Extensive pic. on my setup & Arctic C. Accelero TWIN TUR

Show off your quiet rig.

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runep
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Extensive pic. on my setup & Arctic C. Accelero TWIN TUR

Post by runep » Thu Oct 16, 2008 2:27 pm

This took way longer than I expected and will be way longer for you to read - There... I said it... up front and in your face.... Now.. there is cookies in the ending :twisted:

Anywho this is a picture tour de force, with a smile, on my adventure with installing the following setup this evening:
Arctic Cooling Accelero TWIN TURBO and Scythe Mugen on my AMD X2 6400+
Ohh and as a bonus how I dealt with cheiftech fan backet's when fitting 4 x Nexus 80mm with them vibration killers.

Now first here are the tools and enviromental impact which these 2 coolers makes:

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Note the pages are turned over to the second half of instructions which where way more extensive especially for the AC grapichs cooler - but well made. The can is house cleaning grade alcohol. The green "pen" besides the AC 5 paste is actualy an eraser - more on that later. There is alot to take out after you are done; old coolers and the paste, packaging etc. and I didn't even include the postal package and bits I saved for eventual later use.


Now that picture was taken after I was done - what I really did first was taking out the old CPU stock cooler and my xfx 8800GT card and removed all its cooler screws and then the cooler to get this:

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Isn't that paste looking like high grade stuff? Well the exccesive amounts and experince tells my guts it isn't. BTW love the black style of this XFX board. That was a really positive thing when I got my ASUS Geforce 7900GT died prematurely and I asked for any stock spec'ed 8800 GT as my supplier couldn't get the old anymore (my luck!). I thought of XFX as a low end brand but reliability and style turned out great so far.

This is what I call the 3 rubber setup - a nexus case fan solution when you have fan backets which offen leave you with too few hole that are aligned right:

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Here you can see the inner side and my new mugen cooler in place

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From the backside - note how the last rubber dud wouldn't fit. The remaining 3 are in a position so tight that the fan is relatively well in place - on the sound side there is no difference between this setup and a regular 4 dud setup.

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These are the purple sinners I was talking about - cheftechs fan brackets

Here is a quick view over my motherboad selection - its a ASUS board with Nvidia 570 [2x8 lane] SLI chipset and ofcourse I got this for its OC tinkering and high grade passive cooling setup:

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With the lack of grapich cards you can clearly see the chipset cooling pipeing - and that on the AM2 MOBO you are forced to put your new big mugen cooler side wise. Also note I moved my 4 gig's of ram to the 2. dual channel slot but that wasn't actually needed as it turned out.

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The cooling fins that the 2 backside nexus fans help with.

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Relations between the back 80mm nexus pair - and the big fans of the mugen that blows into the Chill PSU fan.

Now here is a good view on how the special AM2 clips for the mugen are done. These have a little turnable thingy that tightens the clips to good level for such a heavy cooler:

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Here is a overview of the setup so far:

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This little feller screamed of alot of work off the bat:

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Meet my friend vodka! Well no ofcourse vodka was not involved as it less vol.'s than I like :D - but this paste did get removed rather well.

Here is what I did next - like when putting on the mugen, which was rather standard, I made sure these got a good degrease before accepting some highgrade Arctic Cooling Silver 5:

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See what a 90+ vol. drink can do ya!

Now this actualy startled me a bit in the while putting on the small coolers:

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Eraser? What the...? Well it turned out the are pretty much right after what I tested. BTW using a eraser pen like I did does have it advanges with small voltage regulators but on the ram modules its head are to little to be real effective.


Now after alot of tinkering it was finally done:

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Note the big wire on the "top" - thats the dual fan wire that also comes with and adapter to mate it with external management. Lets just have a close one of this wire (adaptor not included here):

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Alot bigger than my taste - Like most I can just control the fanspeed from the nvidia drivers so no lengthy wires was really needed in my case

Here is how the back looked after assembly - screws be gone!
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The AC TWIN TURBO cooler system comes with and will in all cases need you to install 2 outtakes on the back - taking up 3 spaces both internal and externally:

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As viewed from the back

The card was placed in first slot and now you see it:

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Here we see the gray wire running in slot #4 and my X-FI card in the 5.th slot - the giant 3 slot cooler system is in many ways comparebel to mr. Richard Wagners famius "Die Walküre" which my FLAC system just happened to shift to while writing this!

