Silent Grizwald

Show off your quiet rig.

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Nec_V20
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Silent Grizwald

Post by Nec_V20 » Mon Apr 25, 2016 4:21 am

I am a firm believer in Murphy's Law in that, if I have a backup system, I can virtually guarantee that nothing will go wrong with my main system. The basket will only break if you carry all your eggs in it.

To this end I decided that I wanted to go for a silent, low energy, performant (though not performance) computer.

When I say it is silent then I do not mean from a foot or so away, I mean that I have my ear right up to the vent on the case and cannot hear a thing. I realise that this is subjective, so I have done my testing at night when ambient noise is at a minimum, when my main machine (which I normally consider to be quiet) is distinctly audible i.e. when my hearing has become low noise adapted. I had the system under load and was running OCCT 4.4.1 with AVX.

I didn't want it to be as cheap as possible because of the law of three, that is out of fast, reliable and cheap you can only ever have two.

I did not however compromise on any components, I got EXACTLY what I wanted for the build, I just kept checking offers over the course of two to three months to get the cheapest price for those components that I could from a vendor I know to be reliable.

This was my build:

PSU: Super Flower Leadex Platinum 550W
Mobo: GigaByte GA-F2A88XN-WIFI
Case: Corsair Obsidion 250D (replaced front 140mm with 200mm CoolerMaster MegaFlow Fan)
Cooler: Noctua NH-L12
CPU: AMD 7870K
SSD: SanDisk Ultra Plus 256GB
RAM: 16GB (2*8GB) Corsair Vengeance Pro 2400MHz

All in all the price of the rig came to just under £500.

My choices in detail.

PSU: I consider the PSU to be, by far, the most important single component of a computer. A 550W PSU is overkill for the build I know; however Super Flower makes some of the best if not the best analog PSUs available. Under 550W I could not find something with the acceptable quality combined with the features I wanted (hybrid fan, very low ripple, highest quality components, real platinum rating, expected longevity). At a price I was willing to pay.

I know that some of you will say, "You should have gone with a Seasonic". I would agree that a Seasonic would have come into consideration, however they are not readily available in the UK where I live. Buying one from outside the UK would entail paying quite a lot in postage and the Seasonic PSU's I was looking at would have ended up costing about twice as much as the PSU I decided upon, which is readily available in the UK.

Mobo: I have had very good experiences with GigaByte boards and very bad experiences with ASUS boards. I wanted a board that would be as all-singing, all-dancing, as I could get and that included WiFi. I am not an audiophile and I can get by very well on the onboard sound subsystem.

Case: The Corsair Obsidian 250D was the only one which met my requirements, small footprint, mini-ITX, and most important the ability to put a 200mm fan in the front. Even with a Noctua Low Noise Adapter fitted to the fan, it pumps in more air to the case than the included 140mm fan would have done going at full whack.

Cooler: This was a toss-up and I actually bought both coolers I was considering to test them out. The other cooler I bought was the Noctua NH-U9S with an extra Noctua NF-A9 fan. I went with the NU-L12 because under load it was silent, but it also provides airflow to the Caps and VRMs around the CPU. Although it does block off access to the PCI-e slot, I was intending to use that so this was not a consideration.

CPU: This was a no-brainer. Adding an extra GPU to the system would have essentially ended all possibility of the system running silently and the onboard graphics of the Intel CPU's suck. The GPU portion of the 7870K is more than adequate for my needs and has pleasantly surprised me with regard to the games I like to play, such as Diablo III: Reaper of Souls or Starcraft II, never mind Age of Empires II and III or Europa Universalis IV. It is of course imperative that one buys the fastest RAM compatible with the motherboard.

SSD: Again a no-brainer. A mechanical harddrive just makes too much noise. The reason why I went with the Sandisk is because it has good performance and I got it for a price which I just could not refuse.

Optical Drive: Don't generally need one. I have an external Samsung Blu-Ray writer for the very occasional times I need to have an optical drive attached to my system.

RAM: I got the 16GB (2*8GB) Corsair Vengeance Pro 2400MHz for less than half price from one very good and reputable vendor and I have had very good experiences with Corsair RAM in the past. The RAM runs at the fastest speed compatible with my system.

I have to say though that I have the Noctua LNC (Low Noise Adapter) on both of the fans of the cooler and the 200mm fan.

One caveat, I had to replace the 92mm fan of the cooler for an 80mm Noctua fan because of RAM clearance.

What is the REAL selling point of the system is the energy use out of the socket of the system which is:

Off 1.3 Watts
Idle 36 Watts (Only Windows running after boot)
OCCT (with AVX) 127 Watts
Furmark 93.5 Watts
Prime95 137 Watts
Prime95+Furmark 142 Watts

If I load a YouTube video the energy usage goes up to a staggering 44 Watts out of the socket.

Running VLC with a video comes to 46 Watts.

Silent, and uses less than a lightbulb in energy - what's not to like?

Yes the components cost a bit more, but you save back what you have invested relatively quickly.

In fact, not having to install a separate GPU (which I would have needed to have done if I had used an Intel CPU) I already saved a bunch of money. Also of course, if I had put a GPU into the rig then silence would have been unattainable.

One thing I meant to add, I have a Low Noise Adapter on the 200mm fan, but even at that it is shunting more air into the system than the 140mm fan going full whack. I also left all the benchmark programs running for at least an hour. There was no thermal throttling during any of the tests.

Can I play games on the rig? Yes, the games I like to play such as Diablo III: Reaper of Souls, which plays just as fluidly with the same settings as on my main rig, an i7-4790K. So it is a bit more useful with regard to games than simply having to be contented with bejewelled. :D

I have since added a 480GB SSD to the system and two 16 LED case lights and so now the system on idle (only Windows running after boot) is at 42 Watts out of the socket.

Mod question: Will you be adding pictures? Or should this post be moved to an appropriate section?

Nec_V20
Posts: 49
Joined: Mon Apr 25, 2016 1:22 am

Re: Silent Grizwald

Post by Nec_V20 » Mon Apr 25, 2016 6:45 am

In answer to the mod question:

I thought this was the appropriate section of the forum and adding pictures to the post is so obvious that it just had not occurred to me.

It's like, you build a system, carefully check and route every wire and connection, close the case, push the power button and then - NOTHING.

Then you open the case again double and triple check every connection in the system close it up again and - NOTHING.

It is only then that you discover that you have not plugged the power lead into either the machine or the socket.

DOH! :oops:

quest_for_silence
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Re: Silent Grizwald

Post by quest_for_silence » Mon Apr 25, 2016 8:45 am

Your nick is quite evocative: are you born in 1984 or was an XT your first PC? :wink:

Nec_V20 wrote:Mod question: Will you be adding pictures? Or should this post be moved to an appropriate section?

I'm not a mod but I guess you'll be entitled to edit your OP and add pictures from your third messages.

Nec_V20
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Re: Silent Grizwald

Post by Nec_V20 » Mon Apr 25, 2016 9:49 am

The nic comes from the very first hardware upgrade I did for myself from an Intel 8088 running at a staggering 4.77 MHz to an NEC V20 CPU running at the phenomenal rate of 8 MHz.

Obviously from my nic you can surmise that the upgrade worked - it was not just a case of exchanging the CPU, I had to solder out the quartz oscillator and solder in a new one and also get a EPROM of a NEC V20 BIOS which was available from the German Magazine c't.

This was back in either 1983 or 1984.

I wrote in another post on this thread which hasn't been published yet that I will be posting photos, just as soon as the battery for my Panasonic Lumix camera has charged (I have not used the camera in the past two years and the battery was totally flat).

I think it would be better to leave the photos together with the explanatory text in the third post rather than trying to mash them together.

I put a lot of thought into what I put into the build and I have an advantage over someone like you - I am autistic (Asperger's).

So when I post the pictures and someone doesn't like the build for aesthetic reasons, then I don't care. My favourite looking aircraft of all time is the Republic A10 Thunderbolt II - it is affectionately known as "Warthog" and that should tell you all you will ever need to know about my aesthetic sense, in that I don't have much of any to speak of. :)

Technically I consider the build to be balanced. As you will be able to see from the pictures I have managed to arrange the cables so that the airflow from the 200mm fan in the front is completely unimpeded. I took off the 120mm fan in the side panel and with the top down arrangement of the fans on the NH-L12 cooler it draws in cooler air through the dust protected side panels. I have not populated either of the two mountings for 80mm fans on the back.

This arrangement isn't possible if I wanted to put a card (except a low profile one) in the PCI-e slot, from the beginning however I never planned to use that slot for anything.

I researched every single component thoroughly. Not so much in the beginning for what I wanted, but for things that would be a deal-breaker.

For instance with the case:
1) Can it fit a 200mm fan? If not, move on
2) Does it have dust filtering? If not, move on

I gradually whittled down the choices until very few remained. The 250D was the case with the least amount of compromises.

The only reason why I put the LED lights in it was to see what it would look like, not because I wanted them. That having been said it took me two hours to get them just right (the autism thing) and the result is actually quite pleasant. So it's a frigging black shoe-box with some blinken-lightens :D

Well another reason for putting the lights in was that it reminded me of a fake notice I read decades ago:

[ Mod: Deleted. Off topic and the first was mildly offensive to parts of the SPCR community.]

quest_for_silence
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Re: Silent Grizwald

Post by quest_for_silence » Mon Apr 25, 2016 1:30 pm

Nec_V20 wrote:Well another reason for putting the lights in was that it reminded me of a fake notice I read decades ago:

[ Mod: Deleted. Off topic and the first was mildly offensive to parts of the SPCR community.]
Steve, are you kidding?

CA_Steve
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Re: Silent Grizwald

Post by CA_Steve » Mon Apr 25, 2016 3:03 pm

nope

Nec_V20
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Re: Silent Grizwald

Post by Nec_V20 » Mon Apr 25, 2016 6:04 pm

[ Mod: Deleted. Off topic and the first was mildly offensive to parts of the SPCR community.]

???????

Those two things I quoted are iconic techie texts:

The first one has a Wiki page and goes back to the anecdote originating in the 1950's:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blinkenlights

Who might it be "mildly offensive" to, Germans? Newsflash, my native language is GERMAN and not English and I found what I quoted to be funny.

