First time quiet pc

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tedw
Posts: 5
Joined: Sat Apr 04, 2015 4:38 pm

First time quiet pc

Post by tedw » Sat Apr 04, 2015 5:14 pm

Hi experts,
I've built my fair share of pcs, but have been out of the trade for about 5 years, also this will be my first time aiming for silence as a high priority.
I'll be moving over my 120gb ssd drive and 2tb wd green from another pc.

After looking at some of the gaming builds on this site, I put together this list, for my budget (hope to be under $1500 Canadian after tax) and what was available to order here in Canada.

http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/p/grtGD3

Intel Core i5-4690k 3.5GHz Quad-Core ProcessorS
Scythe Kotetsu 79.0 CFM CPU Cooler
ASRock Fatal1ty Z97 Killer ATX LGA1150 Motherboard
G.Skill Ares Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory
Asus GeForce strix GTX 960 2GB Video Card
Fractal Design Define R5 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case
Rosewill Hive 650W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply

The power supply seems a bit overkill at 650w. Quiet plus enough power to maybe handle sli? I am still considering the Rosewill silent night fan less power supply...

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.as ... -_-Product

Not sure...If fan less would just end up causing the rest of the rigs cooling to work harder and be louder.

I wanted to get a mobo which could potentially support sli down the road. I was looking at the 960 GTX as the price is good compared to the 970, I want to be able to play the games but highest graphical settings are a lower priority next to the priority to be quiet. I'm looking forward to trying the Witcher 3 and dragon age inquisition...
I have never done sli, not even back in voodoo2 days, but if it would be enough of an improvement and still within budget I would consider.

The pc will be used for gaming on weekends, the wife will be using it for email, facebook, document editing and gimp, and skypeing, and it will sometimes sit idle hosting music and movie files from the green hdd.

Thoughts, improvements?

-Ted W.

CA_Steve
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Joined: Thu Oct 06, 2005 4:36 am
Location: St. Louis, MO

Re: First time quiet pc

Post by CA_Steve » Sun Apr 05, 2015 7:46 am

Welcome to SPCR.

What's your monitor resolution? That will drive the gfx card cost and whether it's worth going with SLI. If it's 1080p, you are probably good with a single GTX 960, unless the game is poorly coded / a resource pig.

I wouldn't go with a Bronze efficiency rated PSU. Your stressed load with one GTX 960 is ~250W and maybe 220W during heavy gaming load. Call it 370W and 320W, respectively, with SLI. So, the goal is to get a PSU that's inaudible at light loads and quieter than your gfx card(s) during gaming.

Memory: There is a slight bump in some games by going up to 1833 speed. It's only $8 more for the same Ares CAS 9 RAM.

tedw
Posts: 5
Joined: Sat Apr 04, 2015 4:38 pm

Re: First time quiet pc

Post by tedw » Sun Apr 05, 2015 12:16 pm

Thanks, Steve.
I have 2 24" 1680x1050 monitors, bought ages ago. A nice new 28" would be great but I haven't been able to justify the purchase with these 2 still working so well. Maybe once I have the final price list of everything else together I'll price new monitors. Probably nothing crazier than 1080p though.

I guess my knowledge is out of date on power supplies.
I'm looking at this one then, modular, and rated gold.
Rosewill Valens-500M, Valens Series 500W Modular Power Supply, 80 PLUS Gold Certified
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.as ... -_-Product
I haven't used Rosewill for power supplies before.


Thanks for the memory tip. reading about ddr3 ram timings also indicates how out of date my pc building knowledge is.

Some of the newer games are looking to be memory hogs. Witcher 3 recommends 16gb.
Thinking about increasing to a 970...i have a hard time justifying over $500 for a video card (I could buy a ps4 instead!) so I don't think I can justify a 980.

Is there a link to support SPCR for Newegg.ca or amazon.ca ?

-Ted W

CA_Steve
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Joined: Thu Oct 06, 2005 4:36 am
Location: St. Louis, MO

Re: First time quiet pc

Post by CA_Steve » Sun Apr 05, 2015 1:27 pm

Yeah, for <1080p don't even think about the GTX 970 - it's a waste of $'s. Get the GTX 960. It'd be way cheaper to buy it now and then get another for SLI if you truly need it.

There is no review info on that Rosewill PSU series that I can find. So, I can't recommend it. If you want to stay below $100 CAN, there's the Seasonic S12G-550.

.ca support sites: I haven't seen anything from MikeC on this...and he lives in Vancouver :)

xan_user
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Location: Northern California.

Re: First time quiet pc

Post by xan_user » Sun Apr 05, 2015 1:34 pm


tedw
Posts: 5
Joined: Sat Apr 04, 2015 4:38 pm

Re: First time quiet pc

Post by tedw » Tue Apr 07, 2015 10:32 am

Thanks guys,
this input has been super valuable. :D

In the end I'm planning to go with

Fractal R5 case
Intel Core i5-4690K
Scythe Kotetsu 79.0 CFM CPU Cooler
MSI Z97S SLI Plus ATX LGA1150 Motherboard
G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1866 Memory (extra RAM since I do photoshop/gimp fairly regularly and it can't hurt for gaming either)...
Asus STRIX GeForce GTX 960 2GB Video Card
SeaSonic S12G 550W 80+ Gold Certified ATX Power Supply

And some day soon, I'll think about a second SSD drive and a nice new 28" monitor...

I'll update once it's put together with how it sounds. :D

-TedW

tedw
Posts: 5
Joined: Sat Apr 04, 2015 4:38 pm

Re: First time quiet pc

Post by tedw » Tue Apr 28, 2015 10:11 am

Thanks for the good advice, people!

I finally got all my parts delivered last weekend, and have had this baby running smoothly for a little while.

In the end I couldn't get the Scythe CPU cooler at a reasonable price in Canada, so I switched to the Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO.

The 212 is a huge beast and the mount is pretty fiddly, but far from the worst designed CPU fan I have attached in the past to old systems.

The Fractal R5 is gigantic and roomy - bigger than I was expecting but each piece is dripping with quality. I loved that I had the option of mounting the front door hinge on the other side, and all of the optional components in the box were fantastic.

I wish I had a reliable sound measuring device - when this thing is on I can barely hear it, and if my window is open to get a nice breeze from outside, the breeze is much louder than the PC.
This box is quieter than a sleeping kitten.
I only used my old DVD drive for installing Windows and MB drivers, but whenever the optical drive spins up it is far and away the noisiest thing in this box - it is hard to believe. I hope to never put a disk in that drive again, it is comparatively such a racket.

I haven't had much of a chance to do much high-performance gaming to see how it sounds when the fans on the video card crank up, but so far I'm unbelievably pleased with this system.

Thanks again, guys! I placed the bulk of my order through newegg.ca, and when I signed in to make my purchase I used the suggested donate link, so I hope it worked for you through the .ca version of the site, and they give you a kickback. Let me know if there is anything I can do on my end to interact with newegg in that respect.

Regards,
Ted

CA_Steve
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Location: St. Louis, MO

Re: First time quiet pc

Post by CA_Steve » Wed Apr 29, 2015 6:16 am

Congrats on your build!

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