Quiet, Clean, and Green Tower Build

Show off your quiet rig.

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Rhynri
Posts: 9
Joined: Fri Dec 07, 2007 3:13 am

Quiet, Clean, and Green Tower Build

Post by Rhynri » Sun May 15, 2016 10:38 am

My 6 year-old machine was in for a replacement. When building a new machine, I had a few requirements: I wanted it to be quiet as feasible (more on this later) and efficient, as my old machine was quite power-hungry. I also wanted it to look nice and clean. I came up with a pretty good parts list:

Specs:

Intel 5820k (6-core)
32 GB GSkill Trident-Z
Asus X99-Deluxe (Refurb) - for the fan headers... and more fan headers (it has an expansion card for fan headers even)
Corsair AX760 (Refurb) - for the zero RPM fan feature
Fractal Design Define R5 (and a few spare GP-14 fans) - thanks to SPCR for the review/suggestion!
2x Noctua NF-F12 industrialPPC-3000 fan
Corsair H50
EVGA 670 GTX FTW [Blower Type] (Stolen from the old machine)
Intel 750 NVMe PCIe and some other SATA based 2.5" 500gb SSD*

Some of those don't look very quiet, right? I was going for quiet as feasible to begin with... but there is more to the story. But first, pictures!

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Computer as it sits. Desk is Autonomous Smart Standing Desk

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Computer Internals. Noctuas are in a Push-Pull on the radiator. I actually have two more black GP-14s, but I like the look as is.

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Speedfan values after 10 minutes wake from sleep at about 21C/70F ambient, which represent my preset fan minimum percentages. This is typical in use.

General Information:

I was happy with how clean the build was. It's nothing special, but it looks pretty nice from outside the case. The first thing I installed after windows was speedfan (obviously) and I was quickly able to get the machine fairly quiet at idle. That old GPU was still a problem, however. It made a ticking noise and was generally not quiet. Those 4 GP-14 fans move a lot of air, though, so I wondered if I could get away with passively cooling at idle. So I grabbed a few adapters and was able to rig it directly to a PWM header on the motherboard (it requires a GPU-style to PWM-style cable adapter, and then an extension, I can provide part numbers if anyone is interested). And speedfan was now in control of my GPU... and the ticking was gone. Evidentially it was caused by the crappy on-board fan header on the GPU. I found that the fan itself was inaudible under a certain speed, and the motherboard could run it as slow as 250rpm. That problem solved, I still had an unidentified mid-high-pitched sound.

It was my display. My 2006 Dell 3007WFP's fluorescent backlight vibration was resonating in the bezel and making a buzz. The loudest part of my computer at idle is my display... *facepalm* Turning the backlight down eliminates the problem, as does pinching the bezel with a clamp or your fingers. I can't afford to replace it yet, so for now I just deal with it.

I can actually passively cool the GPU (it tops out around 107F/42C idle if I do), but there is no audible difference between the slowest set of fan speeds and passive cooling, and it's an older fan so I feel the start/stop cycles might wear it out faster. I've done a set of blindfolded tests with friends and family (who are far too obliging to my odd requests) and no one so far has been able to successfully identify the difference between the machine running and off. I've even had friends accidentally put it to sleep because they didn't realize it was on and the display was off/sleeping. I have triple-pane windows, and live in a quiet part of town, have a very quiet (brand new) HVAC, so while this build likely isn't perfectly silent (I mean, it can't be) I imagine very few people will have rooms quiet enough to hear it. I did the blindfold tests with the HVAC circulation off, as a note.

I actually contacted Noctua to make sure it was okay to run the fans at 250rpm like I do, because it's actually below their listed minimum value. I think that they can run that slow partially because the 4 GP-14 fans move so much air. Even with the slotted/mesh case rear panel, you can take out a disk drive slot cover and it'll blow air in your face. So very good positive pressure.

It is a professional machine though, and I do occasionally game on it. Under these conditions, the case fans make a low frequency sound I can only define as "relaxing", it's the kind of low frequency rumble that puts your kid to sleep in the car. The CPU fans are generally inaudible, although certain full CPU loads (compiling, rendering, etc) will bring it up to a max of about 130F/54C, which is about 1200 or so on my fan curves. You can hear the CPU cooler then, but you could easily prioritize sound over temp if you wanted. As a note, these values are with an overclock to 4.2ghz over the stock 3.3ghz.