It was not "off topic" because it was an influence on me to put some "Blinkenlightens" in my system and since the topic is about my system and my reasons for putting what I did into it, how on Earth could it be "off topic".

I'm autistic and I might be missing something obvious to you "normals". I don't see anything even remotely constituting offence either overt or covert in the portion of my post which you censored.

With regard to the other quote with regard to the VCR and the polish sausage, it was in reference not only because the memory of the "Blinkenlightens" quote jogged it, but also the the fact that I did RTFM very carefully before I made my choice on specific hardware and didn't just wake up and think it would be a good idea to buy an individual piece of hardware out of the blue.

http://www.big-bubbles.talktalk.net/per ... struct.txt

And then there is the total classic from IBM with regard to mouse balls which is hilarious in so many ways:

https://w2.eff.org/Net_culture/Folklore ... s_ibm.memo

Is it only because I am autistic that I find these things humorous, or maybe because I was Senior German Engineer for Enterprise Disaster-Recovery Tech-Support?

I was also responding to someone who had responded to me and I decided to attempt to inject some humour into the reply on something I thought would be common ground. I'm new here and I thought it was the done thing with "normals" to attempt to "break the ice". More fool me.

Where did I go wrong? I did not swear, I did not attack anyone, I did not denigrate any person, sex, gender, colour in the post and yet I managed to fall afoul of rules I am not aware of.

I AM AUTISTIC, I DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHY MY POST WAS CENSORED!!

Could you please elucidate.

CA_Steve
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Re: Silent Grizwald

Post by CA_Steve » Mon Apr 25, 2016 7:29 pm

Ok, this'll be my only post on this line of query.

We have a worldwide audience. So, a joke in mock German could easily offend other native German speakers that are part of our community, if not you. Funny, in a Hogan's Heroes sort of way, maybe not so funny as a post on a tech website.

Nec_V20
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Re: Silent Grizwald

Post by Nec_V20 » Mon Apr 25, 2016 8:08 pm

CA_Steve wrote:Ok, this'll be my only post on this line of query.

We have a worldwide audience. So, a joke in mock German could easily offend other native German speakers that are part of our community, if not you. Funny, in a Hogan's Heroes sort of way, maybe not so funny as a post on a tech website.
The thing is, that it isn't a joke. It is a piece of techie lore.

It reflects so many things such as the fact that the reason why Americans landed a man on the Moon in 1969 was because of German scientists, but the reason why so many American rockets failed in the early sixties was because Germans use the "," (comma) as the decimal mark and Americans use the "." (dot). So the German scientists did the hard part of actually doing the difficult calculations and the American engineers mucked it up because they were off by waaaaayyyyy more than one when translating the numbers.

You are a Californian, and personally, as a German I find it somewhat immodest of you to attempt to determine and define what Germans would find funny or offensive. You are propagating the stereotype of Germans not having a sense of humour and personally as a German I find that more than just slightly offensive.

A lot of German humour is plays on words, for instance the translation of the phrase "Englisch für fortgeschrittene" being translated as "English for runaways".

quest_for_silence
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Re: Silent Grizwald

Post by quest_for_silence » Mon Apr 25, 2016 11:22 pm

Nec_V20 wrote:You are a Californian, and personally, as a German I find it somewhat immodest of you to attempt to determine and define what Germans would find funny or offensive.

Either autistic or not, now you are really immodest: the fact you're the author and a german doesn't entitle you to determine what is acceptable (here: meant either as legitimate, or licit, or appropriate) and what it is not (here): such a judgement belongs to moderators only (here), so apparently it never did to normal users as you (or me).

Despite the sympathy I had at first glance for your moniker, I think you should apologize for your last comment and give it a rest (after all you/we already got an official, comprehensive explanation, though seemingly you didn't like it).

Please do not answer me publicly (moreover I won't comment on that anymore), and have a nice time.

Cistron
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Re: Silent Grizwald

Post by Cistron » Tue Apr 26, 2016 8:24 am

I'm Austrian and I take offence of the Germans booking German as their language. :mrgreen: (plus we sound way cooler)

Dude, chill and just follow the moderators' wishes. Humour is debatable.

edit: So, are you gonna post any pictures of your build? This is what this is all about in the end. Pics or it didn't happen!

edh
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Re: Silent Grizwald

Post by edh » Tue Apr 26, 2016 9:35 am

Nec_V20 wrote:I am a firm believer in Murphy's Law in that, if I have a backup system, I can virtually guarantee that nothing will go wrong with my main system.
Sorry but the universe doesn't quite work like that. :wink: Superstitions generally don't have any real truth. As a life long cheapskate I can't endorse building a 2nd machine just as a backup I'm afraid. Do you really believe that your WHOLE computer might blow requiring you to replace the WHOLE thing? If anything blows it will be a single component and at the time it blows it is likely to be replaceable for less than the cost it is right now.
Nec_V20 wrote:I would agree that a Seasonic would have come into consideration, however they are not readily available in the UK where I live.
Really? Plenty of Seasonic PSUs show up in a Google Shopping search. If anything Superflower is more difficult to find. I own an X400 and am very happy with it.
Nec_V20 wrote:I have had very good experiences with GigaByte boards and very bad experiences with ASUS boards.
How is the fan control? Gigabyte fan control isn't best liked on SPCR.
Nec_V20 wrote:The Corsair Obsidian 250D was the only one which met my requirements, small footprint, mini-ITX, and most important the ability to put a 200mm fan in the front. Even with a Noctua Low Noise Adapter fitted to the fan, it pumps in more air to the case than the included 140mm fan would have done going at full whack.
Not sure I'd agree with the Corsair for this system. It is massive for a MiniITX system without a graphics card. The TDP of your components does not match up with the intended use for such a case and the 200mm fan is wasted if there isn't a set of hot components to cool. Plus obscure large sized fans generally don't have the best sound characteristics. Common fan sizes have more options available and of those options the best quiet fans will usually beat an unusual large fan for noise. Silverstone's 180mm fans are an example that divides opinion.
Nec_V20 wrote:I went with the NU-L12 because under load it was silent, but it also provides airflow to the Caps and VRMs around the CPU.
Not a good choice of cooler for such a system layout. You have laminar flow created by the front fan and then you stick in a top down cooler to spoil it. Use of a large tower heatsink would be more sensible.

What fan speeds are you running?
Nec_V20 wrote:Adding an extra GPU to the system would have essentially ended all possibility of the system running silently.
I disagree on that. The Corsair doesn't really help you by putting the expansion slots up against the side panel but you could install a card that runs passively at idle or you could retrofit a bit passive heatsink instead.
Nec_V20 wrote:Idle 36 Watts
That's quite a lot for a modern low power system like this. Have you looked at BIOS options to disable things that you do not need?
Nec_V20 wrote:but you save back what you have invested relatively quickly.
No, it's all entirely unnecessary expenditure as it's purely a backup system based upon some highly improbable failure on your main system and not being able to live without a computer for the few days that it might take to find replacement parts. Still, I'm assuming you're an adult and earn your own living and this is coming out of taxable income in which case thank you for putting more money into the hands of the taxman.
Nec_V20 wrote:I put a lot of thought into what I put into the build and I have an advantage over someone like you - I am autistic (Asperger's).
Sorry, that's not acceptable to say. What you have done here is just assume that your own view of the world is correct. It is not. You may feel you are intelligent (maybe you are) but that does not mean that you are experienced or that others here or not as intelligent as or indeed more intelligent than you.
Nec_V20 wrote:The only reason why I put the LED lights in it was to see what it would look like, not because I wanted them.
Remove them. I don't even need to see pictures. They are entirely illogical adding power consumption and heat to what is unlikely to be a well optimised system for cooling.

quest_for_silence
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Re: Silent Grizwald

Post by quest_for_silence » Tue Apr 26, 2016 10:08 am

edh wrote:Sorry, that's not acceptable to say. What you have done here is just assume that your own view of the world is correct. It is not. You may feel you are intelligent (maybe you are) but that does not mean that you are experienced or that others here or not as intelligent as or indeed more intelligent than you.

If I didn't misunderstood you, I guess you misunderstood him.
As far as I understood, you (generic) shouldn't separate that phrase from the following one.
Nec_V20 wrote:I have an advantage over someone like you - I am autistic (Asperger's).

So when I post the pictures and someone doesn't like the build for aesthetic reasons, then I don't care.


:wink:

Nec_V20
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Re: Silent Grizwald

Post by Nec_V20 » Tue Apr 26, 2016 10:26 am

And here are the photos of Silent Grizwald. As you can see, it is nothing spectacular:

Here is a link to a site which reviewed the case but also has a lot of photos of the case:
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cases/ ... d-review/1

and here is a link to the Corsair site with some more photos showing the dust filters on the side etc.
http://www.corsair.com/en-gb/obsidian-s ... tx-pc-case

if anyone is interested in seeing good photos of the case

Here is the view of the case from the side with the cover on:

Image

The lighting inside the case is a lot more subtle than it appears in the photo, but as you can see the dust filtered side panel does allow for a lot of airflow to reach the cooler and I have done the smoke test and air is coming out of the bottom half of the side panel and is being drawn in from the top half.

The size of the case itself is slightly larger than a sheet of paper - to give you an idea of the scale. It's a shoe-box, it does the job and I think it does the job very well.

Here is a view of the case from the top with the cover on:

Image

As you can see, I am a craptastic photographer and aside from my lack of photographic talent I don't think this photo adds much of anything. I will go into more details about the innards in the photos with the side and top panel off.

Here is a view from the side with the cover off:

Image

The white light at the bottom comes from the PSU and whenever you plug a connection into it it lights up. Don't ask me why this is a good idea, I could just as easily do without this "feature".

Another picture of the side this time with the system off and the flash on my camera turned on:

Image

On this picture you can clearly see that the cables are routed either below or above the 200mm fan, in the next pictures from the top you will see that the cables are also routed around the side of the fan as well. I also put a dust filter attached to the front of the fan. The case has a dust filter to filter the air going into the case. So why the dust filter in the front? I noticed that when I had the fan at full revs it was audible but had an added sound component, that added sound component (which is hard to define) was still barely there with the fan attached to the Low Noise Adapter. That sound completely disappeared when I put the filter on the front.

