Here is the PC I would like to build:
CASE: Antec P182 with 2 Scythe Slipstream 1200 and 2 Scythe Slipstream 800, softmounted
PSU: Corsair HX620
MOBO: Gigabyte or Asus P6T Delux (Intel X58)
RAM: OCZ DDR3/1333 CAS 7 (3 x 2 Gb) (6 or 12 Gb total, I will decide)
CPU: Intel i7 9200 (2.66 MHz) 130W TDP declared
GPU: Sapphire HD4870/1Gb
HD1: WD Velociraptor 300 Gb
HD2: WD Caviar Blue 640 Gb (2 in RAID1 or 4 in RAID01, I will decide)
My baseline for a quiet system:
P182 with all 3 original fans (rear, top and low chamber at low): loud and vibrating.
P182 with 2 original fans (rear and low chamber at low): not quiet enough.
Some questions:
1. High chamber ventilation: are a Slipstream 1200@5v (rear), a Slipstream 800@7v (top) and a Slipstream 800@7v (front) enough to keep silently fresh the upper chamber? Do I need to add a Scythe CamaBay (perhaps without fan)?
2. Low chamber ventilation: can I put 4 disks here, and a Slipstream 1200@5v, without having PSU overheating and PSU fan ramping?
3. GPU cooling: the Shapphire HD4870 has a huge heatsink with 3 heat pipes: do I really need to replace it? If so, is it better an AC Accelero S1 rev2 with turbo module or an AC TwinTurbo? May I really hope to have better temps and low noise?
4. CPU cooling: I would like to use a “blow downâ€
Can it be quiet for me?
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xan_user
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i7 hasn't been through the spcr ringer yet, and it will be some time before a good silent HS rises to the top. 130w is a lot of heat to dump.
between 3-5 drives only softmounted = loud (for me) Suspension would fix that.
12GB ram!
that much ram will increase the cooling needs a little.
Sounds like a screaming system, Whatca doing with it? taking over satellites for world domination?:lol:
Given your baseline for silence as a 182 with 2 slow fans as not quiet enough, this new build will be a real challenge to quiet. There's bound to be some trial and lots of error..
between 3-5 drives only softmounted = loud (for me) Suspension would fix that.
12GB ram!
that much ram will increase the cooling needs a little.Sounds like a screaming system, Whatca doing with it? taking over satellites for world domination?:lol:
Given your baseline for silence as a 182 with 2 slow fans as not quiet enough, this new build will be a real challenge to quiet. There's bound to be some trial and lots of error..
- TRUE with S-FLEX or similar - you can get 1366 brackets for it.
- Scythe Kama Bay with S-FLEX or Nexus, you should do some ducting to get more airflow over the ram.
- Get a HD4870 that is dual-slot and vents hot air out of the case.
Also you should forget all notions of keeping this big bugger silent during gaming, while it will probably do fine in just heavy cpu load (folding@home for SPCR
)
- Scythe Kama Bay with S-FLEX or Nexus, you should do some ducting to get more airflow over the ram.
- Get a HD4870 that is dual-slot and vents hot air out of the case.
Also you should forget all notions of keeping this big bugger silent during gaming, while it will probably do fine in just heavy cpu load (folding@home for SPCR
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thejamppa
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Re: Can it be quiet for me?
[quote="gianni"]
4. CPU cooling: I would like to use a “blow downâ€
4. CPU cooling: I would like to use a “blow downâ€
xan_user:
130w is what Intel declares for all i7 processors (here the specs: http://download.intel.com/design/proces ... 320834.pdf).
In SPRC preview, the entry level (2.66 MHz) is less power hungry then the top (3.2 MHz) which has the same declared TDP (http://www.silentpcreview.com/article884-page5.html).
Yes, if softmounting does not work well enough, I can suspend my drives. I will try.
I could try with 6 Gb: about 5 Gb are what I need now, but I have no room for the future.
No desire to take over satellites, just to run the small LAN of virtual machines with Windows 2008 Server, SQL Server, Analysis Server, SharePoint Services and Visual Studio 2008 I daily use to work… and to run the video game I sometimes use to play
.