Now after just testing this could atleast boot into windows with good temps and fans spinning with ASUS quite mode control I installed the last 2 fans. BTW on my MOBO that doesn't support 4 pin connectors on anything but CPU fan you will have to cut the last one out if 2 fan pin sets are too close on the MOBO:

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This one was placed behind one my HD's but you couldn't exchange the fan backet there for vibration reducers duds so I decided it needed to take the low slot which might also have been better from an airflow point of few. Well okay the grapichs cooler system and wires may obstruct some :D Also this uses my 3 dud system of suspension

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The side door fan fitted in real 4 dud setup. Note my Hitman logo and premade door - my next project is repainting the original metal door and the rest of the case and then add foam inside. But thats also becourse of the Wife Acceptance Factor is part of my noise avareness project and she just happens to work as a painter so she both have the knowhow, skill, discounts and willingness to help me makeover this awfull looking case into a statement of noise avareness.

Now I installed the side and noticed something interesting about the new big mugen cooler and the side fan:

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This is what I would call out as a perfect fit!

Now I got all the wires placed and cables pluged into my PC agian:

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All done and ready - X-FI Elite Pro card blue light making its stand


Okay. So this is where I am right now.. Sound level and type is some better but not much better than before in while listing to music and such - sound type thought with the new fans and vibration dampners changed to near perfect. I ofcourse still only have employed cool and quit bits and drivers to auto underclock the 6400+ and ASUS quite mode MOBO fan control setting. When I have game tested and such I will make ajustments ofcourse and let you guys know.

Untill then... hope you enjoyed grinding thought this pile of pictures and text!

runep
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Post by runep » Thu Oct 16, 2008 2:29 pm

now for some gaming.. damm this took 3 hours just to write and edit.

xev
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Post by xev » Thu Oct 16, 2008 2:54 pm

looks good. but you should clean up the wires around the gfx card. That should be better for noise and temps/

Is the side panel fan exhaust or intake? You might want to experiment with the orientation to see which one give better temps.

runep
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Post by runep » Thu Oct 16, 2008 3:25 pm

xev wrote:looks good. but you should clean up the wires around the gfx card. That should be better for noise and temps/

Is the side panel fan exhaust or intake? You might want to experiment with the orientation to see which one give better temps.
Well following ATX spec its intake if its exhaust it will wast all the air comming from the front as it will mainly just transfer that out which havn't really been heated by any componet... looking into the wireing atm.. while listing out the sounds more.

Update just did a game test - GPU says 48 C idle and 58 C maxloaded - the AC TWIN TURBO fans are not that good soundtype wise if its not for the cards auto that puts them way to fast even in idle for my setup. Mugen can't even really be heard among the PSU and Nexus fans that are still not low enought.[/b]

runep
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Post by runep » Thu Oct 16, 2008 4:08 pm

Ajusted cables and turns out the red sata cabel sewerly impacted the preformance and sound of the nearst fan on the GPU.. along with resorting the rest it gave a sound type inprovment on the AC twin turbo fans and 3 degrees lower idle temp. down to 44 C now.
My ideas is now:
  • There seem to be some vibration still that might be tweaked.
    What grills and holes air is moved thought might make a difference- cut out some and replace these or the current replaceable grills with losenoise but worse looking onces.
    Turn down them damm Nexus's to just around 1K RPM instead of what the MOBO is reading as 1600.
    Look at the GPU fans and fine tune these to the lowst sound possible that still leaves them some degrees from overheating.
    Fine tune Mugen fan if it then stands out more under full load.

bonestonne
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Post by bonestonne » Thu Oct 16, 2008 4:15 pm

i like the build, and agree that it needs some tidying, but i'm not sure how much i agree with an X-Fi.

i almost went down that path, but i will say for really intense audio, i can't really agree with an X-Fi. maybe M-Audio just whipped me into shape when i got my Delta 24/96, but when it comes to multichannel playback, i see many other cards worthy, like, there's RME and their Hammerfall series (which i can't seem to see justification for, but its a killer example). there's the M-Audio revolution series, the Delta series, but i just don't like pushing audio off an X-Fi. at my school we have a Dell XPS 710 (Q6600, 8800GTX 768, 4gb DDR2, 2x500GB) and its got an X-Fi in there for audio, and for the life of me, i just can't agree with it.

i'd probably got E-Mu before Creative for quality audio.

