High Performance + very quiet, can it be done?

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shoebox9
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High Performance + very quiet, can it be done?

Post by shoebox9 » Mon Jan 31, 2005 4:46 am

Hi All

I'm a professional photographer who spends 30+ hours a week in front of my main box, editing wedding photos, etc.

I currently run- P4 2.8 with a standard CPU fan, in a case under my desk, and experience intermitent ringing in my ears whenever I spend much time working at my current box without earmuffs. (I wear them constantly.)

I'm about to upgrade to an Athlon64, 4 Gig of RAM, 4 SATA drives (200-400Gb each) Matrox P650 graphics (fanless) & X100 video acceleration cards, etc. Lots of power, but also lots of heat I guess.

My question is-

Can I achieve a significantly quiter setup (absolute silence is not necessary as the box is under a desk) high performance system, without the risks of water cooling, or should I just spring for an expensive Zalman TNN case?

(Seeing I earn my living with this box I'm a bit scared of water cooling, although perhaps I shouldn't be.)

Thanks in advance.

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Post by Korwen » Mon Jan 31, 2005 6:55 am

Easily.

The performance of the system isn't what makes a computer loud. I myself have a good performing gaming machine, but it's pretty quiet, and with a few more mods it will be barely audible. Already it's quiet enough that when the heater is on in my house, I can't hear it.

The key I would say is proper planning, and smart buying decisions. It's only hard to build a quiet (not silent) computer when you haven't planned it out. My system is an Athlon 64 3000+ with a BFG 6800GT OC, 1gig of PC3200 RAM, and a 160gig SATA HD, and right now the loudest thing on it is the optical drive and the NB Fan, which is the one hard learned lesson. But anyways, to the actual advice.

Buy a reasonably quiet case (Read the cases forum for advice here), use 120mm fans, get a quiet CPU cooler, and for you I'd reccomend a tower case to keep more airflow with all those hard drives. Heat is only an issue if you let it be. By planning out the airflow in your case, putting a few case fans in ideal locations (Ideal locations being at least one exhaust fan, and one intake fan at the front), and being sure to keep enough space inbetween hard drives, it should be fine. Also, on the A64, get a Winchester core socket 939 proccessor, as those are cooler than the socket 754 chips. And if you don't already own the HDs, get Samsung spinpoints, mine is incredibly quiet. Be sure to buy a motherboard with a passive north bridge cooler, as those tiny fans generate a surprising amount of high-pitch, incredibly annoying sound. And if possible, buy a case without a power supply so you can buy a quiet seasonic or nexus PS.

But I'm getting long winded, and losing track. Read here, and plan out your system, and it shouldn't be tough at all to build your next box powerfully, and quietly.

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Post by GrahamGarside » Mon Jan 31, 2005 10:47 am

if you wait a while I think I heard new spinpoints are due out. The current ones only go up to 160GB, but the new ones will probabally go up to at least 300. They are much mroe quiet than any other drive, though if you can't wait or ake do with 160gb drives, then your choice is either maxtor 10's or seagate 7200.8's, though some say these are too loud, I own a 200gb maxtor 10 and it whines, where as others say theuirs are quiet. I also have 2 7200.7's and these are very quiet

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Post by sthayashi » Mon Jan 31, 2005 11:38 am

The only thing that I'd be worried about in terms of computer noise based on what you specified is the hard drives. 4 hard drives of that size will make noise, no matter what.

Now there are ways you can try and reduce that noise, but ultimately that's where your noise will come from, particularly if you adhere to the recommendations on power supplies and CPU Heatsinks (and assuming that your video accelerator is passively cooled, I'm not familiar with that card).

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Welcome to SPCR!

Post by NeilBlanchard » Mon Jan 31, 2005 12:16 pm

Hello & Welcome to SPCR!

The Athlon 64 will run much cooler than the P4, and with the right case and PS, it could run very quietly. The HD's are definitely a source of noise, and since you want to go with 4GB of RAM, that means (in all likelyhood) an nForce 4 motherboard. Be aware that many of these use noisy fans on the northbridge -- there are some Gigabyte mobo that do not. So either get one that is passive already, or one that can be modded with a passive HS.

