[newman]

I performed some major surgery on my computer recently and I thought I'd share the results, maybe it comes in handy to someone. Up until yesterday my i7 920 with 12 gig ram and an XFX 9800GT 512mb VRAM was producing unholy amounts of noise. The stock intel cooler started giving up too, keeping my CPU idling at warm and comfy 70C. My GPU would idle at some 67,68C. I have 3 case fans, one 120mm and 2 92mm but they were all used on the previous rigs too and are all approximately 5-6 years old.
So I decided it was time to give the system an upgrade. The graphics card and the cooling systems were obviously in need of replacing, so that's what I pretty much did yesterday.
First thing I did was buy the Zalman CNPS 10x Quiet CPU cooler. This thing:



Note I didn't take pics of my own system, as there are adequate ones on the web. The one above shows a nice comparison of the Zalman with the intel's stock cooler. Installation required removing the motherboard because you need to screw it in place from the back of the board. Installation is pretty straightforward, however, and taking your computer apart is a good thing for maintenance purposes - you can get rid of dust in places you otherwise couldn't reach. Zalman included very clear instructions and there's even an animated installation guide on their site. Using a soft brush I normally use for removing dust from model kits, I gently removed the intel's old thermal grease from the CPU. The Zalman comes with a generous amount of their own thermal grease in a cool syringe. At least I found it cool, as not being a junkie means I haven't had much chance to play with syringes. I applied it evenly both to the CPU and the base of the cooler, then proceeded to mount the cooler on. It's good to make sure it's secured in place well because this thing is enormous and heavy - in fact, Zalman recommends removing the cooler when transporting the system to avoid damaging your board. So if you move your rig a lot to LAN parties or whatnot, this cooler may not be for you. You can connect the cooler straight to the board or use a split cable that connects one end to the board, one to the cooler, and one to a potentiometer you can use to control the cooler. There's plenty of cable to attach the potentiometer to the side of the case and a double adhesive tape for securing it in place. Handy.

Next up, time for more shopping; I traced a lot of the unholy noise produced by the system to the aging case fans so I went to get new ones. After some research and looking at what's available in local shops it turned out Scythe is an excellent choice. I got a Scythe Gentle Typhoon 120mm at 800 rpm, and two Scythe Kama Flow 92mm ones at 2200 rpm. I got two Zalman fan controller potentiometers for those so I can control them manually (pretty much identical to the one I got with the cooler). So now I got 3 potentiometers stuck on the side of the case. I also got sharkoon's fan silencers for good measure - 1 120mm one and 2 92mm ones. They're basically some sort of silicon mass profile that fits the base of a fan and dampens any vibrations produced by the fan thus preventing them from transferring to the case. A nice touch is Sharkoon including small round profiles made from the same material you put in under the screws to prevent the screws themselves transferring vibrations to the case. As with any case fan, installation was straightforward. I consider these parts a good investment as you can get each of the fan silencers under 2€. Sure my new case fans may be silent now, but in 3 years time I'll be glad it's there.

One of my HDDs is a Samsung Spinpoint F3. A lot of owners of this particular brand of HDDs are familiar with a rather annoying repeating hum these drives produce in 1 second intervals. According to Samsung this is normal. I guess they find sound induced nervous disorders normal as well as the repeating humming noise was driving me crazy. I managed to reduce this effect a lot by using a Sharkoon Vibe Fixer 3 available at a local store. The thing is rather cheap and consists of two rails that mount in one of your case's 5,25" bays, and 4 rubber "corks" that mount to the drive and fit into those rails. These rubber corks dampen the vibrations transferred to the case by a lot, at least in mine - ymmv. Worth checking before is whether or not you can mount it in your case - if you got some custom rail system in your case's 5,25" bays you may not be able to install the rails making the whole thing useless.

The case fans, disk silencer and fan silencer, plus two extra fan controllers all set me back some 50€. The Zalman CPU cooler was a bit more than that. But it didn't stop there - I decided to replace my old 9800GT with something with a bit more kick. Managed to get a very good deal in a local store on one of these. I thought if the card performs half as good as it looks, it'll be awesome. Installation was straightforward, like with any graphics card - remove the old one, plug into a PCI-E slot, connect the extra PSU jacks and away you go. Worth mentioning are the facts that it's a twin slot card so it's good to make sure you got enough room in your case. I'd also give this monster plenty of clearance so the fans can do their jobs. MSI recommends a minimum of a 600W PSU for this card. Given the fact that MSI can't possibly know what the rest of your system is this number is what they probably considered a safe bet. All I can say is my Corsair 650W PSU works fine with it.

