Saying farewell to my first SPCR inspired PC

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CA_Steve
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Saying farewell to my first SPCR inspired PC

Post by CA_Steve » Thu Dec 08, 2016 8:39 am

It's been a doorstop for a number of years, but I hadn't parted with my first attempt at a quiet PC. Until now. So, farewell Sonata case, AMD T-Bird CPU, Abit (!) mobo with the funky southbridge that would only accept one SATA I HDD at a time, Arctic Cooling CPU cooler, aftermarket passive NB heatsink, Gigabyte's passive 6600GT, my first (HP) CD R/W drive and of course, the ubiquitous 3.5" floppy. It was an awesome step up from my prior sounds-like-being-at-the-airport PC.

What was your first "quiet" build?

Abula
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Re: Saying farewell to my first SPCR inspired PC

Post by Abula » Thu Dec 08, 2016 10:35 am

You serve well.... under a time where silence was unheard off (punt intended), good bye Steves first.

quest_for_silence
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Re: Saying farewell to my first SPCR inspired PC

Post by quest_for_silence » Thu Dec 08, 2016 1:27 pm

CA_Steve wrote:What was your first "quiet" build?

IIRC my first SPCR inspired build likely should date back to 2006 or 2007 (although my firsts steps into "quiet computing" were made some years before, with a venerable Abit socket 370 system, with Intel 440BX chipset and Zalman cooling).

This 2006-or-2007 system was based upon a DFI (gone, sadly) 965 Dark motherboard, a Core 2 Duo E4500, the Antec Solo, a Scythe Ninja or Ninja Plus, XFX passive 7600GT, WDC & IBM HDDs, CD-RW and floppy (I've still three or four drives) and if memory serves me well, a 1440x900 NEC monitor.

It died relatively early (DFI boards were never reliable, I guess, not to mention the heavy overclock), and in that occurrence I bought some other parts, most notably the first Thermalright High Riser and the firsts Slipstreams: some of those parts are still in my hands, I re-bought some more than once (Antec Signature), some are still in service (maybe a couple of Slipstreams, the original High Riser with a Venomous BTK is on a Core i5 4590, the Antec Solo still host my personal "legacy" system, X48 based, the 7600GT is sitting unused in the original box, and so on...).

cmthomson
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Re: Saying farewell to my first SPCR inspired PC

Post by cmthomson » Sun Jan 29, 2017 7:48 am

My first "quiet" build was a Pentium-D overclock (150W!!) with a Ninja 1000 in a big box with lots of fans and ducts. It was way quieter than the HP PC that it replaced, but really loud by today's standards.

These days I run an i7K mildly overclocked (4.6 GHz) in the same case with similar ducts, fanless power supply, and newer fans which only spin up when I'm rendering a video. Totally silent any other time (except the DVD burner of course).

VERiON
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Re: Saying farewell to my first SPCR inspired PC

Post by VERiON » Sun Jan 29, 2017 3:50 pm

OMG CA_Steve - almost like mine:

- sempron 3100+ with fanless Thermalright HR-01
- 1 stick of ram (because adding more messed up speedstep)
- NEXUS psu
- Sonata case
- passive 6600GT with Zalman CNPS3100 glued directly to the GPU
- 40gb seagate barracuda suspended on elastic cords
- passive zalman chipset cooler

all parts "blessed" by SPCR reviews and forum members

All above cooled solely by the NEXUS fan via the maze of cardboard ducts.
Still going strong as my parents' "internet browser" PC, but soon to be replaced by mac mini or NUC.

Olle P
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Re: Saying farewell to my first SPCR inspired PC

Post by Olle P » Mon Jan 30, 2017 1:45 am

My first quiet build?
Now that's a matter of definition, since I've worked with incremental upgrades of my computer since I purchased it at Christmas 2000 and the oldest part of it is the (unused) floppy drive from my previous computer of 1994.

The first time I got really bothered by the noise and did something to reduce it was sometime around 2004/5 I think. (Had an Athlon XP 1800+ at the time.)
I had bought a new computer case that came with a PSU. The PSU had a fairly loud 80mm fan, and adding another 80mm fan at the case exhaust didn't help.
* My first attempt of reducing the noise was to make a simple short duct with damping material on the inside that directed the PSU exhaust sideways, away from me. Reduced the noise level by a dB or two, not nearly sufficient...
* Replacing the PSU reduced the noise a good bit, but by now I was bitten by the "low noise" bug.
* Had an idea about reducing the noise leaking out by having the components placed in a well ventilated but "sound proofed" box. Went on to build this box from fibre board. Air intake through dust filters on the underside. Passing through two 12mm AC fans blowing straight up into the case. Exhaust by two 12cm fans at the upper rear, blowing the air through a vertical duct with outlet rearwards at the bottom. I used the innards of my old case to hold the actual computer stuff but removed a lot of material from it to allow better airflow. Some pictures here.
While not quite reaching SPCR standards it did help significantly and I used this case for quite a while.
* Further measures to reduce noise was to 1. replace the stock CPU cooler with a Scythe Ninja 2 (which I for compatibility reasons had to ditch when I got a new motherboard this summer), 2. replace the small fanned chipset cooler with a fanless variety, and 3. replace a noisy graphics cooler with an Arctic S2 (that was only used for one card).

Later on I ditched the huge and heavy wooden box in favour of an Antec P183 (modded for better airflow), and then reduced the noise further by upgrading the PSU to a CP850.

Got a temporary setback about a year ago when I purchased a not so quiet graphics card, but that's history.

Quinnbeast
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Re: Saying farewell to my first SPCR inspired PC

Post by Quinnbeast » Sun Feb 05, 2017 9:05 am

I sold my first SPCR-a-like build a few years back to a friend of mine, probably 2012. I could have easily kept it lying around, but having made the decision to go for a 100% new build as a replacement, it was increasingly obvious that selling it made a lot of sense if anyone nearby that was interested. I ended up with a completely clean slate after selling most of my setup to the same person, right down to the desk, monitor, speakers and mouse. As far as I know, it's still going strong as an office PC and for modest gaming.

Antec Solo / Q9400 (previously E4400) / Asus P5P something-something / Thermalright HR-01 / AMD 6870

/me wipes away a tear

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