Lucas Malor wrote:I think it's time to describe the case a little: it's an almost completely closed box... and it has only one fan on one side and no space for more fans. I suppose it is used as an exhaust fan.
If it were so, well, in my opinion it shouldn't handle a passive R7 at acceptable thermal levels.
Lucas Malor wrote:Indeed this is what I would suggest to him: wait and try
If cpu is too hot, change its fan. If GPU is too hot, change case fan. If it's too hot yet, change case.
The main issue is the passive R7 temp, and not the CPU one: I would expect the VGA is thermally throttled in such an environment.
A Pentium G3220 may run loud in such an enclosure, but it shouldn't run too hot, even with the crappy stock heatsink.
That's why I asked you whether or not that rig should be quiet.
Lucas Malor wrote:The problem is only that H87M-E costs about the double of H81M-E... it's hard for me to convince him, since this is a cost that he must do immediately, while fans and case are future upgrades.
Sorry man, I can't help: if you ask to us how to build a *quiet* low cost gaming rig, that's the way to do it.
You can try workarounds, or various strategies, but they may work or not, and it would not be the straight path to a quiet rig.
A passive VGA setup requires an intake fan and an exhaust fan to run that card within comfortable thermal limits: if it has to be quiet, those fans should not always run at 12V (full speed), so they require two controllable motherboard headers (another controllable mobo fan header is required by the CPU heatsink, so the total is three), so eventually you need a good µATX mobo, and not a too basic one.
Talking of workarounds, you might use a Y-splitter to connect more fans when you lack fan headers: in order to not overload a voltage controlled fan header - usually all the ones marked as case_fan, cha_fan, sys_fan, while pwr_fan is usually unmanaged - it's preferable a PWM splitter, like the - relatively common in Italy - Akasa-branded ones (another little cost, mind), and then you have to careful choose only 4-pin PWM fans (usually case fan are not PWM, so you can't re-utilize the original one, even if I think it may be also noisy and uneffective), loosing at the same time some flexibility in thermal management. Or you may take the overload risk using voltage 3-pin fans, but I would advise to not exceed a total of 0.4A/0.5A for each header (any fan has its nominal input current printed on its hub label, you have to sum them).
If you dont' want to pick up a Y-splitter, you may also think of accepting some noise penalty, strapping with zip ties a 12V fan on the passive R7: doing so you can get rid of the intake but you will loose any form of control on VGA noise, so the choosed fan has to be a quiet one, so a slow one (less than 1000rpm, preferably less than 800rpm), and the bigger, the better.
Even if it's a sub-optimal setup, can that be enough? I can't help: your friend will find out in a hot summer day, when playing at Diablo with his mates. To be safe, a faster fan can be used that way, but your system surely won't be quiet.
It's also possible to combine those two workarounds, strapping a faster PWM fan on the card, but connecting it to the CPU fan header through a PWM splitter: that way the fan will spin up accordingly to the CPU temp, not the VGA temp, but you may think that usually under gaming the CPU temp goes up together with VGA one. Can that be enough? Same answer as above: your friend will find out in a hot summer day, when playing at Diablo with his mates.
As an alternative you may use a 3-pin splitter, instead that a PWM one: in that case, providing you won't overload the header, the VGA fan will react accordingly to the motherboard or system temp, which should vary very slowly, compared to the CPU one, unless you will tie with a BIOS/sw utility the allotted fan header to the VGA temp.
At any rate, as I told you ASRock boards are more economical than their ASUS cousins (as you know, ASROck and ASUS belong to the same group, Pegatron), and I think it's not mandatory to pick a more expensive brand: check online the manual of an ASRock B85M Pro4 or of an H87M Pro4, in order to see whether they can work for you.
Lucas Malor wrote:quest_for_silence wrote:Despite its brand, the so-called Builder-series is crap: that cheap unit made by CWT is not meant to be quiet, neither to be very reliable
Well, that PSU
was suggested to me in the forum of your italian cousin, pcsilenzioso.it, and I suggested it to all my friends since then
I discovered your site thanks to it.
I can't speak about reliability, but IMHO it's quite quiet. I have to say I'm not a gamer, but since there are gamers that are satisfied with stock PSUs, it's a good PSU to recommend to them ^^
I know that italian site/forum (in case, greet for me the moderator frupoli), and I think that the community recommendations are often more perfomance and/or affordability oriented (not to mention Corsair is very popular in Italy, so that anything they do looks nice).
So, if you tell me that it doesn't scream at idle/low load, I can agree, but it's not quiet according to the usual SPCR community expectations; as said above, if you ask to us how to build a *quiet* low cost gaming rig, there are better option the Corsair Builder-series: just as an example, the proposed BeQuiet L8-300 is noticeably quieter, the similarly priced beQuiet BN-140 even more (but it's more rare to find in Italy than the L8), and so it goes for the slight more expensive Seasonic G-360; therefore, even if now the CX430 seems to have an acceptable noise level for you, we still don't call it quiet, at all.