Ok, so with everything connected, moment of truth; let's see if the noise reduction measures worked?
I plugged the system back in, flipped the switch, and.. nothing. Oh right, flip the switch on the PSU to "on". Works so much better that way. A LED light on the board quickly lit up and I was ready to power the system on. So I flipped the main power switch again and... no sound. My Saturn-V-launching-sound-mixed-with-a-squadron-of-Saab-Drakens-doing-a-full-afterburner-low-flyby-over-you system sounds were gone, replaced by what is in comparison almost complete silence. All I could hear was the gentle hum of the fans, made nearly inaudible when setting the potentiometers so the 92mm case fans run at some 60%.
So how does it perform? Overall system temp is usually below 30C. It varies slightly but I usually get 28,29C. CPU cores now idle at 33C (core0) with cores 1-3 varying from 29 to 31, give or take. The MSI card comes with pretty good software allowing additional overclocking and temperature monitoring software. According to that, the card also idles at some 33C.
Hard drives all idle a bit below 30 and get to like 32,33C under load. CPU never goes above 67C under full load, and I only managed to get my GPU load to 81% - apparently I don't own any games that can stress it to 100% even with all the graphical settings maxed out Anyway after the GPU load goes over 70% the temperature stabilizes at some 68,69C and it never went above that with 81% no matter how long was it under load. It's also worth mentioning that I found the card to be very quiet - the Twin Frozr II cooler apparently works as advertised. The cooling pipes do their jobs as good as they look, and the decision to use twin lower RPM coolers instead of one high RPM one was a good one. The result is a graphics card that'll run any modern game on full settings without generating astronomical amounts of heat or making you deaf in the process.
So all in was is it worth it? The answer is a resounding yes. If you skip the graphics card part, I got from a very loud and annoying system to a very, very quiet one for 50€ and one afternoon of work. I dare say that without some expensive quality water cooling setup this is about as quiet as it gets.
I realize I'm not exactly reinventing the wheel here - most of you probably already know that investing in quality coolers/fans and silencers pays off. Just thought I'd share my experience, maybe someone will find the information here useful.
I posted this in gaming discussion as it has more to do with that than gen disc.

Post edited because the title was misleading - 50€ didn't cover the CPU cooler which costs a bit more than that in itself.

[JGZinv]

Noctua makes excellent coolers as well...  switching from bunches of small fans to a handful of larger fans with a lower RPM
can help with noise too.

I'd look into going with a higher PSU when you can though. I like Corsair, but I had an identical 650W unit and it burnt out after
a year on components that are a fair bit older than what you're running. It took the mobo with it when it died, and that was a costly lesson.

[newman]

Are you sure you didn't have a power surge of some sort? In general that PSU should be able to run those components just fine. The 1000 Watt monster psu's go into the sphere of SLI setups already. And if the PSU died from being strained too far it's weird it'd take the board with it as well, especially a Corsair. A power surge however would be consistent with what happened to you. I have to admit though I have been considering replacing the current PSU with a 950W Corsair, that way I'd be covered for any future upgrades or additions. Not planning on ever using SLI so it should be more than enough.
The 650W one should be fine for a few more weeks, I'd rather wait for the next paycheck before doing it. Hopefully I'll be able to sell the 650W one.

[JGZinv]

It's possible. Although it was in a surge protector at the time. I spent the next 2 months going around and around
with Asus, Corsair, and Intel getting replacement parts. It could have blown and shorted to the casing, as anytime that
PSU was in the system unit, we had major ground problems.

Stuck a 950W in there and it's been fine.

