gaming PC

Post by paapaa » Sun May 06, 2012 11:43 am

You would have done better with Ivy Bridge system: consumes less power and generates less heat -> less noise. I also think you PSU is greatly overpowered for your needs. A semi-passive Kingwin would've been a better and silent choice. But I understand you already assembled the system so we'll focus on that.

But do you really think you need 6 fans in your system? I just built a silent computer with one 800rpm case fan and one 1100rpm CPU fan. No other moving parts in the system. And it is almost totally silent - I have to see the Fractal R3 blue light to see if it is on. I can't hear it unless in the middle of night when it is 100% silent - even then it is very quiet. You'll do just fine with one case fan and one cpu fan. Even if you overclock. 4 fans is totally and absolutely useless.

I also think your GPU produces a lot of noise. Consider an aftermarket cooling solution. I mounted Accelero S1 Plus to my 4770 and it is now 20 C cooler than the stock cooler AND produces no noise at all. Stock GPU coolers simply suck. Big time. Accelero S1 Plus with a 12cm fan would cool anything you can feed to it.

Forget the monitoring software. Just see if your computer is stable under heavy load. Only temps you could watch are CPU, GPU and mechanical HDD. Check out HWMonitor:

http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html

Seems to be quite reliable monitoring software AFAIK.

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