My rather quiet Sonata II

Suosaaski · Post by **Suosaaski** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 10:12 am

I am starting to be quite satisfied with my current setup, so I decided I might actually post a pic here.

Here's the hardware:

Case: Antec Sonata II with Nexus Damptek mats everywhere inside the case, including the inside of the front cover + blocks and Nexus fan @750rpm, air duct removed and the grille for it has been sealed
PSU: Seasonic S12-430
Motherboard / Memory: Asus M2N-SLI Deluxe / 2 * 1GB DDR2
CPU / Cooler: AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ / Scythe Ninja with Nexus fan @750rpm
Graphics card: Asus Radeon X1950Pro
Hard disk: Western Digital 250GB SATA2
Optical drive: Samsung DVD-RW

A couple of notes about the setup:

I originally had a GeForce 7600GT with Zalman VF900Cu at minimum rpm (1350 with the fanmate at it's minimum position), I was going to install that on this Radeon too, but to my surprise, this Radeon stock cooler is more quiet than the Zalman was, so I was happy to leave it there. Also it was originally running with the Ninja having no fan, but it turns out that the case and cpu heats a lot more with the current graphics card, so I decided to install my spare Nexus fan on the Ninja too. This was to be expected, since I knew that the Radeon consumes much more power than the GeForce. It made no difference to the noise output of the system. The Nexus fans are running at around 750rpm, which is about the lowest rpm where they will start spinning from any position they are left in.

Any suggestions/comments are welcome.

Suosaaski · Post by **Suosaaski** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 10:12 am

This post will have all the pics.

An overview of the case.

Overview with the sidepanel removed.

Sidepanel with Nexus Damptek.

Front door with Nexus Damptek.

Here's the new HDD suspension.

I used the same screws that came with the Sonata II for securing the HDD in place. Then I added some cableties to it.

Then I took one of the Nexus Damptek blocks and one HDD bay, and secured the HDD in place on the HDD bay with the Nexus block in between.

Then I just attached this setup to the normal HDD bay.

Finally a pic of the Asus Radeon X1950Pro stock cooler.

Here are the older pictures:
The old overview without sidepanel -picture

jaldridge6 · Post by **jaldridge6** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 10:38 am

take the harddrive bays out, then put your drive on a block of foam inside a Scythe Quiet Drive or a Smart Drive ^_^

Suosaaski · Post by **Suosaaski** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 11:22 am

The humm is gone! Did some HDD suspensioning, pics to be updated soon!

Suosaaski · Post by **Suosaaski** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 11:58 am

Pics updated with some description on what I did.

Suosaaski · Post by **Suosaaski** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 12:21 pm

Pics updated, again, now this thread has all the pics I wanted

h20 · Post by **h20** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 12:59 pm

i also have the sonata 2 but i kept the PSU in it. Why did you change it, you really thought it was noisy?

does the damping really have a big effect and what temps u have?

thanx
h20

Suosaaski · Post by **Suosaaski** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 1:07 pm

The PSU was not very noisy, but the failure rate of Smartpower 2.0 is very alarming, so I wanted to change it to a more reliable model.

The damping does not have a big effect, it reduces resonance a bit, but it is not noticeable unless the computer is very quiet.

Temps are a bit under 40 degrees when idle and a bit under 50 under load for the CPU. Motherboard is a bit hotter, and I have not checked any other temps.