Silent Grizwald
Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2016 4:21 am
I am a firm believer in Murphy's Law in that, if I have a backup system, I can virtually guarantee that nothing will go wrong with my main system. The basket will only break if you carry all your eggs in it.
To this end I decided that I wanted to go for a silent, low energy, performant (though not performance) computer.
When I say it is silent then I do not mean from a foot or so away, I mean that I have my ear right up to the vent on the case and cannot hear a thing. I realise that this is subjective, so I have done my testing at night when ambient noise is at a minimum, when my main machine (which I normally consider to be quiet) is distinctly audible i.e. when my hearing has become low noise adapted. I had the system under load and was running OCCT 4.4.1 with AVX.
I didn't want it to be as cheap as possible because of the law of three, that is out of fast, reliable and cheap you can only ever have two.
I did not however compromise on any components, I got EXACTLY what I wanted for the build, I just kept checking offers over the course of two to three months to get the cheapest price for those components that I could from a vendor I know to be reliable.
This was my build:
PSU: Super Flower Leadex Platinum 550W
Mobo: GigaByte GA-F2A88XN-WIFI
Case: Corsair Obsidion 250D (replaced front 140mm with 200mm CoolerMaster MegaFlow Fan)
Cooler: Noctua NH-L12
CPU: AMD 7870K
SSD: SanDisk Ultra Plus 256GB
RAM: 16GB (2*8GB) Corsair Vengeance Pro 2400MHz
All in all the price of the rig came to just under £500.
My choices in detail.
PSU: I consider the PSU to be, by far, the most important single component of a computer. A 550W PSU is overkill for the build I know; however Super Flower makes some of the best if not the best analog PSUs available. Under 550W I could not find something with the acceptable quality combined with the features I wanted (hybrid fan, very low ripple, highest quality components, real platinum rating, expected longevity). At a price I was willing to pay.
I know that some of you will say, "You should have gone with a Seasonic". I would agree that a Seasonic would have come into consideration, however they are not readily available in the UK where I live. Buying one from outside the UK would entail paying quite a lot in postage and the Seasonic PSU's I was looking at would have ended up costing about twice as much as the PSU I decided upon, which is readily available in the UK.
Mobo: I have had very good experiences with GigaByte boards and very bad experiences with ASUS boards. I wanted a board that would be as all-singing, all-dancing, as I could get and that included WiFi. I am not an audiophile and I can get by very well on the onboard sound subsystem.
Case: The Corsair Obsidian 250D was the only one which met my requirements, small footprint, mini-ITX, and most important the ability to put a 200mm fan in the front. Even with a Noctua Low Noise Adapter fitted to the fan, it pumps in more air to the case than the included 140mm fan would have done going at full whack.
Cooler: This was a toss-up and I actually bought both coolers I was considering to test them out. The other cooler I bought was the Noctua NH-U9S with an extra Noctua NF-A9 fan. I went with the NU-L12 because under load it was silent, but it also provides airflow to the Caps and VRMs around the CPU. Although it does block off access to the PCI-e slot, I was intending to use that so this was not a consideration.
CPU: This was a no-brainer. Adding an extra GPU to the system would have essentially ended all possibility of the system running silently and the onboard graphics of the Intel CPU's suck. The GPU portion of the 7870K is more than adequate for my needs and has pleasantly surprised me with regard to the games I like to play, such as Diablo III: Reaper of Souls or Starcraft II, never mind Age of Empires II and III or Europa Universalis IV. It is of course imperative that one buys the fastest RAM compatible with the motherboard.
SSD: Again a no-brainer. A mechanical harddrive just makes too much noise. The reason why I went with the Sandisk is because it has good performance and I got it for a price which I just could not refuse.
Optical Drive: Don't generally need one. I have an external Samsung Blu-Ray writer for the very occasional times I need to have an optical drive attached to my system.
RAM: I got the 16GB (2*8GB) Corsair Vengeance Pro 2400MHz for less than half price from one very good and reputable vendor and I have had very good experiences with Corsair RAM in the past. The RAM runs at the fastest speed compatible with my system.
I have to say though that I have the Noctua LNC (Low Noise Adapter) on both of the fans of the cooler and the 200mm fan.
One caveat, I had to replace the 92mm fan of the cooler for an 80mm Noctua fan because of RAM clearance.
What is the REAL selling point of the system is the energy use out of the socket of the system which is:
Off 1.3 Watts
Idle 36 Watts (Only Windows running after boot)
OCCT (with AVX) 127 Watts
Furmark 93.5 Watts
Prime95 137 Watts
Prime95+Furmark 142 Watts
If I load a YouTube video the energy usage goes up to a staggering 44 Watts out of the socket.
Running VLC with a video comes to 46 Watts.
Silent, and uses less than a lightbulb in energy - what's not to like?
Yes the components cost a bit more, but you save back what you have invested relatively quickly.
In fact, not having to install a separate GPU (which I would have needed to have done if I had used an Intel CPU) I already saved a bunch of money. Also of course, if I had put a GPU into the rig then silence would have been unattainable.
One thing I meant to add, I have a Low Noise Adapter on the 200mm fan, but even at that it is shunting more air into the system than the 140mm fan going full whack. I also left all the benchmark programs running for at least an hour. There was no thermal throttling during any of the tests.
Can I play games on the rig? Yes, the games I like to play such as Diablo III: Reaper of Souls, which plays just as fluidly with the same settings as on my main rig, an i7-4790K. So it is a bit more useful with regard to games than simply having to be contented with bejewelled.
I have since added a 480GB SSD to the system and two 16 LED case lights and so now the system on idle (only Windows running after boot) is at 42 Watts out of the socket.