CallmeRoth
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Post by CallmeRoth » Thu Oct 16, 2008 6:16 pm

suggestions: Not sure if they were brought up yet.


Put the CPU fan on bottom of heatsink blowing through then the PSU will pull off.

Cut out the fan grills , possibly cut it to fit a 120mm.

runep
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Post by runep » Fri Oct 17, 2008 1:36 am

bonestonne wrote:i like the build, and agree that it needs some tidying, but i'm not sure how much i agree with an X-Fi.

i almost went down that path, but i will say for really intense audio, i can't really agree with an X-Fi. maybe M-Audio just whipped me into shape when i got my Delta 24/96, but when it comes to multichannel playback, i see many other cards worthy, like, there's RME and their Hammerfall series (which i can't seem to see justification for, but its a killer example). there's the M-Audio revolution series, the Delta series, but i just don't like pushing audio off an X-Fi. at my school we have a Dell XPS 710 (Q6600, 8800GTX 768, 4gb DDR2, 2x500GB) and its got an X-Fi in there for audio, and for the life of me, i just can't agree with it.

i'd probably got E-Mu before Creative for quality audio.
Yeah well - my experince is that many highend DAC's for headphones actualy fields the same chips as my X-FI Elite Pro - thought at a totally different price range and with many other improvements. Also this card is only for gaming and untill I can aford the really expensive balanced DAC/AMP units from places like Headroom. For gaming there is not card near this in features or preformance. And my FLAC's still sounds close to listing sessions with a very highend audiophile system we use for testing at work.

runep
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Post by runep » Fri Oct 17, 2008 1:38 am

CallmeRoth wrote:suggestions: Not sure if they were brought up yet.


Put the CPU fan on bottom of heatsink blowing through then the PSU will pull off.

Cut out the fan grills , possibly cut it to fit a 120mm.
Well 120mm sounds good but in pratices I just spend the bucks on these 4 80mm and the case can't really acommidate any 120mm. Point taken about the CPU fan - will do this when I have the time.

runep
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Post by runep » Fri Oct 17, 2008 2:36 pm

Well.... I learned a few things by now. Experimented with taking down the speeds on the different components and stress testing both GPU and CPU to see if that setting bought them into the "risk for shorter lifespan" heated area. I should note that I moved the Mugen 120mm from sucking upwards on the broadside to blow thought as suggested - this in turned as we saw on the pictures but I didn't really realize made the side-fan of the case impossible to mount at the same time. I think I will move this back later but only when I have the right gear to get the nexus's down to 1K RPM. Results are:
  • Firstly; The AC TWIN TURBO fan set is rather nice both cooling and sound wise at the included 7 volt fan speed setting (they included a 12v and 7v converter from the GPU specific to PSU normal 4 pin plugs). It run cooly 48 C idle and in the low of the 60'ies C on full load.

    Secondly; my setup can't run with out the case fan's at the back at least. The limiter is the Mugen on the CPU which reaches a wopping 70 C under load when without fans to help and running 2 CPU burn-in to stress both cores. Comparably I put only the 2 rear 80mm nexus back in action and its running 66 C now even after a good while stress testing and 37 idle (power of AMD's C&Q right there!). The Mugen 120mm fan seems to top RPM at just below 1300 with my setup - still with the ASUS quit mode running the nexus at 1600rpm. That is due to I sadly found out my local shop for electronics componets and such have been closed so better hope the E-engineers at my work lab has the 47 ohm resistors or potentiometers required.

