Silent HTPC and gaming rig

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ATWindsor
Posts: 285
Joined: Mon Apr 18, 2005 11:53 pm

Silent HTPC and gaming rig

Post by ATWindsor » Tue Jan 05, 2010 3:08 pm

I am building a HTPC rig, wich will also be used for gaming, I have a pretty large media library (stored on fileserver), so i think some beef will be nice. (for searching files, general snappiness and so on).

I have the following setup planned:

Case: Antec Fusion Remote Max - Not very nice looking, but large and good airflow.
PSU: Seasonic M12 550 - Old PSU i have, should do the job I think
SSD: Intel 80GB gen 2. - Silent, and with good performance.
Motherboard: Asus P755D EVO - maybe the piece I am least sure of, any know problems with this board? Coil Whine or similar?
GPU: Powercolor HD5750 SCS3 - Pretty much given, only fanless 5750 I could find in norway. Will be used to output HDMI to TV.
CPU: Intel i5-750
RAM: Kingston value 1333, 4*2 GB
Cooler: Scythe Ninja Rev 2. - My preliminary choice, based on the height clearance, the best tower coolers seem to be a bit to tall for the case(?)
(see also viewtopic.php?t=56915&sid=3715ec355f451 ... 3eff2889ab)
Blu-ray-player: LG CH08, seens like a nice drive, is it support by programs that slow down the drive? I would rather not hear it while watching movies.

I plan to attach a 120mm-fan to the GPU, and run it very slowly, maybe around 400 rpm. The CPU-fan should run at about 600 rpm, which is a good level for low noise. The CPU is pwerfull enough with some to spare, but I am slightly concerned about cooling it. I will not be overclocking, suggestions and comments are welcome.

AtW

audiojar
Posts: 81
Joined: Sun Aug 23, 2009 1:17 pm
Location: Seattle, WA

Post by audiojar » Wed Jan 06, 2010 1:49 pm

I don't see why you should be concerned about a Ninja on a i5 not being enough. Also, CPU fan speed will ramp up if needed. You probably don't even need a fan on the GPU, it's designed to be passively cooled.

ATWindsor
Posts: 285
Joined: Mon Apr 18, 2005 11:53 pm

Post by ATWindsor » Wed Jan 06, 2010 2:07 pm

audiojar wrote:I don't see why you should be concerned about a Ninja on a i5 not being enough. Also, CPU fan speed will ramp up if needed. You probably don't even need a fan on the GPU, it's designed to be passively cooled.
I guess my concern comes from my i7-920, when the weather is warm, and i rune prime on all "8" cores, the fan ramps up. There I have a better cooler (Prolima Megahalems), and I don't think the 750 uses that much less power than the D0-variant of the i920. However its rarly a problem in actual use, so I might just be a bit paranoid :)

AtW

stromgald
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Joined: Wed Jun 09, 2004 12:45 pm
Location: California, US

Post by stromgald » Wed Jan 06, 2010 3:03 pm

It's roughly 20W less power under load according to this test:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/sh ... =3634&p=17

The thing that clouds the results are the different motherboards/chipsets for the tests. Since they used fairly high-end motherboards throughout their tests, I don't think they affected the power consumption much. The graphics card is the same for the i7-920 and i5-750 tests.

I'm a little surprised that the Megahalems ramps up significantly for the 920. Did you overclock it?

RoGuE
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Location: Massachusetts, USA
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Post by RoGuE » Wed Jan 06, 2010 4:44 pm

I'm too lazy right now to provide any real critisism of your build and stuff...

but I will ask you this... why do you feel you need to prepare sound levels for prime 95 tests? Few games are completely multi threaded, and you didn't say anything about serious encoding or video editing etc. So my question is, why do you care about the speed of the CPU fan when you're halfway through a p95 test? Doesn't that seem silly to you? In practice, you will never come close to burning the cpu that toasty...therefore you will never hear the fan ramp up that high.

Also, I support putting a little moving air on the graphics card...you certainly wont hear it, and it will actually cool it a lot better than passive, even though the air is moving slow.

ATWindsor
Posts: 285
Joined: Mon Apr 18, 2005 11:53 pm

Post by ATWindsor » Thu Jan 07, 2010 2:18 am

stromgald wrote:It's roughly 20W less power under load according to this test:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/sh ... =3634&p=17

The thing that clouds the results are the different motherboards/chipsets for the tests. Since they used fairly high-end motherboards throughout their tests, I don't think they affected the power consumption much. The graphics card is the same for the i7-920 and i5-750 tests.

I'm a little surprised that the Megahalems ramps up significantly for the 920. Did you overclock it?
For some reason i was unable to access anandtech at the moment, but if i recall correctly, the review doesn't say if its a C0 or D0 i 920, the D0 uses almost 20 watts less than the C0, so if they compared the C0, the I750 uses almost as much as my i920-d0.

I did not overclock, if i get a significant ramp-up is a matter of perspective i guess, but it wouldn't run at just 600 rpm. But as briefly mentioned, this is with prime95 running. I don't think it happens often, if at all, with normal usage.

AtW

ATWindsor
Posts: 285
Joined: Mon Apr 18, 2005 11:53 pm

Post by ATWindsor » Thu Jan 07, 2010 2:22 am

RoGuE wrote:I'm too lazy right now to provide any real critisism of your build and stuff...

but I will ask you this... why do you feel you need to prepare sound levels for prime 95 tests? Few games are completely multi threaded, and you didn't say anything about serious encoding or video editing etc. So my question is, why do you care about the speed of the CPU fan when you're halfway through a p95 test? Doesn't that seem silly to you? In practice, you will never come close to burning the cpu that toasty...therefore you will never hear the fan ramp up that high.

Also, I support putting a little moving air on the graphics card...you certainly wont hear it, and it will actually cool it a lot better than passive, even though the air is moving slow.
That is a valid point, I guess the reasoning behind using prime95 is that if tits cool enough then, its always cool enough that you can run the fans at the lowest speed. In my current i920-build, the cvooling is sufficient for actual usage at lowest fan level, so ooling i sgood enough, however that is a better cooler, so I might have less headroom this time, maybe little enough for the fan to ramp up in regular use?

I am not sure what qualifies as "serious encoding", i will be encoding bluray-quality in software, which does take its toll, but its not nearly 100% at 4 cores.

AtW

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