Quiet case for dusty area

Enclosures and acoustic damping to help quiet them.

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pox67
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Joined: Sun Jan 16, 2011 2:36 pm

Quiet case for dusty area

Post by pox67 » Sun Jan 16, 2011 2:50 pm

Unfortunately my gaming PC is being relocated from my study to the garage to make way for the mother in law. Depressing huh.

Currently I am using a Coolermaster HAF case to house a C2Q 9550 which is overclocked and a Nvidia 285GTX which runs pretty hot.

This setup is no good for the garage and is frankly pretty damn noisy. The garage also houses woodworking equipment so I need a case that has filters on all intakes. Cases that have open grills on the drive bays won't be any good as I think they will let in too much dust.

Any recommendations?
I think the P183 might be the best from what I can see.

quest_for_silence
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Location: ITALY

Re: Quiet case for dusty area

Post by quest_for_silence » Mon Jan 17, 2011 1:45 am

pox67 wrote:Any recommendations?

A positive pressure case, as many Silverstones.

jhhoffma
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Location: Grand Rapids, MI

Re: Quiet case for dusty area

Post by jhhoffma » Mon Jan 17, 2011 7:17 am

You need to look up some of Bluefront's old post. He was a master of filtered positive-pressure case-mods. He had a couple cats from what I remember and everything had to be filtered.

Don't know why he stopped posting, but hopefully his legacy isn't lost here.

quest_for_silence
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Re: Quiet case for dusty area

Post by quest_for_silence » Mon Jan 17, 2011 10:07 am

jhhoffma wrote:Don't know why he stopped posting, but hopefully his legacy isn't lost here.

I don't know him, but as he should be a retired machinist, I'm a bit worried about his long lasting silence.

JamieG
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Location: Melbourne, Australia

Re: Quiet case for dusty area

Post by JamieG » Mon Jan 17, 2011 6:22 pm

I don't know if you can find this product where you live (no location in your profile so I can't help further), but DEMCi makes a filter kit for some of the HAF range:

Australian shop

Might be worth looking into as an alternative to a new case.

pox67
Posts: 3
Joined: Sun Jan 16, 2011 2:36 pm

Re: Quiet case for dusty area

Post by pox67 » Mon Jan 17, 2011 6:33 pm

JamieG, I do have these filters fitted. They do help but the HAF case is literally full of holes and no good for a garage.

quest_for_silence, I will think about the Silverstone Raven RV02-E then. How is that for noise?

jhhoffma
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Joined: Mon Apr 25, 2005 10:00 am
Location: Grand Rapids, MI

Re: Quiet case for dusty area

Post by jhhoffma » Mon Jan 17, 2011 7:22 pm

Come to think of it, some of his latter posts were dealing with solar chargers and lead-acid batteries...

scdr
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Re: Quiet case for dusty area

Post by scdr » Mon Jan 17, 2011 10:48 pm

A notion I have wondered about is using an air cleaner for a case.
Don't know how quiet it would be (air cleaners are generally annoyingly noisy),
but seemed like it might be a start at a case for really dusty environments.

(Would need to use a small motherboard, and lots of cables might be a problem,
so may not be suitable for a gaming build either.)

Rekonn
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Re: Quiet case for dusty area

Post by Rekonn » Sat Jan 22, 2011 6:12 am

How about a Lian Li Lancool PC-K7B? It's a mid tower case for about $90 with two 120mm fans in the front, both with removable filters. Nothing on the sides, only 1 120mm in back and PSU for exhaust.

michaelius
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Re: Quiet case for dusty area

Post by michaelius » Sat Jan 22, 2011 8:17 am

pox67 wrote:JamieG, I do have these filters fitted. They do help but the HAF case is literally full of holes and no good for a garage.

quest_for_silence, I will think about the Silverstone Raven RV02-E then. How is that for noise?
Raven 2 sounds like a bad idea for very dusty place as it has huge amount of top open for beter airflow so the dust will be getting inside when computer is turned off.

Maybe Lian Li PC-A71-FB ?

Image

Front doors, filters on front 140mm fans, no opening in top.

quest_for_silence
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Re: Quiet case for dusty area

Post by quest_for_silence » Sat Jan 22, 2011 9:09 am

pox67 wrote:quest_for_silence, I will think about the Silverstone Raven RV02-E then. How is that for noise?

I'm sorry, I forgot to answer to: yes, I think it should work very well for you, even if I think its positive pressure is more aimed towards maximinzing the stack cooling effect.

I have two fanned GTS 450 inside a Raven 2: pretty quiet, maybe one of the quietest option for multiple videocards (this is why I choose it for), very noticeably quieter than a P182, or a mini P180 with a 790GX IGP (that BigBoy is really annoying).

Just a side note, it's somehow definitely less quiet than my modded Solo with the same cards (with much higher temps): indeed, in defiance of what I've just stated, it cannot be defined a silencing enclosure but a rather gaming one, it can cool GPUs very well without being wide open (as an Antec Hundred-series), but IMO it cannot actually muff/deaden the GPU's noise (so if a GPU is noisy, the overall level will be affected by that).

I'm saying so with reference to your Nvidia GTX 285: if it were hot and noisy, I am afraid that the Raven, even if its stack effect cooling is very effective, might not cool down it enough to achieve a noticeably lower fan speed with a reference design.
Obviously it should be far better than your current case, just I guess that any potential noise issue could lie more in this card, rather than in the CM.

About the current RV-02E, as a matter of fact the Air Penetrator fans are an actual improvement over my case, and indeed I retrofitted it.
Otherwise the 120mm ones are more probably that not the best stock case fans I've ever heard.

Eventually I mean you already know that it's costly (maybe a Fractal XL might offer a more favourable price/performance ratio) and ugly (even if, probably it's better than the original Raven One).

quest_for_silence
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Re: Quiet case for dusty area

Post by quest_for_silence » Sat Jan 22, 2011 9:15 am

michaelius wrote:for beter airflow

I guess it's not for any "better airflow", it's just an anticlockwise rotated motherboard tray, moreover under positive pressure.

pox67
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Joined: Sun Jan 16, 2011 2:36 pm

Re: Quiet case for dusty area

Post by pox67 » Sat Jan 22, 2011 5:34 pm

Thanks for the responses.
I bought a Silverstone Fortress FT02 last Wednesday. Built on Friday and been using since.

For the reason I got the case it has worked out OK. It is quieter than the HAF case by a lot and seems to keep things cooler. Dust coming in the top is not a factor for me but might be for others. My case is located under the desk with a decent gap at the top for the hot air to escape, this will stop dust dropping in the top when it is turned off.

Now for the bad. Cable management in this case is one of the worst I have seen. It is an easy fix as well, the side behind the motherboard needs at least another inch to allow thick power cables to run back there. At the moment that side actually bulges out as I can't get the cables flat enough. The main culprit is the motherboard power but also molexs that don't reach the hard drives jam in to the side of the case.

Also with the top cover on all the backplate cables(in my case: 8 USB, 2 DVI, 5 channel sound as well as headphones) all route over the PSU exhaust area blocking it up.

Hard drives are a long way from the PSU but I can't blame them for this as there aren't many other options.

For a case this expensive I was very disappointed in this design defects.

Saying that the case does exactly what I was looking for.

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