Silent Gaming Rig - The Holy Grail?

Jools · Post by **Jools** » Fri Nov 19, 2004 7:50 am

Who else, like me, dreams of the day when they can have a fast desktop PC capable of playing the latest 3D games in absolute silence? (This would of course mean having NO fans, or having to resort to water cooling!)

Most of the components are either available now, soon will be, or could be with just a little more effort. All the components would be low-wattage, cool and quiet. (Better not to generate the unwanted heat in the first place, than to have to expel it.)

Case:

A combination of a well-designed Shuttle and Zalman TNN500AF, possibly using the entire left side as the GPU heatsink, and the right as the CPU heatsink. (Shuttle are rumoured to be working on a Pentium M SFF, but may be having problems?)

or

A regular ATX-sized case, with vent holes top and bottom.

PSU:

(Current internal fanless PSU's all run too hot, or suffer from buzzing.)

Shuttle Zen external brick, 200W. More than enough to power a low wattage CPU & GPU, 1x3.5" HD (enclosed) & 1xDVD.

or

Zalman NEPS400 external fanless. Promising for those requiring more power - but Zalman are still having teething trouble, and will not commit to a release date.

Mainboard:

(To run at stock, without undervolting).

Athlon 64 939pin Low-Voltage capable, preferably with nForce4 and PCI Express. New DFI Lanparty NF4 with SLI the best candidate?

or

AOpen i855GMEm-LFS mATX - interesting, but it uses an old chipset, and is restricted to DDR333 memory. P4 retention clip may or may not work (shims?) with third party HSF's. Next-generation Alviso chipset may not even come to market.

CPU:

Athlon 64 3400/3500 mobile 939pin Low Voltage (~35W?) - but with a heat spreader to protect the core for self-builders. (Sadly, AMD have stated they have no plans to produce a desktop variant.)

or

Intel Pentium M Mobile 765 2.1GHz (~21W?) with heat spreader. Efficient, but two year old design is missing some P4 goodies. (Pentium M LV 10W TDP @ 1.5GHz very cool, but probably too slow).

Heatsink:

Scythe NCU-2000 - one of only two giant heatsinks that don't use a fan. Its heatpipes are incredibly efficient. (May unfortunately need a slow moving 700rpm 120mm fan above it, in either a PSU or top-mounted case fan.)

or

Two TNN-style aluminium heatsinks on the side of the SFF case, that have been cleverly engineered so as not to be difficult to fit.

GPU:

nVidia 6600/6800 Go - with 12 pipes and passive heatsink such as Zalman ZM80D-HP. Upgradable to dual SLI configuration with bridge.

or

ATI Mobility Radeon X800 chipset (M28) with 12 pipes.

lm · Post by lm » Fri Nov 19, 2004 8:25 am

You need to add a hard drive.

Jools · Post by **Jools** » Fri Nov 19, 2004 8:37 am

That was implied with the 1x3.5" (enclosed) HD mentioned in the PSU section.

2.5" drives are still too whiny for my liking, even the best of them. My Toshiba 5400rpm is great in it's Nexstar external USB case, but it's nowhere near quiet.

The best 3.5" I've found is the Samsung Spinpoint PATA. It is very, very quiet in a SilentMaxx HD enclosure. Temps never exceed 30C, even with no air movement. The SATA variant got too hot (probably near 50C), although I could only go by the other Seagate Barracuda V SATA's temp, as the Spinpoint SATA doesn't report temps.

Placing the enclosure in the bottom of the case (using the four noiseblockers as legs), rather than the 5.25" drive bays seems to help temps.[/quote]

StealthGirl · Post by **StealthGirl** » Fri Nov 19, 2004 9:11 am

My company is currently working on exactly this, a silent, high-performance PC case. Our testbed is the Antec Aria, which we have code-named BlackFin (picture link below). I can't tell you more about it until we complete our tests with the new heatpipes we've ordered. However, at least on paper and from simulations, this system is going to rock!

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/stealthgi ... pg&.src=ph

Website will be up soon at Aero-case.com

StealthGirl

peteamer · Post by **peteamer** » Fri Nov 19, 2004 9:18 am

Stealthgirl, any chance of a pic link that doesn't bomb?...

Pete

StealthGirl · Post by **StealthGirl** » Fri Nov 19, 2004 9:50 am

Try it now. Yahoo sometimes loses it's share settings.

tay · Post by **tay** » Fri Nov 19, 2004 9:50 am

That Antec Aria box looks interesting. A system with a zalman resarator, HD enclosure, and passive psu should be good enough to disappear into ambient noise. Hey you could even do 2 resarators, 1 each for the cpu and gpu.