I have moved my old P4 with 3 disks from my mildly modded Thermaltake XaserIII to a P182 and the PSU doesn’t ramp anymore: great 2 chamber design. On the other side, the noise on idle of the system is higher: the culprit is the fan on rear, with its grumbling noise. I simply would like a smoother sound for the fan, no vibration on case, and 2-3 db less noise.
130w is what Intel declares for all i7 processors (here the specs: http://download.intel.com/design/proces ... 320834.pdf).
In SPRC preview, the entry level (2.66 MHz) is less power hungry then the top (3.2 MHz) which has the same declared TDP (http://www.silentpcreview.com/article884-page5.html).
Yes, if softmounting does not work well enough, I can suspend my drives. I will try.
I could try with 6 Gb: about 5 Gb are what I need now, but I have no room for the future.
No desire to take over satellites, just to run the small LAN of virtual machines with Windows 2008 Server, SQL Server, Analysis Server, SharePoint Services and Visual Studio 2008 I daily use to work… and to run the video game I sometimes use to play
.I have moved my old P4 with 3 disks from my mildly modded Thermaltake XaserIII to a P182 and the PSU doesn’t ramp anymore: great 2 chamber design. On the other side, the noise on idle of the system is higher: the culprit is the fan on rear, with its grumbling noise. I simply would like a smoother sound for the fan, no vibration on case, and 2-3 db less noise.
the TRUE is the Thermalright Ultra120Extreme, about the best heatsink you can get for air cooling. I wouldnt worry so much about cooking the motherboard, with a kama bay and a very rudimentary duct to get more airflow over the ram you should also be covered for VRM heatsinks.
I would consider suspending the velociraptor in the middle hdd bay if you can still fit it with a HD4870, just remove the icepak. That way it will be pretty quiet too.
I would consider suspending the velociraptor in the middle hdd bay if you can still fit it with a HD4870, just remove the icepak. That way it will be pretty quiet too.
Hum, 6 sticks of RAM draw other power and warm up the case. The processor is the worst power consumer of the moment. The video card is hot.
But it should be a powerful workstation I could use for some years.
Making it quiet is supposed to be my hobby, but it can be a nightmare!
If the PSU in the lower chamber ramps up due to simple power drawing and self heating, even if its chamber is cold, I could became deaf, working with this thing under my desk.
Perhaps it is better to choose a Core2 Quad on socket 775 with 8 Gb of DDR2 1066@1066, instead of 6 or 12 Gb of DDR3 1333@1066.
What do you think?
But it should be a powerful workstation I could use for some years.
Making it quiet is supposed to be my hobby, but it can be a nightmare!
If the PSU in the lower chamber ramps up due to simple power drawing and self heating, even if its chamber is cold, I could became deaf, working with this thing under my desk.
Perhaps it is better to choose a Core2 Quad on socket 775 with 8 Gb of DDR2 1066@1066, instead of 6 or 12 Gb of DDR3 1333@1066.
What do you think?
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protellect
- Posts: 312
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Your big noise problem is going to be the CPU and the GPU. That's a nice big heat sink, so I think CPU is covered. GPU is always hit and miss, you're going to get it and it will be quiet, or will be noisy... And you will have to adjust from there.
Using good 120mm fans like you are will help. I'd put one in the front middle hd bay, and one in the back. Add a third to the top of the P182 if you have heat issues.
I'm running a Q9450 in a P180, one fan in back, one in the front bay, no heat problems, 1600RPM yate loons @ 7v/850ish RPM.
Ram that isn't over clocked makes less heat than you think, and DDR3 uses less volts than ddr2 = less heat. 8GB doesn't make any more noticeable heat than the heat sinks do, and I don't think 2 more sticks will make a difference.
Corsair HX620 is an excellent supply, and I highly doubt it will ramp up, and come anywhere near making you "deaf" when it's under your desk, even with 3 or 4 disks in the lower chamber.
Seems like for as much virtualization you're doing, HDD access is going to be your biggest issue. RAID 0+1 or 10 would be very desirable. At least get your VM's on separate disks off of your OS/hypervisor disks.
