Abula wrote:There is no PSU in the world that can guarantee no Coil whine. That said, Corsair is marketing their new RM series as no coil whine, inside the power range you are looking are the Cosair RM450 and RM550.

Thanks! I'll take a look at those.

Everyone else, keep the suggestions coming!

- Tim

Hey all... I went through a lot of effort to make my new build as quiet as possible. It's damn near silent - EXCEPT for the PSU. I got a Seasonic Fanless Plantinum 520 ; some people had mentioned coin whine, others had said they didn't hear it. When I first bought it, and using this computer on and ...

I have a 460W model powering a 14-drive system with i5-3570K inside Nanoxia Deep Silence 1 case, trust me, it won't produce that much heat - it will produce exactly that 7-10W heat we computed :). I have it all put together now, and it seems to be pretty cool (tho' I have kept the doors off of it f...

150/0.9 = 166.66W (90% efficiency of small PSU) 150/0.85 = 176.47W (85% efficiency of big PSU, -5% worse according to the numbers provided before) 30/0.9 = 33.33W (90% efficiency of small PSU) 30/0.75 = 40W (75% efficiency of big PSU, -15% worse according to the numbers provided before) And well, i...

faugusztin wrote:We talk about sub-10W values.

Ok, so it's really even less than moving from a 100 watt lightbulb to a 90 watt bulb - i.e. negligible.

Why the worry about such small inefficiencies?

- Tim

Having looked a little more in depth, here's the PSCR review listing the X1050 power efficiency at low power: http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1239-page4.html For the actual power consumption, it obviously depends a lot upon individual components like hard disks and motherboard as they do vary,...

I was ordering parts for my new build, and read the review here on the SeaSonic X-SERIES X-1050 1050W ; lots of great things said about it, and I went ahead and ordered it before I really thought about it. There is no way I will EVER need that much power. Not even half that, really. I don't think th...

Have you already got something in the external 3.5" bay? That's the lone 3.5" bay down between the fan vents, not the 5.25" bays. :) Ahhh, no - I thought you were referring to the 5.25" bays. I saw it in the photo you linked to, but hadn't remembered that even being there. Funny place for it to be,...

I felt the same when I went from my P182 to a P280. They don't make 'em like they used to (just eight years ago...). I moved back into the P182 a few weeks later and sold the P280. As for USB, you might consider an external 3.5" USB3 bay device, such as the one I used in my build: http://www.silent...

You could also use one of these - they have 2.5 adapters as well for them. They don't stick out from the bays.

http://www.addonics.com/products/aesnmrs.php

- Tim

I have an Antec P182 that I'm going to retire, as I haven't used that computer build much and am replacing 3 of my computers with a single new build. I got a Corsair Obsidian 550D for this new build, but when examining it, I find the P182 feels much more solid and well-constructed in comparison. It ...

I can't add anything to this thread, except that I'm starting a new build soon with the latest-and-greatest Intel (Z87 chipset with an i7-4771, SSDs in RAID-0 (Tom's Hardware says I shouldn't bother with RAID for SSDs, but we'll see), and I wanted the perfect, quiet case for it that could also handl...

PS I found one of the articles that mentions the Haswell "refresh" I mentioned:

http://www.dailytech.com/Report+Intel+D ... e31770.htm

- Tim

There was also the rumor that Broadwell would see the start of motherboards without replaceable CPUs, but then I heard that Intel retracted that. Did you hear anything about that? - Tim Yes some broadwell will be BGA not LGA like we have atm, its still unclear what models will be, my guess is maybe...

There was also the rumor that Broadwell would see the start of motherboards without replaceable CPUs, but then I heard that Intel retracted that. Did you hear anything about that?

- Tim

Thanks for the info, Abula! I had thought they were coming out with another "extreme" group of chips and lowering the cost of existing chips; at least, that's what I heard was going to happen. Don't really want to wait 'till Broadwell, though it would be nice to have one - always nice to have the la...

Hi all... I had read some time ago that Intel had planned to do a tiered release of Haswell chips - the 1st one they did earlier this year, and I had heard of a 2nd one (with a subsequent price-lowering on existing chips) around now, supposedly. Does anyone know where I can read up on what the suppo...

From what I can tell, even the "quiet" 5400 rpm drive is probably the main culprit. That would be my guess too. Even the Green Power ones emit a (generally acceptable and "pleasant") whooshy noise, that can easily be mistaken for a fan. I had to enclose a 2.5"-drive in a 2.5"-Quiet Drive by Scythe ...

just take the lid off, turn it on, and start unplugging fans. you'll figure out what makes the most noise; then start undervolting it, or replacing it. Well yes indeed, that's what I intend. I've done a lot of that already, tho' it's not as easy to recreate the sound once the cover is on and it's i...

frenchie wrote:The fans

Har har.

- Tim

I've been slowly upgrading my HTPC to be quieter. My case has: 2 60mm exhaust fans 1 92mm intake fan 1 CPU cooler 1 1TB HDD I replaced the 60mm and 92mm fans to be the quietest ones to be found. The CPU cooler is quieter than the stock cooler, but not the quietest. Since I'm limited on space in this...

starsky wrote:yeah I ran prime 95 64 bit, SFF 8k on all 8 cores and after 5 iterations I am stable between 56 and 57c. Ambient temp 20c.

Just amazing, is all I can say. I wonder if that cooler would fit in my case - I somehow doubt it.

- Tim

It throttles at 100c so you are safe. By way of comparison I have the same chip with a Noctua SE14 and mine maxes out at 56C in a Sonata 2. Only 56c? Pretty amazing! Have you run prime95 against it (with the "small FFS" test)? Doing that, last night it got up to around 82c But also, your cooler loo...

Well, I've solved part of the "mystery". I had Windows 7's "Minimum CPU power" setting at 100%, so all cores were always running and using full power (not sure how that translates into what's actually happening on the chip, but I'm sure I'll investigate that). Now instead of 45c, idle is around 37c ...

Hey all... I'm building a reasonably small form-factor machine to use for software development (using a Silverstone SG04B-FH case so I can carry it around). 2 SSDs and 1 Velociraptor, 8gb, Intel i7-860, older ATI graphics card, and a Scythe Big Shuriken cooler. I had to RMA the last motherboard I us...

Vicotnik wrote:CPUs are fairly shock resistant. They can handle water pretty good as well, I know that from experience.
ESD might kill it though, if you handle it improperly.

Always by the edges, of cawse.

- Tim

When I was building my latest computer, I dropped the CPU (i7-870) into the case, and it bounced a couple of times on the motherboard. I cursed, but still finished the build. The contacts on the bottom of the CPU appeared unharmed. It worked fine, pretty much, tho' I am returning the motherboard for...

After all that, the motherboard I'm using (Gigabyte GA-P55M-UD2) has started acting flakey; besides the very slow boot cycle (due to it waiting 14 seconds or so to enumerate AHCI devices or something along those lines, from what I've read), it also doesn't always notice that I'm pressing the delete ...

By the way, I'm now using the 4x slot - it's actually a 16x slot but running at 4x, so the card fits into it.

- Tim

You could try remounting the heatsink I suppose. Sounds like there might be contact issues between the processor and the cooler. Yeah, I was wondering that - that particular heatsink is very difficult to get really settled on the processor unless you have the motherboard out of the case (you have t...