The P650 is what I have in this machine here at work -- good card! I have two ViewSonic VP171b monitors for a bright, clear, 2560x1024 desktop! :twisted:

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Post by burcakb » Mon Jan 31, 2005 1:09 pm

Hello shoebox9,

As has been mentioned hdds will be your biggest problem. But selecting a proper case is also very critical, and seeing you're in Australia, you might have some problems locating many of the recommended cases. Do you have a good Antec dealer in your country? What other cases are available? You're mainly looking for a 120mm intake/exhaust case, preferably in steel.

I know AOpen H600 cases are available there and the latest versions allow mounting a 120mm exhaust fan and usually come with a nice FSP powersupply. But the grill design is so horrible that it requires a heavy dremel session to get a good start. Can you do mods or have someone do them for you?

As for the rest, pick your components, and we'll comment. Usually with a good cooler like the Zalman 7000 or Thermalright XP90 and some quiet fans, you can get an Athlon64 system very quiet.

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Post by SometimesWarrior » Mon Jan 31, 2005 1:29 pm

Let's identify the possible problem components:

CPU, power supply, motherboard chipset fan: these are commonly discussed on SPCR, and there's a wealth of readily-accessible information for picking good parts. Two considerations: the PSU will need a strong 12V rail to handle the extra drives, and PSU voltages might have to be tighter when you add that much RAM (I don't know about this, it's just dumb speculation on my part :P). Motherboard-memory compatibility could be a factor.

X100 capture card: I see that it has a tiny fan and heatsink. Bad news: this might make horrible noise unless you replace it. Good news: with such a tiny stock heatsink, the chip underneath is probably low-power, so a passive Zalman northbridge heatsink might work. It can be scary to modify such an expensive component, but as long as you do the replacement procedure correctly and carefully, you will be in great shape. For added security, a quiet fan can be used to direct airflow over the Zalman heatsink.

Hard drives: these will be a bit of a challenge to keep quiet. Picking quiet drives is the most important step, but selecting the right case is crucial, too. Ideally, you would get something with room to suspension-mount four drives on bungee cord, and to also give you good airflow so you can have a slow-spinning fan or two push air over all the drives. There is an older thread here on SPCR where a guy suspension-mounted about half a dozen drives in one case, but I can't find it right now. Anther option is to mount the drives in removable drive bays, and then suspend the drive bays in front of fans. Someone here with better case-modding chops than myself could give you better ideas.

RAID card: I'm assuming you'll skip the motherboard's on-board RAID controller and use something that's proven to be effective and high-performance. I'm not familiar with RAID controllers, but it's possible that your controller will have a dinky fan, like the X100 capture card. The comments for the X100 apply here as well.

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Post by teejay » Mon Jan 31, 2005 1:53 pm

Although I'm not a big fan of moving equipment outside of hearing range as a noise reduction solution, you might want to consider putting your current system to use as a file server on a gigabit network and place only one or at most 2 disks in your actual work rig. Whether or not that works greatly depends on your location and the way you use all that diskspace of course... I imagine direct photo editing won't work even over Gigabit wire but as long as you can fit your current workload on the local machine it could work.

Another thing: do you really need 4 Gb of ram or is that simple"bigger-should-be-better" philosophy? Not criticizing, just curious. There's still quite a price difference between 2 and 4 Gb... the difference could buy you the Gigabit lan :wink:

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Post by shoebox9 » Mon Jan 31, 2005 4:04 pm

Wow Guys,

I'm amazed at the level of advice you're giving me. Thank you. To be honest, as a newbe asking newbe questions, I expected to be ignored.

OK- do I really "need" 4 GB of RAM? Well, no, but it makes a big difference for me editing up to 700Mb layered PSD files. A couple of history states held in RAM in Photoshop, and I'm back to the virtual memory coffee drinking routine.