I have 4 15k 146GB SAS drives in RAID10 at work and I am not really thrilled with the hd throughput with the performance [running multiple ubuntu web server app instances, no databases.] They are of course using a supermicro rebranded LSI hw raid card.
If your DB server is at all busy, I'd say get it a seperate disk. It can be any piece of crap you want, reuse a 80GB or 160GB or whatever.
Using good 120mm fans like you are will help. I'd put one in the front middle hd bay, and one in the back. Add a third to the top of the P182 if you have heat issues.
I'm running a Q9450 in a P180, one fan in back, one in the front bay, no heat problems, 1600RPM yate loons @ 7v/850ish RPM.
Ram that isn't over clocked makes less heat than you think, and DDR3 uses less volts than ddr2 = less heat. 8GB doesn't make any more noticeable heat than the heat sinks do, and I don't think 2 more sticks will make a difference.
Corsair HX620 is an excellent supply, and I highly doubt it will ramp up, and come anywhere near making you "deaf" when it's under your desk, even with 3 or 4 disks in the lower chamber.
Seems like for as much virtualization you're doing, HDD access is going to be your biggest issue. RAID 0+1 or 10 would be very desirable. At least get your VM's on separate disks off of your OS/hypervisor disks.
I have 4 15k 146GB SAS drives in RAID10 at work and I am not really thrilled with the hd throughput with the performance [running multiple ubuntu web server app instances, no databases.] They are of course using a supermicro rebranded LSI hw raid card.
If your DB server is at all busy, I'd say get it a seperate disk. It can be any piece of crap you want, reuse a 80GB or 160GB or whatever.
protellect is right, the CPU and GPU will generate most heat
I would do my best to evacuate their heat immediately.
Most of the two slot graphics card exhaust out of the case, but their fan is far from silent. The way the heatsink is closed, makes it impossible to run them fanless even at idle. If you use a (semi)passive cooler like Accelero, all the heat will remain inside the case, and will be recycled by the CPU cooler, making it run faster. My case is nice, for having 12cm fan on the side panel, right where the VGA is.
The same applies for the CPU heat too. I understand your concerns about cooling the motherboard, but Gigabyte and Asus boards have good cooling, so I wouldn't worry too much.
I still prefer tower CPU coolers, and if you can duct the exhaust directly out of the case, the better.
The problem with Antec P182 case is, that you will really have one exhaust fan, so you can't duct the CPU to it, the motherboard will get very little airflow. You can try ducting to the top exhaust instead.
And I know the top fan is far from silent, so I suppose it is out of the question.
About the CPU cooler, I wouldn't swap the Noctua NF-P12 for anything else. Don't expect a case fan to match a high pressure fan, it will have to spin faster to achieve the same airflow through the sink fins, and case fans hate to work against any obstacles, making them louder.
I would also use a Noctua NF-P12 fan in the PSU, the default high speed ADDA fan is not silent either. But, in the P182 you may not hear it, the sound has to travel through all the PSU guts, round 90 degree, and exhaust at the back of the case. Going forward will be hard for the sound too, it still has 90 degree to turn, then travel through the lower chamber, the hard drives, the fan and filters ... you may have to try it yourself, stop all the fans, detach the hard and DVD drives, close the case and listen for the PSU. You may not hear it at all.
The hard drives use less than 8 watts, 32w is not that much to heat the PSU. It will generate 130w at max (620W by 80% efficiency), so I doubt the Noctua NF-P12 fan will have any difficulties exhausting it, especially if helped by a front fan.
Another question. Why use Slipstream 1200@5v instead of Slipstream 800@7v ? I suppose they work at the same rpm. Or you need the option to ramp them up?
Why do you need Kama Bay without a fan, you have intake fan? Or is it for the lower chamber? If so, then you need a top intake too. Kama bay should be silent enough, but you have to decide for yourself, the front fans are most exposed, the sound they make can not be easily hidden.
I made something like the Kama Bay, but I mounted it where the back of the DVD is. If it is too noisy for me, I can make an 'S' channel in front of it, to cut the noise before it goes out in the front.
