Quiet / Silent Build. Help?

hare05

I'm looking to build a reasonably quiet system (Passive cooling where possible) with mid-range performance (i3 / i5 + 5750 / 5770?) but I'm admittedly at a loss at where to find low noise cards these days. I haven't seen any passively cooled cards since the 7900gt. Any good sites? Any ballpark figures at how much it might cost?

Also I've been out of the market for a long time so all the other parts are open to recommendations.

Considering water cooling, but I'd like to stick to air if I can get quiet fans.

My old pc is at the end of it's life in the gaming world, my x1950xtx won't even hit it's base clock any more (Should be 650/999 but it conks out any higher than 506/594, could be PSU related) and I've seen recent tests that put a 5750 at 3x my card's performance.

I'd be looking for minimum of dual core, 5750 or Nvidia equiv., and quiet. I don't intend to overclock, just tone down the fans to minimum.

Also recommendations on a monitor would be great, 23"+ with good color and brightness for gaming/movies.

Gonna be using this to play games, run VMs and other college stuff. Would an SSD be a good addition performance / sound wise?

I'll stop rambling now. Commence the flaming! :P

Kepti

The site http://silentpcreview.com/ comes very highly recommended, you should find plenty of info there.

I'm always hesitant to recommend water cooling. I never thought it was worth the hassle for anyone except those guys attempting insane overclocks. You'll be fine with 120mm fans.

SSDs are amazing performance wise, but right now the prices per gigabyte are just a little to high. What I'd do in your situation is get a nice big regular hard-drive and leave the SSD for future upgrade.

hare05

Kepti wrote: »

The site http://silentpcreview.com/ comes very highly recommended, you should find plenty of info there.

I'm always hesitant to recommend water cooling. I never thought it was worth the hassle for anyone except those guys attempting insane overclocks. You'll be fine with 120mm fans.

SSDs are amazing performance wise, but right now the prices per gigabyte are just a little to high. What I'd do in your situation is get a nice big regular hard-drive and leave the SSD for future upgrade.

To be honest, I threw in water cooling as it is VERY quiet, and I've always wanted to have a crack at it. Problem is a good kit would cost as much as the gfx card

Also, this is a personal project, cost isn't the only reason I don't want to buy pre-built.

Solitaire

hare05 wrote: »

To be honest, I threw in water cooling as it is VERY quiet, and I've always wanted to have a crack at it. Problem is a good kit would cost as much as the gfx card

As expensive as a HD5770??

Try two or three times as much!

Every time I hear the word "slient build" I always want to get someone to get it from HWVS, simply because of the sick price on the white Antec Mini P180 (~€60, practically half price!) Throw in a i5-530 build, Hyper 212 Plus throttled down to low speed (its a very meaty monster so cooling even a heavily OCd i3 should be nothing for it!) and a Vapor-X HD57*0 and you're off!

RoyalMarine

just to add something,

i have an i3, hd5770 in an aerocool m40. i replaced the stock fans, and its barely noticable.

ScumLord

Once you cut down the noise of the fans (which in my case couldn't be done without a fan controller, the two different brands of "silent" fan I bought make little to no noise difference) the hard drive will instantly stand out as the nosiest component. SSDs are completely silent they just don't offer much in the line of storage. The only other solution is having your storage in another box out of the way with an SSD running OS and programs locally. This is what I plan to do.

Solitaire

AFAIK Samsung F3 + grommets is very quiet for a regular HDD from what I've heard