[Astronomiya]

Sweet CPU cooler you got there, newman.  On the subject of PSUs, a 650 W is more than enough for any single card setup today.  What you should be aiming for is for the system to be pulling 70-80% of the PSU's maximum rated wattage under load.  The reason is that most PSUs have their highest efficiency in that range, dropping off on either side.  If you are not going for SLI or Crossfire, 650 W is more than enough; and for most of those multi-GPU setups, a 750 or 850 W PSU is best.  Only get a 900 W or higher if you're doing something like SLI GTX 580s or tri-SLI/tri-Fire; otherwise you will not come anywhere close to hitting its maximum rating no matter how many incremental upgrades you do (at least, not before the PSU dies on its own from old age...).  I use a Seasonic X-750 for my GTX 460 SLI setup, and it is more than enough power (my comp draws ~650 W under load, even with overclocking).

[Mongoose]

I'd love to see what someone's monthly electric bill looks like if they're running one of those monster kilowatt rigs.

[newman]

Sweet CPU cooler you got there, newman.  On the subject of PSUs, a 650 W is more than enough for any single card setup today.  What you should be aiming for is for the system to be pulling 70-80% of the PSU's maximum rated wattage under load.  The reason is that most PSUs have their highest efficiency in that range, dropping off on either side.  If you are not going for SLI or Crossfire, 650 W is more than enough; and for most of those multi-GPU setups, a 750 or 850 W PSU is best.  Only get a 900 W or higher if you're doing something like SLI GTX 580s or tri-SLI/tri-Fire; otherwise you will not come anywhere close to hitting its maximum rating no matter how many incremental upgrades you do (at least, not before the PSU dies on its own from old age...).  I use a Seasonic X-750 for my GTX 460 SLI setup, and it is more than enough power (my comp draws ~650 W under load, even with overclocking).

Thanks for the information there man. PSU wattage is a weird category, in that almost everyone's going to give you different info on required wattage. There appear to be two main schools of thought, those who like to put in way overpowered PSUs and those that say it's not necessary. And there appear to be good arguments coming from both sides - it's hard to argue with both yours or JGZinv's experience. Not quite sure what to think as almost every wattage calculator out there gives me different numbers. According to Antec's I have just about the power I need.

[pecenipicek]

Neccesity brings about improvisation....

Scythe Shuriken below, its own fan gave out, and 10 cm fans are utterly impossible to get around here, so i improvised with pieces of some hard plastic cut to size, to go from 12 to 10 cm, and voila. the damn thing runs 10° C cooler than with its stock cooler.


This is the first revision, second revision looks a fair bit nicer, but dont have a pic of that one tho, sorry.

[CP5670]

My PC is pretty quiet despite having 7 case fans (10 in total), as they all run at fairly low speeds except the video card blower. That one does ramp up when gaming, but I use headphones and don't really care in that situation.

I have the same power supply and one of those F3 hard drives, although I haven't noticed any humming sound with it. That particular PSU will easily run any single card system and there is no need to replace it. The wattage requirement doesn't really mean anything, as there are a wide variety of "600W" units out there that have little in common with each other.

Installation is pretty straightforward, however, and taking your computer apart is a good thing for maintenance purposes - you can get rid of dust in places you otherwise couldn't reach

I dusted out my machine just a few days ago, after having put it off for almost two years. I use dust-off cans together with a vacuum cleaner to pick up the flying dust from the air (or else it just falls on other things), but I still haven't found a good way to clean out video card coolers.

[Kopachris]

Neccesity brings about improvisation....

Before I was able to rebuild my rig, it started out by me pulling it out of the garage and reloading it.  It was originally discarded for an unknown failure.  It seemed to run fine for a while, then it always froze after so long.  Upon opening it up, I found that the fan on the video card (an old ATi Radeon TV-tuner with (I think) 256 MB) would not spin.  I folded a piece of paper up, set it on the back of the card for electrical insulation, and placed a few old fans I found in the garage on top of the paper.  It worked!

My current rig idles around 30°C, with my video card idling around 70°C (it only has a heatsink; no fan).

[pecenipicek]

My PC is pretty quiet despite having 7 case fans (10 in total), as they all run at fairly low speeds except the video card blower. That one does ramp up when gaming, but I use headphones and don't really care in that situation.

I have the same power supply and one of those F3 hard drives, although I haven't noticed any humming sound with it. That particular PSU will easily run any single card system and there is no need to replace it. The wattage requirement doesn't really mean anything, as there are a wide variety of "600W" units out there that have little in common with each other.