I would do my best to evacuate their heat immediately.
Most of the two slot graphics card exhaust out of the case, but their fan is far from silent. The way the heatsink is closed, makes it impossible to run them fanless even at idle. If you use a (semi)passive cooler like Accelero, all the heat will remain inside the case, and will be recycled by the CPU cooler, making it run faster. My case is nice, for having 12cm fan on the side panel, right where the VGA is.
The same applies for the CPU heat too. I understand your concerns about cooling the motherboard, but Gigabyte and Asus boards have good cooling, so I wouldn't worry too much.
I still prefer tower CPU coolers, and if you can duct the exhaust directly out of the case, the better.
The problem with Antec P182 case is, that you will really have one exhaust fan, so you can't duct the CPU to it, the motherboard will get very little airflow. You can try ducting to the top exhaust instead.
And I know the top fan is far from silent, so I suppose it is out of the question.
About the CPU cooler, I wouldn't swap the Noctua NF-P12 for anything else. Don't expect a case fan to match a high pressure fan, it will have to spin faster to achieve the same airflow through the sink fins, and case fans hate to work against any obstacles, making them louder.
I would also use a Noctua NF-P12 fan in the PSU, the default high speed ADDA fan is not silent either. But, in the P182 you may not hear it, the sound has to travel through all the PSU guts, round 90 degree, and exhaust at the back of the case. Going forward will be hard for the sound too, it still has 90 degree to turn, then travel through the lower chamber, the hard drives, the fan and filters ... you may have to try it yourself, stop all the fans, detach the hard and DVD drives, close the case and listen for the PSU. You may not hear it at all.
The hard drives use less than 8 watts, 32w is not that much to heat the PSU. It will generate 130w at max (620W by 80% efficiency), so I doubt the Noctua NF-P12 fan will have any difficulties exhausting it, especially if helped by a front fan.
Another question. Why use Slipstream 1200@5v instead of Slipstream 800@7v ? I suppose they work at the same rpm. Or you need the option to ramp them up?
Why do you need Kama Bay without a fan, you have intake fan? Or is it for the lower chamber? If so, then you need a top intake too. Kama bay should be silent enough, but you have to decide for yourself, the front fans are most exposed, the sound they make can not be easily hidden.
I made something like the Kama Bay, but I mounted it where the back of the DVD is. If it is too noisy for me, I can make an 'S' channel in front of it, to cut the noise before it goes out in the front.
protellect:
Q9450 with 8 Gb of DDR2 is the setup I had planned to buy: it’s a nice system.
When I went to buy, I saw the new i7.
An i7 system, all inclusive, costs from 10% to 20% more then the Core2 Quad system and the overall performance increment should be about the same.
The TDP increment from 95w to 130w is the only thing I really fear: it is 50% more!
I will use the disk setup you say: velociraptor for OS and disk RAID for VM disks. I hope db will not be too stressed: it’s a development environment, not a production machine.
Thanks.
roilev:
My old Abit IC7-G has blown up after 18 months of use: I just used a front side bus of 206 MHz instead of 200 MHz, with RAM slots full.
I am reluctant to reduce air flow on mobo if RAM slots are full: I have the feeling that “slots fullâ€
Q9450 with 8 Gb of DDR2 is the setup I had planned to buy: it’s a nice system.
When I went to buy, I saw the new i7.
An i7 system, all inclusive, costs from 10% to 20% more then the Core2 Quad system and the overall performance increment should be about the same.
The TDP increment from 95w to 130w is the only thing I really fear: it is 50% more!
I will use the disk setup you say: velociraptor for OS and disk RAID for VM disks. I hope db will not be too stressed: it’s a development environment, not a production machine.
Thanks.
roilev:
My old Abit IC7-G has blown up after 18 months of use: I just used a front side bus of 206 MHz instead of 200 MHz, with RAM slots full.
