One-fan A64 w/ Reserator and Phantom

[gitto]

Hey everyone.

Here's my system. Thanks to everyone here who helped me along the way

First, the specs.

CPU : AMD Athlon 64 3500 Newcastle (but a weird sort of newcastle, a CAA2C)

Motherboard : Asus A8N-Sli Deluxe

PSU : Antec Phantom

RAM : OCZ Platinum PC-3200 EL R2 1Gb (2x512)

Hard Drive : Samsung SP1614C Nidec

Case : Lian-Li PC-V1000

Cooling : Zalman Reserator 1 (Modded). The stock ADDA case fan at 5v as exhaust

CDRW : Some generic 4Kus 48x.

Video Card : Gecube Radeon X800 XL.

Other stuff : Creative Audigy 2 ZS, Dynalink ALH181 (PCI ADSL modem), Smartdrive 2002C.

Pictures - Click for big ones

Here's a picture of all of inside the case.

All the inside

My modified molex connector to run the ADDA fan at 5v. I can't hear it from 30cm at 5v with the case closed. In open air, the fan was noisier, from wind noise. I left the restrictive grill in the case, as it stopped the wind noise. It only pushes very very lightly out of the case, but I think it helps.

Modified molex

My Smartdrive 2002C. I can hear the SP1614C in it, very very faint low noise. When the drive was pretty much empty, I couldn't hear seeks. Now with it 50 GB full, I can. I haven't enabled AAM. Defragmenting doesn't seem to help. Perhaps I just got more sensitive to the sound? I just drilled the rivets for the drivebays out. I rest the Smartdrive on some soft pieces of latex, the same stuff my Reserator sits on.

SmartDrive2002

Some pics of the waterblocks on the Nforce4 chip and the GPU. Both waterblocks are the ATI ones. Using the stock mounting clips for the waterblock on the chipset wouldn't work, so I co-erced it to work with mounting clips from a NB-47. I would have preferred to use thermal epoxy, as forcing the NB-47 mounting clips to mount the waterblock was difficult. If you look closely you can see I am not using the Zalman clamps, I got stainless steel screw in ones from a hardware store. These are heaps better than the Zalman option, very easy to use and screw in tight. The waterflow is Nforce chipset --> CPU --> GPU. Clearances weren't a problem with both waterblocks and the videocard installed.

Waterblocks 1
Waterblocks 2
Waterblocks 3
Waterblocks 4
Waterblocks 5

Just another pic of the motherboard section. I think I did a good job with the wiring, I routed most of it through a hole for the LED cables and front ports. I would put the SATA cable through there as well if I had a 1M one.

Angled inside

Quick disconnect hose fittings! Just simple plastic ones used for garden hoses. I can clamp the tubing, and these easily unclip. The white stuff is teflon tape to stop it leaking. This will make moving the system a lot easier.

Quick disconnect fittings

Some of the finished product

Finished 1
Finished 2
My whole desk

Temperatures:

I leave my rig on 24/7 Folding for SPCR. I run the CPU at 1.225vcore and its totally stable. Sadly, even an overclock to 2400mhz at 1.5v was unstable. EVEREST reports the temperatures as follows.

Motherboard : 56C.
CPU : 34C
Aux : 46C
Hard Drive : 39C.

Ambient temperature of 26-27C.

The Asus Probe monitoring program reports the CPU as 46C, or in other words as the Aux sensor. I don't know which to believe. Either is fine. At 1.5v the CPU and AUX temp each rise about 10-13C. Also at 1.5V the top of the case gets fairly warm to the touch, at 1.225v it's only slightly warmer than it would be with the computer turned off. After many hours of gaming, the RAM sinks on the videocard get very hot - too hot to touch. The Antec Phantom gets moderately hot.

Noise levels :

In normal situations, I can't hear it. Effectively silent. In very low ambient noises, I can. The reserator pump still makes a low noise which seems quite loud sometimes, but it isn't intrusive. I can hear the seeks from the SP1614C as I said before. Also, there is a high pitched whine, generally unnoticeable except if I have the side of the case off. I can't determine if it comes from the Phantom or from the video card. My Phantom did not whine in my previous system, so I guess this is coil interaction?