The idea of using my current box as a file server from say, the back shed, is a great one! I'll think much more seriously about this, as you're right, it would reduce H/D noise under my desk. With my current jet engine fan noise, I hadn't realised the H/Ds were that big a deal. Thanks.

I've been reading the case reviews and hunting for those available locally (in Australia). The Antec SLK300B looks good, but I wanted to put a Antec Phantom 350w fanless in, and am worried that the case doesn't seem to have a spot for a could put a third extra low speed fan in (which I presume I'd need). Maybe I don't really need a fanless PS either, I just presumed once I'd taken care of the CPU fan this would be the next biggest problem. No one has mentioned doing this yet?

Cheers,
Graham
(shoebox9)

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Post by sthayashi » Mon Jan 31, 2005 9:15 pm

shoebox9 wrote:I've been reading the case reviews and hunting for those available locally (in Australia). The Antec SLK300B looks good, but I wanted to put a Antec Phantom 350w fanless in, and am worried that the case doesn't seem to have a spot for a could put a third extra low speed fan in (which I presume I'd need). Maybe I don't really need a fanless PS either, I just presumed once I'd taken care of the CPU fan this would be the next biggest problem. No one has mentioned doing this yet?
Fanless ones are much more expensive, if you don't mind paying the premium, go for it. Personally, I'd hold off on the Phantom for now. Though my fanned PSUs were pretty darn quiet before I modded them, and after modding, I can safely say that they're not my loudest noise source in my computer (my hard drive get's that distinction, hence my warning). I'd say an unmodded PSU is a borderline loudest source depending on your fan and hard drive setup.

MikeC, the site founder, sells modded PSUs which are pretty much guaranteed to be quiet and powerful enough for your needs, IMHO. Though the shipping could end up being brutal. I'm not sure what's available down under, but I'd still advocate seeing what's on the recommended pages that's available near you.

The two things I would be concerned about are 1) Your RT.X100, which appears to have a small fan on it (though it may run slowly enough to not make noise, you never know) 2) Since you never specified your exact hardware, beware of fans on Northbridges. They're popular on some motherboards, so be sure to have a look at your motherboard before you buy it.

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Which A64s are 90 v 130s

Post by shoebox9 » Wed Feb 02, 2005 2:19 am

Hi Again,

I've been reading up further on your recommendations, and I'm having trouble figuring out which AMD 64 CPUs are which.

I was planning to buy either the 3500+ or 3800+ but both seem to be 130 micron rather than the cooler 90 micron build.

Any advice on sorting this out?

Cheers,
Grahem
(shoebox9)

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Post by ckolivas » Wed Feb 02, 2005 5:08 am

shoebox9 wrote:I've been reading the case reviews and hunting for those available locally (in Australia).
pccasegear.com is an Australian distributor of quite a few good quieting cases and hardware at reasonable cost.

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Post by Spod » Wed Feb 02, 2005 9:06 am

The only 90nm Athlon 64s are currently socket 939. All the following are S939.

3000+ and 3200+ are only available in 90nm.
Most 3500+ chips are now 90nm, but beware of vendors with old 130nm stock.
3800+ and 4000+ are currently all made on the old 130nm process, though they will soon become available on a new 90nm process, even better than the one that's being used now with the 3000+, 3200+ and newer 3500+ CPUs. I don't know when the 90nm 3800+ and 4000+ will become available.

On your other points, the SLK3000B is a good case. The AcoustiPack kit for Antec SLK3700-BQE is a good fit, and will help reduce certain types of noise very nicely.
Email the nice people at earsc.com and they'll send you a free sample kit of fan and HDD grommets

What's the point in getting a fanless PSU if you'll just add a fan to cool it? A Seasonic Super Silencer (80mm rear fan) or Super Tornado (120mm bottom fan) or Nexus 4090 (120mm bottom fan) should be quiet enough for it not to matter. Nexus also do good case fans, though if you can't get those, Yate Loon or Globe are worth a look before resorting to the ever-present Panaflo.

