Silent PC

[Jimmykicker]

I am currently building a new PC and was wondering what the opinions of people in this forum are -- I am going for as silent as possible, but not overly expensive. Here is what I have come up with so far:

Thermaltake Xaser III 3000A Case
Seasonic Supersilencer 400W PS
Thermaltake K8 CPU heatsink for AMD64 3000+
Radeon 9600XT

The big question here is whether or not to get watercooling -- I might overclock, but not too much...any opinions out there?

[Faustus]

I wouldn't worry about water cooling so much. Just use like Panaflo L1A fans for case fans and make sure everything is well ventalated.

[Jimmykicker]

I am thinking this will not be enough if I decide to overclock...already fried one processor like that...what do you think?

[Piccoro]

Water cooling is good if you get a good setup.
If you buy one and try to save some cash then you could end up with a worse setup than with Air cooling.

If you are going for silent, look for a case with a 120mm fans instead of 2 80s.
A 120mm fan that moves the close to the amount of air as 2 80mm fans will be quieter. They are rare though. The ones I have seen have 2 80mm fans in front and a 120mm fan for exhaust.

Besides the Thermaltake, look into Akasa's or Zalman's Athlon 64 cooler. Sometimes Thermaltake products are too loud at full effective speed but when you turn down the RPM/Noise they are only decent coolers at best.

Athlon 64s run very cool though so you should have no problem cooling that CPU.

[Faustus]

Yeah then I guess do water... silly me figured that someone who wants a silent PC would not be overclocking.

[808smokey]

Thermaltake K8 CPU heatsink for AMD64 3000+

That chip isn't fast enough? I'd never overclock that puppy.


AMD RULZ!!!

[Jimmykicker]

You are all right -- guess I need to decide which is more important - overclocking or silence -- I think I will probably just go for the silence right now-- thanks for the suggestions...

[Jimmykicker]

That chip isn't fast enough? I'd never overclock that puppy.

I get too impatient with encoding times and stuff