Advice for Silent, Fan less, i7 build

[Michael-Inet]

Hi All,

My current notebook is old and I ran across an older post on building a fan less PC [1]. As this new PC will most likely end up in my bedroom, I'd like it to be totally silent (e.g. fan less).

Below is what I'm thinking, but as my starting point was from something ~18 months ago ($500 Passively Cooled HTPC in the linked article) . . .

Is there a better, more current, build to accomplish the same? e.g. Can the same be built around the new i7-6700T (Socket: LGA 1151), or does that double the costs?

My desired uses are:

OS: Linux, Ubuntu / CentOS
Software: LAMP stack, OpenOffice, GIMP, Drupal, Developer tools
Video: non stutter 1080p playback, HTPC, Plex.tv
Graphics: light editing

I believe the heaviest loads will be from bulk load/conversion scripts into MySQL (using Drupal APIs).

What I have so far (complete paste of spreadsheet at bottom):

i7-4790T, 45 Watts, $320
http://www.macmall.com/p/Intel-Boxed-Pr ... dp.ihgihia

Akasa Euler, $100
http://www.sidewindercomputers.com/akeufacaform.html

ECS Elitegroup H87H3-TI, $67
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00F4KNC5Q

Crucial 16GB Kit, $73
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007B5S52C

Samsung 850 EVO 500GB, $175
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OBRE5UE

# # #

I'll use an existing USB 3 external hard drive. As I've been notebook only for the last ~10 years, any recommendations on mice, keyboards, and especially monitors are greatly appreciated.

I'd also like advise on how to add an on-demand fan, such that if the CPU temp hits XYZ, the fan turns on to cool the case down.

Thanks,
Michael

[1] Three Tiny, Silent and Green PCs That You Can Build Now
By Kannon Yamada, March 12, 2014
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/three-tiny ... build-now/


"The extension xls is not allowed."
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I have no idea what extensions are allowed to Upload an attachment, here's a very ugly Copy/Paste:

Code: Select all

Total				$735
						
						
						
CPU				$320		
	cpubenchmark.net	Watts				
i7-6700T	9378	35	$380		(In stock on November 29, 2015. )	http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0161UZWO6
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-6700T+%40+2.80GHz&id=2614

i7-4790T	9050	45	$372		(pending?)	http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KDMFXJI
i7-4770T	8776	45	$372			http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DVDSQ0O
i7-4765T	7316	35	$372			http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00J5915DI
						
						
i7-4790T			$320			http://www.macmall.com/p/Intel-Boxed-Processors/product~dpno~13156156~pdp.ihgihia
i7-4770T			$324			http://www.macmall.com/p/Intel-Boxed-Processors/product~dpno~9606040~pdp.icccggj
i7-4765T			$316			http://www.macmall.com/p/Cybernet-Systems-Boxed-Processors/product~dpno~9971273~pdp.ifieajc
						
						
Case				$100		
Akasa Euler 			$100			http://www.sidewindercomputers.com/akeufacaform.html
HD-Plex HD1.s 			$224			http://www.hd-plex.com/hdplex-h1.s-fanless-computer-case.html
						
						
Motherboard				$67		
Intel DQ77KB		NO USB 3!	$90			http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GJ5H0XK
ECS Elitegroup H87H3-TI			$67			http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00F4KNC5Q
						
						
RAM				$73		
Crucial Ballistix		($42.99x2	$86			http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DSGLM64
Crucial 16GB Kit			$73			http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007B5S52C
						
Hard drive				$175		
Samsung 850 EVO 250GB			$96			http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OAJ412U
Kingston Digital 480GB			$165			http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FZ3CAF0
Samsung 850 EVO 500GB			$175			http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OBRE5UE
						

[quest_for_silence]

I have no idea what extensions are allowed to Upload an attachment, here's a very ugly Copy/Paste

I can't help about your current issue, but on any forum you may try out this handy tool against text ugliness: http://www.sensefulsolutions.com/2010/1 ... table.html

[Vicotnik]

Fanless is doable, but a lot of hassle. And for a system that will do some serious work I think fanless is too early yet. I personally don't like quad cores in heatsink cases, even if they are factory underclocked. A heatsink case like the HD Plex can take a lot of heat but in a pretty closed heatsink case the air inside will have about the same temp as the heatsink. I worry about the stuff inside the box in general, not the CPU. With a high workload, just adding a fan will make it so much easier. It can still be very quiet.

