Quiet and Fast PC Build - I need suggestions

[bronco27]

I'm building my first desktop and I really would like to get some feedback on what I currently have picked for my build. I would like to be able to keep my price under $1500. I'm looking to build a quiet pc that can be upgraded in the future if need be. Please let me know what you think.

My Build

Antec P183 Black Aluminum / Steel / Plastic ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail

Intel BOXDX58SO LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail

CORSAIR CMPSU-650TX 650W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Compatible with Core i7 ... - Retail

Intel Core i7-920 Bloomfield 2.66GHz LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor Model BX80601920 - Retail

OCZ Gold 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Low Voltage Desktop Memory Model OCZ3G1600LV6GK - Retail

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit 1-Pack for System Builders - OEM

Intel X25-V SSDSA2MP040G2R5 2.5" 40GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) - Retail

Western Digital Caviar Green WD10000CSRTL 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive -Retail

Gigabyte PCIe Graphics ATI Radeon HD 4850 GV-R485MC-1GI 640MHz 1GB GDDR3 CrossFireX VGA DVI Retail

 

[Decembermouse]

I love the rig.

-Maybe get a 750W PSU instead of a 650W if you plan on putting in another graphics card or overclocking. Go for 80+ Bronze/Silver (or even Gold) if you want it really quiet. Those are more efficient than the plain 80+ PSU's, so they waste less energy as heat... meaning less fan noise.
-You're getting one of the best CPU's on the market. To go along with it, instead of a Radeon 4850, why not something from the Radeon 5000 series? They are 45nm instead of 55nm, more power efficient (less fan noise!) and the medium/high-end ones use GDDR5, which is also cooler. They're also faster than the 4850, and will play DirectX 11 games.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...ue&Order=PRICE

Great case, RAM, and HDD choices! OCZ memory has always worked great for me, and I have the WD Green 1TB drive. It's quiet and fast and uses I think about half the power of your usual desktop HDD.

 

[bronco27]

I love the rig.

-Maybe get a 750W PSU instead of a 650W if you plan on putting in another graphics card or overclocking. Go for 80+ Bronze/Silver (or even Gold) if you want it really quiet. Those are more efficient than the plain 80+ PSU's, so they waste less energy as heat... meaning less fan noise.
-You're getting one of the best CPU's on the market. To go along with it, instead of a Radeon 4850, why not something from the Radeon 5000 series? They are 45nm instead of 55nm, more power efficient (less fan noise!) and the medium/high-end ones use GDDR5, which is also cooler. They're also faster than the 4850, and will play DirectX 11 games.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...ue&Order=PRICE

Great case, RAM, and HDD choices! OCZ memory has always worked great for me, and I have the WD Green 1TB drive. It's quiet and fast and uses I think about half the power of your usual desktop HDD.

Thanks for the suggestions. What manufacturer would you suggest for the Radeon 5000 series?

Thanks again!!!

 

[CurseTheSky]

If you want it to be REALLY quiet, you'll enter need to run the P183's Antec Tricools on low (which hardly move any air), or you'll need to replace the fans with something Scythe GentleTyphoons.

Good fans are expensive, but MAN they make a huge difference in the amount of sound your system makes.

Edit: IIRC, XFX has the best warranty for ATI graphics cards. I've heard good and bad things about ASUS, Sapphire, PowerColor, VisionTek, etc. as well.

 

[bronco27]

Thanks CurseTheSky!

Is this the fan?

Scythe Gentle Typhoon 120mm Case Fan - 1150 RPM

Dimensions:120 x 120 x 25mmAir Flow:63 m³/hSpeed:1150 RPMNoise:16 dBAPowerC12VBearing Typeouble Ball

 

[Decembermouse]

If I were to buy one today I'd get this guy:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814102868

Sapphire's Vapor-X cooler is about the best on the market, short of a fancy expensive water-cooling setup. Check out what OCC says about it:

http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/sapphire_hd5770_vaporx_overclock/17.htm

 

[Zap]

You are forgetting an aftermarket heatsink for your CPU. Any of the large tower style units that use a 120mm fan and a bunch of heatpipes should work fine. Just find one with a PWM fan or one that doesn't come with a fan and find a PWM fan. That way you can hook it up to the 4-pin CPU fan header on the motherboard and enable Smart Fan in the BIOS to have the motherboard control the fan speed. Alternately, get a BIG heatsink that can be used passively because the P183 has two fans nearly surrounding the CPU area and it was popular to use Scythe Ninja heatsinks passively in these type of Antec cases.

