A Silent PC....

[robthebloke]

Recently I've been getting somewhat annoyed by the noise levels of my PC recently, and was also getting annoyed at a higher than expected number of BSOD's. The former caused by a Q6600 and a geforce 8800GT, the latter I suspected was caused by knackered memory (and it was....). I was bored this weekend, and thought I'd take a stab at doing something about it.

So anyhow, i set about finding the largest heatsinks I could for those 2 components, to try to minimise the fan speed required in the case. I also had a hunt for quiet fans I could use to cool those heatsinks. In the end I chose these combinations: (because they were available as today only items at scan)

Thermalright Ultra 120 eXtreme + 120mm Asaka fan
Thermalright HR-03-GT + 92mm NorthQ Silent Tornado

I'll upload some photo's taken during the installation tomorrow, so i'll go into a few details then, but until then you'll have to use your imagination....

So anyhow, first things first. The CPU heatsink is in a word, massive. If you go for this heatsink, be aware that:

1) It will only *just* fit in a standard ATX case (i've got about 2mm clearance from the top of the heatsink to the side of the case, and about 10mm clearance between the PSU)
2) It's going to be a royal PITA to plug in things like the motherboard power connecter, the graphics card, the cpu fan, infact anything in a mile radius of the CPU is now going to be a squeeze to fit back in.
3) Attaching the fan is a lot harder than it could be. The fan clips are so crap, that I could only attach the fan one way around, and you can only do that on one side. Needless to say, if your motherboard power connector is between the CPU and the back of the case - don't buy this heatsink because it will not fit! (In hindsight, I did see that they didn't list an Asus P5K Pro as being compatible, but assumed that it would be given all the other P5K models are listed. Ooops).

The GPU heatsink is, well, massive. With a fan attached, it's simply ridiculous. In theory you can connect the heatsink in one of two ways, either above the card, or below it. I attached it below the card, which takes the bottom of the whole GPU+HS+Fan to being about 3-4 cm from the bottom of a standard ATX case. Yup, that's right - it's managed to cover my second PCI-express slot, and the next PCI slot, leaving about 1mm room to get a single PCI card in the bottom slot of the case. This is not a heatsink for SLI!!!

Now, in theory you can attach it above the card, but I think that's a load of BS. Even with the stock CPU fan installed, and assuming you aren't attaching a fan to the GPU heatsink, there simply isn't enough room to install it like that (unless you move the card into the 2nd PCI-express slot - and even then it's a push to fit it in).

Now for some minor niggles about the GPU fan.

1) The instructions are as crystal clear as the bowels of an extremely constipated man.
2) It took about an hour to figure out how the crap fan clips would work.
3) standard 92mm fans have 3pin connectors. The GF8800GT has a 4 pin fan connector. This means you have to plug the fan into a chassis fan connector - which means it won't automatically ramp up the speed when the GPU needs it.
4) The memory heatsinks included don't like sticking to the memory chips, and will fall off. You'll probably some thermal glue to stick them yourself.

So anyway, the results. For a start, mission (almost) accomplished on the noise front. The noise of the two fans is in-audible over the power supply and hard drives. The power supply is now the noisiest thing in the case (and it wasn't that noisy to start with). I think I'll be replacing that for a high quality silent PSU next.

I did manage to mess up slightly by installing the CPU fan the wrong way around initially (done due to space problems by the power connector, and since the fan clips are so crap, it's impossible to attach the fan on the other side and make it blow the other way around). End result - I had to re-mount the CPU heatsink again. Ugh.

Moving swiftly on. Now for the interesting part - temperatures! I didn't take a GPU temperature stock reading, but my previous stock Intel cooler was keeping the CPU at 51(idle) and 65(load) at the standard 2.4Ghz. The temperatures afterwards? With the fans on Max speed, the temps were 21(idle) and 32(load). At max load, the GPU was happily kept at 51 degrees, tending to stay around 39 at idle.

Well, I was fairly happy with those temperatures, so thought I'd have a crack at overclocking it. Previously the CPU had refused to overclock at all from the stock 2.4. After replacing the memory, well, things were somewhat different! I got a bit worried about temperatures, so i did install a case fan at the front to get as much air through the case as possible (which isn't actually needed at stock speeds).

First things first. I very quickly found that if the memory was running at anything outside of the range 760 -> 840, all PCI devices would fail to work (mind you I only have 2, and with the GPU heatsink in there I can only fit 1 card into the case at anyone time). This meant that some clock speeds just weren't possible since the memory speeds were out of range, and I had to pay special attention to the memory speed and set that separately.

Anyhow, I managed to push the CPU to 3.7Ghz with everything still working (blu-ray, tv, graphics card, etc etc). The temperatures? At idle, the CPU temp was 45 degrees, at full load the temp remained steady at 64 degrees. If i didn't care about the TV tuner, I reckon I might be able to push it to 4Ghz - but to be honest, I don't think i'll try because the CPU voltages were starting to get into the realm of scary!

All of that is a rather i nice result i think. I must admit I've clocked the CPU back to the stock speed - because to be honest, I don't need the extra Mhz, and my main aim was a silent PC - so I don't want to be running the fans at max all the time! If you're considering overclocking a Q6600, then i can recommend that heatsink + fan over the rather pathetic stock fan (if your case + motherboard can handle it!). It's huge, and a fair amount of hassle to fit, but the noise levels and cooling ability are very impressive.

