Tuning my Antec 180 to new heights, advice welcome! Updated
Posted: Sun Aug 20, 2006 12:33 pm
Hello masters of silence! Im going to upgrade/tweak my not-quiet-enough system in the coming week and I would appreciate any comments before I commence. This post is actually a follow up on a post I made several months ago, building the very system that I am tweaking today. So if I refer to anything from my old post, this is where you find it:
Several months earlier..
Since my last post Ive been running the suggested system with a few changes, including giving up the idea of SLI due to cost and heat (se the above post). Since I was plagued by different hardware issues I finally took a break when my computer was up and running. The problems that I had were..
-7800GT that was dead on arrival due to bad packing, I was sent a 7800GTX instead as compensation so I didnt complain (Althou this has proven to a somewhat of a problem, as you will soon se).
-My Abit motherboard died after a week. Wich made me order the only other passive board the store had, the Asus that I use today.
-One of my harddrives died.
-The computers harddrives kept turning themselves off, wich turned out to be due to my seasonic 500 psu (new, but the 12v was actually running at 9v).
After I finally got the system to work I had the following setup:
Asus A8N32-SLI
AMD 64 3700+ with a Zalman 7000cu at 5v. (The cooler from my old system)
2 gigs of Corsair ram
7800GTX (Bfg) with a Zalman VF700cu at 5v. (Again, re-used cooler)
Antec 380 (from the Sonata 1)
Asus quiet-tech DVD and CDRW (two drives, had the CDRW in my old system)
WD Raptor 74
WD SE 320GB
SPCR 180
Except the fans included above I use 4 x 120 mm fans to cool the case. 2 are Adda fans with low noise and the other two are the ones included in the 180. I use the Adda fans at the front of the upper chamber as well as the rear top of the case, then the two included fans on minimum in the lower chamber as well as the top.
I recently ordered a x2 4600 due to the pricecuts (in the end I took your advice McBanjo!), and when I install it Im planning to do some changes to my system. The system as it is now isnt very quiet by my standards, most of the people around me would beg to differ, but I am sure the crowd at SPCR would not. I can easily hear the fans working, and on top of this I noticed that Im having some heat issues that I will show you below.
Heres the heat of my system on a decent summer day in Sweden, roughly 24 degrees indoors (In a 1930's building like ours, the heat outside affects the flat's temperature alot) ambient:
Load: (Cpu-burn, rthdribl and compressing a large folder)
Cpu: 59c
Motherboard: 53c
WD Raptor: 36c
WD 3200: 36c
VGA: 83-84
Idle: (5 minutes after Load)
Cpu: 49
Motherboard: 49
WD Raptor: 36
WD 3200: 36
VGA: 53
As you can se my harddrives are nice and cool, I couldnt belive it that they didnt warm up under load, but that might be due to the large amount of CPU power going to Cpu-burn and rthdribl, not leaving enough power for the harddrives to work properly on their task. The CPU is hot but alright, the graphics card is burning up.
What I want to do is to make my system cooler and more quiet. All at the same time. Here are my suggested changes:
-Fan swap in the Antec psu, since it has one fan only and its pointing the right way (out, not down) I hope to use it to cool the entire lower chamber. A nexus 80mm will be used.
-Removing the top fan and the lower chamber fan.
-Fan swap on the 7000-cu to a 92mm nexus, hopefully this will be enough to cool the new 4600.
-Swapping the fan on the 7800GTX to a AC Nv 5 instead of the VF700-cu.
What I want to acheive is to lower the noise, remove the heat from the gfx in the upper chamber, and cool the new cpu adequately. To do this I figured my best shot would be to remove the bottom fan (since the harddrives will probably be fine with the Antec psu + some duct tape), remove the top fan and seal the opening, and then most importantly lower the heat in the upper chamber, by switching to a Nv 5. A VF900 would be better for the card itself, but would heat up my passive motherboard as well as the new CPU.
I want to keep as many parts as possible and keep my costs down where possible. Ive considered a Ninja or a 9500 for the cpu, but the 7000-cu is free, they are not.
Any comments are welcome and I promise to post the finished project in a few weeks time in the system section. It wont be anything revolutionary, but it might be an aid to others with hot hot graphics cards, a decent system and an 180. If nothing else my temp raitings before and after might help someone. The answers I seek:
-Will a 7000-cu be able to handle a 4600 x2 with a nexus fan even if I remove the top fan?
-General advice and opinions. Feel free to bash the setup if you like, I wont be offended.
If you read this far, thanks for bearing with me!
/Johan
Edit: added some pictures, people love pictures. Its very dusty at the moment, that grey thing clogging up the 7000-cu, dust.