The air being shunted in by the 200mm fan (which as I said, even with the Low Noise Adapter stepping down the rotation of the fan, still pumps more cooler ambient air into the system than the included 140mm fan going full whack) has a completely clear and unobstructed path to where it is meant to go, that is to the portions of the system generating heat. Because the airflow is totally unimpeded there are no whistling sounds of air going around cables which sometimes happens.

As I said, I put a hell of a lot of consideration into my choice of case and I knew from the start that I would not be needing the 5.25" cage for the optical drive, because there was not going to be one installed. I have an external USB Samsung Blu-ray writer which I bought for my main machine which is housed in a CoolerMaster HAF XB case where I had no intention putting in an optical drive either, but rather used the two 5.25" slots to house an icy-dock 2*5.25 inch to 3*3.5 inch hotswap cage.

So taking out the 5.25" holder in the system is not some post hoc rationalisation, but something which I had in mind from the beginning, which is why the lack of a 5.25" bay was not a deal-breaker for me when buying the case.

You will also notice on the cooler the 120mm fan on the top and the 80mm fan on the bottom. The cooler came with a 92mm fan, but I had no clearance for the RAM,which is why I had to buy an 80mm Noctua NF-A8 PWM fan. Both fans on the cooler are PWM fans and both are attached to a Low Noise Adapter meaning that the 80mm fan has a top rotational speed of 1750 rpm and the 120mm Noctua NF-F12 PWM has a top rotational speed of 1300 rpm. I have set the fan profiles to ramp up gradually as the temperatures increase, but even when the system is under full load the fans are completely inaudible. I completely removed the 120mm fan which came with the case and was attached to the side panel because it was totally superfluous to requirements. The air gets pumped into they system by the 200mm fan (and to a lesser extent sucked in by the 120mm fan on the top of the cooler, gets swirled around by the cooler with the 80mm fan cooling the heatsink of the VRMs behind it (to the left on the photo) and the other motherboard components like the capacitors. Yes the air is warm, but it is a lot cooler than the heatsink. The warm air can then go where it pleases carrying the heat away from the system out of the back and the sides of the case. Because the motherboard is raised some of the airflow goes underneath it to cool the underside a tad as well.

The PSU is in its own enclosure and I have it placed in there fan side up, in hybrid mode the fan of the PSU never spins up even when the system is under load, however any heat it does produce (because heat rises) can escape through the top and as you can see it gets a lot of air from the 200mm fan in the front.

The top down arrangement of the cooler ensures that there are no dead spaces where heat could build up such as the space between the two RAM modules. The downside of the cooler, as you will see in the photos below is that it blocks the PCI-e slot; however because it was never my intention to populate this slot, that was not a deal-breaker for me either with regard to this particular case. I do however have a Noctua NH-U9S cooler if I should ever change my mind. I tested it in the system and it runs silently as well with two Noctua NF-A9 PWM fans (only one is supplied with the cooler).

I should say that I have been building systems for over 30 years now, so I know exactly what I am looking for in hardware and what compromises are legitimate and which ones are foul. Getting rid of the 5.25" enclosure and having the PCI-e slot blocked were, for the build, to me very legitimate compromises. You may not be able to live with that and would have to look at either a different case or cooler.

Now we get to the top view of the system with the top cover removed from slightly different angles:

Image

Image

As you could see from the side view the cables were routed either below or above the 200mm fan and now from the top you can see that the cables are routed to the left and the right of the 200mm fan and that the the air has a completely unimpeded path from the fan to the components that need cooling.

What? You don't like the colour of the Noctua fan? I don't care. I have been using Noctua fans for over a decade and a half and ALL of them still work and ALL of them have not developed any annoying clicks or sounds over that time. To my mind they are the best because they start off quiet and remain quiet. My previous main system ran 24/7 for 1,790 days before I replaced it with my new one. The Noctua fans inside had not degraded one whit. One of the Noctua fans came from the system I had before my previous main system and had been running in that for years.

I am also a bit sick and tired of reading that Noctua fans are expensive. If you consider the goodies like the high quality 30cm PWM extension cable, PWM Low Noise Adapter cable, PWM Splitter cable and the rubber vibration dampening grommets to attach the fan to the case you get included with them then the price of the Noctua fan is more than justified. A good PWM splitter cable will cost you around £3, a good PWM 30cm extension cable costs around £3.50 and a good PWM Low Noise Adapter (or voltage reduction) cable around £2.50; this comes to £9. Keep this in mind when you are out shopping for fans for your computer.

The one thing which is a deal-breaker for me is if a case is made of aluminium instead of steel.

Why? Well as Jack O'Neill used to answer whenever Samantha Carter asked if he understood what she had explained the answer is "magnets".

As you can see in the picture below:

Image

I use 5mm Neodymium ball magnets (usually four of them) to attach my USB or other cables to the side of my case so that I always have them to hand and they don't get lost in the clutter of my desk. There is nothing worse than having to hunt for a USB cable that you have not used in weeks but really need NOW.

That's the way I like it, that's the way I want it and that's the reason why I would never consider buying an aluminium case.

edh
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Re: Silent Grizwald

Post by edh » Tue Apr 26, 2016 1:43 pm

Nec_V20 wrote:as you can see the dust filtered side panel does allow for a lot of airflow to reach the cooler and I have done the smoke test and air is coming out of the bottom half of the side panel and is being drawn in from the top half.
That shows the airflow through the case is very inefficient. You are pulling air in and expelling it through the same very concentrated area. Oh, and you do realise that a dust filter should be on your intake only, not your exhaust? It is possible to build a system to function well without filters but with the turbulent airflow you have you can forget this.
Nec_V20 wrote:The size of the case itself is slightly larger than a sheet of paper
It is over 28 litres which for a MiniITX system without a graphics card and just an SSD is huge. 10L would have been possible 12-14L easily achievable.
Nec_V20 wrote:Here is a view from the side with the cover off:
This just shows you have the wrong case. There are huge unused volumes and the airflow arrangement is madness.
Nec_V20 wrote:On this picture you can clearly see that the cables are routed either below or above the 200mm fan, in the next pictures from the top you will see that the cables are also routed around the side of the fan as well.
This is quite a cable tangle. Have you perhaps considered some cable tidying?!? This is not about aesthetics but about cooling and about ease of making sense of the internals of the system when building it. This is just a mess.
Nec_V20 wrote:The air being shunted in by the 200mm fan (which as I said, even with the Low Noise Adapter stepping down the rotation of the fan, still pumps more cooler ambient air into the system than the included 140mm fan going full whack) has a completely clear and unobstructed path to where it is meant to go
The airflow is wasted. If you had a big tower heatsink or other hot components in the way to make use of the airflow then it might make sense. Right now it is largely blowing air past your components, not through the heatsink. It is NOT about airflow but about heatflow! By the way, you still haven't stated much detail on fan speeds or indeed any temperatures for this fantastic work of genius that you have built.
Nec_V20 wrote:I put a hell of a lot of consideration into my choice of case
Seriously?
Nec_V20 wrote:You will also notice on the cooler the 120mm fan on the top and the 80mm fan on the bottom.
Yes, and this does not fit in well with the fact you're pushing a lot of air from the front.
Nec_V20 wrote:Both fans on the cooler are PWM fans and both are attached to a Low Noise Adapter meaning that the 80mm fan has a top rotational speed of 1750 rpm and the 120mm Noctua NF-F12 PWM has a top rotational speed of 1300 rpm. I have set the fan profiles to ramp up gradually as the temperatures increase
And what RPMs are you getting? Unless you can state some useful RPMs and temperatures then you can't say you've managed some masterpiece of thermal design. I simply don't believe on the photo evidence and specs that this is even a remotely good thermal design.
Nec_V20 wrote:The top down arrangement of the cooler ensures that there are no dead spaces where heat could build up
I would disagree but no doubt your masterful thermal design allows you to conquer some problems.
Nec_V20 wrote:I should say that I have been building systems for over 30 years now, so I know exactly what I am looking for in hardware
Then I feel sorry for you.
Nec_V20 wrote:Now we get to the top view of the system with the top cover removed from slightly different angles:
[snip]
As you could see from the side view the cables were routed either below or above the 200mm fan and now from the top you can see that the cables are routed to the left and the right of the 200mm fan and that the the air has a completely unimpeded path from the fan to the components that need cooling.

No. What I can see is a right spaghetti tangle of cables. What are they even all for? It's not like you have many components in there to cable up. Did you just go into a branch of Maplin and buy some extra cables to connect up 'just in case the other cables fail, you know Murphy's law'?
Nec_V20 wrote:You don't like the colour of the Noctua fan?
No, I'm OK with it. I have a Noctua in my system running at 300rpm. Great fan even if it's got a colour scheme based upon the output from the two opposite ends of a baby.
Nec_V20 wrote:haI ve been using Noctua fans for over a decade and a half
Noctua were established in 2005. That's 11 years ago. Please check their website to confirm this or elaborate further on your time travelling arrangements.
Nec_V20 wrote:My previous main system ran 24/7 for 1,790 days before I replaced it with my new one.
Why run a system 24/7 for all of that time? What do you have to do that requires a computer to run all of the time? It makes no sense for personal users.
Nec_V20 wrote:I use 5mm Neodymium ball magnets (usually four of them) to attach my USB or other cables to the side of my case so that I always have them to hand and they don't get lost in the clutter of my desk. There is nothing worse than having to hunt for a USB cable that you have not used in weeks but really need NOW.

That's the way I like it, that's the way I want it and that's the reason why I would never consider buying an aluminium case.
Ordinarily I'd consider this a pretty strange thing for someone to post BUT this pales into comparison versus most of the other things you post. Even so it's the strangest reason I've ever heard for using steel over aluminium. So why exactly do you need to keep a USB cable stuck magnetically to the side of your case? Personally I'd avoid using strong magnets like that near sensitive electronics, like you might find inside a computer.

