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AMD Rigs - You can have a COOL rig or a QUIET rig...can you have both? Prove it!

MichaelD

MichaelD

Lifer
I'm quickly growing weary of my hovercraft. That would be my Antec 1040 case with 4 fans, plus the HSF and PS fans. System stays nice and cool, but my bedroom sounds almost as loud as the server room at work...

So, I disconnected the two front intake fans, thinking that the two rears would draw plenty of air thru the considerably well-ventilated front as well as cut the noise down. It did cut the noise down quite a bit, since my case is in a cubby in my desk (back is open) and the two front fans are about 3 feet away from my left ear. As far as temps..my case temps went up 4C and my CPU temp went up by about 3C. Not a dramatic increase, but more than I like.

So, to my line of thinking, as far as AMD rigs go; you can have a quiet case or a cool case, but can you have both? Watercoolers need not apply. I'm not in the habit of mixing water and electricity...especially not when I'm paying for both.
rolleye.gif
 
ignore the temps and dont be anal about it. unless ou overclock 3c isnt that much. Beside people have been complain about the northwoods has well for temps. =\ Oh you want to have the fans blwoing in btw, a neg pressure is not good to have in a pc. You what a postive pressure.
 
Inwin S500 case with a 250W powerman psu, fan replaced with a panaflo L1a,

1 L1a exhaust fan, 1 alpha 8045 w/ L1a on the 1.2ghz tbird, and 1 L1a blowing across my Gf2ti (which has it's built in fan unplugged). Seagate barracuda IV harddrive.

The chipset fan is unplugged as well. 27C case temps, 50C cpu temps, and a very quiet system overall.

it can be done.
 
Hmm, that's pretty interesting, Huma. I must admit; I haven't tried those Panaflo fans yet. Are they really that much quieter than say, the ball bearing Antec fans I have? (I bought the ball bearing ones b/c I figured they'd be quieter than the sleeve bearing ones that come with the case, as well as lasting longer...)

Oh, Adul, my case is set up correctly. Maybe I worded it wrong? My front fans blow in (suck) and my rear fans blow out (blow) You know, the whole "suck and blow" thing. 😉
 
Im not exactly sure when the idea of having a cool cpu temp became important.
If the computer runs, who the hell cares if its at 55c, 45c or 35c ??? I dont.
To illustrate:
I was driving down the road the other day. My digital thermometer showed my engine was 267c. I was like OMG, Chevy's only run at 256c... what the hell is wrong with my car? Clearly my car cant be running right if its 11 degrees hotter than the other guys car. Surely the engineers didnt design it to run this hot. There is no way its at optimal performance even though its running within a pre-fdefined range.

See my point?
 
Weelll......

You could switch to a better insulated case, such as the Fong Kai FK-320. I have this case and it is so thick and well-insulated that even a 38cfm Delta screamer was tolerable when I went to bed at night. Also, it uses 120mm and 92mm fans instead of the 80s that Antecs use. So you can have some low-output Panaflos, buy a nice heatsink like the ThermalRight AX-7, strap a Panaflo on there, install a nice quiet Antec PSU, and you have a near-silent computer that still has excellent cooling.

In all, though, it doesnt matter if your CPU temp raises 3 degrees, or probably even 15 degrees. As long as its stable, its all good. Case in point: I am usually pretty anal about my CPU temp. I have a 1Gig Athlon overclocked to 1.3. I'm using an Alpha PAL8045 with a 50cfm Sunon fan strapped to it. Usually my CPU temps stays around 40. I decided the other day that I wanted to quiet the case down a bit, so I dropped the CPU fan to 7V. Now my CPU runs anywhere from 44 - 48, and at first I freaked. Its never been that high before. But, its still perfectly stable and quite frankly, 48 is a good temp for an Athlon, especially with a 30% overclock. So I just stopped worrying about it.
 
I have a 1600+ at 1575 MHz (150 FSB) in an Antec SX635 case. The small case makes for very good airflow. To quiet things down, I chucked the retail heatsink and bought an Alpha Pal 8045 and a bunch of Panaflo L1A's from BGMicro. I replaced the standard Antec fan with the Panaflos, added 2 more in the case, and 1 on the heatsink. The loudest part of the system is power supply (Antec 350W, not True Power), it's not all that loud considering it has 2 fans.

