Advice for a silence freak

[WelshBloke]

I'm probably about due for a video card upgrade, the problem is I really dont like my PC to be noisy.

At the moment I've got an 8800gts 640mb and its ok sound wise its good upto 60% any more and I can definitely hear it (I know I'm fussy).

What would be great is if anyone can give me newer cards that are as quiet as mine.

I dont really want to get into a debate about if you think the cards are too noisy or quiet because this is about what will be suitable for me to buy.


Just to give you an idea of how quite I like, the sound of my hard drive seeking really pisses me off.

Cheers all


****EDIT******
This made me Lol:

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[manimal]

1. Get a SSD for your boot drive. SILENT

2. Get any midrange card you want thats in your dudget and plays the games you want.

3. Get an aftermarket cooler like an acellero or any of the myriad of options that you can add near silent fans.

4. Get some quiet fans or get a fan controller that works for you

5. Lists your parts so we can get an idea what road would best fit your tour down silent lane.

 

[WelshBloke]

1. Get a SSD for your boot drive. SILENT

2. Get any midrange card you want thats in your dudget and plays the games you want.

3. Get an aftermarket cooler like an acellero or any of the myriad of options that you can add near silent fans.

4. Get some quiet fans or get a fan controller that works for you

5. Lists your parts so we can get an idea what road would best fit your tour down silent lane.

Yeah I need to get an SSD but other than that my PC is about as quiet as your going to get without some seriously exotic solutions.

I really only need advice on the video card bit. I used to have an after market cooler on an old ATI card and I think it was louder than my 8800gts (which is a pretty quiet card)

Are there any modern, passively cooled cards?

 

[ZimZum]

Budget ? The Saphire 5850 Toxic is fairly quiet

Sapphire’s vapor chamber cooler did a tremendous job of cooling ATI’s RV870 chip while also generating very little noise. Despite the fact that the board is OC’ed to 765MHz, the 5850 Toxic ran 7 degrees Celsius cooler than the stock Radeon 5850 at load, and 8 degrees cooler at idle.

Equally impressive is that the board managed to do this while running nearly silent. Sapphire claims that their cooler runs 10dB quieter than ATI’s reference design, and based on our experience with the 5850 Toxic, we believe these claims. While our 5850 reference board generated up to 49.6dB of noise at load, we couldn’t get a reading with our Extech sound level meter at a distance of 6”. Our meter goes down to 40dB, so the Sapphire board was generating less than 40 decibels of noise under load.

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/sapphire_radeon_5850_toxic_review/page11.asp

 

[WelshBloke]

Budget ? Saphire 5850 is fairly quiet



http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/sapphire_radeon_5850_toxic_review/page11.asp

That sounds pretty good, according to Toms hardware the 8800gts640 idles at 37 db so about the same.

 

[SHAQ]

The 260 is very quiet. I never had to up the fan over 60% to keep it below 75C. Is your CPU fast enough for anything faster though? I wouldn't get anything faster than a 260 if you only have a dual core. I believe you can get a 260 for under $200 easily. A 5850 is closer to $300.

 

[blanketyblank]

How fast do you want to go?
They sell passive 5750s so if you want 0 sound that's your best bet.
My 5770 is very quiet though audible if you listen for it. If you set your own fan profiles you can get the fans down to like 20% or so at idle where it's virtually silent.
I wouldn't consider a 260 unless they have suddenly dropped the price to make them competitive. 5750 is probably best value for the money now since I've seen them at $100 AR recently.

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

That sounds pretty good, according to Toms hardware the 8800gts640 idles at 37 db so about the same.

To compare sound you'll have to do it within the same website, since everyone has their own different equipment and styles of measuring. Closed or open case? 1", 6", 12" or 1m away? Which sound meter? What is ambient? etc.

 

[thilanliyan]

Get any card and watercool it!!
I like the silence too.

 

[NoQuarter]

I suspended my hard drives with rubber bands in the 5.25" bays once and it helped the sound from those quite a bit, rubber grommets even help a bit, and I even put a hard drive in a VHS case which made it completely inaudible and worked fine but I took it out when the weather got warm, I bet a 5400 rpm drive would survive fine though


Anyway for your video card, one solution would be to just get a 5770 or 5850 and lock the fan down at 35% or so and just let it run hot. At stock speeds it's still not going to hit any dangerous temp because those things have a lot of headroom, and you could underclock it to bring down the temp to match your fan profile if you need to.

My OC'd 5770 runs at about 68C at 44% fan speed in the stone giant benchmark so I'm sure you could get by with lower fan speeds.

 

[happy medium]

With my 8800gt, I use one of these..

http://www.arctic-cooling.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=2_&mID=105

And I zip tied the quitest 120mm fan I could find to it.
It worked great and was dead silent.