Nec_V20
Posts: 49
Joined: Mon Apr 25, 2016 1:22 am

Re: Silent Grizwald

Post by Nec_V20 » Tue Apr 26, 2016 3:01 pm

edh wrote:
Nec_V20 wrote:I am a firm believer in Murphy's Law in that, if I have a backup system, I can virtually guarantee that nothing will go wrong with my main system.
Sorry but the universe doesn't quite work like that. :wink: Superstitions generally don't have any real truth. As a life long cheapskate I can't endorse building a 2nd machine just as a backup I'm afraid. Do you really believe that your WHOLE computer might blow requiring you to replace the WHOLE thing? If anything blows it will be a single component and at the time it blows it is likely to be replaceable for less than the cost it is right now.
Nec_V20 wrote:I would agree that a Seasonic would have come into consideration, however they are not readily available in the UK where I live.
Really? Plenty of Seasonic PSUs show up in a Google Shopping search. If anything Superflower is more difficult to find. I own an X400 and am very happy with it.
Nec_V20 wrote:I have had very good experiences with GigaByte boards and very bad experiences with ASUS boards.
How is the fan control? Gigabyte fan control isn't best liked on SPCR.
Nec_V20 wrote:The Corsair Obsidian 250D was the only one which met my requirements, small footprint, mini-ITX, and most important the ability to put a 200mm fan in the front. Even with a Noctua Low Noise Adapter fitted to the fan, it pumps in more air to the case than the included 140mm fan would have done going at full whack.
Not sure I'd agree with the Corsair for this system. It is massive for a MiniITX system without a graphics card. The TDP of your components does not match up with the intended use for such a case and the 200mm fan is wasted if there isn't a set of hot components to cool. Plus obscure large sized fans generally don't have the best sound characteristics. Common fan sizes have more options available and of those options the best quiet fans will usually beat an unusual large fan for noise. Silverstone's 180mm fans are an example that divides opinion.
Nec_V20 wrote:I went with the NU-L12 because under load it was silent, but it also provides airflow to the Caps and VRMs around the CPU.
Not a good choice of cooler for such a system layout. You have laminar flow created by the front fan and then you stick in a top down cooler to spoil it. Use of a large tower heatsink would be more sensible.

What fan speeds are you running?
Nec_V20 wrote:Adding an extra GPU to the system would have essentially ended all possibility of the system running silently.
I disagree on that. The Corsair doesn't really help you by putting the expansion slots up against the side panel but you could install a card that runs passively at idle or you could retrofit a bit passive heatsink instead.
Nec_V20 wrote:Idle 36 Watts
That's quite a lot for a modern low power system like this. Have you looked at BIOS options to disable things that you do not need?
Nec_V20 wrote:but you save back what you have invested relatively quickly.
No, it's all entirely unnecessary expenditure as it's purely a backup system based upon some highly improbable failure on your main system and not being able to live without a computer for the few days that it might take to find replacement parts. Still, I'm assuming you're an adult and earn your own living and this is coming out of taxable income in which case thank you for putting more money into the hands of the taxman.
Nec_V20 wrote:I put a lot of thought into what I put into the build and I have an advantage over someone like you - I am autistic (Asperger's).
Sorry, that's not acceptable to say. What you have done here is just assume that your own view of the world is correct. It is not. You may feel you are intelligent (maybe you are) but that does not mean that you are experienced or that others here or not as intelligent as or indeed more intelligent than you.
Nec_V20 wrote:The only reason why I put the LED lights in it was to see what it would look like, not because I wanted them.
Remove them. I don't even need to see pictures. They are entirely illogical adding power consumption and heat to what is unlikely to be a well optimised system for cooling.
I should have put a smiley at the end of the "Murphy's Law" part. It was meant to be tongue in cheek but, due to my autism, I am not very good at that kind of thing. I have a number of reasons for building this machine for myself some of which I will enumerate below in answer other points you have raised.

There are actually three "superstitions" which I find useful to keep in mind:

1) Murphy's (or Sod's) Law - anything which can go wrong will go wrong
2) Hanlon's Razor - Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity
3) Peter Principle - In every hierarchy people will always be promoted to the level of their incompetency

One of the real reasons for building the machine was the fact that I was interested to see first hand what AMD had to offer with regard to their APU's. Although I would usually go with Intel I just got sick of hearing Intel and AMD fanboys slag each other off and proof of the pudding is in the eating, so I wanted to find out for myself where the limits lay.

To your second comment about Seasonic PSU's the cheapest price I could find for a Seasonic X400 platinum rated PSU is £105 and it was out of stock, whereas platinum Super Flower PSU I have in my system cost me £79. It reminded me of last year when I was hunting for parts for the build that the Seasonic PSU's which met my criteria were either out of stock or just ridiculously expensive and then had another whacking big postage cost on top of that because it had to come from outside the UK. Question do you have the gold or the platinum rated x400?

I don't just want any old PSU - Seasonic or otherwise - I want a PSU which meets MY criteria. After I have compiled a shortlist I then check them out and research them thoroughly.

To your third comment, I have no problems whatsoever with the fan control on the GigaByte board. The only criticism I could bring up would be that the board itself only has two fan headers. This is to say that I have had nothing which has negatively come to my attention with regard to the fans in my system after I set up the profiles for them. I don't know what you or others would consider to be the specific shortcomings of GigaByte as opposed to say ASUS or MSI or some other board manufacturer.

I will say that the fan headers on my main system which has a Gigabyte GA-Z97-Gaming G1-Wifi-BK are a bit awkwardly placed and not as good as on other boards.

To your fourth comment, I hardly think the CoolerMaster 200mm fan could be called "obscure" by any stretch of the imagination. Over the past decade I have had a total of seven of these fans in various systems and only one of them went wonky on me (after about five years of being on 24/7 in two different systems). I have described in detail above with the pictures of my system why I wanted this case and a 200mm fan for the system. Suffice it to say that even with the Low Noise Adapter the 200mm fan SILENTLY pushes more cool air into the system than the supplied 140mm fan would have at full whack and making a relatively speaking racket in the process.

The TDP of the 7870K is 95 Watts - as a comparison the TDP of the i7-4790K I have in my main machine is 88 Watts. As opposed to the i7-4790K where I disabled the onboard graphics I am using the graphics portion of the 7870K. The two sticks of Corsair 2400 RAM I have in the system running at 1.65 volts also get toasty and the components around the CPU socket like the caps and VRMs also need cooling.

So I would disagree with you that the 200mm fan in the front shunting in cool air is inappropriate to the TDP of the system.

I wrote that it had a small footprint, not the SMALLEST footprint and I did so for a reason. Smallest footprint was not a consideration. If I had gone for smallest then, from what I saw I would have had to make really foul compromises with regard to other components and by foul I mean absolutely reeking - things like no USB three connectors on the front for instance. Aside from that although I don't have much of an aesthetic sense I do want a case that I find appealing - although this would not be a deal-breaking thing - and I quite like the looks of the Corsair 250D.

Why in the name of the wee man would I ever consider something which really is obscure like a 180mm fan?

To your fifth point, like you I was torn between getting the top down Noctua NH-L12 or a tower heatsink. So I got both. As well as the NH-L12 I bought a Noctua NH-U9S and a second 92mm fan. I tested both and prefer the top down NH-L12. Sure I have the laminar flow from the 200mm fan in the front, BUT, I have the air across the motherboard blocked by the two rather tall Corsair Vengeance Pro 2400 RAM. The fans of the tower cooler would overhang the components surrounding the CPU socket and effectively insulate them from any airflow. Sure warm air is being directed down on those components (capacitors and VRMs); however the air is still a damned sight cooler than the heat they generate. Also the top down arrangement, if you look at the side view of the system in the pictures in my other post above means that there is no dead pocket of air which can accumulate between the RAM modules which are quite heavily accessed by the graphics portion of the A10-7870K APU.

I did the smoke test and the top down NH-L12 actually draws in cool air through the top of the side vent and warm air comes out of the bottom of that vent, whereas the the NH-U9S shunts the air it gets from the 200mm fan in the front out the back with hardly anything venting out of the side.

With the Low Noise Adapters attached to both the 120mm Noctua NF-F12 PWM and the 80mm Noctua NF-A8 PWM fans they run at a maximum RPM of 1300 and 1750 respectively. When running even the post tortuous of the benchmark tests for well over an hour the fans never ramped up to anywhere near full revs and remained totally silent to my ear. As far as I can remember the 120mm fan never went above around 800 RPM.

To your sixth point, the whole point of the exercise for me was mainly to see if I could build a performant computer using the AMD 7870K APU without the need of a separate GPU. If I had had a separate GPU in mind then I would NEVER have gone for the 7870K APU in the first place. And let's face it, the performance of the passively cooled GPUs are pretty underwhelming at best.

To your seventh point. I have an i7-4790K as my main machine and at idle, just running Windows it uses 143 Watts. I have to also say that I have undervolted the CPU to the tune of -0.130 volts (the system is rock solid stable at an undervoltage of -0.130 Volts, but gives me a BSOD at -0.131 Volts). This may not seem like much, but it makes a difference of around 50 Watts that the system draws out of the socket when I am running a benchmark like OCCT 4.4.1 on it.

Where I live I have had a number of blackouts one of which lasted over a day.

I have hacked or modded if you like my UPS to accommodate larger batteries and system, monitor and comms equipment, runs for just over 22 hours on battery. My i7-4790K wouldn't even make it to the six hour mark.

36 Watts is not what the system uses on idle, but rather what it draws from the socket. The PSU at this power level is not anywhere near peak efficiency and only at around 90% so the system is in fact using 32.4 Watts. I have found that the APU does not under any circumstances like any kind of undervolting whatsoever. I can get the power requirement of the entire system down if I disable the onboard WiFi for instance, but that would not be the be point.

To your seventh point, I have to say that this is my fault. As I explained in answer to your first point I made that comment tongue in cheek, but being autistic I am not very good at that kind of thing and I should really have put a smiley in to reinforce that. I thought I was being obvious and obviously I was not. Mea culpa I apologise and abase myself for misleading you.

This having been said, an RMA of, for instance, a motherboard would take significantly more than a week (in the case of ASUS that should read never - been there, done that, didn't get the replacement and thus don't buy them any more) and not just "a few days".