Installation is pretty straightforward, however, and taking your computer apart is a good thing for maintenance purposes - you can get rid of dust in places you otherwise couldn't reach

I dusted out my machine just a few days ago, after having put it off for almost two years. I use dust-off cans together with a vacuum cleaner to pick up the flying dust from the air (or else it just falls on other things), but I still haven't found a good way to clean out video card coolers.

if warranty is out, disassembly, especially on the newer dual slot cards. good chance to replace the paste as well.

[CP5670]

That can certainly be done but takes way too much time and effort. I wanted to do it without removing anything from the case. Most modern cards do at least have openings in the rear shroud (behind the blower) that you can spray the air into.

[newman]

That can certainly be done but takes way too much time and effort. I wanted to do it without removing anything from the case. Most modern cards do at least have openings in the rear shroud (behind the blower) that you can spray the air into.

I do get where you're coming from, because I used to look at things the exact same way. I put off replacing the crappy old intel stock cooler for months because I couldn't find one I liked that didn't include removing the motherboard. In the end, I'm glad I bit the bullet and just took the system apart and gave it a thorough upgrade. It resulted in a cleaner and much quieter system and in me feeling a bit more confident about working with hardware (I used to avoid installing coolers myself, because I was afraid I'd mess up with the thermal grease or not secure it properly or something and lose the CPU). It's really not that daunting once you do enough research before going in and take proper precautions. Hell it was even fun, sort of. Nowadays if I saw the GPU cooler was full of dust I'd take it apart without a second thought

[CP5670]

I don't mind taking stuff apart if I actually want to upgrade something, and have built many systems in the past. It's just a hassle to do it only for cleaning purposes, which I (at least in an ideal world) should be doing every 6 months or so. The only things I remove and change out are the air filters.

[newman]

Fair enough, does make sense. Let me know how it goes with the air cans. I actually had an idea that includes using my airbrush + compressor to clean the harder to reach areas. I can regulate the air flow pretty well and be very precise with that thing. I'll likely still need to remove the GPU for best results but doing that is like 2 seconds of work anyway. 3 with dual power connectors on it

[Mongoose]

Man, I wish I could take those measures.  I'm stuck with one of those lovely Dell clamshell cases with a single variable-speed fan that whines at idle and sounds like a jet turbine whenever it gets hot in here.  I wouldn't mind shifting the whole thing into a new case someday, but I'm not sure if there are any out there that support this sort of motherboard.

And I've never really had much success with air cans myself...as soon as they start getting cold, the airflow drops off dramatically.  I've taken to using an old hair-dryer set on cool the last few times I've bothered to clear out my system.

[pecenipicek]

And I've never really had much success with air cans myself...as soon as they start getting cold, the airflow drops off dramatically

Well, since its butane after all

[Astronomiya]

Thanks for the information there man. PSU wattage is a weird category, in that almost everyone's going to give you different info on required wattage. There appear to be two main schools of thought, those who like to put in way overpowered PSUs and those that say it's not necessary. And there appear to be good arguments coming from both sides - it's hard to argue with both yours or JGZinv's experience. Not quite sure what to think as almost every wattage calculator out there gives me different numbers. According to Antec's I have just about the power I need.

It sounds like JGZinv just got a bad unit; statistically, you'll get one of them once in a while, even from the best brands.  Anyway, the PSU calculator I like best is found here.  It's accurate and will give you a good idea of what kind of PSU you actually need.

Everything I said in my previous post also only applies to reputable brands like Corsair, Antec, and Seasonic.  The reason GPU manufacturers put up huge power requirements is they know that most people have ****ty no-name PSUs that are patently not able to put out their rated wattage, and may even only be able to put out something like half that in the worst cases.

[newman]

Yea that one gets the same results as Antec's. I get 631W required wattage with 10% capacitor aging (6 sticks of DDR3, 3 HDDs, one optical drive, external USB powered devices, fans, PCI wireless card, the GTX 480.. it adds up). Not sure I like being that close to declared maximum of 650W though.

[Astronomiya]

If you're uncomfortable with it, I'd suggest getting a 750 W to hit the efficiency plateau.