I am reluctant to reduce air flow on mobo if RAM slots are full: I have the feeling that “slots fullâ€
Here is the PC I have built
Components
CASE: Antec P182 with 1 Scythe Slipstream 1200 and 3 Scythe Slipstream 800, softmounted
DUMPING MATERIAL: Nexus
PSU: Corsair HX620
MOBO: Asus P6T Deluxe (Intel X58)
RAM: Corsair DDR3/1333 CAS [email protected] (6 x 2 Gb)
CPU: Intel i7 9200 (2.66 MHz) 130W TDP declared
CPU COOLER: TRUE 120 with 1 Scythe Slipstream 1200
GPU: Sapphire HD4870/1Gb
GPU COOLER: stock Sapphire cooler (3 heatpipes and 1 80mm fan)
HD1: WD Velociraptor 300 Gb
HD2: WD Caviar Blue 640 Gb (2 in RAID1 or 4 in RAID01, I will decide)
Fan setup
1 Scythe Slipstream 800@7v (lower chamber)
1 Scythe Slipstream 1200@5v (rear)
1 Scythe Slipstream 800@7~12v controlled by mobo (top)
1 Scythe Slipstream 800@7~12v controlled by mobo (front)
1 Scythe Slipstream 1200@5v (CPU Heatsink)
MOBO fan setting on Silent
Fans are soft mounted, an extra spacing (2 mm) has been used to avoid that front fan touches air filter clips.
Hard disks setup
1 WD Velociraptor 300 Gb in upper slot of upper chamber
4 WD Caviar Blue in lower chamber; a 5(W)x5(H)x120(L) mm strip of soft foam (from an old Cooler Master PNK-U01 kit) has been forced to enter between the bottom front of disk and their case.
Solved troubles
HD vibrations
I was used to have soft foam or elastic suspension mounted disks. Silicon mounting of P182 are quite prone to transmit vibrations. All vibrations have been removed in the following way:
A 5(W)x5(H)x120(L) mm strip of soft foam (a porous inelastic rubber material) has been forced to enter between the bottom front of disk and their case; it has reduced disk vibrations, absorbing them.
All disk cables are pressed against case dumping material and open cell foam: these absorb all residual vibrations and avoid vibrations to be transmitted to case and mobo.
Heat dissipation
After trying and trying again, I have found a fan setup that gives 65°C on CPU and 39°C on MOBO, with 8 instances of CPU Burn running. Temps have been measured after 30 min of test in a 21°C room.
The resulting noise at full charge is less then the noise produced from 2 Antec 3-cool fans.
On idle the system is very quiet.
The quality of the noise is impressive: no humming, no vibrations, no fan click clack; just the “whooshâ€
Components
CASE: Antec P182 with 1 Scythe Slipstream 1200 and 3 Scythe Slipstream 800, softmounted
DUMPING MATERIAL: Nexus
PSU: Corsair HX620
MOBO: Asus P6T Deluxe (Intel X58)
RAM: Corsair DDR3/1333 CAS [email protected] (6 x 2 Gb)
CPU: Intel i7 9200 (2.66 MHz) 130W TDP declared
CPU COOLER: TRUE 120 with 1 Scythe Slipstream 1200
GPU: Sapphire HD4870/1Gb
GPU COOLER: stock Sapphire cooler (3 heatpipes and 1 80mm fan)
HD1: WD Velociraptor 300 Gb
HD2: WD Caviar Blue 640 Gb (2 in RAID1 or 4 in RAID01, I will decide)
Fan setup
1 Scythe Slipstream 800@7v (lower chamber)
1 Scythe Slipstream 1200@5v (rear)
1 Scythe Slipstream 800@7~12v controlled by mobo (top)
1 Scythe Slipstream 800@7~12v controlled by mobo (front)
1 Scythe Slipstream 1200@5v (CPU Heatsink)
MOBO fan setting on Silent
Fans are soft mounted, an extra spacing (2 mm) has been used to avoid that front fan touches air filter clips.
Hard disks setup
1 WD Velociraptor 300 Gb in upper slot of upper chamber
4 WD Caviar Blue in lower chamber; a 5(W)x5(H)x120(L) mm strip of soft foam (from an old Cooler Master PNK-U01 kit) has been forced to enter between the bottom front of disk and their case.