Future things to do:

Get a DVD burner! Maybe the PX-716SA (Plextor Sata Dual Layer DVD)
Replace that damn ugly floppy drive bezel with a plain one - no extras were provided with the case.
Get a Logitech MX-1000 mouse.
Replace the ADDA fan with a Nexus 120mm.

Well, thats all I think.

Your thoughts?

Edit 14/9/05 - Changed the broken thumbnail hyperlinks to text links to large pictures.

[BenW]

Nice, don't want to send it my way do you

[Shadowknight]

The Samsung... is it a JVC or a Nidec? The Nidecs are supposed to be quieter. Also, you said you have it on latex, but in the pictures it looks like it's directly touching the case. Try to get a 1/2 inch piecee of soft foam and rest it on that. I can only hear my drive and seeks if I have the side panel off, and I put my ear within 6 inches or so of the drive.

[Straker]

Interesting comment on the seeks. If the drive was empty when you bought it and you just installed Windows on it and basically used it like a new PC (without copying over tons of old files etc), all the data should have been physically very close together, on the outside of the platters. I would *guess* that in that case, you wouldn't notice the seeks for a while since the heads would never have very far to go. Would be interesting to take a 300GB drive, copy 20GB of stuff onto it, then fill it up and compare the sound of seeks in each case.

[gitto]

Shadownight:

Hard Drive : Samsung SP1614C Nidec

The drive is resting on the latex, though yes you can't see it. I might try some softer foam sometime, but the small latex squares I cut allow airflow up through the holes in the bottom of the case.

Does anyone know of a free disk defragmenting program that I can tell to move all my largely unnaccessed files away from all my programs and Windows? I know Windows 2000 defragmenter should do that, but I dont trust it really.

[benx]

Its look real nice:) blue with mattalic is nice combination.

btw, why buy a sli mobo with a X800xl ?:) waste of money?

[gitto]

Oh, I wanted the A8N-Sli for the space it would give me. The nforce4 chipset wasn't directly underneath the video card, and with the watercooling taking up 2 slots, I still have 3 normal pci slots free and one backwards-compatible pci-express 16 slot possibly available if I really need it.

[Sanderman]

Shadownight:

Hard Drive : Samsung SP1614C Nidec

The drive is resting on the latex, though yes you can't see it. I might try some softer foam sometime, but the small latex squares I cut allow airflow up through the holes in the bottom of the case.

Does anyone know of a free disk defragmenting program that I can tell to move all my largely unnaccessed files away from all my programs and Windows? I know Windows 2000 defragmenter should do that, but I dont trust it really.

Actually, you probably should partition your drive and put the operating system, programs and less frequently accessed saved files in seperate physical partitions on the disc. I don't know of any freeware that does that without overwriting the files on the disc, though there are a number of commercial programs that do allow you to partition an existing disc without losing anything - this for instance (which I've used with great success): http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/pr ... kdirector/

You can then defrag the partitions individually and windows will never get spread across the disc along with your other programs or files and your loading times for programs will plummet. And the seek noises should be greatly reduced as well.

[gitto]

Thanks Sanderman, Acronis Disk Director works well. Programs load much faster now that my primary partition is only for Windows + Apps, and very few seeks now

[gitto]

The Nidecs are supposed to be quieter. Also, you said you have it on latex, but in the pictures it looks like it's directly touching the case. Try to get a 1/2 inch piecee of soft foam and rest it on that.

I've put the drive on some inch thick blocks of soft foam now for an audible improvement. The drive was making the side of the case vibrate, which suprised me as it really felt sturdy.

[ATWindsor]

Interesting, I'm thinking of getting a similar setup myself, jsut how well do you haer the reserator? At approx waht range is it inaaudible?

AtW

[gitto]

That's a bit of a difficult question. In normal everyday use, it's effectively silent. But late at night, with no other ambient noise, I can hear it from even 2m away. It's defintely not an intrusive sound, just a very low pitched and quiet one that easily blends in. I can only hear it when I listen for the noise. But in daytime use with even a bit of ambient noise about, it's totally inaudible at 3ft.