SPCR

AMD X2 5600+ CPU
ASUS 3850 Gfx
GIGABYTE GA-MA69GM-S2H Mobo
Silverstone LC17

My gfx card is still too loud and I can't seem to find a way to control the fan speed via software. It's rather quiet so far - noticeable wind noise but nothing else. I was able to suspend my HDD but I would like to hold more drives and haven't found a way yet to suspend more than 1 per bay. Any suggestions?

(I know I need a modular PSU)

If you're relatively confident in your build for the future, you don't need a modular PSU. You can cut off the ends of the wires you don't need and use electrical tape or butt connectors to tie off the loose ends. You can always splice/solder them back on if you need to.

The graphics card seems to be the standard "New and Improved" ASUS "Glaciator" design. It's simple to remove the old fan and glue/stick your favorite 80-92mm fan in its place and use the BIOS/Mobo/Speedfan/Fanmate to control. I've simply ziptied a 800rpm Slipstream onto my 8800GT (with some foam padding on the fins), and that is more than I'll ever need for GPU cooling. Unless you can move the adjacent card, though, it doesn't look like you'd have the room (even if it'd fit inside the case).

In my HTPC, I did away with the drive cage as it used up too much room and didn't do anything to quiet the drives. I made my own platform out of 3.5"-5.25" adapter brackets and used sorbothane blocks to mount my HDD horizontally. By using more that one drive, however, you run into some troubles with having enough airflow to keep them all cool. I'd start looking into removing the drive bays and fabricating your own brackets to hang drives from vertically on their side.

I was home over lunch and looked into it a bit more. My Nexus PSU have use a Nexus fan, but it's certainly audible and seems to run at full speed 24/7. It's probably louder than the gfx card atm.

If I'm going to use Speedfan to control my fan speeds should I disable automatic fan control on the motherboard? I was thinking so.

almico's website doesn't specifically say that your mobo is supported so Speedfan may not work, but yes, generally if you want to use Speedfan you would want to disable BIOS control to allow full power to go to Speedfan.

You can always perform a fanswap on the PSU. I can't tell from the pic which PSU you have, but usually a slower spinning (quieter) 120mm fan will do well on the same PSU controller or run off a mobo header.

I did 2 things to my L17. I installed 3 drives in a single cage. Then I turned it 90 degrees, set the cage on some soft foam and lashed it to the chassis with stretch magic. That gets you to 3 drives with a decent amount of physical isolation, and room for an HDD fan.
I slid a 'floor to ceiling' piece of cardboard from the rear slot in the Minja to the rear corner of the case. This forces the air from the side vent to flow though the cooler before exhausting out the rear of the case. This lowered my idle CPU temps a good 3 ~ 4 degrees and took all of a minute to accomplish.

I stuffed two HDD's into one of the bays with soft packing foam in the bay in a "W" shape. This means that the drives are effectively isolated from the case, and you can fit two per bay.

I soft mounted the stock fans, and got a passive GPU. Everything else is as stock, and it is easy quiet enough for my old man.

Saw LC17 and knew what I would see - a bunch of PSU cables with no place to go - same as mine