    3. Sound type and volume did improve in small bits all day the more I turned my eye on what ever was now the loudest noise. Cables and drives has been fastened and rerouted thought its still a rather crowed case with my sound card and assory USB/firewire ports etc. I have found that the AC twin turbo set at 7volt is fine for me and my monster card. The mugen I'm thinking of ether letting be as is with the MOBO moving it up to 12V for gaming and 9v or so for idle or turning down to 7-9volt permanently. The nexus 80mm's are all getting a forced 7Voltage once I procured the items needed.
My experience up till now tells me that if I work the last kinks out as mentioned above I really need to go for padding the case and drives - or rather I plan to procure a good 500GB-1TB drive and suspend that up good and then fluff the case when I strip it for the planned paint job. Also I have one of the best dvd/cd reader drives - a pioneer slot-in bought before dvd and CD burners got cheap. What I actually most want to is suspend that! Whats that for a project?
:twisted:

Monkeh16
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Post by Monkeh16 » Fri Oct 17, 2008 3:52 pm

runep wrote:my experince is that many highend DAC's for headphones actualy fields the same chips as my X-FI Elite Pro
And those DACs don't come with unstable drivers.

AMDforlife
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Post by AMDforlife » Fri Oct 17, 2008 7:07 pm

Dude you have way too many 80mm fans running! :shock: You can remove the side 80mm fan cuz you sure have enough VGA cooling! :P

I have nearly the exact same case, but an Antec design. I'll show some pics of how I modded it to fit a 120mm fan.

Also I found a better way to mount the fans (those purple brackets suck!)
Velcro! Its made by 3M and cost like $2.99 CDN. It sticks well to the steel, but it also makes it easy and fast to remove for cleaning!

The pics show how I cut the front 2x 80mm holes into a single 120mm. It took probably 40 minutes but was pretty easy.

Image

Image

runep
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Post by runep » Sat Oct 18, 2008 2:33 pm

Monkeh16 wrote:
runep wrote:my experince is that many highend DAC's for headphones actualy fields the same chips as my X-FI Elite Pro
And those DACs don't come with unstable drivers.
Yup pretty much right - at these price ranges products are handmade and tested well.

Monkeh16
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Post by Monkeh16 » Sat Oct 18, 2008 4:06 pm

runep wrote:
Monkeh16 wrote:
runep wrote:my experince is that many highend DAC's for headphones actualy fields the same chips as my X-FI Elite Pro
And those DACs don't come with unstable drivers.
Yup pretty much right - at these price ranges products are handmade and tested well.
Whereas Creative cards make more money, are not handmade, and aren't tested at all..

xan_user
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Post by xan_user » Sat Oct 18, 2008 4:11 pm

Eight fans!

Whoosh!

Nice build tho.







... but we really do need a minimum fan count for posting at SPCR. :lol:

oxygen200000
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Post by oxygen200000 » Sat Oct 18, 2008 11:37 pm

1: Too many fans. If you want silence, you must use up to 3x120mm fans in the whole system.
2: Why did you remove the original thermal paste from Accelero? That paste is MX2 and is a little better than AS5.

runep
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Post by runep » Sun Oct 19, 2008 7:37 am

oxygen200000 wrote:1: Too many fans. If you want silence, you must use up to 3x120mm fans in the whole system.
2: Why did you remove the original thermal paste from Accelero? That paste is MX2 and is a little better than AS5.
Well saw that.. 24 hours AFTER I did it... but BTW actualy in tests I'v seen that paste to be worse in some conditions so... On the Fan side I just ordered some resistors sets to get them down to that claimed 7Volt~1K RPM then their noise is so low that I ordered a Samsung F1 1TB HD and a rubber setup for it to replace my 450GB in total HD's that are making quite the most noise even now.

Ohh and ordered the recommend dampning "carpet" in the good 7mm deep type for when I and my better half have time to paint my case (ETA before the new year).

Also an very interesting note: I replaced and and or tightend all screws that could turn (some would keep turning for lack of size or damage over the years these where replaced with bigger fittings).
Also I used a hammer with a metal narow thingy infront to nail in the case fittings around the removable trays used for my optical drive to keep it from sitting so loose also tried with some sucess using normal narow rubberbands between the fitted beam on the side of the DVD drive and the fittings which I just had, with the dvd drive in of course, hit to a firmer fit. All this provided quite a positive reponse


