My SLK3000B experience thus far

w00dy · Post by **w00dy** » Mon Feb 21, 2005 1:16 pm

After much studying of this site, I ditched my Lian Li PC65 and today bought a SLK3000B.

The build went smooth as silk and I am pretty impressed thus far - case temp is 26c, with CPU at idle at 36c.

I have a couple of immediate thoughts:

The air vent for the CPU seems to let out a load of noise - I may well experiment blocking this but leaving the bottom vent open.

Also the rear fan is a little noisy - I have it set on "low" but it could be quieter. I have a Nexus 120mm at the front which is virtually inaudible. I am going to "soft mount" the Antec with EARS grommets tomorrow, which should hopefully reduce noise somewhat.

Then I will tackle the HDD noise !!

All in all well pleased and thank you all for your guidance and help

Tech · Post by **Tech** » Wed Feb 23, 2005 10:23 am

Do you like it a lot better than your PC-65?

Tzupy · Post by **Tzupy** » Thu Feb 24, 2005 3:27 am

I'm a bit disappointed by the new Antec SLK 3000B I bought yesterday. It is short, by comparison with my Chenbro GB, also feels less sturdy, but it's higher, which is a good thing. Right now I can't talk about quietness, because my new Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe still has the chipset stock HSF on (waiting for a Thermalright NB-1...)

w00dy · Post by **w00dy** » Thu Feb 24, 2005 4:08 am

Tech : yes I do like it more than PC65 - looks wise and performance wise

I have kept exactly the same hardware and my CPU temp has dropped 5c and my Case temps down 3c, and it is very quiet.

Tzupy : The front door is the only area of the case that looks a bit suspect quality-wise. I have added one layer of acoutstic foam to the back of the door, which has made it feel a bit more sturdy, but I would like to find some way of stopping the door moving up and door on the hinge - perhaps some type of rubber grommet?

Tech · Post by **Tech** » Thu Feb 24, 2005 6:35 am

Tzuby, the Thermalright NB-1 is loud. I had one and got rid of it. You might look at Swiftech's MCX-159 or Microcool's Northpole which are both much quieter.

w00dy, well I was planning on getting a PC-65 because I've always wanted one but I hate noise so I might just go with the 3000B. It's also less than half the price of the PC-65. I won't like not having the removable motherboard tray because I swap parts a lot but I guess there are always trade offs.

HolyBastard · Post by **HolyBastard** » Thu Feb 24, 2005 6:40 am

Does the Fan of the CPU need to Push air thru the CAG or take air from it? Because most fan push air from the cpu and not to the cpu...

And is the NF4 fan that loud if I only one a quite computer at idle?

w00dy · Post by **w00dy** » Thu Feb 24, 2005 6:59 am

Tech : The PC65 is a NICE looking case but not all it is crakced up to be - it is light weight and very noisy - I was spending a fortune on quiet fans, grommets etc to try and silence it, but was rapidly losing the battle. The SLK3000B has PLENTY of room to compensate for the lack of mobo tray.

HolyBastard: I think the fan on the CPU needs to push air downwards, so it pulls cool air from the CAG. I haven't used the CAG at all as I have an Arctic Freezer 64 which I HIGHLY recommend - at 7v it is VERY quiet and keeps my CPU temps down. Even at 12v it is not loud !

Tibors · Post by **Tibors** » Thu Feb 24, 2005 7:23 am

HolyBastard wrote:Because most fan push air from the cpu and not to the cpu...

With the exception of tower type heatsinks and Alpha PAL, all CPU heatsinks with integrated fan I know blow downward onto the CPU. Thus they will pull air into the case from the CAG, just like Intel designed it.

It was rather special that Thermalright claimed you could use their XP series heatsinks with fans in suck mode (i.e. blowing away from the CPU).

HammerSandwich · Post by **HammerSandwich** » Thu Feb 24, 2005 11:03 am

Tzupy wrote:It is short...but it's higher...

Tzupy, would you please reword this? I don't understand what you mean here.

Devonavar · Post by **Devonavar** » Thu Feb 24, 2005 12:46 pm

Tibors wrote:
HolyBastard wrote:Because most fan push air from the cpu and not to the cpu...
With the exception of tower type heatsinks and Alpha PAL, all CPU heatsinks with integrated fan I know blow downward onto the CPU.

A good number of Scythe's heatsinks also use the upward blowing configuration. You can generally tell which direction is intended by whether or not a heatsink has a plastic shroud to ensure that air is drawn in at the bottom of the heatsink.

