Took a bit more time than it should have, but I got my new PC together. So far everything seems to be working.
Had to make some extra cutouts in the Acoustipack foam fixed to the inside of the main panel because some of the quick release drive tabs were sticking into the foam making it very difficult to put the panel on the case. As an aside one thing I should mention about the case is that the "tool-less" PCI card slot retaining bracket is a bit flimsy and very difficult to unlatch with a 120mm fan mounted in the back of the case.
Should also mention that the case fans are indeed pretty quiet, as is the power supply fan, but the graphics card fan and motherboard fan are not. The Zalman northbridge cooler won't fit with the graphics card in place and I don't particularly want to risk damaging a $525 graphics card, while negating the warranty in the process, by putting in a different cooling system for the graphics card. By the way, if I were going to do this, Zalman, reportedly, makes a good graphics cooler kit, the VF700-CU.
Back to the point at hand. I have everything working, with the 120mm Silenx fan at the back of the case pulling hot air out, 92mm CPU fan (kept the fan that came with the ThermalRight XP90 as it's supposed to be higher CFM than the 92mm Silenx fan) pushing air onto the XP90 heatsink, and 92 mm Silenx fan in the front pushing cold air into the case. With all this, the CPU temp and case temp during the current warm spell are pretty high. Something like 50-55d C for both CPU and motherboard.
I've been thinking about what to do about this and about the only solution that I can come up with is to get one or more high speed fans in the case and a fan controller (such as Zalman ZM-MFC1, although I don't particularly like the style of the face-plate of that particular model). Problem is finding a high quality high speed, high air volume, fan that has good sound characteristics at high and low speed and that is commercially available with the proper 3 pin connector.
Panasonic has their Panaflo series which is supposed to be good, but their high speed fans are a bit deep at 38mm.
Papst is supposed to make very high quality fans, but I'm having a heck of a time finding somewhere that sells the high speed versions with the proper connector.
Adda is another company that is said to make high quality high speed fans. Dell uses these for their cases and judging from the fact that Adda has the patent on Hypro Bearing fans, Silenx uses their fans as well (too bad they don't sell high speed fans as well, but then I guess they wouldn't be "silent").
So I'm in a bit of a quandary. If anyone has any ideas, I'm all ears. Keep in mind, however, that Delta fans and the Vantec Tornado apparently don't have very good sound characteristics and are right out.
If I find a good solution, I'll let you know.
Water cooling is as quiet as it gets, and there are some nice units that just attach to the back of the case and will cool the CPU and graphics card. They work great. I'll find a link.
greg
Posted by: Greg Hughes | Tuesday, June 14, 2005 at 10:03 PM
I ran into the same issue with the last silent PC i put together. A couple of things helped - if you have multiple exhaust fans, turn them around. Pushing more cooler air in seemed to help. I wound up having to crank my adjustable speed Zalman fans up to full speed too; more noise, but got the temp down. I'm curious as to how well the water cooling solutions work in a practical environment.
Posted by: James E. Robinson, III | Wednesday, June 15, 2005 at 03:21 AM
May I suggest the following for a laugh:
http://www.peteredge.orcon.net.nz/casepics.htm
A case made of nothing but fans. I'm sure it has no heat problems ;)
Posted by: Evan Erwin | Wednesday, June 15, 2005 at 07:26 AM