Will this be quiet? Core i7 860 with 5850 (passive?)

MisterB · Post by **MisterB** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 6:29 am

I had been waiting for the new Intel and AMD/ATI stuff to come out and now that it is here, it is time for picking a new PC. First and foremost I want the system to be quiet, hence my post here

However, I will use it primarily for gaming and will also be compiling so I want it to be reasonably powerful. This is the component list I have come up with after reading the excellent reviews and forums here (included links to reviews if I could find them):

Case: Antec Performance One P183 Black
I like the Silverstone FT01 very much as well, but this one seems to have more quiet potential.
PSU: Antec CP-850
Goes well with the case.
CPU: Intel Core i7 860
Because I want hyperthreading, I went with an i7. The 860 seems to give most bang for buck.
CPU cooler: Prolimatech Megahalems CPU-Cooler Rev B.
Currently one of the best for this platform.
CPU Fan: Scythe Slip Stream SY1225SL12M, 120mm
According to the review a really good fan.
VGA: Sapphire HD5850 1GB GDDR5 PCI-E (Game Edition)
I don't need the 5870, but will still use the system mostly for gaming so some power is in order. I went with the Sapphire because I read somewhere the memory on their newest boards was less prone to overheating. Other than that, I don't favor one brand over the other.
VGA cooler: Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 Rev. 2
To cool the beast. Might be I will need an extra fan for this.
MB: MSI P55-GD65
Seems like a good board. Has an easy overclock button I might try (if it doesn't raise noise levels too much).
RAM: OCZ Gold Low Voltage OCZ3G1600LV4GK
4GB of dual channel DDR3 memory. I don't care too much about specific brands.
Fanmate: Zalman FanMate 2
To undervolt the Slip Stream.
Storage: OCZ Vertex Series SATA II 2.5" SSD 60GB
The only component I will keep from my old system, together with a 500GB drive, cdrom drive, mouse, keyboard and monitor.

My feeling is that this should work, giving me lots of power with as little dB as possible. All comments are welcome. Do you think I can game without adding an extra fan? I plan on keeping the top vent open, as it will be under my desk anyways.

FartingBob · Post by **FartingBob** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 8:28 am

Yes that should be fairly quiet considering the power. Has anybody confirmed if the Acclero fits on the 5850 yet? I dont know what mounting holes it uses. Anyway, the reference cooler is apparently pretty quiet and cool running so it wont kill you.

MisterB · Post by **MisterB** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 12:49 pm

FartingBob wrote:Yes that should be fairly quiet considering the power. Has anybody confirmed if the Acclero fits on the 5850 yet? I dont know what mounting holes it uses. Anyway, the reference cooler is apparently pretty quiet and cool running so it wont kill you.

It should be possible, pics in this thread: AMD New Radeon 5870, 5850 (scroll down a bit for the pics). But keeping the memory chips cool seems to be the hardest part.

hybrid2d4x4 · Post by **hybrid2d4x4** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 8:28 pm

I don't think that the 5850 can be run passive unless you never stress it. It's a good card at idle, but the load power consumption is still really high, and that means you're probably going to have as much fun trying to keep the VRMs and RAM cool as 4870 owners (as you already seem to know).

Other than that, you've got a really good selection of components- should be a sweet machine when you're done!

MisterB · Post by **MisterB** » Fri Oct 23, 2009 2:02 am

Was afraid I'd need some extra cooling for the 5850. But an extra undervolted Slip Stream can't increase the noiselevels too much.

coreyography · Post by **coreyography** » Tue Oct 27, 2009 9:18 pm

MisterB wrote:Was afraid I'd need some extra cooling for the 5850. But an extra undervolted Slip Stream can't increase the noiselevels too much.