As for the GPU heatsink, I do think it's quite good, but i think adding a fan to it is a waste of time. The fan in the front of the case made more difference to the GPU temperature than the actual fan on the heatsink. So much so that disconnecting the GPU fan made about 2 degrees difference. That's probably going to mean that i rip the fan out, and move it into the front....

Anyhow, to finish this off (and get as silent as possible), I'm thinking that these may finish the job off:

NorthQ Black Magic PSU
Zalman Multi-Fan Controller

What do ya think? Comical PC photo's to follow....

[robthebloke]

The heatsink + fan on the GPU...
   
And again from the side. It's quite big!
   
The stock Intel cooler next to the Thermalright 120 Ultra. That's quite big too!
   
The backplate coming through the motherboard. You can just see the tips of the 4 mounting holes
   
The heatsink mounted to the motherboard
   

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Installed in the case. There's about 3-5mm clearance from the top of the HSF and the case side panel. Note: The heatsink + fan are mounted the wrong way around. don't mount yours like this! The fan should be directing air towards the rear of the case.
   
This should give you an idea of just how large the GPU's heatsink is. Note that only 1 PCI card can be used along with this HSF. A lot of slots are going to be obscured with this!
   
Both mounted and ready to go. (CPU heatsink still the wrong way around). Note the tight fit for the motherboard power cable between the PSU and CPU. This gets much worse when the heatsink is mounted the right way around.
   
The finished product with the CPU heatsink mounted correctly.
   
A closeup of the rather bad situation with the motherboard power cable. The bottom fan clip just couldn't be used with the power cable there. As luck would have it however, the cable ended up being so tight against the heatsink, that it managed to hold the fan in place rather firmly.
   

[robthebloke]

After another night of fiddling, managed to get the voltages down a load, and have been running stable at 3.75Ghz, with 1.43v, max temp at load 58 degrees - 38 idle. Got it to boot at 3.95Ghz, but would have needed quite a bit more voltage to get it to be stable.

Now to start clocking up the geforce and see what i can get as a 3D mark (then honestly I will clock it back down again. honest).

[yamatosoul]

Very impressive and educational. And that heatsink is ridiculous! I didn't know such a thing existed.
Thank you for the post!

[robthebloke]

Going to be updating this soon, these just arrived this morning:

Anit Vibration Screws 'n' stuff
Acoustipack noise insulation
Hard drive coolers + vibration cooling
Fan Controller
New Power Supply
+ a load of fans

should be a fun evening

[robthebloke]

First impressions are.

The bad:

The Sharkoon-Silencer-Kit is a bit pointless. I did use them, but not really sure it makes much, if any difference.

The AKASA-AK-HD-03BK hard drive cooler is shit. After mounting the drives in the 5 1/4 bays, the hard drive noise got noticeably worse since the larger amount of air around the drives act as a soundbox for the drives. The other problem is that the air flow in the 5.25" bays isn't that great (especially after wrapping the internals of the case in carpet), and so the temperatures rose about 30deg C. Ripped them off the drives, and moved them back down to the bottom of the case. Don't ever buy these - they're shit.

The good:

650W NorthQ Power Supply is rather sweet. It generates a lot less heat than my old one, looks a lot better, is a joy to install, and have no complaints what so ever.

Zalman ZM-MFC1 Fan Controller. It looks quite stylish, is easy to install, and does exactly what it says on the box. My only (small) gripe is that some of the control-knobs were not properly glued - nothing a small blob of super glue won't fix.

The AcoustiPack ULTIMATE Multi-Layered-Material-Kit is awesome. Installation took absolutely ages, but kept me entertained for hours - one of the most fun upgrades you can do to your PC. The pack comes with 3 (very heavy!) sheets of acoustic foam (with sticky back plastic). The trick with this stuff is to use the thicker 7mm sheet around the hard drive and CD rom bays + the case front around the fan inlet; then use the 4mm sheets to do the rest of the case - which is what I didn't do. The temperatures have increased by about 3C in the case, so don't expect maximum overclocking with this stuff on. There is however much less variation in the case temps now - i.e. running fans on max or low speeds makes little to no difference. The all important result: my PC is now quieter than background noise! woot!

Pics to follow....

[aram]

Hmm that acoustic foam sounds interesting, looking forward to the pics!

[robthebloke]

The side of the case (material covering back of motherboard panel).
   

Close up. material also put onto hard drive bays.
   

Side panel for case. 2 thicknesses of material. 7mm for the most part, 4mm where the CPU heatsink sits. Don't do this, just use 4mm for the whole panel, and use the 7mm around the hard drives + CD roms.
   

some stuff on the case front (with front panel removed).
   

The rear of the front panel with some stuff to cover the unused floppy + 5.25" bay.
   

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The fan controller.
   

A view of the inside (note: new fans that better fit the heatsinks, + 2 new rear fans).
   

Rear of the case. note the rubber fan mounts from the sharkoon silencer kit.
   

Another view of the side. You can see the crapply cut bits around the cd roms (not that anyone will ever see that).
   

job done
   

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and finally. The hard drive cooler mounted in place. This has now been removed and put back to where it originally was. The coolers are bloody useless unless you have a fan blowing air across them. Don't bother buying them.
   

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ok, a few more closeups.....