Ohh and I admit it... I just realised I'm almost just as adicted to messing with noise audio on my PC as I do with my audiophile system parts - moving the noise floor is just such a big issue. In fact since I live in a rental and we are planning to buy or build a house - things in the noise compartment is now just as integra to my planning as is special electrical requiments. We where already planning a low noise vent system becourse its good for our commen light allergies/astma and for freshning the air and help cleaning all rooms when you have cats and stuff like we do. - Yeah always choosing to have cats or dogs when you have allergies towards them is a little self inflicted pain but I'd ague that most people reading this might have done far more silly things related to silencing in the general publics mind.
Anywho we planned things like the 3. grounding leg on all walloutlets (which is very rarely seen implemented at all in denmark and even fewer does it correctly all the way to the PC etc. ), propper ethernet and TV lines in most rooms and with really high quality wireing and outlets. Oh and ofcourse filtered telephone line for the ethernet routing and internet connection area, standalone powersurge protection on all types of outlets. And ofcourse we already now buy powersaving/green power eletronics and lightbulbs etc. And I could go on... but when your are into this stuff and now how much it matters for [quality] preformance of your electronics there is tons you can do before moving into a new home - even a rental. On that note I plan to buy a power reconstructor for my audiophile stuff that will isolate it from the rest of the grid. Now back to work!

runep
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Post by runep » Sun Oct 19, 2008 11:47 am

runep wrote: Ohh and ordered the recommend dampning "carpet" in the good 7mm deep type for when I and my better half have time to paint my case (ETA before the new year).
What I was refering to was SPCR recommeded Acousti AcoustiPack EXTRA Single 3-layer stuff which I ordered 2 of for full case coverage. That makes me think about a top fan... so many things to do...

The HD I was talking about was the Samsung SpinPoint F1 HD103UJ and with that I ordered a Sharkoon HDD Vibe-Fixer in search of better.

AMDforlife
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Post by AMDforlife » Mon Oct 20, 2008 1:18 pm

That makes me think about a top fan... so many things to do...
You gotta be kidding... :shock:

The last thing you need to do is add more fans.

Oh ya and adding foam to this case is pointless. You need to ... remove fans... period. The side fan on the window for sure needs to go.

runep
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Post by runep » Mon Oct 20, 2008 11:26 pm

AMDforlife wrote:
That makes me think about a top fan... so many things to do...
You gotta be kidding... :shock:

The last thing you need to do is add more fans.

Oh ya and adding foam to this case is pointless. You need to ... remove fans... period. The side fan on the window for sure needs to go.
Top fans was to make better use of my current 8 and use less fans if possible of course.. Thought with the current setup I'm a bit worried about removing any fans as when the CPU is fully loaded on both cores its fan even at full 1250 RPM speed and with all the 80mm nexus at 1800 rpm can barely keep the CPU cool below a 65 C on the sensor which I gather must actual be around the 63 C max recommend for my 6400+. Now since sadly there is no better sub for that CPU and I just bought the mugen.. hmmm...

runep
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Post by runep » Fri Oct 24, 2008 1:33 pm

MAN! I took me forever to figure out how to clone the windows drive without needing a reinstall - only to figure out today that there was a short cut in how windows deals with harddrive letter allocation via the registry. That is normally not easy and even less so when you have your system drive on D for some long forgotten reason! Also merging drives and letting all dependcy of old once isn't easy. Anywho after fighting for like 20 hours copying and making a 3.th xp install on a old drive from where I could run tools required fior my crasy rewriting all enviroment variables and entire register etc.. I used 1 hour of replaceing all the files I manually and autoreplaced with this new knowhow. That was basivly that ofcourse if you have another windows OS you can use regedit in that and from that load hives from a remote drive. In that hive (system in my case) you can edit sections that can't be editted while the registry it belongs to is running - E.i. there is about 3000 places in the registry that, when running a normal windows XP, can't be edited like the mounting of drives and so forth...

:!: Anywho the fact still remains I got that Samsung F1 1 TB running and its so damm quite just hanging in a rubberband suspension - close to silent compared to my 2, not so old, 200-250 GB WD and seagate HD's and the still not down rev'ed fans (guess whats going to be worked next - just waiting for my resistor order to arrive). Since the wires from these to HD's could now be hidden or taken out my case flow is also much improved. Time for some music listing, my waiting for left-4-dead replacement of super high quality: Zombie Panic HL2 Mod on Steam, and lets not forget Farcry 2 or first game about the little girls that runs around with "mr. bubbles" :twisted: (for some reason everytime that I get much into that game I get really busy or my system gets a major issue - ironically I have a laptop that could run it at launch but its running 32bit where my stationary here is XP Pro 64bit so I can't move savegames :()

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