If you want fanless then start with the case. With an i7 in there I would go for a beefy one. I like HD Plex better than Akasa. Then pick out a motherboard that has the layout you need, think on where the heatpipes will be. When I built my Haswell systems I found the ASRock boards to work fine. Don't know about Skylake, but I would start looking at those boards. DQ77KB was a nice board but it's kind of ancient.

[edh]

I wouldn't bother with a T processor as you can take a normal CPU and undervolt and get the same effect for less money. Your choice of motherboard will effect the range of undervolting you will achieve so you would need to research motherboard some more to do this.

How about using an M.2 SSD if you can switch to a motherboard that supports it?

What do you intend to use the USB hard disks for? If these are being used as everyday storage and are constantly going to be connected then wouldn't mounting them internally be better?

[Michael-Inet]

HD Plex

Hi Vicotnik,

Thanks for the reply, and while I'm off researching, I had a question about the HD Plex.

Why do the heatpipes on each side not have one going the opposite way to spread the heat load to the case better? Both your case and Bobb's do it, so there must be a reason, but it seems odd from a thermal dynamics standpoint.

Best,
Michael

Ref:
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=68534
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=67412

[Michael-Inet]

How about using an M.2 SSD if you can switch to a motherboard that supports it?

Hi edh,

Thanks very much for the tip on M.2 SSDs! I haven't shopped for one in so long I didn't realize just how much a difference the interface makes now.

Changes:

SSD: M.2, PCIe 3.0
Motherboard: Thin mini ITX w/ PCIe 3.0

@Vicotnik
Does the ASRock H81M-ITX have a PCIe 3 connection? Tom's says it does, Newegg says it doesn't, and as far as I can tell, ASRock, http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/H81M-ITX/ , also seems to indicate it only has a 1 x PCIe 2.0 x16 . Confused . . . Is there an ASRock thin mini with one?

I found these, but as my footnote shows, I had a hard time getting any relevant results for motherboards that are both thin ITX and PCIe 3.0.

These are what I did find, any other recommendations?

SSDs
512GB, $370, http://www.amazon.com/Eluktro-Pro-X-Per ... B010800UGK
Eluktro PCIe 256G, $185
Samsung SM951 256GB M.2 80mm PCIe 3.0, $193

Motherboards
Gigabyte (GA-Q87TN), $140, http://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-SO-DIMM- ... B00FU7U9EU
GA-H87TN, $140
GA-H81TN, $130


Thanks All,
Michael

Answers to Qs:

> Why the Akasa over the HD Plex?

Akasa:
~$110 (Case + PSU)
Part of the PSU is external (case doesn't have to shed the heat)
Significantly less hassle
Positive review by SPCR, http://www.silentpcreview.com/Akasa_Eul ... n_ITX_Case

HD Plex:
$224 (Case + PSU)
PSU is internal (case does have to shed the heat)
[also has great reviews]

> Why the T processor?

Both the ease of convenience and the safety of my not screwing it up. As well as, it would take a fair amount of effort on cpubenchmark.net trying to figure out comparable CPU Marks after undervolting.

> External USB hard disks . . . wouldn't mounting them internally be better?

I already have an external 4GB, but even if I didn't, it removes another heat source from inside the case and drops a load off the PSU.


Footnote:
Google sucks these days. 'Your search - "PCIe 3.0 Thin ITX motherboard" - did not match any documents.' I had to use Bing, shudder.

[Abula]

SSDs
512GB, $370, http://www.amazon.com/Eluktro-Pro-X-Per ... B010800UGK
Eluktro PCIe 256G, $185
Samsung SM951 256GB M.2 80mm PCIe 3.0, $193

Consider Samsung 850 EVO 500 GB M.2 3.5-Inch SSD (MZ-N5E500BW).

[Michael-Inet]

Consider Samsung 850 EVO 500 GB M.2 3.5-Inch SSD (MZ-N5E500BW).