I just turned 57 a couple of days ago and have been a bleeding-edge techie for around 34 years now, so I think the term "adult" would be appropriate :D

To your seventh point, I think you (personally) mistook the way I was using the word "you", which I did in the way one would use the word "one" (see what I did there?). With regard to my autism (Asperger's) I have found that cats, dogs and computers tend to really like me - humans not so much. On the other hand three out of four ain't bad.

As far as intelligence is concerned I was accepted into MENSA when I was 19 and nobody was more surprised than I. How that came about is a long story and was completely coincidental. It came as an absolute shock to me when I was diagnosed with autism when I was in my mid twenties - again a long story and this time very coincidental - and I buried it in shame for well over two decades because of the stigma and only brought up the courage to come out publicly and admit it a few years ago.

I was not however talking about intelligence but rather the affinity I seem to have with computers in contrast to "normals".

In my time as Senior German Engineer for Enterprise Disaster-Recovery Tech-Support I dealt with over 17,000 individual cases/escalations and failed to resolve 223 (I don't count kludges or workarounds as resolutions). At one point I achieved something truly unique in that for two days I had ZERO open cases. At this level of tech-support dealing with more than 15 and resolving more than eight per day is considered good. I dealt with around 39 per day and had to maybe call back five times or so, my "first time fix" percentage was way above 75%. The maximum I ever managed in one day was 49.

In over 95% of the cases I never needed to touch our stuff to sort the problem and the people who reached me had already been through the mill of the top line enteprise support of Microsoft, Novell, HP, Dell, Quantum etc, et al, ad nausaem before they had the good fortune to reach me or one of my boys (my girls were also my boys) and get their problem sorted. I never turned a customer away even though I could prove that our stuff had absolutely NOTHING to do with their problem. In a lot of cases it was easy enough to prove it had nothing to do with our stuff if a SCSI sense key of either 9, 11 or 15 (in Windows a System event ID of the same number) occurred. ID 9 and ID 11 pointed to the tape drive and ID 15 always pointed to the autoloader. The fix took less than a minute and I only knew about it because of an article I had read in volume 18 of the German magazine c't from 1998 page 193 column 3 onto column 4.

I am deeply grateful that despite my cognitive impairment I found something which I could excel at.

To point nine, I quite like them and they add naff-all to the cooling load. I have no cooling problem as witnessed by the fact that I can run the most tortuous of benchmark tests for over an hour and the system doesn't even break into a mild sweat as far as cooling is concerned. I will give you that they are illogical and that the system power requirement would be reduced without them. In the case that I am reduced to running on the UPS I can easily disconnect them.

Nec_V20
Posts: 49
Joined: Mon Apr 25, 2016 1:22 am

Re: Silent Grizwald

Post by Nec_V20 » Tue Apr 26, 2016 3:06 pm

Cistron wrote:I'm Austrian and I take offence of the Germans booking German as their language. :mrgreen: (plus we sound way cooler)

Dude, chill and just follow the moderators' wishes. Humour is debatable.

edit: So, are you gonna post any pictures of your build? This is what this is all about in the end. Pics or it didn't happen!
Kann nichts dafür, dass ich 'nen Piefke bin. :D

I put the pictures in so you can now tear me apart to your heart's content. :)

Actually I would be interested in the feedback.

Nec_V20
Posts: 49
Joined: Mon Apr 25, 2016 1:22 am

Re: Silent Grizwald

Post by Nec_V20 » Tue Apr 26, 2016 5:52 pm

edh wrote:
Nec_V20 wrote:as you can see the dust filtered side panel does allow for a lot of airflow to reach the cooler and I have done the smoke test and air is coming out of the bottom half of the side panel and is being drawn in from the top half.
That shows the airflow through the case is very inefficient. You are pulling air in and expelling it through the same very concentrated area. Oh, and you do realise that a dust filter should be on your intake only, not your exhaust? It is possible to build a system to function well without filters but with the turbulent airflow you have you can forget this.
Nec_V20 wrote:The size of the case itself is slightly larger than a sheet of paper
It is over 28 litres which for a MiniITX system without a graphics card and just an SSD is huge. 10L would have been possible 12-14L easily achievable.
Nec_V20 wrote:Here is a view from the side with the cover off:
This just shows you have the wrong case. There are huge unused volumes and the airflow arrangement is madness.
Nec_V20 wrote:On this picture you can clearly see that the cables are routed either below or above the 200mm fan, in the next pictures from the top you will see that the cables are also routed around the side of the fan as well.
This is quite a cable tangle. Have you perhaps considered some cable tidying?!? This is not about aesthetics but about cooling and about ease of making sense of the internals of the system when building it. This is just a mess.
Nec_V20 wrote:The air being shunted in by the 200mm fan (which as I said, even with the Low Noise Adapter stepping down the rotation of the fan, still pumps more cooler ambient air into the system than the included 140mm fan going full whack) has a completely clear and unobstructed path to where it is meant to go
The airflow is wasted. If you had a big tower heatsink or other hot components in the way to make use of the airflow then it might make sense. Right now it is largely blowing air past your components, not through the heatsink. It is NOT about airflow but about heatflow! By the way, you still haven't stated much detail on fan speeds or indeed any temperatures for this fantastic work of genius that you have built.
Nec_V20 wrote:I put a hell of a lot of consideration into my choice of case
Seriously?
Nec_V20 wrote:You will also notice on the cooler the 120mm fan on the top and the 80mm fan on the bottom.
Yes, and this does not fit in well with the fact you're pushing a lot of air from the front.
Nec_V20 wrote:Both fans on the cooler are PWM fans and both are attached to a Low Noise Adapter meaning that the 80mm fan has a top rotational speed of 1750 rpm and the 120mm Noctua NF-F12 PWM has a top rotational speed of 1300 rpm. I have set the fan profiles to ramp up gradually as the temperatures increase
And what RPMs are you getting? Unless you can state some useful RPMs and temperatures then you can't say you've managed some masterpiece of thermal design. I simply don't believe on the photo evidence and specs that this is even a remotely good thermal design.
Nec_V20 wrote:The top down arrangement of the cooler ensures that there are no dead spaces where heat could build up
I would disagree but no doubt your masterful thermal design allows you to conquer some problems.
Nec_V20 wrote:I should say that I have been building systems for over 30 years now, so I know exactly what I am looking for in hardware
Then I feel sorry for you.
Nec_V20 wrote:Now we get to the top view of the system with the top cover removed from slightly different angles:
[snip]
As you could see from the side view the cables were routed either below or above the 200mm fan and now from the top you can see that the cables are routed to the left and the right of the 200mm fan and that the the air has a completely unimpeded path from the fan to the components that need cooling.

No. What I can see is a right spaghetti tangle of cables. What are they even all for? It's not like you have many components in there to cable up. Did you just go into a branch of Maplin and buy some extra cables to connect up 'just in case the other cables fail, you know Murphy's law'?
Nec_V20 wrote:You don't like the colour of the Noctua fan?
No, I'm OK with it. I have a Noctua in my system running at 300rpm. Great fan even if it's got a colour scheme based upon the output from the two opposite ends of a baby.
Nec_V20 wrote:haI ve been using Noctua fans for over a decade and a half
Noctua were established in 2005. That's 11 years ago. Please check their website to confirm this or elaborate further on your time travelling arrangements.
Nec_V20 wrote:My previous main system ran 24/7 for 1,790 days before I replaced it with my new one.
Why run a system 24/7 for all of that time? What do you have to do that requires a computer to run all of the time? It makes no sense for personal users.
Nec_V20 wrote:I use 5mm Neodymium ball magnets (usually four of them) to attach my USB or other cables to the side of my case so that I always have them to hand and they don't get lost in the clutter of my desk. There is nothing worse than having to hunt for a USB cable that you have not used in weeks but really need NOW.

That's the way I like it, that's the way I want it and that's the reason why I would never consider buying an aluminium case.
Ordinarily I'd consider this a pretty strange thing for someone to post BUT this pales into comparison versus most of the other things you post. Even so it's the strangest reason I've ever heard for using steel over aluminium. So why exactly do you need to keep a USB cable stuck magnetically to the side of your case? Personally I'd avoid using strong magnets like that near sensitive electronics, like you might find inside a computer.
To point one, the smoke test shows that the arrangement is not just dependant for cooler air on what is supplied by the 200mm fan in the front. As I explained the reason why I put another filter on the front was that even with the Low Noise Adapter reducing the RPM of the 200mm fan it still had an audible sound. This disappeared entirely when I put a filter on the front of the fan.

To point two, smallest was never my objective. The size of the case makes it easy and convenient to work in. If smallest were my goal then obviously you would be correct.

Also the smaller and more constricted the more difficult it would be to dissipate heat.

To point three, the system never breaks a sweat even when the tortuous benchmarks are running full throttle for over an hour. A smaller case would mean more constrictions and thus more heat problems, never mind the PITA of working in it.

Size is a relative thing and there is a hell of lot less "wasted" space in the 250D than there is in the CoolerMaster HAF XB which houses my main i7-4790K rig.

To point four. when you look at the picture you are seeing a two dimensional representation of a three dimensional object. I have left some of the cable ties looser because I don't want to tighten them up until I am really certain that everything is in it and where it should be. All cables are however tied away from the 200mm fan and when you actually look at the case they are quite tidy. To a certain extent the "untidiness" is an optical illusion and also the fact that I am not completely 100% anal about these kinds of things.

To point five are you being sarcastic? I am not very good at recognising that kind of thing. Or are you genuinely trying to have a go at flaming me? Either way I really cannot make head nor tail of your intended criticism.

To point six, yes.

To point seven, the case is split into two halves, the top half and the bottom half. The air being pumped into the system also goes towards cooling the components in the bottom half. Presently I only have two SSDs in the system, however I will very likely be adding to the amount of drives and I want there to be good airflow to them. The big picture is more important than your narrow view.

To point eight, the highest the 120mm fan spins when the system is maxed out with regard to benchmark testing after an hour or so is around 800 RPM.