4GB of RAM will certainly help in Photoshop, if you can afford it. Another useful tip is to make sure the Photoshop scratch disk is on a seperate hard drive from the Windows pagefile, even if that means putting the Windows pagefile on the OS partition while the scratch disk shares a drive with the data. Adobe recommend this themselves.
Obviously, if you have three disks, then having the programs on one, pagefile on another and scratch on the third is optimal. But given your sensitivity to noise, it's probably not worth the noise of three disks for the responsiveness you'd gain, especially if you're having a file server for long term storage.
Speaking of which, backups! If your livelihood depends on it, then it's worth keeping offline backups of your data - DVD, or even an inexpensive tape system if you're storing hundreds of GB.

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Post by GrahamGarside » Wed Feb 02, 2005 10:09 am

I wouldn't recomend a fanless psu. With the kind of work you will be doing the graphics card won't be pulling much power, and the cpu won't be a full load often, only short bursts while applying filters, resizing etc.. so it's unlikely a psu would need to speed the fan up during such use. A seasonic 350W would be fine.

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Post by keith » Wed Feb 02, 2005 10:49 am

I'd reommend the Asus A8V for a motherboard. It has a passively cooled north bridge. I wouldn't worry too much about trying to find a 90nm vs a 130nm CPU, though. I'm using the XP-120 with a Nexus fan on my 130nm A64 3500+ for cooling. Even under heavy load, the CPU never gets over 42C. I use crystalCPUid to drop the voltage down to 1.3 v on startup. That made a big difference in temps. I'm also using a Nexus 4090 PSU, with great results. A 120 mm Nexus intake fan was cobbled into an Antec full tower case using a dremel and a hacksaw. I don't have an exhaust fan, but my case temps are typically 19C, so it doesn't appear to need one.

My system isn't perfectly silent, but with a fan controller, it could be. It's certainly quieter than the 8 80mm fans I had going full blast before!

Hope this helps.
Keith

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Post by shoebox9 » Wed Feb 02, 2005 5:02 pm

OK,

I think I've got it.

GMC Neo Classic case (http://www.pccasegear.com/prod981.htm) I'm a bit surprised these cases (ie Neo Classic/X-21 Trinty) aren't listed here at SPCR. Includes 4 80mm SilenX 15db case fans, and lots of pre fabed noise reduction stuff. Unless I'm missing something, very cool! (Thanks for the link Ckolivas.)

SilenX 400W iXtrema Pro power supply (http://www.pccasegear.com/prod1727.htm) I'm also surprised these aren't mentioned on the recommended list. I did find a review here which basically said- very quite and recommended, as long as you have at least one case fan.

A64 3500+ with Zalman 7700 Al/Cu
Asus A8V with 4Gb RAM
Matrox P650 fanless dualhead graphics card.
4 nasty noisy h/drives (I know, the big weakness at the moment).
Matrox RT.X100 video editing card with tiny/whiny fan. I'll have to figure out how to fix this later.

Thanks everyone. When larger Samsung drives arrive (GrahamGarside hinted this should be soon) I'll replace my current drives.

Cheers!
Grahem
(Shoebox9)

PS I currently back up my data to a matched set of drives in a micro ATX case (fan unplugged) with Firewire but no Mobo, etc. This case then goes into a locked fireproof filing cabnet, safe from lightning, theft, etc. Cheap and safe (hopefully)!

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Post by ckolivas » Wed Feb 02, 2005 5:41 pm

shoebox9 wrote:Includes 4 80mm SilenX 15db case fans

SilenX 400W iXtrema Pro power supply (http://www.pccasegear.com/prod1727.htm) I'm also surprised these aren't mentioned on the recommended list.
That's why they're not recommended on this site. There is a bad history with the silenX supplier pretending to be a whole lot of different normal users on these forums and posting opinions about his own product. Incredibly bad behaviour from a supplier, which makes me call them evilX fans. Unfortunately, they are actually damn quiet fans and PSUs so I use them despite this (see my thread about this very issue under the fans section in the forums).