Hi Abula,

I did this out of order, so I'll paste the High end drive benchmark list up here at the top:

http://www.harddrivebenchmark.net/high_end_drives.html

Edit: SSD only list, http://www.harddrivebenchmark.net/ssd.html


The EVO you listed is an older interface and has about a third of the read/write speeds as the SM951's.

Based upon my past usage patterns, I'll probably spend the extra ~$180 now and get the:

Samsung SM951 512GB AHCI MZHPV512HDGL-00000 M.2 80mm PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD - OEM
[s]$377.99[/s] Use quest_for_silence's footer links above, Newegg has it for $367.

That way in a year or two I'm not having to rebuild the OS to install a bigger SSD.

Full details and links below.

Best,
Michael

Samsung 850 EVO 500 GB M.2 3.5-Inch SSD (MZ-N5E500BW)
Interface, SATA 6Gb/s
(Up to 500 MB/sec Sequential Write)
http://www.harddrivebenchmark.net/hdd.p ... GB&id=9570
Average Drive Rating: 4708

Samsung SM951 256GB AHCI MZHPV256HDGL-00000 M.2 80mm PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD – OEM
M.2 Interface: PCIe 3.0 x4 lanes, up to 32Gb/s
(MZHPV128HDGM)
http://ssd.userbenchmark.com/SpeedTest/ ... HDGM-00000
Real world Avg. Sequential Read Speed 1,337MB/s
http://www.harddrivebenchmark.net/hdd.p ... CI&id=8844
Average Drive Rating: 10700

SAMSUNG SM951 M.2 512GB AHCI
Average Drive Rating: 11034
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-SM951-512 ... B00VELDBJ6

SAMSUNG XP941 M.2 512GB
Average Drive Rating: 7493

[quest_for_silence]

I did this out of order, so I'll paste the High end drive benchmark list up here at the top:

http://www.harddrivebenchmark.net/high_end_drives.html

The EVO you listed is an older interface and has about a third of the read/write speeds as the SM951's.

Do what you think best, but relevant actual performance are quite comparable (I'm referring mostly to random/write performances and latency), those figures you quoted are a tad pointless in a desktop environment (particularly with AHCI drivers), so that the major cost is not that justified. Obviously, IMHO.

[Abula]

@Michael-Inet, really depends on what you will be doing, personally im still not convinced on M.2 or PCIE SSDs, the gains for the average users are very little for the premium price you pay, most of what we love about ssds, beside being silent, its given by how they are by design, the 0 latency and responsiveness will be given by any ssd, the mayor gains of this true M.2 ssds gains are on sequentials reads/writes if someone benefits from that, that said, not that many people do. You can blind test me between my 5 year old X25M2 (sata II) or Samsung 840Pro (sata III) and i cant tell the difference. Again if you do benefit from high sequentials go for it, else a bigger ssd (sata III) will make more sense over time.

[Michael-Inet]

@Michael-Inet, . . . Again if you do benefit from high sequentials go for it, else a bigger ssd (sata III) will make more sense over time.

I agree with your statements, I can't see how most are going to benefit that radically beyond just using a modern SSD. And, while I did notice a large OS difference between my USB 2 SSD when I upgraded to a USB 3 SSD (on a USB 2 internal notebook hard drive bay), I don't think it'll be that much difference OS wise between USB 3 and PCIe 3.

But, I'm probably in that minority, I do gigabyte inserts into MySQL as part of my job, so, yeah, it's useful for me.

Best,
Michael

Edit: Luca (@quest_for_silence) thanks for the link!

[Vicotnik]

Hi Vicotnik,

Thanks for the reply, and while I'm off researching, I had a question about the HD Plex.

Why do the heatpipes on each side not have one going the opposite way to spread the heat load to the case better? Both your case and Bobb's do it, so there must be a reason, but it seems odd from a thermal dynamics standpoint.

Best,
Michael

Ref:
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=68534
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=67412

I was going for that at first, but those heatpipes are bulky. Ended up going with the arrangement that blocked less stuff on the board. I knew heat wouldn't be a problem either way.