Careful with the VRM and RAM chips on that thing. I have an unused Sapphire 4870 sitting on my desk because the crappy VRM heatsink would not stay cool with TWO 120mm fans on an Accelero S1 r2. Capacitors on either side make it impossible to use a bigger one. I cannot locate the screws to the stock cooler to reattach it, and had to buy a GTX275 in the meantime (yeah, for this experience and other reasons ATI kinda pissed me off

).

It's quiet enough for me (probably not dead silent, though) except when I use NVClock in Linux to artifically run the fan up. I can't complain as it runs my 2 1920x1200 screens well.

RoGuE · Post by **RoGuE** » Tue Oct 27, 2009 10:49 pm

Dont use a 1600 RPM max fan on your cpu cooler. It's overkill, and not that quiet. Go with a 1200rpm slipstream. Full blast, its got plenty of cooling, but better yet, it can be undervolted to ~600 rpm where it is virtually in-audible. Especially if it's on the inside of a case.

RoGuE · Post by **RoGuE** » Tue Oct 27, 2009 10:50 pm

coreyography wrote: it runs my 2 1920x1200 screens well.

guess things ARE bigger in texas..lol

MisterB · Post by **MisterB** » Wed Oct 28, 2009 1:11 am

coreyography wrote: Careful with the VRM and RAM chips on that thing. I have an unused Sapphire 4870 sitting on my desk because the crappy VRM heatsink would not stay cool with TWO 120mm fans on an Accelero S1 r2. Capacitors on either side make it impossible to use a bigger one. I cannot locate the screws to the stock cooler to reattach it, and had to buy a GTX275 in the meantime (yeah, for this experience and other reasons ATI kinda pissed me off ).

Thanks for sharing this, I will do some further research into the different brands to see how they fit with an Accelero. I'm really looking forward to trying this (my first really quiet system), but hope to avoid experiences like yours

RoGuE wrote:Dont use a 1600 RPM max fan on your cpu cooler.

Thanks for the heads up. But I see now the url in my shopping list was not as specific as it could be. The first fan on that page is a 1600rpm model, the one below is 1200 and that is the one I was trying to refer to. So the link should be this: Scythe Slip Stream SY1225SL12M, 120mm. I updated the link in the shopping list.

But good advice anyways, I had not considered rpm at all in selecting that fan. Good to know it will be able to do the job well

MisterB · Post by **MisterB** » Fri Oct 30, 2009 4:37 pm

The examples of a 5850 with an Accelero that I could find all used the Gigabyte 5850, so I'll probably switch to that card, just to be sure.

In this SPCR thread the mod is discussed, pointing to this and this site (all with lots of pictures).

ntavlas · Post by **ntavlas** » Fri Oct 30, 2009 5:43 pm

The pictures in the last links are quite useful and a good guideline of how you could setup the 5850. The stock heatspreader is kept and used in tandem with the accelero. Given the lack of appropriate heatsinks it`s likely your best bet in cooling the mosfets and ram.

What I`d try on top of that is to plug a pwm fan directly on the card and use it`s fan controller to automatically adjust speed. It will require modding the fan header but this way the fan won`t have to run at speeds needed to cool the hotspots all the time.

Nice choice of components overall. Both the ft01 and p183 are well suited for the job. Yes, the antec should have an advantage in terms of noice thanks the front door. On the other hand, I do like the ft01 looks and positive pressure setup. I would also look at the mini p180.

MisterB · Post by **MisterB** » Tue Nov 03, 2009 1:13 am

Thanks, I'll look into the pwm fan suggestion, seems a good idea. I had looked at the mini p180 and like it as well, but the size advantage is not that important to me as it will sit under my desk anyway and the p183 has more quiet potential I think.

By the way, I really like your custom builds, very nice work!

RoGuE · Post by **RoGuE** » Tue Nov 03, 2009 1:29 am

MisterB wrote:Thanks, I'll look into the pwm fan suggestion, seems a good idea. I had looked at the mini p180 and like it as well, but the size advantage is not that important to me as it will sit under my desk anyway and the p183 has more quiet potential I think.