Solved troubles
HD vibrations
I was used to have soft foam or elastic suspension mounted disks. Silicon mounting of P182 are quite prone to transmit vibrations. All vibrations have been removed in the following way:
A 5(W)x5(H)x120(L) mm strip of soft foam (a porous inelastic rubber material) has been forced to enter between the bottom front of disk and their case; it has reduced disk vibrations, absorbing them.
All disk cables are pressed against case dumping material and open cell foam: these absorb all residual vibrations and avoid vibrations to be transmitted to case and mobo.
Heat dissipation
After trying and trying again, I have found a fan setup that gives 65°C on CPU and 39°C on MOBO, with 8 instances of CPU Burn running. Temps have been measured after 30 min of test in a 21°C room.
The resulting noise at full charge is less then the noise produced from 2 Antec 3-cool fans.
On idle the system is very quiet.
The quality of the noise is impressive: no humming, no vibrations, no fan click clack; just the “whooshâ€
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protellect
- Posts: 312
- Joined: Tue Jul 24, 2007 3:57 pm
- Location: Minnesota
lol. thats super sad. I've had things like that happen to me though too.
"so it goes."
Let us know what you think of vmware. I'm getting ready to deploy VMware for Microsoft Exchange with an HP-SAN backend, and dinky 1u quad-cores with as much memory as I can cram in them for our in-house email, using snapshots to "backup" exchange. The HP-SAN has a 4 gigabit fibre card for throughput and is full of U320 SCSI disks.
I'm running an existing VMware server on a 2GHZ C2D Xeon with 20GB of memory, and 4 15K SAS 146GB drives in RAID0+1. The performance is completely acceptable for developement, it even has a MSSQL database on it, sharepoint instances, and a lot of ROR developement servers using Ubuntu. Linux VM's always run skinny compared to microsoft ones.
"so it goes."
Let us know what you think of vmware. I'm getting ready to deploy VMware for Microsoft Exchange with an HP-SAN backend, and dinky 1u quad-cores with as much memory as I can cram in them for our in-house email, using snapshots to "backup" exchange. The HP-SAN has a 4 gigabit fibre card for throughput and is full of U320 SCSI disks.
I'm running an existing VMware server on a 2GHZ C2D Xeon with 20GB of memory, and 4 15K SAS 146GB drives in RAID0+1. The performance is completely acceptable for developement, it even has a MSSQL database on it, sharepoint instances, and a lot of ROR developement servers using Ubuntu. Linux VM's always run skinny compared to microsoft ones.
Doesn't look possible to make silent, but 30db or so - about the noise of a typical laptop should be possible. The issue here will be airflow. Optimally you would get a case with 2 120mm fans at the rear running as quiet as possible(likely slightly undervolted S-Flex or similar).
- Motherboard - Gigabyte model with the solid state/ultra durable regulation. these run significantly cooler and require little or no air blowing over the MB components. ASUS isn't close, unfortunately.
- CPU is fine, though quite hot...
- Ram should be two 4gb sticks. Should keep the heat down a bit and leave a slot or two open for the future.
- GPU is very hot. I'd be tempted to get the model one down from it and save some money. 1GB is overkill as well. wait until DX11/Windows 7 is out before spending huge cash on a video card.(DX11 will have raytracing enabled as will require hugely faster video cards)
http://www.openrt.de/
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=33 ... pert&pid=1
Check out Page 2 and 3. Textures and polygons are going to do bye-bye soon and about time. This means a whole new class of multi-core video cards, though, and so don't blow the bank on a card now thinking it'll last you a long time. Get what you need for the next year or two for cheap.
And something a lot less power hungry as well.
In any case, make sure what you get will work with the Accelero S1. Get the very quiet aux fan kit for it as well. You won't hear them over the CPU fan anyways.(I have mine in fact set to 7V and I can't hear them at over 5-6 inches in open air)
http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=1153
It's not often mentioned, but the "turbo module" even under-volted a bit drops heat down by a massive amount. You will need a set of low profile ram heatsinks, though. The supplied ones have rather weak glue. Okay, pathetic. I went with the older Zalman blue ones that are essentially permanent. Test sites may want to take things off and on, but I've never replaced something like this on a video card.
http://www.microbarn.com/details.aspx?r ... ce=froogle
The only downside is you'll need 2 sets! 4 are low profile and 4 aren't. Idiot move by Zalman, but the glue does stay forever.
