Power and Silence

[jibberegg]

In the spirit of "powerful, quiet, cheap; choose any two" I'm going with the former two for this build. I'm looking for a powerful yet quiet PC to sit hooked up to the living room TV to act as a media centre streaming files over the network, playing blu-rays locally and also some gaming as and when required. Oh, and distributed computing 24/7 too.

With the upcoming releases of Ivy Bridge, the rest AMD's 7000 series and nVidia's 600 series certain bits of this build will probably be waiting a couple of months, but the rest of the components probably won't change too much between now and then.

With the specs released I'm thinking i7-3770T for CPU; 45W TDP and 8 threads nothing to be sniffed at. GPU will have to wait for performance/price battle but let's assume something like a 7950 or nVidia equivalent.

What case, CPU cooler, mobo, PSU combo would fit my "silence at a premium" build? It's a tech bachelor pad so size isn't an issue; Have no problem sticking a XL-ATX chassis next to the TV if that's the best option

 

[mfenn]

"Silent" or "quiet"? You're using the two words interchangeably but they don't mean the same thing. You could easily spend $4000 (or pounds judging by your avatar) chasing a "silent" build but never quite achieving that goal.

 

[paperwastage]

distributed computing 24/7

silence + power for distributed computing doesn't really go together

what you could do is
a) slower but completely silent
get a i3-2100T. use a giant heatsink(fanless).

get a fanless GPU, gigabyte 6770

get a fanless PSU. Since its an i3 + 6770, a good 300W-400W should do it
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151097

b) powerful, but not silent
replace the above i3 2100T with an i5 2500k, perhaps a H60 radiator with a silent/low rpm fan

 

[jibberegg]

Sorry, being decidedly imprecise with my nomenclature there. I mean silent in the practical sense, so "as quiet as possible". A tower cooler with low RPM fan would fit. Can't imagine a 200W capable cooler getting above 25% with a 45W CPU. Thanks for the suggestions paperwastage; I've never done watercooling before, how quiet are those systems? No idea how much noise (if any) pump etc all makes.

 

[fuzzymath10]

It's pretty easy to keep a CPU running quietly. My living room PC with a Q8200 has a small HSF (Scythe Shuriken, not the "big" version) with no fan, and the 120mm case fan (Noctua S12B) can keep it adequately cooled and be hardly heard. I just spent about two days doing non-stop re-encoding, and it peaked at 70C. An IB CPU will do as well or better for cooling, especially if it's a 45W TDP.

I have less experience with video cards, but I use an Arctic Accelero for an old 4830 (~100W) and another one for my 5750 bent into a C shape to reduce its height, and can get away with passive cooling. I'm sure good active cooling on faster GPUs is quiet, but I question the long term reliability of their fans always running (not an issue with the new 7000s which can shut off their fans).

Choose the PSU wisely. I have a lower-powered Seasonic PSU and it's dead quiet at idle, but does make a gentle blowing noise when loaded up. A higher end model will probably not have this issue, and you can get a fully silent one too.

A much bigger challenge is fitting a decent amount of power into a slim case while remaining quiet. I've spent the better part of a year trying this with my main system, with the GPU being the most challenging part (and this is just a 5750 which is very much lower-middle of the pack).

 

[ElFenix]

the T and S model processors were essentially worthless for sandybridge, and i'd assume they'll be worthless as well for IB. basically, if you undervolted a regular sandy down to the same level as the T and S models, you'd end up consuming only slightly more load power, but getting your work done faster. so the S and T models were actually lower performance per watt than the regular models.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1202-page3.html

 

[boxleitnerb]

Watercooling for only one CPU and one GPU is not really necessary unless you want to overclock like crazy. Only once you go SLI/CF and cannot fit the insanely large coolers onto your cards, it makes more sense.