Tzupy · Post by **Tzupy** » Fri Feb 25, 2005 4:40 am

Sorry for being unclear... IMO the 3000B is a bit short (front to back), since there's not much space between the mobo and the HDDs.
It's also taller (higher was an ill chosen term), so there's more space between the mobo and my Neopower480. I could have installed the XP-120 instead of the XP-90.
I'm going to control the speed of the Delta fan on the NB-1 with my fan controller (I know it's loud at 6,000 rpm, but at ~4,000 it should be better). I'm afraid the NB47J wouldn't do the job, since I'm overclocking the 'FSB', maybe upto 266, if my memory will take that...

w00dy · Post by **w00dy** » Fri Feb 25, 2005 6:18 am

Tzupy, I agree with you about the "shortness" of the SLK300B - The HDD's do extend too far into the case the IDE cables are a bit squashed up against my Nvidia 6800.

I am thinking of placing the front fan on the outside of the case (a la BQE3700) and moving the HDD's forward in the drive cage. Hopefully this will ease the crush in the middle a bit !

rtsai · Post by **rtsai** » Fri Feb 25, 2005 6:26 am

You won't be able to "move the drives up in the drive cage" without some modding. The front edges of the drive cage are bent inward 90 degrees to provide a bumper surface abutting the drives. You'll see what I'm talking about when you attempt to "move your drives forward"

. Presumably this is to prevent someone from pushing their drives into an intake case fan mounted in the interior of the case. If you really need more room between the drives and the motherboard, you will have to go without the drive cage (or move the entire drive cage itself, a la cage suspension).

What Antec should have done was to somehow make the drivecage reversible for people without front intakes, or to provide two ways to mount the drive cage (a "forward" front intake-less way, and the currently "normal" way to accommodate a front intake).

w00dy · Post by **w00dy** » Fri Feb 25, 2005 7:54 am

Cheers rtsai - I see what you mean

I may decide to get hold of an external caddy for one of my HDD's and place the two remaining drives in the bottom two slots on the HDD rack - this should free up the area around the HDD rack. Or I may move two drives into the 5.25" slots - Don't really want to have to start modding just at the moment.

Tzupy · Post by **Tzupy** » Fri Feb 25, 2005 11:32 am

I believe that Antec should have made it 5-6 cm longer, and ask for 5$ more - I would have gladly paid.

HammerSandwich · Post by **HammerSandwich** » Fri Feb 25, 2005 12:45 pm

Thanks, Tzupy.

mrscintilla · Post by **mrscintilla** » Sat Feb 26, 2005 12:13 am

How is your HD temp w/o a front fan? Maybe the single 120mm rear exhaust draws sufficient air fromt he front grill to cool the HD??

I use speedfan to monitor my HD temps in an old Lian-li pc50. It runs around 34C. Bought a slk3000b, still in shipping. I am most curious as to whether I can just run the single rear fan.

I was told that HDs are most fragile to heat. A bit worried about having no fan over it.

Another question I have is whether the front panel block intake airway to the CDROM drives. I was thinking of building a duct from the PSU to one of the CDROM bays, and let the intake air go into the PSU.

Tzupy · Post by **Tzupy** » Sat Feb 26, 2005 3:55 am

What about a list of improvements for the 3000B?
If many people add their complaints / suggestions, I think we should make a poll and see which ones are the most desired. Then we nicely ask Antec to take the final list into consideration for an improved version.
1) make the case 5-6 cm longer, in order to allow easy use of long GFX cards with AC Silencers.
2) patch the front bottom hole and make the front slits a bit larger.
3) make the CPU duct flexible, so people can put it exactly on top (mine is half the fan off - XP-90 on Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe).
4) add a sort of cap for this duct, that allows air to flow in, but dampens noise.
5) add a dust filter for the lower lateral intake.

Oliver · Post by **Oliver** » Wed Mar 02, 2005 4:10 pm

Tzupy:
Do you think that a xp-120 mounted on the a8n-sli deluxe with a nexus 120mm fan would smack into the round tube air guide? Is the case deep enough for that. Can the guide be removed easilly, or is it riveted into place? Would removing it mess up the exterior of the case?

Does the case have enough door left (they put all those holes in it), to drown out the 7200 rpm pitch of the hard drive spinning (not the seeking noises)? In other words, when you close the side panel, does the case sound a lot quiter, than with the side panel off?

Finally , does the side panel make really good pressure around its perimiter with the emi protrusions . Or is it a sloppy fit?

Are your hard drives cool?

rtsai · Post by **rtsai** » Wed Mar 02, 2005 5:41 pm

Oliver wrote:Do you think that a xp-120 mounted on the a8n-sli deluxe with a nexus 120mm fan would smack into the round tube air guide? Is the case deep enough for that. Can the guide be removed easilly, or is it riveted into place? Would removing it mess up the exterior of the case?