I'm fine with these numbers under load. I'd rather have the machine running cooler under load than quieter. You could easily tweak the curves to prioritize quietness over heat dissipation if you wanted, and there is a LOT of overhead on the CPU cooler for hotter CPUs if you use any of these ideas in your own build. I'll be happy to provide fan curves and such on request.

Problems

The first is that all these fans spool up to 100% for a second or two, in two pulses, when you wake the computer from sleep, which means it's LOUD momentarily when it wakes up. I just look at it as dust busting (especially for the GPU, which is cleaner now than when I first put it in), so I haven't attempted to fix it yet. Another issue is you have to make sure speedfan is running, or it has an audible idle state, which is my safety UEFI defaults to make sure it's cool without my fan curves running. And speedfan doesn't take well to automatically running at startup (you lose the GUI).

If I'm using the GPU, it generally is audible, maxing out at around 2000rpm and 158F/70C. This is by choice, it's old, and I'm trying to keep it from thermally flexing as much as possible, so the fan curve drops off almost immediately once the load stops, and you wind up with nice curves up to and down from that temp, and minimal fan noise. The GPU also heatsoaks once it's been in use for rendering or gaming, and never really returns to the 98F/37C rest state due to the slow speed of its fan under my settings, usually winding up at 126F/52C. Again, probably easier on it this way.

I feel that most people won't mind the minimal amount of noise this setup makes while gaming, as most people game with the sound on. I personally use headphones. You could also tweak the configuration to make it quieter at the expense of heat/FPS as some on this forum have. Once the new generation of GPUs come out, it'll get more efficient and therefore cooler and quieter with the addition of a new GPU.

The last problem is that this is very configuration heavy. It also requires taking off the heat shield on your GPU, and wouldn't be as easy if my GPU wasn't a blower-type, as you'd have multiple fans to adapt. I also once erased parts of my configuration during a bios update... oops. In hindsight, I should have written down which fan headers were set to PWM, which were set to DC, and what my setpoints were, as the settings backup did not successfully save these.

*As a note, this motherboard only supports PCIe-based M.2 drives. Don't ask me how I know. >.< I'd have had two less wires in there otherwise. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out which two.

The machine draws about 70 watts at idle, a lot of which I think is the GPU. It runs about ~225 Watts under load give or take 25 Watts depending on what my GPU is doing. These values are from my UPS, which has been historically accurate against my per-circuit home energy monitor. The monitor adds about 120 watts to all these values, but no modern monitor (even Dell's current 30" with identical specs) pulls juice as much as the fluorescent backlight in mine does.

Let me know your thoughts, and I would love to answer any questions anyone might have, or provide additional information as I am able. Also, please let me know any suggestions for improvement you might have.

[Edited for clarity.]

SebRad
Patron of SPCR
Posts: 1121
Joined: Sun Nov 09, 2003 7:18 am
Location: UK

Re: Quiet, Clean, and Green Tower Build

Post by SebRad » Mon May 16, 2016 3:31 am

speedfan doesn't take well to automatically running at startup
Have you tried launching speedfan as a scheduled task?
To do this open the Windows Task Scheduler -> Action -> Create Task. (not basic task)
Tick the box for 'Run with highest privileges' and fill in the name/description
Add a trigger of 'At startup' (probably!)
Add Action of start a program and point it at the Speedfan executable.
Under conditions you might wish to disable the battery power conditions.
Under Settings un-tick 'Stop task if it runs longer than:'

Regard,
Seb

Rhynri
Posts: 9
Joined: Fri Dec 07, 2007 3:13 am

Re: Quiet, Clean, and Green Tower Build

Post by Rhynri » Mon May 16, 2016 5:31 am

Hello Seb, and thank you kindly for your reply.

I did in fact try that method. Speedfan would run, as evidenced in the task list and by the fans slowing down, but would not appear in the system tray, nor would the UI window appear in any capacity, hence my comment. If you have any idea what might cause this I am all ears. Every now and then I forget to run it and wonder why I can hear my computer. Fortunately, outside of system updates I never need to restart.

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