 

[Sunny129]

silence + power for distributed computing doesn't really go together

i generally agree with this...and there's no denying that its literally impossible for a completely silent DC host to post a respectable PPD and not have cooling issues. however, a quite powerful and near-silent DC cruncher can be built if you're wise about picking and choosing components. the two rigs in my sig are just that - fairly powerful crunching machines that are almost dead silent.

what you could do is
a) slower but completely silent
get a i3-2100T. use a giant heatsink(fanless).

get a fanless GPU, gigabyte 6770

get a fanless PSU. Since its an i3 + 6770, a good 300W-400W should do it
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151097

b) powerful, but not silent
replace the above i3 2100T with an i5 2500k, perhaps a H60 radiator with a silent/low rpm fan

while i agree that going for one extreme or the other (power or silence) would be the easiest and quickest solution, i still maintain that a fairly powerful and near-silent cruncher can be built without compromising too much on either side.

one of my 1090T 6-core CPUs is cooled by a CoolerMaster Hyper 212+, the other by a CoolerMaster Hyper 212 EVO. the single stock fan on each cooler has been replaced with 2 low-rpm Scythe fans in a push/pull configuration. with all 6 cores under 100% load 24/7, one of my 1090T CPUs never goes above 48°C, and the other never goes above 43°C. the substantial difference in CPU temps is not a result of having slightly different coolers on each CPU, but rather due to a combination of several other factors, such as different cases, different ventilation, different rooms in the condo, etc. even with 2 fans in push/pull, at 800-900rpm they're virtually silent.

one of my rigs has an HD 5870 GPU, who's stock blower-style reference cooler sounded like a leaf blower at any fan speed above 35%. in addition to that, i had to run it at damn near 70% to maintain comfortable temps while crunching under full load. i've since replaced the stock cooler with an Arctic Cooling Twin Turbo II which i run at 50% fan speed, and GPU temps never exceed 58°C under full load 24/7. also, it is virtually silent at this fan speed - if you could possibly turn off every other component that makes noise, you might be able to hear the GPU cooler. only at a fan speed of 80% and up is it audibly noticeable, and even then its not bad at all.

the same goes for the GTX 560 Ti in my other rig. while its stock fan-style reference cooler was much quieter than the reference cooler on my HD 5870, it was still far too loud for my liking. it also uses an Arctic Cooling Twin Turbo II now, and with the fans at only 30% (which is for all intents and purposes dead silent at this fan speed) my GPU never exceeds 53°C.

i have a SeaSonic X650 PSU in one rig, which is in fact dead silent up to a point - the fan remains off until a substantial load is placed on the PSU, and doesn't even get that loud when the load approaches the PSU's max power output. right now, with the 1090T CPU and HD 5870 both under 100% load 24/7, the whole system draws approx. 360W, which only loads the PSU to 55% capacity.

the other rig uses a SeaSonic S12II 620 PSU. its fan throttles according to PSU load as well, though as i understand it, the fan never completely turns off. the fan is also not as quiet as as the X650's when the PSU is under a moderate to high load. the system draws a max of 320W and therefore only loads the PSU to 52% capacity, and the PSU fan, despite still being the loudest component in this rig, remains relatively quiet. i used to have a SeaSonic S12II 520 in this same rig, and with the same system power draw of 320W, that PSU was being loaded to 62% capacity, and its fan would run quite a bit faster and louder.

so between the 2, these rigs are cranking out 280K PPD provided both systems are up and running smoothly. lately my PPD has been a bit less than that b/c i've been playing with resource sharing between DC projects. regardless, i don't think there are too many others out there who crank out that kind of PPD and have near-silent machines like i do. all that being said, my machines are aimed primarily at DC, and the OP is looking to build a machine that's geared much more toward general usage. that being the case, the OP very well may be best off sticking to one of the extremes - power or silence - like you suggested.

 

[jibberegg]

@ElFenix - Thanks for the great link there, hadn't seen that article before. I'll definitely weigh up my options more carefully after reading that. Undervolting does seem like the way to go.
@Sunny129 - Very comprehensive post, thanks for your effort there! Hyper 212 EVO goes to top of cooler list and I'll check out the aftermarket GPU cooling too. X-650 PSU also sounds like a solid bet. Last piece of the puzzle, what case can I put everything inside to make it the quietest it can be? With the low power of the internal components, I was thinking maybe a Solo II? Not the best at cooling to say the least, but rock bottom of the acoustics chart... http://www.anandtech.com/show/4730/antec-solo-ii-sonata-evolved/5