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article793-page1.html
SPCR's review. Nice DIY fan mod - heh.
- The drives - I'd go for less drives to keep the heat down if possible.
- Two WD RE2/RE3 raid specific enterprise drives for the boot drive.(Raid 1)
- One giant storage drive. Not raid specific(non raid drives shouldn't be used as such and vice-versa)
My setup is like this, in fact. Three drives and rock solid. Going to replace the 300GB storage in three weeks with a 2 TB WD GP. I could have used laptop drives, but unless you have a good dedicated raid card in your machine, onboard raid is just asking for trouble unless you use raid specific drives.(which laptop drives aren't designed to be) Note - fewer platter RE2/RE3 drives, though smaller, are preferred.
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=385
Best of both worlds. Raid specific and low noise/power. 2 500GBs would be a great boot drive. IME, Raid 1 is just as fast as a Raptor since while write speeds aren't faster, read speeds are. And 99% of the time, it's read speeds for stuff like loading levels and so on that matter to us.
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=576
2TB - one drive should be enough storage by itself.
Major source of heat solved.
- Motherboard - Gigabyte model with the solid state/ultra durable regulation. these run significantly cooler and require little or no air blowing over the MB components. ASUS isn't close, unfortunately.
- CPU is fine, though quite hot...
- Ram should be two 4gb sticks. Should keep the heat down a bit and leave a slot or two open for the future.
- GPU is very hot. I'd be tempted to get the model one down from it and save some money. 1GB is overkill as well. wait until DX11/Windows 7 is out before spending huge cash on a video card.(DX11 will have raytracing enabled as will require hugely faster video cards)
http://www.openrt.de/
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=33 ... pert&pid=1
Check out Page 2 and 3. Textures and polygons are going to do bye-bye soon and about time. This means a whole new class of multi-core video cards, though, and so don't blow the bank on a card now thinking it'll last you a long time. Get what you need for the next year or two for cheap.
And something a lot less power hungry as well.
In any case, make sure what you get will work with the Accelero S1. Get the very quiet aux fan kit for it as well. You won't hear them over the CPU fan anyways.(I have mine in fact set to 7V and I can't hear them at over 5-6 inches in open air)
http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=1153
It's not often mentioned, but the "turbo module" even under-volted a bit drops heat down by a massive amount. You will need a set of low profile ram heatsinks, though. The supplied ones have rather weak glue. Okay, pathetic. I went with the older Zalman blue ones that are essentially permanent. Test sites may want to take things off and on, but I've never replaced something like this on a video card.
http://www.microbarn.com/details.aspx?r ... ce=froogle
The only downside is you'll need 2 sets! 4 are low profile and 4 aren't. Idiot move by Zalman, but the glue does stay forever.
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article793-page1.html
SPCR's review. Nice DIY fan mod - heh.
- The drives - I'd go for less drives to keep the heat down if possible.
- Two WD RE2/RE3 raid specific enterprise drives for the boot drive.(Raid 1)
- One giant storage drive. Not raid specific(non raid drives shouldn't be used as such and vice-versa)
My setup is like this, in fact. Three drives and rock solid. Going to replace the 300GB storage in three weeks with a 2 TB WD GP. I could have used laptop drives, but unless you have a good dedicated raid card in your machine, onboard raid is just asking for trouble unless you use raid specific drives.(which laptop drives aren't designed to be) Note - fewer platter RE2/RE3 drives, though smaller, are preferred.
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=385
Best of both worlds. Raid specific and low noise/power. 2 500GBs would be a great boot drive. IME, Raid 1 is just as fast as a Raptor since while write speeds aren't faster, read speeds are. And 99% of the time, it's read speeds for stuff like loading levels and so on that matter to us.
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=576
2TB - one drive should be enough storage by itself.
Major source of heat solved.