Personal computing discussed

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bitcat70
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Re: Putting together a quieter computer

Mon Dec 30, 2019 3:09 pm

DrCR wrote:
bitcat70, how did the build turn out?

Got all the parts and built the machine. Jeez! That heat sink is huge! Thank goodness for modular power supply cables. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to make the CPU power connection as the sockets were under the heat sink. With modular cables, though, I plugged them in before installing the mobo in the case and routed them through the pass through above the mobo and behind it. The case came with two 120 mm fans mounted: front and rear. I removed the front fan to see how the computer would perform without it. I don't think I'll reinstall it. These fans, though quiet as they are, are three pin ones. Do four pin PWM fans offer any advantages over these? I ended up removing the 3.5 inch HDD bay to make extra room for the cables coming out of the power supply. I won't be using spinning rust in this build and this case has a nifty behind-the-mobo SSD mounting bracket. Did a fresh Windows 10 install, loaded the drivers, updated BIOS and left all the OS and BIOS setting (except for changing the power plan to "Performance") at default. Ran Prime95 torture test for about 18 hours without any errors. Ryzen Master was showing CPU temperature between 65 - 75 Celsius. But what was most interesting was that even with all the cores pegged at 100% and almost all of the RAM being used the system was barely audible. And it was only slightly louder than when running at idle. In both cases it's whisper quiet and barely distinguishable from ambient noise. I can still hear it if I focus on it but otherwise It just melts into the background. I like it a lot! One thing I noticed, though, is that the RAM runs at DDR4-2400 but it's DDR4-3200. I'm not sure if the systems needs any tweaking but I'll see if I can make RAM run at DDR4-3200 and if it has any impact on speed/stability/noise. But that's something for another post.

Thank you DrCR and everybody else for your contributions in making my build a success!
 
JustAnEngineer
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Re: Putting together a quieter computer

Mon Dec 30, 2019 4:53 pm

Pulse Width Modulation generally allows a lower throttled speed (and therefore a lower noise floor) than you can achieve with voltage control of your fan speeds.

If your ASRock motherboard is anything like mine, you’ll need to run the motherboard’s fan calibration routine before it will let you use the lowest fan speeds. Once you’ve run the fan calibration, you can set the temperature-speed curves for each fan. There’s an option to allow the system to completely stop some fans when cool.

For your memory, in the BIOS configuration select “XMP profile” to get higher than the fallback DDR4-2400 / PC4-19200 / 1200 MHz base speed.
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Redocbew
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Re: Putting together a quieter computer

Mon Dec 30, 2019 5:05 pm

bitcat70 wrote:
Got all the parts and built the machine. Jeez! That heat sink is huge!


Yeah, the "whacking huge hunk of metal" approach is quite popular these days. It works though and helps keep the fans speeds down, so I'm good with it.

Do four pin PWM fans offer any advantages over these?


If thermals are ok, and you're happy with the noise levels as they are, then not really. Like JAE said, they just help you fine tune things a bit more in case running the fans at full speed the whole time is too loud, or running them at a lower speed doesn't give you the cooling you need.
Do not meddle in the affairs of archers, for they are subtle and you won't hear them coming.
 
bitcat70
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Re: Putting together a quieter computer

Tue Dec 31, 2019 12:03 am

JustAnEngineer wrote:
Pulse Width Modulation generally allows a lower throttled speed (and therefore a lower noise floor) than you can achieve with voltage control of your fan speeds.

If your ASRock motherboard is anything like mine, you’ll need to run the motherboard’s fan calibration routine before it will let you use the lowest fan speeds. Once you’ve run the fan calibration, you can set the temperature-speed curves for each fan. There’s an option to allow the system to completely stop some fans when cool.

Although the system is very quiet and a big improvement over the old beast if I could bring it down even more I'd like that. PWM sounds like the better choice here plus it would give me the opportunity to tweak the system which is something I haven't done in a long while. Since the fan on the heat sink is already PWM that leaves the 120 mm rear fan. I think I'll get the Noctua NF-A12x25 (or wait for the new announcement?) unless there are other contenders? Maybe the BeQuiet BL066? As far as calibrating it, are you talking about something built into the BIOS or something like the "ASRock A-Tuning utility" that's run from Windows?