I have the SLK3000B + XP-120 + Yate Loon 120mm mounted on a Soltek SL-K8TPro-939 and don't have any clearance problems with the round tube. The guide can be removed with a screwdriver, leaving just the hole.

Oliver wrote:Does the case have enough door left (they put all those holes in it), to drown out the 7200 rpm pitch of the hard drive spinning (not the seeking noises)? In other words, when you close the side panel, does the case sound a lot quiter, than with the side panel off?

Sure, the case is quieter with the side panel without; I'm not sure what you were expecting. I have a pair of SP1614C grommetted in the HD cage and they are barely audible when my ear is pressed against the front bezel. The HD noise was much worse when they were in the stock black Antec grommets.

Oliver wrote:Finally , does the side panel make really good pressure around its perimiter with the emi protrusions . Or is it a sloppy fit?

I don't understand this question. The side panel isn't really airtight if that's what you're asking.

Oliver wrote:Are your hard drives cool?

I guess so. I have a front 120mm fan mounted at 5V and there is a noticeable difference to the touch. For some reason I can't read the SMART temperature information so I can't provide any quantified data.

frankgehry · Post by **frankgehry** » Wed Mar 02, 2005 5:49 pm

W,

Your fan is noisy because low speed is 1200 rpm. You need to slow it down. Follow this post -

http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewtopic.php?t=19844

Tzupy · Post by **Tzupy** » Thu Mar 03, 2005 1:45 am

Well, I couldn't answer the questions in time - different time zone... Rtsai answered about the same as I would.
IMO the side panel isn't sloppy fit, but the side vents do let noise out, so you have to make sure the inner components aren't too noisy. The lower vent does however help in cooling the GFX card. I have patched the front bottom hole and have the Antec Tricool @1,200 rpm blowing on the HDDs. I have a thermal probe on the HDDs (old Seagate ATA IV) and it's never gone over 35C (26C in room).
The Antec HDD grommets don't seem to work so well, maybe I had them screwed too tight?

as530 · Post by **as530** » Thu Mar 03, 2005 3:02 am

Oliver:

I had an XP-120 + Nexus 120 on my A8N-SLi deluxe, and the left panel fitted on fine, even with the round air guide. however, when applying acoustipack to the case, i took off the air guide (easy to do) and haven't put it back yet (don't really see the need to. Also I removed the stock rear case fan, and moved the nexus 120 from XP-120 to rear case position, so my XP-120 is now fanless (CPU idling at around 30-33° with CnQ enabled).

The left panel does help a lot with reducing high-pitched whining sounds *when* acoustipack is applied; unfortunately i can't remember what it was like before, and even if i could it was being drowned out then by other things.

Tzupy · Post by **Tzupy** » Thu Mar 03, 2005 4:26 am

As530, please tell me how your GFX temps are. I have a MSI 6600GT and haven't yet applied the VM-101, am just wondering how much the temps would increase. In your case, I understand that the Acoustipack has covered the side vent, so the increase may be higher (mine runs now 42C idle, 54C after 2h of FarCry). Oh, and how tight is the fit between the XP-120 and the VM-101, I didn't believe they would fit together (so I got the XP-90).

Oliver · Post by **Oliver** » Thu Mar 03, 2005 8:09 am

Tzupy, as530,rtsai:
Thanks all for replying.

Tzupy:
Uou mentioned about grommets not working too well.
As a general reply, a rubber grommet is like a inefficient spring, and if you crush it too much, then it will not
be able to absorb as much energy. But you also don't want a harddrive to fall out because it is not screwed tight enough. I do not know the 3000b design so I cannot comment on the specifics.

as530:
I noticed you have a nb47j on your nforce4 chip. Was it easy to get good contact with that -- in other words is it cinched down so you do not have to worry about it popping off, or is is just sort of held in place by some friction on some pins. Did you have to get to the backside of the motherboard to mount it? What is your temperature reading on it? How did you take the temperature ? You do know that the system temp is taken somewhere else on the motherboard, and the only way to get the temp of that northbridge is with some sort of external probe thermometer. Do you think that having the holes in the slk3000b side panel helps to passively cool the nf47j.

In other words, do you think you could have gotten away with your setup with the nb47j on an antec p160 case that as far as I am aware of, does not have any holes in the left side panel, but does have postions for 2 120mm fans?

I noticed you have a passive graphics cooler. So you do not have stray air from a gpu fan hitting the nb47j. So what are you idle and hard running temps on the nb47j?
I was thinking of getting that board and mounting the Swiftech mcx159 instead of teh nb47j. It does have a fast spinning fan, but some people say it is quiet. I have no idea.

