What is the most quiet & efficient cooling?

[Nikolai]

Hi There,
I was wondering if anyone could recommend suitable cooling for the system im building.
I will be having the following:

gigbyte-p35-ds3 motherboard
intel core 2 quad q6600 2.4ghz
4 gigs dual channel corsair ram
2 X 320gb harddrives in raid 0
1 X 500gb storage HD
1 X 160gb scratch drive
GeForce 7600 GT PCI E

What im looking for is cooling that is renowned for being highly effective but also very quiet .... i do not desire liquid coolers because im installing this system and feel its too risky and too expensive.

also how much does the casing come into the cooling picture, does the right case provide better cooling, and if so do you recommend a particular case for cooling?

thank you very much for your guidance!

[Dread]

You're going to get a lot of advice on this one, so before all the pundits come in lets cover some things about cooling.

First off, quiet & efficient usually don't go together. There are exceptions like phase change systems, but they are very expensive. Whats your budget?

For extremely quiet, and efficient the Zalman Reserator (water-based cooling) would be ideal, but you've already stated you don't want water.

Yes, the case, and wire management can greatly effect cooling.

I would recommend going with a larger than standard case, and adding a
20cm fan, and a couple 12cm fans to the mix with careful wire management.
Do you plan on over clocking the system at all? The larger blade diameter and slower spin of these fans offer good to great cooling, while keeping the noise down compared to smaller/faster fans.

[Capper]

Well, we're more putz than pundit here, but Dread brings up a lot of really good points.

As far as the cooler goes, considering you want to balance cooling efficiency with quiet performance, I'd strongly recommend the Zalman CNPS9700. Zalman specializes in quiet cooling solutions, but that doesn't mean they sacrifice performance. In all of my testing the 9700 was neck and neck with the top performing coolers, and when Matt was using it on his test bench, it had the best cooling performance.
Its cross flow design would also work very well with the Silent Pipe II that Gigabyte uses on their boards.

[fstroupe]

I have spent a fair amount of time experimenting with cool and quiet, since the reason I built my first rig was for digital recording. Though, I became more interested in enthusiast computing and less in making music, I still occasionally do some recording. I have never faced any noise problem while recording since building my own.

Unless a rig is particularly hot, i.e., a Pentium D, I have found that two 120mm fans at 5v, along with decent cable maintenance, and a well cooled PSU will keep most rigs plenty cool enough, if you have efficient CPU and GPU coolers. Add a left side fan if you have passive mobo cooling to get a little more air stirring around that area. My case, with overclocked AMD X2, 7900GS, and a pair of HDDs, stays very close to ambient room temperature.

Ambient room temperature makes more difference than you'd think in cooling your heat generators if you have efficient coolers, and decent ventilation. I've seen a few F difference in room temp make 3-5C difference with a good CPU cooler.

Looking at your rig, your only real concern is trying to keep the HDDs cool. All the reading I've done on your CPU (since it will probably be my next CPU purchase), it doesn't seem particularly hot. A decent GPU cooler keeps the 7600GT plenty cool.

My main concern would be air across the HDDs. Excessive heat is supposed to shorten the life of your HDDs...though I really have no idea how much. Four HDDs packed together in a bay is going to generate a pretty good amount of heat.

I am presently running only two internal drives, and I feel that the 120mm @ 5v is enough. I personally don't think I would feel comfortable with that using 4 drives, especially with the RAID, I am assuming you will have your O/S on those. A 120mm fan at 12v really isn't loud, though it is loud enough to be audible...within 2' of the case anyway. It isn't audible from across the room.

Keep in mind that you are somewhat limited in case selection. Many tool-free cases will only hold three HDDs. Look closely before you buy.

I personally would like a case with an HDD bay holding more than 4 HDDs, to add some additional space between some of the drives, but I don't think that I have ever owned one with a larger bay. The Silverstone case mentioned below has an inside swinging panel that will hold a couple of drives, but I never used it.

My favorite case period is a Silverstone TJ-05. I've had it a long time, and always go back to it. It is mini-server sized, with a 120mm intake, 120mm exhaust, and an 80mm on the right side next to the HDD bay. IMO, this setup is the best for keeping the HDDs cool, running both fans at 5v. I don't think that they make it anymore, at least it isn't listed in Newegg. Just to note, this is the only place I would ever again use an 80mm case fan, and would prefer a 120mm...I've never seen one mounted there.