As for the cpu cooler, I'm actually not that impressed by the 7700; the extra weight and copper does not improve performance that much beyond the 7000. I think the thermalright XP90 with a nice quiet fan outperforms it and the XP120 which is actually its direct competitor is the reference here at SPCR.

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Post by shoebox9 » Wed Feb 02, 2005 7:43 pm

Wow, I just read the review on the XP-120, amazing!

OK, now this might be a dumb question, but how do I down-rate the supply voltage to the 120mm fan on top to 5v?

Perhaps just a Zanman fanmate2? CPU fans aren't speed controled by the A64 Mobo (ie Cool n Quite) that I'd be messing up, are they?

Cheers,
Grahem

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Post by ckolivas » Wed Feb 02, 2005 8:06 pm

shoebox9 wrote:Perhaps just a Zanman fanmate2? CPU fans aren't speed controled by the A64 Mobo (ie Cool n Quite) that I'd be messing up, are they?
The fanmate is ideal for such an application. Many BIOSes now have some way to throttle the fan speed when the temperature is low, but you can enable/disable this. Some fans simply don't turn at lower voltage so you have to be cautious about the combination of fanmate and BIOS control. The SilenX seems to work fine with variable voltage when I've tried it. I tend to leave them on full voltage as case fans. However the moment you put any quiet fan up against something like a heatsink the noise level will go up dramatically so the fanmate will allow you to tweak the noise to acceptable and you can keep your eye on the temperature readings in your operating system.

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Post by shoebox9 » Wed Feb 02, 2005 10:15 pm

Thank you Con! (ckolivas)

Now I'm set to buy my stuff. Thanks to all of you who have been so very helpful :-)

Cheers,
Grahem
(shoebox9)

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Post by mikeki » Wed Feb 02, 2005 10:43 pm

New to this forum, so maybe shouldn't be giving advice, but...

Besides all the great system silencing recommendations, you may also want to buy some keyboard, mouse, and monitor extension cables. If you need access to a dvd, then get a long USB cable and an external DVD.

Then move the system out from under the desk to beside it, or farther away from you. Maybe even in a closet if the closet is convienently behind your desk. This takes the noise farther away and keeps you from kicking it!

Maybe you're not thinking big enough. Would a dual processor box help Photoshop? This probably require a huge case that are typically not reviewed here, but there are many that use 120mm fans. Maybe it's impossible to make a dual proc box quiet.

Good luck, fun project.

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Post by sthayashi » Wed Feb 02, 2005 11:09 pm

mikeki wrote:Maybe you're not thinking big enough. Would a dual processor box help Photoshop? This probably require a huge case that are typically not reviewed here, but there are many that use 120mm fans. Maybe it's impossible to make a dual proc box quiet.
It's totally possible to silence a dual proc box. At least on the AMD side, given the right motherboard and assuming you're willing to put an effort into it. Here's a good start for dual Opterons (look in the right most column).

Whether shoebox9, wants to spend that kind of money, that's up to him.

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Post by shoebox9 » Thu Feb 03, 2005 2:53 am

Guys,

I nearly went dual CPU around 2 years ago, but the one big sang is that Photoshop just isn't optimized for it (at least not the PC version, the Mac a little more so).

Apparently the more they optimize for dual CPUs, the worse the single processor performance will be, and Adobe just aren't willing to go down that path yet. So, lots of outlay for tiny gains. I'd be better off buying a single FX53.

For me, I'm probably happy to simply get a 3500+ and spend the extra on 4Gb of RAM, though seeing CPU increases seem to be stalling a bit at the moment, maybe a FX53 would still be the go?

Running my box from a cubbard say 4-5m away is a new idea to me. Does it really work?

Cheers,
Grahem

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Post by GrahamGarside » Thu Feb 03, 2005 2:53 am

I actually find the 7700's to be quite efficient heatsinks. The temperature of mine is only limitted by case airflow, theres no differance in temp between full and low speeds on the fanmate. But, and this is the problem, the default fan isn't that quiet, even taking it down to 3V it's not silent and won't spin below that, so I would say t makes more sense to get an xp-90/120 seeing as to get good results from a 7700 you would need to swap the fan any way.