Pauli · Post by **Pauli** » Thu Mar 03, 2005 8:58 am

Tzupy wrote:Well, I couldn't answer the questions in time - different time zone... Rtsai answered about the same as I would.
IMO the side panel isn't sloppy fit, but the side vents do let noise out, so you have to make sure the inner components aren't too noisy. The lower vent does however help in cooling the GFX card. I have patched the front bottom hole and have the Antec Tricool @1,200 rpm blowing on the HDDs. I have a thermal probe on the HDDs (old Seagate ATA IV) and it's never gone over 35C (26C in room).
The Antec HDD grommets don't seem to work so well, maybe I had them screwed too tight?

Those stock Antec grommets are useless -- they just are not soft enough.

Tzupy · Post by **Tzupy** » Thu Mar 03, 2005 9:12 am

Pauli, would you mind elaborating on your HDD decoupling with Sorbothane? Do you mean Sorbothane grommets or something else? I only saw Sorbothane case feet. What should I use instead of the stock Antec grommets?

rtsai · Post by **rtsai** » Thu Mar 03, 2005 9:56 am

Tzupy wrote:What should I use instead of the stock Antec grommets?

The EAR grommets work well enough for me in the HD cage; they are a noticeable improvement over the stock Antec grommets.

as530 · Post by **as530** » Tue Mar 08, 2005 8:41 am

hello all

sorry for the delay in replying; have been busy. Here are answers to the various queries / more questions:

VM-101

The XP-120 is difficult to fit with the VM-101; however, since my nForce4 board has 2 graphics slots (SLI, remember?) I just put my video card on the second slot, which is miles away from the XP-120. With the stock (loud) HSF cooler, my leadtek 6600GT was idling at around 45°; unfortunately i can't remember load temps.

Fitting the VM-101 was easy enough, but I think i may have used too much AS5, since the entire apparatus can still twist around a little on the GPU chip. Anyway after fitting the vm-101 my idle temps rose to around 48-49°, which is acceptable. However, after playing a tetris game (yes, tetris - it's called Zetrix - much more graphics intensive than you'd expect from a tetris game) for about 20 mins, my GPU temp went up to almost 80° which is far too high for my liking. However, given the distance between my VM-101 and the exhaust Nexus 120, this isn't surprising, as there's so little airflow over my VM-101. However, I've since fitted a cheap Akasa "junior" 3.5 bay 3-fan controller (no RPM readings, powers fans itself) to which i have attached all 3 of my fans - my front & rear nexuses, and also a little old AMD CPU HS fan which i've snuck in between the right side of the HDD cage and the right case panel. This small fan is loud at full power, but it does waft air over my NB-47J, and with a bit of tweaking I could get it to direct air over my VM-101 as well.

NB-47J
Now, the NB-47J does require removal of the mobo to fit, and it does fit easily onto the nForce4 chipset on the A8N-SLi deluxe. It also twists around a little, but far less worryingly so than the VM-101. It seems to cool the chipset effectively. To the touch, it is usually only mildly warm. With the small old AMD fan right next to it, I have no worries at all about my chipset temperature, although I have to say i didn't know that what my Asus Probe is reporting as "MB temperature" was not the chipset temp.

My only problem now is that my A8N's manual says that the first PCI-e graphics slot must be used if you're only using one graphics card; and that in normal mode, the second PCI-e slow functions only as a x1 PCI slot, rather than x16.

This is slightly worrying because it means that my graphics performance might have tumbled significantly, but a few minutes of Doom3 showed little subjective difference, if any. However, could this potentially be the cause of my very high load temps? A sort of bottleneck at the PCI slot causing higher load GPU temps? I don't know.

My system is reasonably quiet now but both my SATA Nidec Spinpoints (both at AAM to 128: quiet) still have a significant idle vibration, and seeks are quite loud too. I can't be bothered with suspension, so am currently using Antec's stock grommets in the normal cage. Can somebody tell me more about these EAR grommets - which company sells them, what are they made of, etc etc? also presumably they'll fit OK in the 3000B's cage?

lastly, I want to post some pics of my system, but do i need my own hosting arrangements and then have to link to them? will try to find out soon anyway.

Sorry for the huge post but thoughts / comments - particularly on the second SLI slot issue, are most welcome!

Tzupy · Post by **Tzupy** » Tue Mar 08, 2005 11:52 am

I'd really want to know where one can find those EAR grommets in the UK! Please help if you happen to know.
I understand that they are built from softer rubber than the stock ones, but are they Sorbothane?
I wish there would be some standardized / manufactured HDD suspension device that replaces the steel cage...

My SLK3000B experience thus far

My SLK3000B experience thus far

noisy fan