Silent mid range 182

[SHare]

Here is what I have done with my recently acquired P182.

Asus P5B-E Plus
E4300 with Noctua NH-U12
2Gb PC6400 Geil RAM
MSI 8600GT Silent Edition
500gb WD sata drive
X-fi xtreme music
Compro t200 tv card
Edimax wireless card and LG GSA-H42L
Corsair VX450
2xNoctua NF-12's running at 900rpm via ULNA.










Top image was my original setup, but I was finding it a bit noisy at night. I seemed to be getting alot of turbulence noise from the fans, especially the top one. Next image is the setup I tried out but was far to toasty. CPU hit 65c and GPU was topping 80c. Running the fan on the heatsink now but the GPU is still about 70c loaded and the CPU has only come down to ~58c. When I can next be bothered I might change the direction of the heatsink to be blowing straight up and out, hopefully that shouldn't add too much noise but be alot cooler.

<edit>
Went ahead and made the change, GPU idles at 40c along with the CPU at ~35c. Doesn't appear to be much louder either but I'll need to give it time to properly test it out.

Here is the entire setup in its current home



Those bloody red curtains are hideous

Any feedback is welcome.

[Shukuteki]

You might want to try one of those new Scythe fans, the Noctua's aren't exactly known to flow a lot of air.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6835185058

Thats the 1200rpm model, they also have a 500rpm and a 1600rpm model.

[sheninat0r]

Noctuas are known to have incredible airflow for very low noise, until you blow it through some tightly-spaced HSF fins. They have good airflow, but bad pressure - interestingly enough, they work well for 99% of anything you'll need to do with fans in a PC. People have reported humming or whining when Noctuas are placed in areas with tight intake grills, like in front of hard drives. Other than that, the NF-S12 is a great fan. Noctua's new NF-P12 was designed to fix the pressure problems with the NF-S12 - it has a completely different blade model which gives excellent pressure at still low noise levels.

[SHare]

I was actually waiting til the new Noctua NP12's get reviewed. They look promising, come with 2 adapters to lower the speed to 2 levels and seemingly push more air at similar noise levels. I think the current setup I'm running will be best for my system, I taped up the back exit and the bottom chambers to stop warm air being sucked in from the wrong places. I did though, leave the rubber gromits out of the ports at the back to let the GPU get some cooler air from there.