The best possible silent case for workstations (heavy load)

Naxeem · Post by **Naxeem** » Mon Jul 28, 2008 1:51 am

Currently I have TT Armor which is not very silent and I need something better. What is the best possible (silence and cooling optimum, but silence wise) case that can hold:

dual quad core CPUs, 4 hard drives, dual gpus.

that is the minimum it has to support..

The system works 24/7 around the clock and calendar so cooling should not suffer (much).

Thank you for your advice.

Please post 1-2 case choices so I can pick up the one I can get (and I hope the best one is accessible to me)

thejamppa · Post by **thejamppa** » Mon Jul 28, 2008 3:42 am

Dual Quad means usually eAtx-compatible towers.

Antec Twelve Hundred ( changing case fans in slipstreams help a lot getting 5x Slipstream 500 for case fans makes slow RPM fans still blowing seriously air)

Coolermaster COSMOS S or Stacker Series'.

Sharkoon Rebel 12-series ( Value and Economy )

Naxeem · Post by **Naxeem** » Mon Jul 28, 2008 3:59 am

If I choose to stay with one quad?

Btw what about Antec 180, 182 and 190 models?

wojtek · Post by **wojtek** » Mon Jul 28, 2008 4:35 am

Hi,

P18x is ok. I'm using P180B with similar setup with one important exception - only one GPU (and only ATX mobo). At one point there was 6 HDD (including Raptor) but you need to do some mods - to be sure about thermal and noise characteristic. If you want product 'ready to eat' or EATX mobo than choose something different - thejamppa propositions.

One more thing - there is problem with some oversized GPU's but it's easy to solve this problem - just remove HDD cage.

Sorry about my English language skills

Wojtek

EsaT · Post by **EsaT** » Mon Jul 28, 2008 4:39 am

Unless you do something very CPU intensive and very well multithreading (3D rendering as best example) or run multiple CPU intensive programs at same time second CPU probably doesn't help much.
Like you might have noticed open front cases leak noise out very effectively so you might want to keep them as secondary options.

And second GPUs produces notable amount (some nvidia's absolutely ridiculous amount) of unnecessary heat always when PC is on so you want case with good airflow over motherboard. (best situation is airflow over graphic cards which is then exhausted)

Lian Li has plenty of spacious tower cases, A70/71 would be one of their cheaper big towers.
(newer 7x10 has noisewise less good hard plastic mounting of HDDs)
A20 might be also interesting.

thejamppa wrote:Dual Quad means usually eAtx-compatible towers.
Antec Twelve Hundred

What it isn't!
P190 is one of the rare E-ATX compatible Antecs but that dual PSU system is badly done.

Naxeem · Post by **Naxeem** » Mon Jul 28, 2008 5:01 am

It's for the workstation machine that will run multiple OS-es on virtualization so I'm still considering to go 1 or 2 CPU. 1 consumer will probably be the case (QX9450 or something like that) rather than expensive Xeons and Skulltrail.

A RAID system will be used with minimum of 4 drives preferably 6.

Dual passive 3850 (Sapphire passive models) is probably what I'm aiming for if the fan noise is significant. 3870x2 which I have produces a lot of noise.

Atm I have Q6600 with Zalman N9700 which makes too much noise in my current case.

(I actually need a whole new quiet system that can run with minimum noise but not very limited performance.

Considering LIAN LI - I have acces only to a bunch of V--- models and some S80 models. No A20 or A70 but only A10A and A10B.

The price really doesn't matter if I can get sound-dampening, good drive mounting and a lot of space for long graphics cards and cables. Even TT
Armor which is large has problems with cables in my 5 drive config...

P.S. I like this A20 model. Do all LIAN LI get removable backpanel for easier motherboard removal/setup? That sounds good for cooling replacement (when CPU cooling gets dusty).

kel · Post by **kel** » Mon Jul 28, 2008 5:23 am

I think the A20 is very new (at least I never saw it before) so it probably isn't widely available just yet.

I have the A10 and managed to mod it essentially inaudible, but I don't think it's EATX compatible...
(for more info on the A10 look here => viewtopic.php?t=47247 )

N7SC · Post by **N7SC** » Mon Jul 28, 2008 5:36 am

The Lian-Li PC-A10 is *supposed* to be an ATX case, but the motherboard tray is, I think, easily big enough for an eATX motherboard. I can measure mine if you like and post measurements.

I have a full ATX motherboard, the watercooling pump, and the reservior all mounted on the removable MB tray, and with plenty of room to spare. Here is a photo of my MB tray:

In my installation, I did not acheive full isolation of the water pump, so it generates a bit of sound, but very little compared to most computers. I will read Kel's post about quieting the PC-A10. It is a great case, lots of room, very well built, and well designed. The door only opens in one direction, and is not *supposed* to be reversable, but I was just looking at it and think that I can reverse it easily. It is a very adaptable case and the best one I have ever seen.

Naxeem · Post by **Naxeem** » Mon Jul 28, 2008 5:56 am

What is that thing above GFX card? My card is much longer than that, so I hope it fits... some way.

Otherwise it looks very nice.

I have a water cooling system lying around but with new PC I gave up on that because of too much hassle with water replacement, system cleaning etc.