@Vicotnik
Does the ASRock H81M-ITX have a PCIe 3 connection? Tom's says it does, Newegg says it doesn't, and as far as I can tell, ASRock, http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/H81M-ITX/ , also seems to indicate it only has a 1 x PCIe 2.0 x16 . Confused . . .

I really don't know. Don't use them so I wouldn't be more helpful than the manual, sorry.

Answers to Qs:

> Why the Akasa over the HD Plex?

Akasa:
~$110 (Case + PSU)
Part of the PSU is external (case doesn't have to shed the heat)
Significantly less hassle
Positive review by SPCR, http://www.silentpcreview.com/Akasa_Eul ... n_ITX_Case

HD Plex:
$224 (Case + PSU)
PSU is internal (case does have to shed the heat)
[also has great reviews]

I use picoPSUs.

Yeah, the Akasa is cheaper for sure. I have nothing against Akasa but I think the HD Plex performs better. With a simple dual core and light load, no matter. With a quad with hyper threading and some heavy load, probably not a problem either and the stuff throttle down if it overheats. But it could get to hot for my taste.

[Michael-Inet]

I did this out of order, so I'll paste the High end drive benchmark list up here at the top:

http://www.harddrivebenchmark.net/high_end_drives.html

The EVO you listed is an older interface and has about a third of the read/write speeds as the SM951's.

Do what you think best, but relevant actual performance are quite comparable (I'm referring mostly to random/write performances and latency), those figures you quoted are a tad pointless in a desktop environment (particularly with AHCI drivers), so that the major cost is not that justified. Obviously, IMHO.

Hi Luca,

I was trying to figure out why there was such a wide discrepancy between cpubenchmark.net and Anandtech.

If I understand Solandri's comment in the Anandtech article correctly:

http://www.anandtech.com/comments/9702/ ... 2gb/476666

The random access results of that test are circumspect as they do not utilize the entire queue depth of parallel data read/writes. Per him, they're testing only up to 4 of the available 32 queues?

There is a later post, by the article author:

Billy Tallis - Thursday, October 22, 2015
The Haswell system is what I've got on hand to test with, and it's what allows my results to be directly comparable with the reviews from earlier this year.

Skylake gives you PCIe 3 from the PCH, but on the testbed we always use an x16 slot directly off the CPU for PCIe SSDs, so we don't need Skylake to run the drive at PCIe 3 speeds.

http://www.anandtech.com/comments/9702/ ... 2gb/476627

which seems a bit odd, as it's describing in essence a 'non- real world' method of using the drive(s) for the test itself.

# # #

At the end of the day it's who's test results you trust. And I do want to thank all for showing me I had blinders on on the SSD interface options.

Best,
Michael

Edit: Yeah, I think I'll go with the HD-Plex HD1.s w/ a picoPSU, especially if I can find a mini ITX Skylake MB for it. I've put a message into HD-Plex for them to update their MB compatibility list

[quest_for_silence]

The random access results of that test are circumspect as they do not utilize the entire queue depth of parallel data read/writes. Per him, they're testing only up to 4 of the available 32 queues?

Different queue depths are representative of different workloads. You're correct to think the highest the queue number, the highest the performances, but the right QD to look at ultimately depends of the software and use.

I think it may be difficult to make a somewhat correct guess estimate for each case, Samsung itself, writing about SSD benchmarking, says that "most consumer workloads will be similar to 4KB data at QD 1 and the SSD’s maximum random performance is represented by 4KB at QD 32".

So probably QD1-4 are more representative of the expected performances with personal productivity softwares and consumer workloads, QD32 is probably more representative of heavy tasks, such as maybe an heavyly loaded multiuser database server.

[Michael-Inet]

Edit: Yeah, I think I'll go with the HD-Plex HD1.s w/ a picoPSU, especially if I can find a mini ITX Skylake MB for it. I've put a message into HD-Plex for them to update their MB compatibility list

And that was fast!

11:31 Send: Can you update your page?
11:33 Reply: Yes, let me update today.
13:58 Reply: Just updated.

And I will be buying from HD-Plex. A lesson in how to do customer service right.

Best,
Michael

http://www.hd-plex.com/hdplex-h1.s-fanl ... -case.html