Case & cooling for architectural renders

[kakker]

I'm building a PC mostly for professional architectural modeling and photomanipulation of large files, but also for very occasional gaming. I have so far settled on the following:

Asus 9X79 Pro
Intel core i7 3930k
GTX 580 graphics
16 giga RAM (possibly 24)
Western digital caviar black 1Tb
SSD 256 giga
Blu-ray writer
PSU still to be selected

My difficulty has been in selecting a case and a CPU cooler. When I do renders, all six cores will be working 100% overnight while I'm sleeping in the same room. The GTX580 will not be working hard. Cool and quiet are difficult to combine, but I have to achieve that. Please note that there will be no overclocking. I've read plenty of reviews, but I haven't been able to choose a case and CPU cooler. So perhaps someone can help me with these questions:
1. From what I read, liquid cooling is not necessarily cooler or quieter than a good quality fan cooler. I decided to keep liquids out of the rig. Would a Zalman CNPS9900 Max (57 €) be sufficient and quiet enough or do I have to go for something much more expensive, like Noctua NH-D14 (106 €)?
2. I do not want to go crazy with case fans, but I'm hesitant about buying a case with only one intake and one exhaust fan because if I don't have enough cooling there is no place to put another fan. Should I DEFINITELY get a case with, let's say, two intakes and two exhausts?

 

[_Rick_]

First make sure the selected heatsink does not prevent you from installing memory.
The classical approach is to use a stinking huge heatsink of your chosing (Scythe Mugen/Ninja and Thermalright Macho are probably some of the best value HS) and then add a big fan.

Liquid cooling has one advantage: You can get the heat out of the case using water, not air. This means you won't need (m)any case fans, and you will have higher efficiency due to a bigger delta between ambient and water temperature. This results in slower fan speeds and less noise.
In-case liquid cooling is advantageous, if your desired cooling performance is only possible with blocked RAM slots. Especially with X79 this can be a problem, if you want to use a quad channel setup.

Finally, the Noctuas are pretty good, but the mark-up makes for poor value.
Ideally buy fan and body separately. That way you get a high quality fan, and you can get the largest cooler that will be compatible with your RAM requirements for the least money.
140mm fans are going to be nice, but you might want to use the as case fans instead.
Finally, a big horizontal cooler (eg. Scythe Grand Kama Cross) may be an interesting proposition if your case supports it.
Essentially you'd build a side-intake over the cpu and exhaust hot air everywhere else. That should optimize quite strongly for CPU temperature, but requires careful selection of case and cooler.

Also, cool is not that important. If you aim for ~350deg K CPU temperature, the high delta theta of around 50K should increase cooling efficiency nicely and allow you to stick with lower fan speeds, while impact on longevity should be negligible.

So, to be more precise, for a case, aim for something that has a short, unobstructed intake path to the CPU area. A single rear exhaust and either a top mounted PSU or top exhaust should be largely sufficient for exhaust duty. An additional intake for the dead space under the graphics card is also going to be interesting.

Move HDD and SSD out of the cooling paths, they require no cooling, but will disrupt airflow, for extra noise, and potentially warmer CPU-intake temps.
If you're a bit adventurous, you could even use ducting to get fresh air to the CPU cooler. This should also help noise.

My actual suggestion, if it fits into your budget, would probably be a Silverstone Fortress FT02. At 200$/euro it's not cheap, but if that board does reasonable fan control, you should be able to obtain good performance. Alternatively, there may be cheaper cases with preinstalled noise dampening material. they may smell oddly for a while, and come with cheap fans that you may have to replace, but some people opine that noise is significantly reduced. Probably also depends on where you put it in a room.

Good luck!

 

[kakker]

Thanks Rick, that is informative (though sometimes a bit over my head). I checked out the Silverstone. I like the looks and the reviews are good, but it's almost double my budget. I've been looking at the Antec P280 and the Corsair Obsidian 550D, both practically the same price and with plenty of places for fans. The Obsidian is interesting, with the possibilities of fans on top, bottom and front (not that I intend them to have them all) but you can keep them covered with panels if you don't need them. You can also remove one of the drive cages so that the intake fan can blow right at the graphics card, like you said. For the CPU cooler I'm still up in the air, especially that not all types are readily available in Belgium.