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Post by ckolivas » Sat Feb 05, 2005 2:11 am

Don't forget to come back here and tell us how you went (although most people are quite proud of their quiet setup and don't need their arms twisted ;) )

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Post by shoebox9 » Sat Feb 05, 2005 3:57 am

No problem! I only wish I could measure the db's before & after.

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Post by ronrem » Sat Feb 05, 2005 4:57 pm

Coolmax has a PSU with a giant 140mm fan all the connects and the fan is a 3 speed with low around 1000 rpm. Artic Cooling has Athlon 64 heatsinks and 80mm case fans with TC on the model # that are VERY quiet. If you put 4 spinrights in a setup where they are in a stack but with suspended mounting,some thought-out noise baffling you can make a fan mount out of L brackets or shelf brackets near the hard drives to pull heat from them toward a rear exhaust. I would not have a front fan. The front is always closer to your ears. You can do a floor fan,cut a hole. if nessecery raise the case up a couple of inches with a wooden base. Chaintech has a nForce 4 Ultra mobo with passive chipset cooling which is good unless you overclock.,--oops,nevermind,that Matrox vid card is AGP,not PCIe so you won't be doing NF4. I suspect the Athlon64 3000 or 3200,which run a tad cooler have far more power than what you're used to and are less $ too-relative to a 3500

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Post by shoebox9 » Sun Feb 06, 2005 3:11 am

Thanks Ronrem,

Hunting for stuff I can get here in Australia, I've noticed the Coolmax 140mm, but couldn't find a review on it anywhere.

Do you have any experience with it?

Thanks also regarding fan positioning. In my unusual situation, I have my box along the wall at the back of my desk (underneath), so front v back dynamics don't apply. I hadn't thought of a floor fan however, this is still a great idea.

Cheers,
Grahem
(shoebox9)

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Post by Tzupy » Sun Feb 06, 2005 10:23 am

About the 140 mm Coolmax, I've read mixed opinions: some say it's quiet enough, others the opposite. And the voltages aren't that great.
I would recommend the use of a fan controller with thermal probe. This way you could adjust the rpm / noise of your case fans and see the results.
Go for an Athlon64 3500+ Winchester, these run cool (I suppose you won't overclock it) and are quite fast.
If you want to use 4 GB of memory, beware that 1 GB sticks have higher latencies. Anyway, with an Athlon64 and 4 memory sticks, you have to set the T2 command in BIOS to make it work.
And under 32-bit Windows you can't use more than 2 GB for applications - this will probably improve with the 64-bit XP. If you are going for a Athlon64, please get quality memory (or at least memory that's certainly compatible with your motherboard).

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Post by teejay » Sun Feb 06, 2005 1:17 pm

mikeki wrote:Besides all the great system silencing recommendations, you may also want to buy some keyboard, mouse, and monitor extension cables. If you need access to a dvd, then get a long USB cable and an external DVD.
One of the problems with this approach is getting the monitor signal across without noticable losses. Since Grahem works with Photoshop for a living I am assuming he likes his resolution as high as possible. That simply does not work too well over distances of 4-5m... at least in my experience, perhaps others have found this to work (I use 1920x1440 @ 85 Hz twice and used the shortest cables possible). Also, with a machine that has a noise level below ambient there is no need... which is just what Grahem is aiming for.

FWIW, I'm never getting a psu that has not been reviewed here, ever again. Costs too much since I've ended up replacing them within a year anyway. 14cm PSUs get some news footage now and again but I have yet to see one with good efficiency, which is key to running a PSU cool and thus less noisy. I always prefer to get one from a known brand (Seasonic, Nexus) that has a known high efficiency. Also, it's much harder to do a fan swap on a 14cm model if the fan wears down or is too noisy to start with.

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