Temps are:

Winter
Case: 21-23
CPU (idle/load): 38/43

Summer
Case: 23-26
CPU: (idle/load): 42-46

The comp is in my room and I have no trouble sleeping when it's on, though I usually don't leave it on. IMHO, the Panaflos are great, I'd love to mod the power supply, but I don't trust myself with those large capacitors :Q
So to answer your question, it is possible to have a fast, cool, and moderately quiet AMD Rig. If you really want an ultra quiet rig, I hear Cyrix's are great 😉

-Ice
 


<< If you really want an ultra quiet rig, I hear Cyrix's are great >>



LOL! Yeah, they have no fans on the heatsink! Funny. 🙂

Some excellent ideas guys. Thanks much. I may just remove the front fans completely and just deal with the temps. I mean, three exhaust fans
(2 case+PS) should make for some decent airflow.

Hmm, I just thought of something though. In the Antec 1030/1040 (830 too, I think) one of the front fans is actually installed into the HD cage. Keeps the HD icy-cool. Maybe I'll just remove one front fan? I'd like to keep that one on the HD...
 
The panaflos are quiet mainly due to much lower airflow.

They keep my system cool enough to stay stable, while being very quiet, so I'm a pretty happy guy.

the AX-7 seems like the heatsink to get for price / performance and it's ready to take an 80mm fan stock.
 
Sure it's possible. I just setup a 1800+ XP on a Gigabyte GA-7VXRP KT333 board and not only is it overclocked, but it is quiet and cool. I used a Antec SX800 case, similar to your Antec but without the door in the front. Here's what I did..

The Antec SX cases are louder than other cases due to them being so open in the front and rear. While this makes for good airflow, it kinda makes it noiser since all the fan openings allow a good deal of sound to escape...especially in the front. I decided to do something a little different with my cooling setup and it worked well. First, I blocked the entire front bezel with a small towel. I used an Alpha 8045 HSF and a 30dba YS Tech to cool the CPU. I am using a modded Enermax 431W PSU with the 80mm rear fan replaced with a Panaflo. It is also modded so the fans run at full speed all the time. The two fans of the Enermax handle the exhausting of warm air near the top of the case as well as the CPU area. I decided to use the two rear fan holders as intakes instead of the traditional front intake mounting. This works well in my case since it is out in the open on top of may desk. This might not work as well with a case that is in a enclosed area or in an otherwise cramped space. The two rear intakes are Panaflo's as well. They both blow cool outside air right onto the CPU area, and the Enermax handles the exhaust. Works like a charm and it is very quiet.

Now, not only is it quiet and cool, but it's also overclocked a good deal too. I cranked the FSB up to 150mhz and now my 1.53ghz 1800+ is running like a champ @ 1.73ghz for 2100+ speeds. 🙂
 
oh sorry this is amd only my p4 1.6a @ 2.4 is running nice and cool at 114 F idle..120 full

/me mossies out of the room

 


<< my p4 1.6a @ 2.4 is running nice and cool at 114 F idle..120 full >>


Wow, your P4 must be on fire or something. You better look in there to make sure it isn't. My 1500+ is running at 2000+ and only hits 113 F at full load. 😛
 
I sure hope that one guy was kidding about his car engine running 267, especially C. 230F is damn hot.

But I agree on the "if it's working, leave it be" to some extent. Using the car engine example again, obviously while it will run for awhile overheated or even without oil (very short while), that doesn't mean because it's working at moment X that it should be left that way. With computer components we don't have physical wear to worry about, except maybe with HD's and CDroms. So other than to account for a margin of ambient heat rise getting a CPU cooler than it already is if it's stable seems not to be advantageous.

--Mc
 
Nearly silent AMD system:

One 21CFM:24dBa Panaflo in the front
One 21CFM:24dBa Panaflo in the back
One 21CFM:24dBa Panaflo on the Alpha 8045

Done...
Just get a quiet hard drive and power supply after that.
 
Yes - you can have quick and quiet at the same time. I have an 1800+ @ 2000+ (AGKGA, 1.8v) with PAL-8045 on an EPoX 8KHA+ case: Lian-Li PC60-USB. Max cpu temp: 42°C (depends on whether the room window is open). Fan is 80mm ~30cfm Papst: very quiet indeed. I've used ducting to funnel the HSF outflow to the rear extract fan. Noise-damping matting on the inside of the case makes a small but useful difference. ...in fact; running out of ideas for new tweaks and mods.

Anyway... like some have said above, provided your system is stable, who cares what temp it's running? That won't wash for most - including myself. Admit it - enthusiasts are a little obsessive. I'm as guilty as the next man - but we are just talking about temperatures of bits of electronics in a box, right?

Still, anything that shaves off another few °C.... eh? 😉
 
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