Jools · Post by **Jools** » Fri Nov 19, 2004 9:57 am

An Aria base could be OK - if the noisy stock PSU is replaced. Even a modded PSU would still have a fan in it. Or does the BlackFin use one of the side alu heatsinks for the PSU, too? I wouldn't have thought so, but one can always hope...

The cable management in an Aria leaves a lot to be desired compared to the new Shuttles, but it does have some sound insulation, I believe - which should help mask capacitor and/or RAM screeching.

Would a GFX card with a ZM80 heatsink still fit in an Aria? I guess maybe one of the HIS ICEQ-II X800 ATI cards would be a better choice as it exhausts directly out of a PCI slot. Yes, I know it's got a fan - but unless a mobile-GPU GFX card appears, it's probably the most powerful "quiet" card currently out.

Still, dropping an AOpen 855 mobo this BlackFin could be good. Nice to hear there's someone working on a small(ish) affordable machine!

StealthGirl · Post by **StealthGirl** » Fri Nov 19, 2004 10:19 am

Jools,

We need to test this first, but right now we don't think we can get away with removing the PSU fan on a SFF case with 150+ watts of board heat (not to mention the drives). We obviously will change it out for a quieter one, but I think we're going to need SOME internal airflow.

As for the GPU, the side heatsink takes care of any necessity for board fan/heatsink. In a stock Aria case there is plenty of room for a Zalman style heatpipe cooler, you just can't use the adjacent PCI slot (same as any case).

We do have a heatpipe modded PSU in the works with a rear facing heatsink, but that would have to be used with a lower powered system, or larger cases. I'm talking to the guys about letting me post a PSU mod project here so everyone can benefit.

Bluefront · Post by **Bluefront** » Fri Nov 19, 2004 4:56 pm

Jools...Unless your CPU is extremely cool-running, I don't think an NSU2000 will provide sufficient cooling......without a fan.

I have experimented with an NSU 1000....only slightly less efficient. To keep a P4-2.66 under 50C, I had to place a PSU with an Evercool 120mm fan directly over the heatsink, and modify the setup so the fan was within 1/4" of the NSU 1000. The fan had to run around 1350 rpms, to maintain safe temps (for me). And this was in a case with a cool AIW 7500.

Running anything intensive, will tax heavily the cooling ability of your proposed setup (IMHO).

Jools · Post by **Jools** » Sat Nov 20, 2004 5:05 am

I have my doubts too. With my own experiments, I found that you can't rely solely on passive convection - at least for a "hot" CPU. My NCU-2000 needed some forced-air movement, no matter how slight. But the reviews of the Pentium M's thermal properties sound promising, even to the extent of running it without a heatsink!

Ticking over at around 30C, the NCU-2000 was actually cold to the touch! So I figured if an A64 3000+ at idle generates about 25W, the NCU-2000 might cope with the PM's 21W under load.

But I'm disappointed the Pentium M doesn't have a heat spreader / core protector. The NCU-2000 is a very large HS, with a heavy copper base. And it sounds like because the PM without a heat spreader sits lower than a regular Pentium, you have to use shims to fit it in the retention clip. That all sounds rather dodgy to me...

Edwood · Post by **Edwood** » Sat Nov 20, 2004 11:38 am

How about using this:

http://www.atechfabrication.com/product ... c_6000.htm

-Ed

StealthGirl · Post by **StealthGirl** » Sat Nov 20, 2004 11:56 pm

Wow, awesome case Ed, but did you check out those case prices? Holy ****, starting price of $375+ for a HTPC ... I can only imagine what this fanless model is going to run. $500 maybe? (And I was worried about OUR pricing! Great news for my team!)

Thanks for finding this site!

Edwood · Post by **Edwood** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 1:01 am

Considering they are CNC machined from solid aluminum, it's a good price.

Consider that the Fanless HeatSync case's competition is Zalman's behemoth that costs well over $1000.

If the Heatsync case truly does perform well, it's a better alternative to Zalman's fanless case.

Although, factor in the cost of a PSU, like abour $140ish for an Antec Phantom, since the Zalman comes with a PSU.

-Ed

Jools · Post by **Jools** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 7:19 am

The HeatSync case does look promising - like the Hush ATX, only larger. Let's hope it's not the effectively "sealed" unit the Hush is, and the heatpipes are easier to fit than on the TNN.

Paired with a NEPS400 external PSU, and if it can handle the latest GFX card temps, it could be ideal as a reasonably-priced silent gaming solution, even though it's obviously intended to be a HTPC.

I wouldn't be to sure about using the Antec Phantom PSU in one. That needs some [positive pressure] air through-flow, because it doesn't have a large heatsink hanging out the back.

Tibors · Post by **Tibors** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 8:46 am

The Hush Mini ITX case might be effectively "sealed", but the Hush ATX case has ventilation openings in the bottom and the top. See the pictures in the review.