this is my first posting here.
I had one of the most frustrating two weeks of my life behind me. Don't want to tell my life story, you can skip to the next paragraph if you like. It all started with a defective powesupply for a 4 monitor DVI switch. I replaced it and thought it was no biggie and turned off my PCs and returned the next day. Then I found one PC not recognizing my still new BenQ XL2720z after Windows loads (black screen) and another PC worked with the monitor but was now reduced to 640x480. I think the EDID of my monitor was killed. But I didn't have time to RMA it yet, because of what followed. Three days later I turn of our 24/7 running server, because we were leaving the house, so I thought it was smart to turn it off while no one is at home (has 9 disks @ 15k, 1KW powesupply, ...). When I came back a few hours later it did not turn on anymore. I asked a friend if he can repair it and after the first attempt the powersupply was working again. For like 5 minutes, and then the mainboard was fried, maybe also the cheap graphic card and the expensive SAS/RAID controller. I finally gave up on the machine because I had a backup. I planned to replace the noisy and power hungry machine with one of the cool Zotac R531 raid capable boxes (the only good thing you'll find in this story). I ordered it, but for the 4 or 5 days until it arrives and is setup properly, I had to let the 2 virtual machines from the big server run on my watercooled rig. My rig never ran for that duration, I usually use it for maybe 8-12 hours and then turn it off over night. It was rebuilt last year, with a new Asus Rampage IV Extreme, 4930K CPU, GTX780 using a Lian Li case with components from Aquacomputer (Radiator, Aquastream pump, plug&cool connectors and plug & cool tubing) and EK blocks for the CPU chipset and CPU. The tubing is only 1.5 years old. Before I ran this machine for like 8 years with the same tubing, but it was the thicker tubes and connectors, not plug & cool. However, after I set up the new Zotac Box with 512GB SSD Raid and copying the stuff on it and testing it for a while I decided to make the cutover. It was working and finally I turned of my watercooled rig and went happily to bed. When I woke up the next morning, I tried to power up my rig and it turned of after like 1 second. I opended it and was shocked to see that some water emerged on the GPU. I was already a bit worrying before if my rig would survive 4-5 days, but obviously it didn't. I checked the tubes and they were extremely stiff and dry. So I removed the water and investigated further. It seems the tubes were expanding a bit during those 4-5 days, but when I turned it off and the water temperature got low again, they had problems to find back their old shape, because of lack of elasticity. If I now bend one of those tubes, they crack and break. I dried all the components for a day and at least anything was still working (board, CPU, GPU, disks). I found that I did not have enough "fresh" tubing left to rebuild it and am still deeply shocked about the low quality of the tubes. Am in Spain, close to the coast and temps were kind of high this summer, maybe that is the problem for the tubes causing them to dry up and break.
I don't want the risk associated with watercooling anymore, especially if it is risks beyond my control, like bad tubing. I don't plan to replace the tubing every year to prevent such a mess. Also having more flexibility would be nice to shift components back and forth if needed, which is kind of difficult with a watercooled system.
That's why I had the idea to move back to an air-cooled system after almost 10 years of watercooling.
I would like the system to be silent but at the same time well cooled. I know this is difficult to achieve.
The components are:
Asus Rampage IV Extreme
Intel 4930K
Corsair 760i PSU
Gigabyte GTX780 (GHz Edition, has 3 fans on it)
GSkill TridentX Ram (with additional removable heat spreader, 54mm height with spreader or 39mm without)
2xWD 3TB Nas Edition drives (5400rpm)
1x256GB SSD
1xDVD drive
I still have a Lian-Li, with 360 radiator in top, aquastream pump, aquastream controller but because of the holes in the top for the three radiator fans and the reservoir it is probably not a good solution. Maybe someone is interested in the stuff?
I have googled the whole internet for three days and came up with theese cases and the two first ones are my favorites right now:
-Fractal Design Define R5
-Silverstone Fortress FT02, FT04 or FT05
-Corsair Graphite 760T
-Phanteks Enthoo Pro
The R5 looks really nice and seems to be well noise isolated with all that foam, but in reviews the temps were not optimal. The Silverstone cases seem to be really good with the cooling but I have no idea how loud my system would be. Given that it is not SLI, it is maybe OK to run the fans at medium or low speed. But maybe I will overclock some in the future. I had my CPU overclocked on water mildly from 3.9 to 4.2 (4.3 would be the maximum possible with my CPU I guess, 4930K is not a beast at overclocking afaik).
I don't like that you have to buy a special DVD or BD drive for the FT05 because it has no more external 5,25" bay so maybe FT02 or FT04 are a better choice. The DVD writer is like 80€ and the BD writer 150€. An external USB drive may work as well at less costs.
I also saw, that I have to watchout for the CPU cooler height because of my TridentX RAM.
The Fractal Design Define R5 allows CPU cooler heights of up to 180mm, so I can use almost any CPU cooler. Officially it only supports ATX boards and the Rampage IV is a little bit bigger, but I saw on other forums that it will fit in.
I have looked at those CPU coolers:
-Noctua NH-D15
-Noctua NH-D14
-BeQuiet Rock 3
-BeQuiet Rock 3 Pro
The Silverstone case only allows a CPU cooler height of up to 165mm instead, so the NH-D15 will not fit in conjunction with the TridentX Rams, because even when removing the RAMs heatspreaders one fan has to be moved up aproximately 5-10 mm increasing the NH-D15 height from 165 to 170-175mm.
1. Are my choices for CPU cooler and cases any good?
2. Will I need some additional case fans if I choose the R5 or the Silverstone FT02 for example? The FT02 has 3 big fans in the bottom as it seems. The FT04 has 2 180mm fans in the front by default.
3. Do I have any chance to get a silent PC, at least when doing normal stuff like browsing the internet, email, ... I don't care if it gets a bit louder under load when playing GPU intense games.
4. Maybe you have some other tips or know other better components to use for my build to get it as silent as possible.
That's it
Thank you for reading.