Heres a lousy sideview shot from an unsteady hand:
And heres the desk that the system calls home. Its usually pushed into the corner, jutting out since I moved it doing tests.
Several months earlier..
Since my last post Ive been running the suggested system with a few changes, including giving up the idea of SLI due to cost and heat (se the above post). Since I was plagued by different hardware issues I finally took a break when my computer was up and running. The problems that I had were..
-7800GT that was dead on arrival due to bad packing, I was sent a 7800GTX instead as compensation so I didnt complain (Althou this has proven to a somewhat of a problem, as you will soon se).
-My Abit motherboard died after a week. Wich made me order the only other passive board the store had, the Asus that I use today.
-One of my harddrives died.
-The computers harddrives kept turning themselves off, wich turned out to be due to my seasonic 500 psu (new, but the 12v was actually running at 9v).
After I finally got the system to work I had the following setup:
Asus A8N32-SLI
AMD 64 3700+ with a Zalman 7000cu at 5v. (The cooler from my old system)
2 gigs of Corsair ram
7800GTX (Bfg) with a Zalman VF700cu at 5v. (Again, re-used cooler)
Antec 380 (from the Sonata 1)
Asus quiet-tech DVD and CDRW (two drives, had the CDRW in my old system)
WD Raptor 74
WD SE 320GB
SPCR 180
Except the fans included above I use 4 x 120 mm fans to cool the case. 2 are Adda fans with low noise and the other two are the ones included in the 180. I use the Adda fans at the front of the upper chamber as well as the rear top of the case, then the two included fans on minimum in the lower chamber as well as the top.
I recently ordered a x2 4600 due to the pricecuts (in the end I took your advice McBanjo!), and when I install it Im planning to do some changes to my system. The system as it is now isnt very quiet by my standards, most of the people around me would beg to differ, but I am sure the crowd at SPCR would not. I can easily hear the fans working, and on top of this I noticed that Im having some heat issues that I will show you below.
Heres the heat of my system on a decent summer day in Sweden, roughly 24 degrees indoors (In a 1930's building like ours, the heat outside affects the flat's temperature alot) ambient:
Load: (Cpu-burn, rthdribl and compressing a large folder)
Cpu: 59c
Motherboard: 53c
WD Raptor: 36c
WD 3200: 36c
VGA: 83-84
Idle: (5 minutes after Load)
Cpu: 49
Motherboard: 49
WD Raptor: 36
WD 3200: 36
VGA: 53
As you can se my harddrives are nice and cool, I couldnt belive it that they didnt warm up under load, but that might be due to the large amount of CPU power going to Cpu-burn and rthdribl, not leaving enough power for the harddrives to work properly on their task. The CPU is hot but alright, the graphics card is burning up.
What I want to do is to make my system cooler and more quiet. All at the same time. Here are my suggested changes:
-Fan swap in the Antec psu, since it has one fan only and its pointing the right way (out, not down) I hope to use it to cool the entire lower chamber. A nexus 80mm will be used.
-Removing the top fan and the lower chamber fan.
-Fan swap on the 7000-cu to a 92mm nexus, hopefully this will be enough to cool the new 4600.
-Swapping the fan on the 7800GTX to a AC Nv 5 instead of the VF700-cu.
What I want to acheive is to lower the noise, remove the heat from the gfx in the upper chamber, and cool the new cpu adequately. To do this I figured my best shot would be to remove the bottom fan (since the harddrives will probably be fine with the Antec psu + some duct tape), remove the top fan and seal the opening, and then most importantly lower the heat in the upper chamber, by switching to a Nv 5. A VF900 would be better for the card itself, but would heat up my passive motherboard as well as the new CPU.
I want to keep as many parts as possible and keep my costs down where possible. Ive considered a Ninja or a 9500 for the cpu, but the 7000-cu is free, they are not.
Any comments are welcome and I promise to post the finished project in a few weeks time in the system section. It wont be anything revolutionary, but it might be an aid to others with hot hot graphics cards, a decent system and an 180. If nothing else my temp raitings before and after might help someone. The answers I seek:
-Will a 7000-cu be able to handle a 4600 x2 with a nexus fan even if I remove the top fan?
-General advice and opinions. Feel free to bash the setup if you like, I wont be offended.
If you read this far, thanks for bearing with me!
/Johan
Edit: added some pictures, people love pictures. Its very dusty at the moment, that grey thing clogging up the 7000-cu, dust.
Heres a lousy sideview shot from an unsteady hand:
And heres the desk that the system calls home. Its usually pushed into the corner, jutting out since I moved it doing tests.