Look less at the quiet potential and more at the form factor of your desired motherboard. right now, its a whole lot easier to find ATX boards...but if you find a mATX board that you like, and is the right socket, the mini p180 is just about as quiet as the p183.

I like the mini a lot because although I don't have to move my computer that often, I'm getting really sick of moving a steel mid-tower case even twice a year. Would be nice to have a mini tower. Oh and did I mention the mini p180 is almost half as cheap? Thats 60 bucks you can toss into buying a more high end graphics card...or how bout a nice big expensive heatsink for your cpu... OR http://www.silentpcreview.com/scythe-quietdrive2.5 that. :D ( think you see my point by now )

In my opinion, the mini p180 and the p183 should be considered on the same playing field in terms of quiet. Both cases are fully capable of creating a super quiet rig.

MisterB · Post by **MisterB** » Tue Nov 03, 2009 5:46 am

In the conclusion of the SPCR review of the mini P180 Mike is not very enthousiastic about the big fan Antec used. That was why I figured the P183 could be more quiet.

However, mATX is still an interesting option. I found two good boards: the Gigabyte's GA-P55M-UD4 and the MSI P55M-GD45. An excellent review of the two can be found at The Techreport. I'm gonna think about this one for a bit

ntavlas · Post by **ntavlas** » Tue Nov 03, 2009 8:03 am

Thanks for your comment MisterB. Now, Rogue made a good point about weight. Moving the computer a few times a year to clean the air filters or do upgrades should be much easier with the mini p180. Unless of course you just lay the pc on it`s side, on the floor, something I did when I had a steel full tower case.

You could possible replace the top fan in the mini antec with something smaller though it will require you to improvise a bit. In fact you will probably want to replace all stock case fans sooner or later.

JamieG · Post by **JamieG** » Tue Nov 03, 2009 3:57 pm

ntavlas wrote:You could possible replace the top fan in the mini antec with something smaller though it will require you to improvise a bit.

I imagine it wouldn't be too hard to find some acrylic and cut it to fit the top of the P180 Mini, with a 120mm hole cut out for a top 120mm exhaust instead.

Another option would be to only supply 7V instead of 12V to the top 200mm fan.

I enquired about this idea in the Antec 902 review thread and whiic made these comments:

whiic wrote:I have 902's big bro, Antec 1200. I have undervolted top 200mm and both 120mm Tri-Cools to 7V and all three steplessly variable rpm 120mm fans to 5V.

If I set them all to minimum, only 1 of the exhaust fans start up. I need to temporarily set switches to "mid" in order to start the other exhaust fan and I need to set 200mm to "full" before it starts. Afterwards it spins in "min" setting like the exhausts.

Intakes don't start at 5V with rpm potentiometer set to minimum (ok, You can yell "Noe-Schitt Sherlock" at this point) so I need to rotate the potentiometer to at least half-way to max in order to start them. They're relatively quiet at half-way setting while undervolted to 5V so I really don't ramp them all the way down even though HDDs run at sub-30 deg C temperatures. I just don't want the exhaust fans to draw air through the floppy drive so I keep the intakes spinning.

200mm Big Boy @7V:
min: faint ticking... well, that's about it. Not much airflow though.
mid: some ticking, some ball-bearing hissing. A bit more airflow.
max: bearing hissing, turbulent whooshing. Dramatic increase in airflow.

Could be something to try, anyway if the OP wanted a quiet P180 Mini.

kvik · Post by **kvik** » Sun Nov 08, 2009 4:33 pm

Did you finish your build, and did you end up cooling a 5850 passively? - If so, I'm currently looking into doing the same thing

MisterB · Post by **MisterB** » Mon Nov 09, 2009 1:00 am

Not yet, I hope to order the parts very soon. I'll update the list once I make it final (will probably be a Gigabyte 5850 and haven't decided yet if I go for mATX).