To point nine, was that sarcasm again, or are you trying to have a go at me? If so I think you might be sightseeing at the Islets of Langerhans.
I ran OCCT 4.4.1 again with AVX capable Linpack and memory usage set to 90% - which I think you will agree is a pretty gruelling benchmark test and after 10 minutes the temps were as follows:
System: 54 degrees Celsius
CPU: 61 degrees Celsius
Fan: 785 RPM

The start temperatures were:
System 48 degrees Celsius
CPU: 28 degrees Celsius
Fan: 460 RPM

Both fans run off the PWM splitter which again is connected to the Low Noise Adapter. The maximum RPM for the 120mm fan is 1,300 RPM, so it is running and holding steady at 60.3% of maximum RPM.

I think that's not bad as far as thermal design is concerned. Can you say the same for your system?

To point 10, why do you feel sorry for me? I enjoy building systems.

To point 11 again you are seeing a two dimensional representation of a three dimensional object, the cables from the PSU are tied down to the base of the case even though they do appear to be floating in mid air, also it is black on black and it is difficult to see. Also I am a craptastic photographer.

Presently there are four cables connected to my PSU. I am pretty sure you are attempting sarcasm now although it might be that you are even trying to be antagonistic. If I am wrong in this assessment then I apologise.

To point 13, subjectively it feels like I have been using Noctua fans forever. But looking back on it, my current main machine has been running over a year, the previous one for about five years and the one before that, when I first used Noctua fans ran for about four years. So adding that up it comes to a decade that I have been using them and not a decade and a half - my bad. Tempest fugit and sometimes it doesn't :D

To point 14 I am always doing something on my computer or having things run in the background. The system itself is never not doing anything useful for me, even when I am asleep.

To point 15, I am a complete disaster when it comes to putting things away and finding them again and my desk always looks like a bomb hit it - it is the Bermuda Triangle of desks with regard to anything I place on it. I have different devices that need different kinds of USB connectors micro USB, mini USB, USB3 Motorola style and lightning, not to mention a few round power plugs for instance for my Corsair Voyager Air external HD.

Over the many years I have tried many different ways to keep things out of the way, but still to hand when I need them and the magnets are my optimal solution and the only one which has ever worked for me.

I will agree that placing a strong magnet on the top of a mechanical harddrive would be a bonehead manoeuvre but on the outside of a steel case there are no problems whatsoever and I have not experienced any in the many years I have been doing this. The magnets are always pretty far away from any kind of sensitive electronics.

Different people have deal-breakers for different reasons, an aluminium case would be one of mine.

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Re: Silent Grizwald

Post by CA_Steve » Tue Apr 26, 2016 7:56 pm

magnets on the side of the case: Won't harm anything unless you decide to use them to store your credit cards (assuming they still have a mag stripe) on the side of the case....or your DOS floppy. :)

quest_for_silence
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Re: Silent Grizwald

Post by quest_for_silence » Wed Apr 27, 2016 12:47 am

Nec_V20 wrote:To point one...

Will you please comment nearby the relevant quoted sentences, and not at the end of the whole block as you did repeatedly?
What I'm asking usually helps readability (at least for other readers), particularly when you're replying to a rather long post: thanks in advance for your understandings.

Nec_V20 wrote:To point five are you being sarcastic? I am not very good at recognising that kind of thing. Or are you genuinely trying to have a go at flaming me?

As far as I can see, that comment was clearly not sarcastic/flaming (with others YMMV): it's not clear your intended goal for such a seemingly large front airflow.
According to edh, it would have been more understandable whether you were using a tower-style heatsink (for instance), but at any rate judging from the parts you used it wasn't clear why right a 200mm fan (though dialed down) were needed.

Nec_V20 wrote:however I will very likely be adding to the amount of drives and I want there to be good airflow to them. The big picture is more important than your narrow view.

Set aside that this specific, omitted requirement doesn't clearly address the original comment about how such a large front fan is beneficial for a top down cooler like the NH-L12, did you have specific previous experiences about the amount of airflow needed to cool hard drives which leaded to your decision to rely right upon a 200mm fan? Thanks in advance for sharing.

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Re: Silent Grizwald

Post by Nec_V20 » Wed Apr 27, 2016 3:51 am

quest_for_silence wrote:
Nec_V20 wrote:To point one...

Will you please comment nearby the relevant quoted sentences, and not at the end of the whole block as you did repeatedly?
What I'm asking usually helps readability (at least for other readers), particularly when you're replying to a rather long post: thanks in advance for your understandings.

Nec_V20 wrote:To point five are you being sarcastic? I am not very good at recognising that kind of thing. Or are you genuinely trying to have a go at flaming me?

As far as I can see, that comment was clearly not sarcastic/flaming (with others YMMV): it's not clear your intended goal for such a seemingly large front airflow.
According to edh, it would have been more understandable whether you were using a tower-style heatsink (for instance), but at any rate judging from the parts you used it wasn't clear why right a 200mm fan (though dialed down) were needed.

Nec_V20 wrote:however I will very likely be adding to the amount of drives and I want there to be good airflow to them. The big picture is more important than your narrow view.

Set aside that this specific, omitted requirement doesn't clearly address the original comment about how such a large front fan is beneficial for a top down cooler like the NH-L12, did you have specific previous experiences about the amount of airflow needed to cool hard drives which leaded to your decision to rely right upon a 200mm fan? Thanks in advance for sharing.
I thought I was very clear why I put in a 200mm fan.

Although my aim was not to make it the smallest it was my intended aim to make it as silent as possible.

With this in mind, dialling down the 140mm fan supplied with the case to a point where it was silent would have essentially meant next to no airflow through the case to the point where I might as well have taken it out altogether.

I explicitly stated a number of times, and I thought I had enunciated it unambiguously, that even with the Low Noise Adapter connected to the 200mm fan, that is making the fan as silent as I could, it was still shunting more air in than the 140mm fan going full whack and making a comparatively speaking huge racket.

You obviously were fixated on the airflow aspect to the point where you COMPLETELY missed the point if dialling down the 200mm fan and still having a good supply of cooler ambient air being supplied SILENTLY to the case and in the process creating an overpressure in the case to carry warm air out of the case through the vents in the side and back.

It was also the reason why I put a filter on the front of the fan, because even though it was really quiet there was a sound emanating from the fan which was, although barely, audible. I did have a 200mm fan filter to hand (attached to the exhaust fan from the top of my CoolerMaster HAF XB case housing my main machine) and attached it to see what would happen. The barely audible sound disappeared entirely.

SSDs although they may not contain any moving parts do become quite warm when in use so airflow to them should be supplied. I saw a really good deal on a 480GB Sandisk Ultra II SSD (£75 including postage) so now the system has two SSDs in it (with the LED lights in the system the idle energy draw out of the socket has gone up from 36 to 42 Watts).

I thought it was eminently obvious that expandability of the system (with more drives for instance) was inherently implicit and didn't need to be explicitly expounded upon.

One of the main reasons for coming out as autistic and not trying to hide it was because over the years I had become very tired of "normals" attributing motives or motivations to me which were and still are inexplicable to me.

The main reactions I have had over the past few years from "normals" to my telling them of my autism:

1) "You can't be autistic, because you are too intelligent"
2) "You cannot rely on a self diagnosis and you must be wrong"
3) That I articulate the fact that I am autistic for some self-aggrandizing reason

With regard to point 2) I did not "self-diagnose" but rather I was diagnosed with Asperger's by the professor of the Clinical Psychology department of Bonn University (he was the one who broke the devastating news to me). I didn't even realise up the the point where I was given the diagnosis that I was being tested for autism.

Point 3) is the most confusing and probably says more about "normals" than it does about me. I cannot see one single reason why coming out publicly as autistic would in any way be advantageous to me, given that I know the rabid prejudices of "normals" towards autistic people or people with mental health issues.

The easiest way I could try to describe my autism is by likening it to being colour blind, where the person sees everything that everyone else see, except for bits of it which he doesn't. Now imagine a colour blind person reading a book where most of the sentences are in black print, except for some sentences which are in red that he can't see. If enough of those sentences are important ones and enough of them are in red print, then the book he is reading loses much if not all of its meaning.

I have experienced the same on this thread where comments I have read are just simply inexplicable and when I have asked for clarification I get something back that is obviously meant to make sense to me, because it obviously makes sense to you "normals", but it doesn't.

The title of the the thread is, "Silent Grizwald", not "Miniscule Grizwald", or "Runs like a bat out of hell Grizwald", or "No cash limit to spend Grizwald", or "The greatest thing since sliced bread Grizwald", or "Suck on this you plebes Grizwald".

It might disappoint some of you to know that not all autistic people sit in a corner drooling and soiling themselves and sticking ice-cream cones into there foreheads instead of their mouths.

I cannot however blame you, because whenever I see any articles about autism they focus on the poor "normal" parents who are lumbered with an autistic child. The articles end up as adult parental pity-parties instead of giving the actual, or in fact any, autistic people a voice. This kind of reporting in the media would be intolerable with regard to reporting on gay people and anyone writing or printing an article like that would be tarred and feathered today.

I am very happy that, with the budget limit I set myself (around £500), I had the enjoyment of the hunt for the components I wanted for the best price, that I went in a new direction as regards creating a system, that the result exceeded my expectations, that I explored new avenues outside of my comfort zone.

Am I happy with the result? Yes. Am I proud of the system? Yes. Is it the greatest thing since Charles Brabbage decided to bang some gears together? Hell No.

Some of your responses (and I don't just mean you personally but also others on this thread) strike me as if you thought that the existence of my system or my creating this thread were some kind of existential threat to you and that is completely inexplicable.

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Re: Silent Grizwald

Post by quest_for_silence » Wed Apr 27, 2016 5:31 am

Nec_V20 wrote:I thought I was very clear why I put in a 200mm fan.

Perhaps you thought that just because you're autistic, but the reason is not really important.

Nec_V20 wrote:dialling down the 140mm fan supplied with the case to a point where it was silent would have essentially meant next to no airflow through the case

The same goes for a 200mm fan: dialing down the Mega Flow to the lowest pace (that is around 150rpm) will leave an abysmal <10CFM through the case, and with the second dust filter even some 20-40% less. At higher rotating speeds your statements may become even more questionable.
In other words, your description doesn't match known figures and common experiences (and as said just above, that's possibly the point you missed being autistic).