As far as CPU cooling, I like the Arctic Cooling Freezer series. I reviewed the Freezer 64 Pro, and liked it so well, I bought another for my next rig. There are many other good coolers out there. I guess I wonder if the present Intel CPU drivers have something similar to AMD's "Cool and Quiet"? I personally have no experience with the new Intel stuff...yet anyway.

I like the Zalman VF-700Cu, and the FS-V7 GPU coolers, they have done a great job cooling my GPUs silently. They come with an adapter that has four 3-pin fan connectors from a 4-pin Molex...two at 12v, two at 5v, which gives you some 5v capability without splicing or using a Molex pin tool. Running the Zalman at 12v makes it slightly audible, I only use it with that voltage when overclocking the GPU, and not always. There are also many other great GPU coolers out there...again, I'm recommending what I personally have used.

But in the end, there are many solutions for your rig. This was my $.02.

[Nikolai]

thanks for your replies, they were very helpful.

Thats a good idea you had fstroupe about getting a case that allowed for harddrive cooling if im going to have all those harddrives.
I was looking at the gigabyte website, because correct me if im wrong but it might be better to make the motherboard/case from that same manufacturer.

I was looking at the gigabyte 3D Mars preivew, (its yet to be released) and they have 2 front side fans specifically for the hard drive and they have more fans elsewere .... has anyone seen or heard anything else about the 3D Mars, could you recommend this? ill make a post in the case section if im overstepping threads, its just it seems that a case has a lot to do with cooling ....
would it be a good idea to also get additional fans from gigabyte for ease of installation?

thanks for your advice .....

[fstroupe]

Haven't seen that case yet, but having a Gigabyte case for a Gigabyte board is pretty irrelevant. Expect it to be very well made, and having a price tag between $160 and $200 (I'm assuming, looking at their other aluminum full towers)....which isn't bad for an aluminum full tower...but a pretty good chunk of change for a case. The Silverstone I mentioned before cost about the same...but it was a review item that I didn't have to pay for.

Looking at that case, it will hold 5 HDDs, with twin 80mms on the side blowing on them, and a 120mm on the front. Twin 120s on the rear. Wow...lots of cooling there, running all of the fans at 5v would give you much more airflow than running a pair of 120s at 12v, and nearly total silence. Very cool. (pardon the pun) Keep in mind that a full tower is a pretty large case. That one is 8.5" x 20.5" x 22.25" (appx). The basic mid-tower is 8" x 17" x 19" (appx). It is about the same size as my Silverstone.

Looking at that case and it's excellent cooling kind of surprises me at the Gigabyte Triton 180 case I reviewed last week. The only thing about the case that bothered me is the poor ventilation for the front 120mm. Other than that, it is a very well made case, and they paid a lot of attention to detail.

To be totally honest, I really couldn't imagine anyone really needing the kind of cooling that the 3D Mars has, unless your house stayed at 90F or above. But...I like it. Thanks for pointing it out to me...I hadn't heard of it. Something to bug the other sites I review for about.

[Nikolai]

thanks for your reply fstroupe,

yeah the reason why i might sound like im going overboard for cooling is that i live in sydney australia ... and although we have Air Con in our apartment, over summer it conks out sometimes ... and temperature can average 90-110 degrees over summer which is just about 2 months away now ... so u can see the reason for my paranoia ... i still would but unconfident with a water cooling system as i feel thats out of my league as this will be the first PC ive put together on my own.
Size of the 3D Mars i think would not be too large as im gearing my rig toward future upgradability and longevity of parts.

what additional cooling units might you suggest ?

[fps justin]

Quiet + efficient + practical = Water Cooling

[Tyreal]

Originally Posted by fps justin

Quiet + efficient + practical = Water Cooling

Thats true but he doesn't want liquid cooling.

[gvblake22]

Originally Posted by fps justin

Quiet + efficient + practical = Water Cooling

The "practical" part of that equation can be the source of much disagreement. The high cost of watercooling doesn't usually make it a practical alternative for most people.