My Silent Cheapie Case Rig

[CroSsFiRE2.0]

Well been lurking about for a while, took lots of hints from people's builds and used them in mine and thought I'd share what I did with you guys. I'll be updating this with newer photos and more detailed pics later. For those too lazy to read my profile underneath. My current mobo is:

Intel E6750 @3.2 (Turns out it can OC, had to drop RAM to 667 in order to keep 1:1 fixed ratio
Scythe Ninja 2 w/ stock fan @ 5V
Asus P5KPL-VM Motherboard G31
OCZ 2x1GB DDR2 800 Cas5
Corsair 450VX fan swapped with S-Flex E +fan guard removed
Seagate 7200.10 320GB
Asus EN8800GS w/ Accelero S1 + Enermax Cluster @ 600rpm fan
LG 22X DVD Burner
Case - Some el cheapo case i picked up

CD Bay slots removed, stuck some styrofoam in front


Haven't updated photos in a while, but instead of suspension, HDD is in a box sitting on foam and covered with ice packs..dead silent.


My previous suspension rig


New HDD Box

Ice Packs were a bit larger than what i needed so they needed some prodding to get in.



Fan swap of my Corsair 450VX with a Sflex E and remoed the fan guard



My Ninja 2 and Motherbaord


Metal cutting fun, still haven't gotten around to filing down the edges yet


Vid Card 8800GS/Accelero S1/Enermax Cluster @ 5v


Without rear fan cut out and cablegami


Overexposed pic of the front, the open bay is for an intake since the only other one is a small slot at the bottom


Case panel open has temps at 30C idle to 47C idle when its closed, load is 55-60C on Cpu, my 8800GS runs at 38C idle and 50C load.

Enjoy

[jimbonewbie]

I had the same mother board as you before I upgraded with an E4500. I was able to OC from the stock 2.2GHZ to 2.65GHZ by raising the FSB from 200 to 241 w/o any other adjustments. I was also using cheap crucial rendition RAM.

[SteveRCE]

The ice packs are new to me. What's your reasoning behind it?

[CroSsFiRE2.0]

Got this 'mod' so to speak from Alleycat's enclosure. The basic idea behind this is that you are mass damping the hard drive, basically putting up a wall to quiet the hard drive and suppress the noise. Where suspension reduces vibration and seek noise, this reduces more of the other sounds (lower frequencies?). The box was originally supposed to be with a steel case but since I couldn't find one that fit, I went with a cardboard one from a dollar store that worked just as well.
edit (ok, so maybe not just as well, temps go critical after 6hrs)

Alleycat's enclosure http://www.silentpcreview.com/files/ima ... index.html

[Blacktales]

More than mass loading, the ice packs in an Alleycat enclosure are also meant to transfer the HD heat to a metal box to help dissipation. And sealing that metal box also helps cut on some high frequencies simple mass loading will not help with.

By using ice packs in a cardboard box ( plus foam on the bottom of the box at that ) you are essentially cutting the escape way for the heat.

So basically, when you boot up your computer, thermal inertia of the ice packs will help your HD maintain a safe temperature for a time. But as time goes, the icepacks themselves will heat up from the HD heat, reach the HD temperature and both will get higher from there as thermal transfer of cardboard is very low.

In a metal box, dissipation from the metal box will help the system attain some kind of equilibrium, the limiting factor being thermal dissipation by the box itself.

In your cardboard box, dissipation would be virtually non existent. With no way for the heat to escape, i would expect quite high temperatures. As the box is not sealed per se, airflow over the box will still make the "system" get to a state of equilibrium, but at a normally much higher temperature than a metal enclosure.

Which brings us to the obvious question : what are your HD temperatures in that box after, say, 2-3 hours of gaming/defragmentation/activity ?

Did you somehow defeat thermodynamics and still get to stay in a safe range ?

[CroSsFiRE2.0]

haha nope, i haven't become a magician yet

yea..the temps go overboard 55C after 6hours running it while surfing, word processing, low intensity stuff, so i got to shut it off for a while, not much I can do about it until I find a decent metal box in my area. The cardboard box was just an interim solution along with my current case until I can replace them.

As for gaming/defragmenting after 2 hrs, I end up at around 42ish.

And yes, max safe operating temp is 60C, then again, this thing was running at 53C when suspended, however, it remained stable at that temp unlike in the box where it kept increasing.

As a strange thing, I noticed that the temperature increase slows down when it hits the 50C range.

[CroSsFiRE2.0]

I had the same mother board as you before I upgraded with an E4500. I was able to OC from the stock 2.2GHZ to 2.65GHZ by raising the FSB from 200 to 241 w/o any other adjustments. I was also using cheap crucial rendition RAM.

Spent some time fiddling around. Setting the FSB manually to OC doesn't work very well. However, using overclock profiles, at 20%, it worked perfectly fine for a OC from 2.6 to 3.2Ghz. The profiles probably raised voltages instead of just FSB, haven't checked if this is the case though. However, I also had to drop my RAM to 667 from 800 since the board doesn't allow for memory ratio changes and was stuck at 1:1. With the OC, it oc's the memory back to 800 .

Idles at 40, 54 load