Nec_V20 wrote:I explicitly stated a number of times, and I thought I had enunciated it unambiguously, that even with the Low Noise Adapter connected to the 200mm fan, that is making the fan as silent as I could, it was still shunting more air in than the 140mm fan going full whack and making a comparatively speaking huge racket.
That's not what you were asked of: particularly you were not asked about a comparison with the stock fan.
Not to mention stock Corsair fans are not well regarded here.

Nec_V20 wrote:creating an overpressure in the case to carry warm air out of the case through the vents in the side and back.

Larger fans usually offers lower pressure than smaller ones (and no, the Mega Flow doesn't have any specific feature to improve pressure).

Nec_V20 wrote:It was also the reason why I put a filter on the front of the fan, because even though it was really quiet there was a sound emanating from the fan which was, although barely, audible. I did have a 200mm fan filter to hand (attached to the exhaust fan from the top of my CoolerMaster HAF XB case housing my main machine) and attached it to see what would happen. The barely audible sound disappeared entirely.

Because that way you cut down the airflow, somehow vouching for the possibility that such an airflow either wasn't necessary or was somewhat counterproductive/self-defeating, noise wise.

Nec_V20 wrote:SSDs although they may not contain any moving parts do become quite warm when in use so airflow to them should be supplied.
I saw a really good deal on a 480GB Sandisk Ultra II SSD (£75 including postage) so now the system has two SSDs in it (with the LED lights in the system the idle energy draw out of the socket has gone up from 36 to 42 Watts).

I thought it was eminently obvious that expandability of the system (with more drives for instance) was inherently implicit and didn't need to be explicitly expounded upon.

That's not what you were asked of: particularly that's another omitted reason but, above all, without figures that's a seemingly groundless assumption; with reference to my experience, all the 2.5" SSDs I have run at acceptable temperature without any fan blowing on it, regardless of the mounting.

Nec_V20 wrote:One of the main reasons for coming out as autistic and not trying to hide it was because over the years I had become very tired of "normals" attributing motives or motivations to me which were and still are inexplicable to me.

I didn't put and I don't put into question your patology, though I'd agree that by "normals" you may easily be seen as lacking good manners, to the point to mix up such a behaviour as intentional lack of respect.
But I don't blame you so much for that, given also that our kind moderator CA_Steve told me (more than once) that I too tend to somehow "piss off" other posters (even if I'm not autistic, or so I think).

Back in track, you were asked (at least that's what I meant) to explain us some of your technical choices/reasonings (and not about perhaps looking that immodest).
Particularly, talking about disk drives (but with reference to a top flow cooler too), I asked if you had (or not, that's legitimate) some quantitative measures of the impact of a supposed increase in airflow in a typical desktop scenario (like that of your mITX build) to support the choices you made: do you mind to stay on this (or strictly related) topic? Thanks.

Nec_V20 wrote:I am very happy that, with the budget limit I set myself (around £500), I had the enjoyment of the hunt for the components I wanted for the best price, that I went in a new direction as regards creating a system, that the result exceeded my expectations, that I explored new avenues outside of my comfort zone.

That's about what I think about your new rig: seemingly another good trade off among low noise, personal beliefs and some specific cost savings.

Nec_V20 wrote:Some of your responses (and I don't just mean you personally but also others on this thread) strike me as if you thought that the existence of my system or my creating this thread were some kind of existential threat to you and that is completely inexplicable.
Well, I can't speak on behalf of other posters, but no, I think it isn't so.
As far as I can see it's mostly that some of your technical choices/solutions didn't match quite precisely either common wisdom or other people experiences: on the other hand, it's comparing different stances that our (shared) knowledge may improve, isn't it? Have a nice time.

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Re: Silent Grizwald

Post by Nec_V20 » Wed Apr 27, 2016 7:43 am

quest_for_silence wrote:
Nec_V20 wrote:I thought I was very clear why I put in a 200mm fan.

Perhaps you thought that just because you're autistic, but the reason is not really important.

Nec_V20 wrote:dialling down the 140mm fan supplied with the case to a point where it was silent would have essentially meant next to no airflow through the case

The same goes for a 200mm fan: dialing down the Mega Flow to the lowest pace (that is around 150rpm) will leave an abysmal <10CFM through the case, and with the second dust filter even some 20-40% less. At higher rotating speeds your statements may become even more questionable.
In other words, your description doesn't match known figures and common experiences (and as said just above, that's possibly the point you missed being autistic).

Nec_V20 wrote:I explicitly stated a number of times, and I thought I had enunciated it unambiguously, that even with the Low Noise Adapter connected to the 200mm fan, that is making the fan as silent as I could, it was still shunting more air in than the 140mm fan going full whack and making a comparatively speaking huge racket.
That's not what you were asked of: particularly you were not asked about a comparison with the stock fan.
Not to mention stock Corsair fans are not well regarded here.

Nec_V20 wrote:creating an overpressure in the case to carry warm air out of the case through the vents in the side and back.

Larger fans usually offers lower pressure than smaller ones (and no, the Mega Flow doesn't have any specific feature to improve pressure).

Nec_V20 wrote:It was also the reason why I put a filter on the front of the fan, because even though it was really quiet there was a sound emanating from the fan which was, although barely, audible. I did have a 200mm fan filter to hand (attached to the exhaust fan from the top of my CoolerMaster HAF XB case housing my main machine) and attached it to see what would happen. The barely audible sound disappeared entirely.

Because that way you cut down the airflow, somehow vouching for the possibility that such an airflow either wasn't necessary or was somewhat counterproductive/self-defeating, noise wise.

Nec_V20 wrote:SSDs although they may not contain any moving parts do become quite warm when in use so airflow to them should be supplied.
I saw a really good deal on a 480GB Sandisk Ultra II SSD (£75 including postage) so now the system has two SSDs in it (with the LED lights in the system the idle energy draw out of the socket has gone up from 36 to 42 Watts).

I thought it was eminently obvious that expandability of the system (with more drives for instance) was inherently implicit and didn't need to be explicitly expounded upon.

That's not what you were asked of: particularly that's another omitted reason but, above all, without figures that's a seemingly groundless assumption; with reference to my experience, all the 2.5" SSDs I have run at acceptable temperature without any fan blowing on it, regardless of the mounting.

Nec_V20 wrote:One of the main reasons for coming out as autistic and not trying to hide it was because over the years I had become very tired of "normals" attributing motives or motivations to me which were and still are inexplicable to me.

I didn't put and I don't put into question your patology, though I'd agree that by "normals" you may easily be seen as lacking good manners, to the point to mix up such a behaviour as intentional lack of respect.
But I don't blame you so much for that, given also that our kind moderator CA_Steve told me (more than once) that I too tend to somehow "piss off" other posters (even if I'm not autistic, or so I think).

Back in track, you were asked (at least that's what I meant) to explain us some of your technical choices/reasonings (and not about perhaps looking that immodest).
Particularly, talking about disk drives, I asked if you had (or not, that's legitimate) some quantitative measures of the impact of a supposed increase in airflow in a typical desktop scenario (like that of a mITX build) to support the choices you made: do you mind to stay on this (or strictly related) topic? Thanks.

Nec_V20 wrote:I am very happy that, with the budget limit I set myself (around £500), I had the enjoyment of the hunt for the components I wanted for the best price, that I went in a new direction as regards creating a system, that the result exceeded my expectations, that I explored new avenues outside of my comfort zone.

That's about what I think about your new rig: seemingly another good trade off among low noise, personal belief and some specific cost savings.

Nec_V20 wrote:Some of your responses (and I don't just mean you personally but also others on this thread) strike me as if you thought that the existence of my system or my creating this thread were some kind of existential threat to you and that is completely inexplicable.
Well, I can't speak on behalf of other posters, but no, I think it isn't so.
As far as I can see it's mostly that some of your technical choices/solutions didn't match quite precisely either common wisdom or other people experiences: on the other hand, it's comparing different stances that our (shared) knowledge may improve, isn't it? Have a nice time.
Because I think that your first point was rhetorical I will skip to your second point. Where, in anything I have written did I say, or even imply that I had stepped down the RPM of the 200mm fan to its lowest speed? With the Low Noise Adapter the 200mm fan spins at around 570 RPM and shifts around 90 CFM. The 140mm fan supplied with the case when spinning at its maximum of 1,200 RPM causing a racket as it does so shifts around 66 CFM.

To your third point, then it appears you don't know what you were wanting to ask about considering the complete silliness of your supposing that I have the 200mm fan running at 150 RPM and being able to shunt less than 10 CFM. I cannot answer what you are asking when you yourself do not know what you asking.

To your fourth point I don't think the filter offers enough of a resistance to the airflow to warrant that it have a high static pressure.

To your fifth point, the filter I bought for the fan can have the mesh removed whilst the frame is still attached to the fan. With the mesh removed the barely audible noise was gone. I put the mesh back into the frame after having tested out if it made any difference to the benchmarks in terms of temperatures without it and it didn't. So the adding of the frame itself, without the mesh caused the slight noise to abate.

So this was neither counterproductive nor self-defeating. This is a link to the description of the dust filter I bought, although not the vendor I bought it from:
http://www.frozencpu.com/products/10222 ... d=f3IQ7EAw

You seem to be labouring under the misapprehension that you are speaking with a n00b. I might be new to this forum, but not new to the subject matter of computers - to the tune of about 34 years.

Your assertions - especially those with regard to my choice of a 200mm fan to replace the 140mm stock fan are just not borne out by the facts.

But you just go ahead and keep on making up objections pulled fresh and steamy from your nether regions and I will continue to knock them flat on the posterior from whence they originated.

To your sixth point, with regard to temperatures it all depends on how intensively you use your SSDs and how constricted the enclosure is where they are situated. So again your own anecdotal experience is moot considering that I cannot know, because you have not told me, what your system is and how it is configured.

I know there is airflow around my drives in their bay because I can feel air coming out the back of the drive enclosure and the smoke test also confirms this.

Are you seriously trying to tell me that you don't think that SSDs develop heat when they are in use? Are you seriously trying to suggest that ensuring some airflow to the SSDs is superfluous? Does the light on your VCR blink?