N7SC · Post by **N7SC** » Mon Jul 28, 2008 6:21 am

The thing above the GFX card is a cooling/fan duct that comes with the case. There is a fan inside it, sucking air from the motherboard/GFX card area and blowing it straight toward the camera, against the solid aluminum side of the duct that you can see in the photo. The solid side of the duct forces the air out the back of the motherboard tray, where there are holes in the MB tray to let the air out. You don't really need it if your graphics card has its own fan, as mine does. But, the fan is almost completely silent on medium speed, and I would have to dismount the radiator to get at the screws to remove the duct, so I leave it in for a little extra air flow in the case.

There is room in the case for very big graphics cards, I think it will easily hold even the largest ones made. Full sized ones will fit easily.

You'll note that the whole water cooling system, including the radiator, is mounted on the motherboard tray. That gives some idea of the size of the tray in the PC-A10 cases. Makes it very easy to clean, work on, etc., as I can pull the whole tray out without having to disconnect any of the water cooling loop. Also makes annual drain/flush/refill of the loop easy: just pull it out and dump it into a bucket. No fuss, no muss.

And, to answer one of Naxeem's questions that I forgot: No, not all Lian-Li cases have removable motherboard trays. Read the descriptions of the cases very carefully. The PC-A10 tray is obviously removable, but I don't remember which others are.

EsaT · Post by **EsaT** » Mon Jul 28, 2008 8:21 am

Naxeem wrote:Considering LIAN LI - I have acces only to a bunch of V--- models and some S80 models.

Where do you live that those are only ones available?
Old V2000/2100 have plastic HDD mounting in addition to that upside-down motherboard position but new V2010/ 2110 have more normal layout and soft mounting.

Actually CM Stacker RC-810 would have biggest undivided space and can take even W-ATX mobo... which makes ATX look small.

NyteOwl · Post by **NyteOwl** » Mon Jul 28, 2008 7:20 pm

There are smaller options for Dual processors than the EATX Skulltrail such as the Asus Z7S and several boards from Tyan and Supermicro for both Intel and AMD. Supermicro even have a dual Xeon microATX board.

One of those, if their feature set matches you needs would expand your case options.

Nick Geraedts · Post by **Nick Geraedts** » Mon Jul 28, 2008 10:59 pm

Naxeem wrote:It's for the workstation machine that will run multiple OS-es on virtualization so I'm still considering to go 1 or 2 CPU. 1 consumer will probably be the case (QX9450 or something like that) rather than expensive Xeons and Skulltrail.

Hang on a tic. Dual CPUs will guarantee that you're going to be buying Xeons and not Core2Duo/Quad. If you're seriously looking into a server or workstation class board (i.e. Tyan), you'll be spending quite a bit more than you would on your typical Gigabyte or ASUS motherboard. A second consideration is that if you're going to be running several VMs, then memory bandwidth might become more of an issue than pure CPU crunching power.

Now... that being said, I'm an Intel fan at heart. I've always prefered building Intel based systems (Intel chipsets and CPUs), mostly because of the stability of their chipset drivers (nForce3 and 4 ruined my trust in nVidia's chipsets). However, depending on the type of virtualization you're looking at running (particularly if you're interested in Hyper-V), AMD would be a better route to go. Hyper-V was specifically designed and tested on AMD machines first, so the performance there is better than you'd find on comparable Intel systems.

The main problem you're going to have with a dual-CPU setup (if you decide to go that route) is cooling the CPUs quietly. There simply isn't enough space for two large tower heatsinks on most dual CPU motherboards, and sadly, the world of servers doesn't concern itself with silence.

I've got the CMStacker 810 (which is getting hard to find these days), and with my current setup, the 10 hard drives make the most noise. It's not silent, but quiet enough for my tastes.

Naxeem · Post by **Naxeem** » Tue Jul 29, 2008 1:02 am

Going the Xeon way seems a bit expensive for me. I could pay it, but it would be throwing my money away I think as I don't really need them.
The real advantage of a Xeon CPU over normal is not very clear to me except for multi-CPU setup and somewhat larger cache that *can* help sometimes. parallel instructions? Well, for servers yes, for workstations no *that* better. I see no real need to go Xeon way.
Yes, I'm aware that Phenoms have double the memory bandwidth of C2Ds and that's why I'm considering them. Still, not sure about config, but I want a case that is large enough to hold my drives and cool them with dual long gfx cards.

Suosaaski · Post by **Suosaaski** » Tue Jul 29, 2008 1:26 am

Antec P180/P182 can hold your 4 hard drives in the lower chamber and cool them separately while keeping your dual graphics cards cool.

Eagle156 · Post by **Eagle156** » Tue Jul 29, 2008 2:49 pm

N7SC wrote:The Lian-Li PC-A10 is *supposed* to be an ATX case, but the motherboard tray is, I think, easily big enough for an eATX motherboard. I can measure mine if you like and post measurements.

I have a full ATX motherboard, the watercooling pump, and the reservior all mounted on the removable MB tray, and with plenty of room to spare. Here is a photo of my MB tray:

In my installation, I did not acheive full isolation of the water pump, so it generates a bit of sound, but very little compared to most computers. I will read Kel's post about quieting the PC-A10. It is a great case, lots of room, very well built, and well designed. The door only opens in one direction, and is not *supposed* to be reversable, but I was just looking at it and think that I can reverse it easily. It is a very adaptable case and the best one I have ever seen.

That's not a full length ATX board. I have the same one; it's not full length, so an E-ATX board would not fit.