JustAnEngineer wrote:
For your memory, in the BIOS configuration select “XMP profile” to get higher than the fallback DDR4-2400 / PC4-19200 / 1200 MHz base speed.

Yup, just goes to show you it's been awhile since I put computers together and never extreme overclocking ones. XMP is a thing so I'll enable it and see how it goes.
 
bitcat70
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Re: Putting together a quieter computer

Tue Dec 31, 2019 12:12 am

Redocbew wrote:
bitcat70 wrote:
Got all the parts and built the machine. Jeez! That heat sink is huge!


Yeah, the "whacking huge hunk of metal" approach is quite popular these days. It works though and helps keep the fans speeds down, so I'm good with it.

Same here but it is the biggest heat sink I ever put my hands on.

Redocbew wrote:
Do four pin PWM fans offer any advantages over these?


If thermals are ok, and you're happy with the noise levels as they are, then not really. Like JAE said, they just help you fine tune things a bit more in case running the fans at full speed the whole time is too loud, or running them at a lower speed doesn't give you the cooling you need.

I'm pretty happy with this build as is but if I can bring down the noise a bit more I'd be even more happy with that plus it will give me something to play with.
 
JustAnEngineer
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Re: Putting together a quieter computer

Tue Dec 31, 2019 12:18 am

https://noctua.at/en/which_fan_is_right_for_me
https://noctua.at/en/nf-a12x25-performa ... nd-nf-s12a
The Noctua NF-A12x25 PWM is the best all-around 120 mm case fan, performing well for either case ventilation or radiator cooling. For $30, you would certainly expect it to be great.
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DrCR
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Re: Putting together a quieter computer

Fri Jan 03, 2020 8:25 am

bitcat70 wrote:
I'm pretty happy with this build as is but if I can bring down the noise a bit more I'd be even more happy with that plus it will give me something to play with.

Yeah, sounds like going ahead and indeed getting the NF-A12x25 PWM for rear case fan would be the next step. Congrats on your build, glad to help!

Redocbew wrote:
Yeah, the "whacking huge hunk of metal" approach is quite popular these days.

Nah, it's been a thing for well over a decade. (Scythe Ninja is 15 years old at this point.)
 
bitcat70
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Re: Putting together a quieter computer

Fri Jan 03, 2020 9:32 am

DrCR wrote:
bitcat70 wrote:
I'm pretty happy with this build as is but if I can bring down the noise a bit more I'd be even more happy with that plus it will give me something to play with.

Yeah, sounds like going ahead and indeed getting the NF-A12x25 PWM for rear case fan would be the next step. Congrats on your build, glad to help!

Thanks again! I have some fans on the way so I'll play with them when I get them. At this point it's just tweaking as the base is solid.
 
JustAnEngineer
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Re: Putting together a quieter computer

Fri Jan 03, 2020 9:44 am

Once you've run the UEFI fan tuning routine and started playing with the temperature-speed curves, you'll really be able to quiet things down.

I'm using a pair of NF-A14 PWM fans ($22 each) on the front of my Define Mini-C. This gives positive case ventilation and catches most of the dust on the front filter rather than letting it inside the case.
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JustAnEngineer
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Re: Putting together a quieter computer

Fri Jan 03, 2020 7:53 pm

P.S.: This is why we don’t want to buy 12 or 14 nm chips in 2020:
https://www.techpowerup.com/262592/nvid ... -the-power
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just brew it!
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Re: Putting together a quieter computer

Fri Jan 03, 2020 11:48 pm

My poor old 32nm FX-8350 is very sad.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
 
Igor_Kavinski
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Re: Putting together a quieter computer

Sat Jan 04, 2020 1:48 am

 
just brew it!
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Re: Putting together a quieter computer

Sat Jan 04, 2020 1:57 am

Igor_Kavinski wrote:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/14562/turemetal-fanless-chassis-for-diy-highend-pcs

Starting at $250 for the mini-ITX version and ramping up to an eye-popping $770 for the full-ATX version, I suspect it's a little beyond most people's case budgets. It's still a cool (pun intended!) idea, if not a particularly new one; IIRC Zalman already did something like this years ago.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.

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