To your seventh point, in my very first post I anticipated that I would be asked for my reasoning with regard to the choices I made and listed them:

From my very first post in this thread:
My choices in detail.

PSU: I consider the PSU to be, by far, the most important single component of a computer. A 550W PSU is overkill for the build I know; however Super Flower makes some of the best if not the best analog PSUs available. Under 550W I could not find something with the acceptable quality combined with the features I wanted (hybrid fan, very low ripple, highest quality components, real platinum rating, expected longevity). At a price I was willing to pay.

I know that some of you will say, "You should have gone with a Seasonic". I would agree that a Seasonic would have come into consideration, however they are not readily available in the UK where I live. Buying one from outside the UK would entail paying quite a lot in postage and the Seasonic PSU's I was looking at would have ended up costing about twice as much as the PSU I decided upon, which is readily available in the UK.

Mobo: I have had very good experiences with GigaByte boards and very bad experiences with ASUS boards. I wanted a board that would be as all-singing, all-dancing, as I could get and that included WiFi. I am not an audiophile and I can get by very well on the onboard sound subsystem.

Case: The Corsair Obsidian 250D was the only one which met my requirements, small footprint, mini-ITX, and most important the ability to put a 200mm fan in the front. Even with a Noctua Low Noise Adapter fitted to the fan, it pumps in more air to the case than the included 140mm fan would have done going at full whack.

Cooler: This was a toss-up and I actually bought both coolers I was considering to test them out. The other cooler I bought was the Noctua NH-U9S with an extra Noctua NF-A9 fan. I went with the NU-L12 because under load it was silent, but it also provides airflow to the Caps and VRMs around the CPU. Although it does block off access to the PCI-e slot, I was not intending to use that so this was not a consideration.

CPU: This was a no-brainer. Adding an extra GPU to the system would have essentially ended all possibility of the system running silently and the onboard graphics of the Intel CPU's suck. The GPU portion of the 7870K is more than adequate for my needs and has pleasantly surprised me with regard to the games I like to play, such as Diablo III: Reaper of Souls or Starcraft II, never mind Age of Empires II and III or Europa Universalis IV. It is of course imperative that one buys the fastest RAM compatible with the motherboard.

SSD: Again a no-brainer. A mechanical harddrive just makes too much noise. The reason why I went with the Sandisk is because it has good performance and I got it for a price which I just could not refuse.

Optical Drive: Don't generally need one. I have an external Samsung Blu-Ray writer for the very occasional times I need to have an optical drive attached to my system.

RAM: I got the 16GB (2*8GB) Corsair Vengeance Pro 2400MHz for less than half price from one very good and reputable vendor and I have had very good experiences with Corsair RAM in the past. The RAM runs at the fastest speed compatible with my system.
How does this not constitute "explain us some of your technical choices/reasonings"?

To your eighth point

I made no trade-off with regard to low noise. It was my intention to get the noise level down the lowest I possibly could without going spareoid on the spendolicks.

I don't know how you are defining "personal belief". I have a lot of personal experience with building computers and that doesn't disappear just because I am pursuing a new paradigm

I was not out for "cost savings" but rather had decided on exactly what individual components I wanted and then hunted for the lowest price I could find from a trustworthy vendor. At no point did I in any way shape or form compromise what I intended to build by going for a cheaper alternative.

To your nineth point, "common wisdom" is an oxymoron (a bit like "Microsoft Works"). I have gone out of my way to bend over backwards to answer any and all questions addressed to me as fully and concisely as I can. It is not my fault if your own misconceptions and prejudices preclude you from comprehending those answers.

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Re: Silent Grizwald

Post by edh » Wed Apr 27, 2016 12:54 pm

I'm not going to bother quoting all the text because we keep covering the same ground and because your level of arrogance prevents you from considering other's views.

61C at 800rpm for this system is neither cool nor totally silent. Your thermal design I don't think is very good. This is because you are using a small top down cooler in a case with a large front fan. There is no kind of air flow focus upon it and no laminar flow. A tower cooler would have been better advised.

You ask what I have, well have a read of this:
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=68832

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Re: Silent Grizwald

Post by xan_user » Wed Apr 27, 2016 6:30 pm

edh wrote: 61C at 800rpm
ouch.
thanks to edh for distilling this thread's walls o text into one succinct post.

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Re: Silent Grizwald

Post by Nec_V20 » Wed Apr 27, 2016 9:04 pm

edh wrote:I'm not going to bother quoting all the text because we keep covering the same ground and because your level of arrogance prevents you from considering other's views.

61C at 800rpm for this system is neither cool nor totally silent. Your thermal design I don't think is very good. This is because you are using a small top down cooler in a case with a large front fan. There is no kind of air flow focus upon it and no laminar flow. A tower cooler would have been better advised.

You ask what I have, well have a read of this:
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=68832
There is a difference between arrogance and being right.

Your implication seems to be that I am telling porkies about having tested the system with a tower cooler, well here's the tower cooler I tested it with sitting on the running system, a Noctua NH-U9S:

Image

I suppose now you are going to tell me that the NH-U9S is totally inadequate or some other self-serving piece of drivel.

As for "small top-down cooler" the fan on the cooler is 120mm, that my friend is not a "small top-down cooler" that is a pretty large top-down cooler. As you would know if you actually informed yourself before banging away futilely at your keyboard. The hint should have been when I wrote in the very first post that the cooler blocked the PCI-e slot, but that didn't bother me because I was not intending to use it.

The other inadequacy of your reply to me is the following which I had to read twice in all its glory because of the cognitive dissonance of it. In fact I have not seen so much misplaced concretion since I inadvertently squirted some SodaStream into my mother's urn.
There is no kind of air flow focus upon it and no laminar flow.
Let's take a look shall we?

Image

You do realise that the static pressure fan on the top of the radiator pushing air down through it don't you? I think there is a shed-load of air focused on the radiator.

So why not use the Noctua NH-U9S? The reason was that the fans going full whack on it were more audible than the fans going full whack on the NH-L12 (without a Low Noise Adapter stepping down the voltage to the fans). The other reason was that the System temp (NOT the CPU temp) was higher in idle. With the fans maxed out the cooler I am using was quite a bit quieter, and the system temps didn't rise as much as with the NH-U9S. The CPU temps were about the same under load.

By under load I mean running OCCT 4.4.1 with the "AVX capable Linpack" option and memory usage set to 90%. I retested the system only this time with OCCT 4.4.2 and the AMD Overdrive utility running. When the system is idling the but the cores are fixed to 3.9 GHz the Thermal Margin (difference between the current temperature and the maximum temperature) is 42 degrees Celsius. Running OCCT 4.4.2 with the "AVX capable Linpack" and the memory set to 90% - which is about the most gruelling a setting one can have on a benchmark - the Thermal Margin was rock solid at 22.5 degrees Celsius.

I should note that I have had two spine operations and have spinal arthritis and the temperature of my room is what others who visit me call "uncomfortably warm". So my ambient temperature is probably a lot warmer than you would have where you live if you were testing.

I just read the thread you linked to and that was 15 minutes of my life that I will never get back.

Seriously? You want to criticise me with this link? It is very sparse on information about the System temp, CPU temp, fan speeds etc. I have to say that I am completely underwhelmed by it.

How long do you think that system would (or will) run 24/7? You do realise that the VRMs and the Caps around the CPU socket get really hot don't you? You do realise that the cooling solution you chose essentially insulates those components don't you? I don't give that system a very long survival chance before you hear one of the caps going BANG! if you run the system 24/7. And of course the hotter the caps get the faster they degrade.

I think I did mention that my system (as all systems I build) is designed to run 24/7 for years.

From the link you have one fan attached to the cooler and that fan is 120mm (what was that you were saying about "small top-down cooler"?).

You have the unmitigated gall to attempt to slag me off when this is your pride and joy?

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Re: Silent Grizwald

Post by Nec_V20 » Wed Apr 27, 2016 9:10 pm

xan_user wrote:
edh wrote: 61C at 800rpm
ouch.
thanks to edh for distilling this thread's walls o text into one succinct post.
I would strongly suggest that you read the reply I posted to edh before continuing.

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Re: Silent Grizwald

Post by xan_user » Wed Apr 27, 2016 9:18 pm

Nec_V20 wrote:
xan_user wrote:
edh wrote: 61C at 800rpm
ouch.
thanks to edh for distilling this thread's walls o text into one succinct post.
I would strongly suggest that you read the reply I posted to edh before continuing.
no need. "a picture is worth...."

edh
Posts: 1621
Joined: Mon Mar 17, 2008 1:49 pm
Location: UK

Re: Silent Grizwald

Post by edh » Wed Apr 27, 2016 10:35 pm

Nec_V20 wrote:There is a difference between arrogance and being right.
:lol: I suppose next you're going to tell us that you're also the most attractive person on this forum and that you're also the world's greatest lover...

Your system:
idle: 28C at 460rpm
load: 61C at 800rpm

My system:
idle: 26C at 300rpm
load: 52C at 500rpm

No problem with VRM temps, they're mid thirties max.

OK, the CPU TDP is 30W higher but that doesn't go all the way to explain it. Basically your cooling setup is wasting the airflow generated by the front fan as it doesn't pass directly through any components.

By a big tower cooler I meant one with a 120mm fan like the Ninja 4 that I have. You should try it rather than comparing with a 92mm tower cooler. Actually tell you what, just for giggles and as money is no object to you to have a spare computer, why not buy a Metis and a Ninja 4, rebuild your system in it properly and compare?

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a new Colm!

quest_for_silence
Posts: 5275
Joined: Wed Jun 13, 2007 10:12 am
Location: ITALY

Re: Silent Grizwald

Post by quest_for_silence » Thu Apr 28, 2016 12:04 am

edh wrote: :lol: I suppose next you're going to tell us that you're also the most attractive person on this forum and that you're also the world's greatest lover...

Okay, fellas, put the rulers away... seriously, don't play down at his level, edh (I guess you'd have hard times to best his patology).

Moreover you have different ambient and different noise level (that rig sports some moving parts more than your one, and he didn't declared how fast the 200mm fan is actually spinning).

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