I agree with the others about the fan suggestions. Most people who are really into quiet computing do not consider the Antec Tri Cool fans (that are included with most Antec cases) to be very quiet, even on Low speed setting. A cheaper alternative to the Scythe fans would be low speed Yate Loon fans. They are cheap and popular, and work really well if you undervolt them. Only drawback might be that they are sleeve bearing (part of why they are cheap) which means they won't last as long, especially if they are used in a horizontal position (P183 has a top fan).

You may want to consider a different motherboard. The Intel board has some odd layout issues (I've used one). For instance, if you decide to go Crossfire in the future, two of the six SATA ports will be covered up by the second card. Also, your RAM upgrades will be limited because it only has four RAM slots while most boards have six. Finally, the 8-pin CPU power connector is situated towards the middle of the motherboard, which means you won't be able to run the cable behind the motherboard like you can on most motherboards that have it right next to the PS2 ports. A decent motherboard in the same price range would be the Asus P6T.

 

[bloodugly]

If you're looking for scythe gentle typhoons, I'd first run a search through the google shopping, shopping.google.com, then check the store out at resellerratings.com.

I tend to go with higher CFM typhoons and use a fan controller to dial in exactly what works best for noise/cooling.

I've used a cheap Sunbeam 4 channel for years, just keep moving it to the next new main rig. It's not let me down and it can even handle super high powered Deltas.

 

[mshan]

http://silentpcreview.com/

 

[sethk]

The Antec P183 is a nice case on the inside, I have used it to build PCs for others, but it is surprisingly cheap and plasticky looking which is a turn off for me personally. The front door tends to snap off easily too. If you're not into looks, it is a nice design, although those tri-cool fans are quite noisy when you have them pushing enough air to be effective, and replacing ALL of them adds to the cost of the case.

Also, not sure which OS you plan to use, but Vista and Windows 7 take up a TON of room, after a default install and keep growing, fast. SSDs get slower faster the less free space you have, and that drive is not very fast with the writes, and does not have TRIM support, I believe, so if you go with it, you will need to keep optimizing it periodically, and keep an eye on the free space. I ended up going with a 2x X25-M 80GB RAID 0 (160GB total, faster than a single 160GB X25-M).

 

[Decembermouse]

HDD's tend to get slower the fuller they get too. I'm going to wait a bit more for an SSD personally, and probably only use it for an OS (at least at this point - expensive!).

To give you an idea, I just installed Windows 7 Home Premium x64 a couple days ago. I updated everyting, and installed all my drivers. Installed Firefox, Folding@Home GPU, FahMon, and Adobe stuff like Flash Player and Reader. All of this takes up 13.2GB. My HDD is a Western Digital Caviar Green, 1TB. I'm not exactly running out of space lol

But if you have a small, fast HDD consider getting a storage drive. I highly recommend the Caviar Green series. They run cool and quiet, and use less power than your average drive. I just realized I already started talking about it above, and apparently here I go again but if you're looking for quiet and fast, I would say it is a good choice. Maybe not for a super quick OS drive- you'd be better off with a Velociraptor or SSD, but it's definitely not slow.

 

[sethk]

I did a similar install this past Thursday. After installing just firefox, Office and some basic system utilities on the C drive, my install took up ~36GB before optimization. Part of this was a gigantic hibernation file, which I turned off with a commmand line option. I tweaked the swap file to be the same size as my RAM (12GB), the recommended option for fast SSDs. I deleted some temp files and turned off system restore, since I do daily backups. All of that freed up room (or will reduce future disk usage), but to put it simply, that's just the start, and I wouldn't like having only 40GB available, it would make me OCD about free space. That's just me - I'm not saying 40GB is not viable for an OS drive.

P.S. Spacemonger 1.4 (free) is an excellent free tool to provide visual representation of what's on a drive and how much space each thing is taking up at a glance.