Mod question: Will you be adding pictures? Or should this post be moved to an appropriate section?
To this end I decided that I wanted to go for a silent, low energy, performant (though not performance) computer.
When I say it is silent then I do not mean from a foot or so away, I mean that I have my ear right up to the vent on the case and cannot hear a thing. I realise that this is subjective, so I have done my testing at night when ambient noise is at a minimum, when my main machine (which I normally consider to be quiet) is distinctly audible i.e. when my hearing has become low noise adapted. I had the system under load and was running OCCT 4.4.1 with AVX.
I didn't want it to be as cheap as possible because of the law of three, that is out of fast, reliable and cheap you can only ever have two.
I did not however compromise on any components, I got EXACTLY what I wanted for the build, I just kept checking offers over the course of two to three months to get the cheapest price for those components that I could from a vendor I know to be reliable.
This was my build:
PSU: Super Flower Leadex Platinum 550W
Mobo: GigaByte GA-F2A88XN-WIFI
Case: Corsair Obsidion 250D (replaced front 140mm with 200mm CoolerMaster MegaFlow Fan)
Cooler: Noctua NH-L12
CPU: AMD 7870K
SSD: SanDisk Ultra Plus 256GB
RAM: 16GB (2*8GB) Corsair Vengeance Pro 2400MHz
All in all the price of the rig came to just under £500.
My choices in detail.
PSU: I consider the PSU to be, by far, the most important single component of a computer. A 550W PSU is overkill for the build I know; however Super Flower makes some of the best if not the best analog PSUs available. Under 550W I could not find something with the acceptable quality combined with the features I wanted (hybrid fan, very low ripple, highest quality components, real platinum rating, expected longevity). At a price I was willing to pay.
I know that some of you will say, "You should have gone with a Seasonic". I would agree that a Seasonic would have come into consideration, however they are not readily available in the UK where I live. Buying one from outside the UK would entail paying quite a lot in postage and the Seasonic PSU's I was looking at would have ended up costing about twice as much as the PSU I decided upon, which is readily available in the UK.
Mobo: I have had very good experiences with GigaByte boards and very bad experiences with ASUS boards. I wanted a board that would be as all-singing, all-dancing, as I could get and that included WiFi. I am not an audiophile and I can get by very well on the onboard sound subsystem.
Case: The Corsair Obsidian 250D was the only one which met my requirements, small footprint, mini-ITX, and most important the ability to put a 200mm fan in the front. Even with a Noctua Low Noise Adapter fitted to the fan, it pumps in more air to the case than the included 140mm fan would have done going at full whack.
Cooler: This was a toss-up and I actually bought both coolers I was considering to test them out. The other cooler I bought was the Noctua NH-U9S with an extra Noctua NF-A9 fan. I went with the NU-L12 because under load it was silent, but it also provides airflow to the Caps and VRMs around the CPU. Although it does block off access to the PCI-e slot, I was intending to use that so this was not a consideration.
CPU: This was a no-brainer. Adding an extra GPU to the system would have essentially ended all possibility of the system running silently and the onboard graphics of the Intel CPU's suck. The GPU portion of the 7870K is more than adequate for my needs and has pleasantly surprised me with regard to the games I like to play, such as Diablo III: Reaper of Souls or Starcraft II, never mind Age of Empires II and III or Europa Universalis IV. It is of course imperative that one buys the fastest RAM compatible with the motherboard.
SSD: Again a no-brainer. A mechanical harddrive just makes too much noise. The reason why I went with the Sandisk is because it has good performance and I got it for a price which I just could not refuse.
Optical Drive: Don't generally need one. I have an external Samsung Blu-Ray writer for the very occasional times I need to have an optical drive attached to my system.
RAM: I got the 16GB (2*8GB) Corsair Vengeance Pro 2400MHz for less than half price from one very good and reputable vendor and I have had very good experiences with Corsair RAM in the past. The RAM runs at the fastest speed compatible with my system.
I have to say though that I have the Noctua LNC (Low Noise Adapter) on both of the fans of the cooler and the 200mm fan.
One caveat, I had to replace the 92mm fan of the cooler for an 80mm Noctua fan because of RAM clearance.
What is the REAL selling point of the system is the energy use out of the socket of the system which is:
Off 1.3 Watts
Idle 36 Watts (Only Windows running after boot)
OCCT (with AVX) 127 Watts
Furmark 93.5 Watts
Prime95 137 Watts
Prime95+Furmark 142 Watts
If I load a YouTube video the energy usage goes up to a staggering 44 Watts out of the socket.
Running VLC with a video comes to 46 Watts.
Silent, and uses less than a lightbulb in energy - what's not to like?
Yes the components cost a bit more, but you save back what you have invested relatively quickly.
In fact, not having to install a separate GPU (which I would have needed to have done if I had used an Intel CPU) I already saved a bunch of money. Also of course, if I had put a GPU into the rig then silence would have been unattainable.
One thing I meant to add, I have a Low Noise Adapter on the 200mm fan, but even at that it is shunting more air into the system than the 140mm fan going full whack. I also left all the benchmark programs running for at least an hour. There was no thermal throttling during any of the tests.
Can I play games on the rig? Yes, the games I like to play such as Diablo III: Reaper of Souls, which plays just as fluidly with the same settings as on my main rig, an i7-4790K. So it is a bit more useful with regard to games than simply having to be contented with bejewelled.
I have since added a 480GB SSD to the system and two 16 LED case lights and so now the system on idle (only Windows running after boot) is at 42 Watts out of the socket.
Mod question: Will you be adding pictures? Or should this post be moved to an appropriate section?