My PC quieting project and a case question

[TheJTrain]

After reading reviews and the recommended lists, I jumped the gun a few months ago and bought some stuff to try and quiet down my jet turbine - I mean my PC. I replaced the Enlight PSU that came with the case with an Antec TruePower 380, the Coolermaster HSF with the Vantec Aeroflow (the one with the TMD fan), a Papst 80mm fan to replace the generic one that came with the case, and a couple fan/PSU vibration isolator mounting pads from Directron. When I say I jumped the gun, I mean that I read reviews and bought stuff without really opening up the case to see what particularly was causing the noise - most of it seemed to be coming from the back, and it was the same from startup through hours of gaming. Noise improvement was minimal, but I was getting married and buying a house so I didn't have time to get back into it until now.

So part two of my project happened this past weekend when I replaced my aging GF3 with a GF4 Ti4200, and I took the time to figure out what was causing all the noise. Turns out the Antec PSU was a little louder than my old Enlight (2 fans rather than one maybe?), but from the review of the Antec I read, I figured that the Enlight would get louder pretty quickly under load, so I didn't worry about that too much. The Papst case fan was WAAY quieter than the generic brand that came with the case, so that was nice. Even the fan on the GF4 wasn't really any louder (at startup anyway) than the GF3 was, so I wasn't losing anything there with my upgrade. The huge bummer came when I realized that by far the loudest noise was coming from the Aeroflow, which was hooked up to a fan header on the mobo, and it was every bit as loud as the old Coolermaster (can't remember the model).

I resolved that I would be smarter this time around and take individual steps, re-evaluating my progress each time. First step is a SLK-900U heatsink and a 92mm L1A with a Fanmate, ordered Monday morning from Heatsinkfactory.com (which in an unfortunate bit of timing is moving to a new facility so they can't ship my stuff until next Monday!). I went with the 900U, even though I may not need it right now 'cause I figured it would be best to go for the big daddy now, and I'd be able to upgrade CPUs when the time comes, and already have the biggest, baddest HS on the block. After all, a better HS means I can run the L1A slower and still get adequate cooling.

So when the stuff comes next week, I'm going to revamp my case with the new HSF, and add some rounded IDE/floppy cables (cleaning up the cable arrangement to promote airflow along the way), and report back with results. I've downloaded MBM but haven't used it yet, so I'll try to get some temp data before and after, along with subjective noise comparisons.

Thanks to all for a great site with honest, objective reviews and helpful forum patrons.

Jason

[Rusty075]

Sounds like a smart, practical way to go about it this time.

A couple of notes:

Rounded cables: HDD performance will take a little hit with rounded cables. You can acheive the same or better airflow with a little origamy of the flat cables. (check out Ralf's case in the gallery)

Buying the 900U to have headroom for the future: You do realise that the XP3200+, which is out now, is going to be the last Socket A CPU to be released? Once the Athlon64's roll out next month AMD isn't going to put out any new Socket A chips. The Bartons will slide down to be the "value" chip, but they've said that they're not pushing it to anything faster.