Advice needed: Objective is near-silent, high overclocking PC

[zebbedee]

I am thinking of moving on up to dual core, and have been considering also trying to silence my PC. Water cooling seems a sensible idea, and a new kit has just come out that looks to be optimal: Swiftech APEX for £175 or around 240 euro. I can get a 3800+ for 364 euro.

These two combined with my current M/B and RAM ought to let me overclock to 4800+ levels, while keeping noise to a minimum. I was thinking of buying an Artic Silencer 4 rev 3 for my X800XT, thereby removing most of the heat generated from the GPU silently.

So, my guess is that with this setup I will spend around 630 euro to get 4800+ type performance from a pretty much silent system, but with the disadvantage of using water cooling.

Do you think this is a good idea? Any other suggestions in order to achieve high perfomance, silent computing without getting a new mortgage?

M

 

[Avalon]

A Zalman 7000/7700 CNPS HSF would also be very quiet, and much cheaper compared to the watercooling kit. However, you will have better temps/overclocking with watercooling and silence will be guaranteed. I can't hear my Zalman at all with my case fans turned off, but I'm not one for silence.

 

[Jeff7181]

Well I'm running my Venice at 2.55 GHz on 1.6 volts with the retail heatsink/fan with 3 Panaflo L1A's for case ventilation and it runs low to mid 40's under load... high 40's low 50's while running somethin like Prime 95. So with an XP-90 or XP-120 with a big slow fan I'm sure it would be adequate for cooling and nearly silent, even with a dual core processor. About the only noise you'll have is the sound of air flowing through the fins on the heatsink and the fan guards. The fan guards can be replaced with wire ones rather than just the holes stamped out of the case, and that'll knock the noise down some more. You can also use a fan controller to slow them down even more when just doing light work... and when you play a game or do some video encoding, turn em up a little.

 

[imported_Kensai]

Get a triple rad with low speed fans. D5 pump, 1/2" tubing, Storm G4 or G5.

 

[Gamingphreek]

Originally posted by: zebbedee
I am thinking of moving on up to dual core, and have been considering also trying to silence my PC. Water cooling seems a sensible idea, and a new kit has just come out that looks to be optimal: Swiftech APEX for £175 or around 240 euro. I can get a 3800+ for 364 euro.

These two combined with my current M/B and RAM ought to let me overclock to 4800+ levels, while keeping noise to a minimum. I was thinking of buying an Artic Silencer 4 rev 3 for my X800XT, thereby removing most of the heat generated from the GPU silently.

So, my guess is that with this setup I will spend around 630 euro to get 4800+ type performance from a pretty much silent system, but with the disadvantage of using water cooling.

Do you think this is a good idea? Any other suggestions in order to achieve high perfomance, silent computing without getting a new mortgage?

M

Check here. They are the authority on that sort of thing.

But since you are hear:

If you are water cooling the only truly silent one is a Zalman reserator (no fans or anything).

For air cooling.

What size fans will you need for this system? For 80mm it is Nexus or Panaflo. For 120 it is Nexus. After getting the fans get a fanmate or a controller and turn them to ~5V.

I have that PSU. It is very quiet but if you are going really quiet you might want to consider trading it out for a Seasonic S12 series.

What HDD's are you using. If you are using anything besides Samsung or Seagate you will want to sell it in favour of a quieter HDD (Seagates tend to perform better but are slightly noisier than the Samsungs).

For your CPU, get a Zalman 7700 series and you can leave the fan and just undervolt it. Or you can opt to buy another Nexus fan and swap the fans out.

You might also want to consider installing some sound dampening foam, but that is only if you want everything as quiet as possible.

-Kevin