 

[Kostamojen]

Just use Rivatuner to turn down the idle fan speed with some custom fan mapping... Thats what I did.

 

[MJinZ]

Haven't heard my GTX 260 yet...

 

[Matrices]

Then you haven't done anything with them. Turn up Crysis or Metro and they'll be all you hear.

The answer is watercooling. Anything less is just a compromise.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Does it need to be quiet even during heavy gaming when presumably the game audio can cover up the noise?

A dual-slot 5850 is supposed to be quiet at idle and will be much faster than the 8800gts.

If you require quiet even during gaming, a 5870 or GTX 480 and water cooling.

 

[manimal]

With my 8800gt, I use one of these..

http://www.arctic-cooling.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=2_&mID=105

And I zip tied the quitest 120mm fan I could find to it.
It worked great and was dead silent.

yup- and acellero with some volt modded loons or something else thats real quiet. Getting absolute silence costs hundreds of dollars. Getting down to low speed fan noise is somewhat easy.

 

[WelshBloke]

Wow lots of good advice here, thanks a lot

Get any card and watercool it!!
I like the silence too.

Then you haven't done anything with them. Turn up Crysis or Metro and they'll be all you hear.

The answer is watercooling. Anything less is just a compromise.

I dont really want to watercool things, its way too much hassle and anyway you still need fans (i did consider one of those passive zalman ones once )

Does it need to be quiet even during heavy gaming when presumably the game audio can cover up the noise?

A dual-slot 5850 is supposed to be quiet at idle and will be much faster than the 8800gts.

If you require quiet even during gaming, a 5870 or GTX 480 and water cooling.

I'd like it to be silent when idle I can cope with a bit of noise when gaming (and by a bit I mean no louder than an 8800gts640 at 75%)


I'm quite tempted by a 5850 :thumbsup:

 

[taltamir]

if you are willing to spend several hundred dollars, hours building your computer, and several hours of maintenance every year or so, then watercooling will let you game in pure silence as well as OC very high.

 

[WelshBloke]

if you are willing to spend several hundred dollars, hours building your computer, and several hours of maintenance every year or so, then watercooling will let you game in pure silence as well as OC very high.

You still need some fans and a pump though, yes?

And there's the PSU fan as well.

My system is cooled by 2 120mm case fans plus my PSU fan and another 120mm on my CPU cooler (all fans are low voltage and pretty silent).
So thats 3 120mm fans plus my PSU, if I water cooled I'd use, what, 1 less fan but an extra pump. So I dont think it would be much quieter.

Obviously the above is without including my videocard but thats what I'm asking about.

I just don't see watercooling, in my case, much of an advantage.

 

[taltamir]

You still need some fans and a pump though, yes?

They can be silent enough that you would not hear them.

And there's the PSU fan as well.

Get a silent one...

But you are right... water cooling is not really needed for that...

Just look at individual reviews for an inaudible GPU... every review site that I know of does noise level testing.

 

[Attic]

This can get tricky, because as the GPU gets loaded close to 100% in really demnding games that fan speed is going to ramp up to keep it cool.

No matter which VC you choose good case cooling is very important, but that can get tricky if you want to remain silent. Low RPM fans are the ultimate in silence, but don't push much air.

Good advice here though, i'd think one of the 5850's would give you performance worth going through the trouble of upgrading.

 

[killster1]

if you are willing to spend several hundred dollars, hours building your computer, and several hours of maintenance every year or so, then watercooling will let you game in pure silence as well as OC very high.

heh i guess some people have diff definitions of silence. I would think it means ZERO NOISE. Any gfx card with a massive heatsink and good airflow in your case or low speed 120-140mm fan is fine, also consider buying padding for your case to further trap sound.

 

[taltamir]

heh i guess some people have diff definitions of silence. I would think it means ZERO NOISE. Any gfx card with a massive heatsink and good airflow in your case or low speed 120-140mm fan is fine, also consider buying padding for your case to further trap sound.

Silence is zero AUDIBLE noise... if you, a human, cannot perceive it, then its silent.

 

[Bill Brasky]

I'm quite tempted by a 5850 :thumbsup:

I was recently bit by the quiet bug as well. The 5850 is a great choice imo.

1. Do you have a case fan controller? If not, get one.
2. Use msi afterburner to set custom fan profiles for the 5850. I'm at 9% fan speed at idle and its very quiet (~35-37% at load). Just for point of reference, my hard drives are by far the loudest part of my computer at idle.

 

[killster1]

Silence is zero AUDIBLE noise... if you, a human, cannot perceive it, then its silent.

Like i said we must have diff definition because only silent computer ive seen is one that is submerged in oil, Pumps make alot of noise or dont work very well get real