Dead with braids. And silence…
I want to share the experience of building a silent computer for home.
Recently, I published an article about choosing a modern monitor, which habrapayuz users highly appreciated. This gave inspiration for the second part. Like last time, I ask you not to consider the article as something academic, I just wanted to share information that took a lot of time to collect.
I set out to collect from components the most quiet system unit, while reliable and fast, for comfortable encoding of HD-video. That's how it was.
Housing
The computer case is just a box, more or less decent looking. However, if you pay attention to sound insulation, ease of assembly and cooling efficiency, then everything is not so obvious. For more flexibility, I considered the case without a power supply, because I have already chosen one of the quietest power supplies beforehand (see below).
I must say that it turned out expensive. I chose the Antec P182 case (pictured above). Without a power supply, they produce several models. The most famous series - P182 and P190 (much more expensive). There is still a rather small case without a PSU NSK4000, but in smaller cases the cooling is less efficient and requires more noisy fans.
Along with Antec, I read about the Lian-Li case. They are original in that they are made of pure aluminum. Look very stylish and made with high quality. But in Russia, even less common than Antec.
It was possible, of course, to find many good cases among the cheaper ones. What did I like about Antec?
The case is thought out to the smallest detail. Detailed reviews are, for example, here and here .
The walls of the case are three-layered, which effectively suppresses vibration and noise. If you knock on them - the sound is very deaf, like a tree :-). In the case of a fan with a diameter of 12 cm, have 3 rotational speeds that can be changed by a mechanical switch (for two of them it is placed on the back wall of the case). I have two fans out of three. At the minimum 1200 revolutions they are heard quite weakly, although some craftsmen change them to more expensive ones and claim that they are much quieter. I have not tried it yet, because quite pleased with the noise level, but to do this in this package is quite easy. To install the hard disk attached original silicone pads, greatly reducing the sound of the spindle and the head.
Convenience assembly above lauding. All hanging wires can be fixed on the back wall with special holders, which greatly facilitates access to the motherboard, and by the way, improves air circulation. The power supply is located at the bottom of the case in a separate compartment. It also isolates unwanted wires. The unit, however, must have long enough wires to reach the DVD drive in the opposite corner of the case.
Among the shortcomings I can point out a rather flimsy front door and a ventilation window in the upper part of the case - sounds partially pass through it, which reduces the value of sound-absorbing walls. I want to try to close it and watch the temperature. If it does not rise, I will leave. One more thing - a couple of times the fan did not start when turned on at minimum speed. But, probably, it was running. Later did not notice this.
The rest is all done, in my opinion, perfect.
The price, of course, is very high (5.5. - 6 thousand rubles), but there are no compromises with quality.
')
I also add that I tried the Antec Sonata III case with the standard Antec EarthWatts power supply. The speed of the 80 mm fan in its power supply is regulated depending on the load. The noise level is quite low at a low power system, but still uncomfortable, as it seemed to me.
Power Supply
Here, due to the large number of options, the choice was more difficult. Now almost all manufacturers announce models with the word "Silent", but their ideas about silence are quite different :-). The race for size led to the fact that there are many power supplies with a 140 mm fan. But, as it turned out, a low noise level does not give a large size as such, but a size plus a rotational speed plus design features, and the latter is not so insignificant. Fanless models (FSP Zen, Antec Phantom), I still excluded, because There is a high risk of overheating of transistors and other components inside the case - the power supply fan blows not only itself. Considered Cooler Master Silent Pro, various models of Zalman, FSP, Antec, Thermaltake. Most of them are very quiet, but not all provide stable voltages.
I was almost going to buy the mentioned Cooler Master , but at the last moment I read the review of the power supply unit Enermax Modu 82+ ( another review appeared recently on iXBT), which is not very common here until now. And then it immediately became clear that I would buy just such a power supply.
Its fan is “only” 120 mm, but it has an exceptionally quiet mechanism and rotates extremely slowly - up to a power of ~ 400 W the speed remains constant at about 500 revolutions. At such a speed, it can be heard only if you attach the ear to the body. In addition, the tests showed that the stability of the stresses produced by the unit is almost a record in its class. Finally, modular (removable) cables make it possible not to use extra wires in the case. There is another option Pro 82+, which differs only in the absence of modular cables and at the same time is cheaper. Price Modu 82 + at 525 W is now about 3,700 rubles, Pro is about 1000 cheaper.
CPU
Now, about the actual stuffing. With the choice of the CPU manufacturer, I personally had no questions. I am not a supporter of the holy wars Intel vs AMD. Now, objectively, Intel makes better processors. This is sad from the point of view that there is almost no competition, which means that there is no progress that could be. However, so far the situation is as follows, although 2-3 years ago it was not so simple.
But there is one big BUT. The performance of desktop processors has long met the requirements of the absolute majority of applications. The speed in games depends on the processor (within the current lines available on the market) not very much, a good video accelerator is much more important here. The only area where the processor is still very significant is video encoding. And a significant role here is played by the number of cores, and not the frequency. Unfortunately, for Intel processors, the price depends almost linearly on the number of cores. So, the Core 2 Duo E8400 now stands from 5 thousand, and the Core 2 Quad Q9450 (the lower model with a full 12 MB cache) - from 9.5 thousand.
I was guided by the following considerations:
- it is necessary to choose a processor with 45nm technology, since it is less heated and does not require active cooling;
- Core 2 Quad I am not ready to buy because of the high price;
- The price of processors of the E7xxx series is not much different from the E8xxx, so it is better to take the 8th series with a full 6 MB cache right away.
Hence the choice was small and fell on the model E8400, as having a “round” frequency of 3 GHz :-)
Now, about the possibility of a potential upgrade. As experience shows, by the time you are ready to upgrade, there is a cheaper and productive platform on the market, and therefore it is more profitable to replace the entire bundle of board-processor-memory at once. I think that Core i7 (Nehalem) processors will be a much more profitable investment in a couple of years than an upgrade to the Core 2 Quad, which was completely outdated by that time. Now, only enthusiasts will be waiting for the release of Nehalem, because the new platform will be expensive, as in its time Core 2 Duo (new top motherboard, expensive DDR3 memory). In addition, it is better to wait until the novelty settles, cures all childhood diseases and greatly reduces the price. And it will happen, it seems to me, not earlier than in a year and a half.
Well, one more, most important note. The last year there has been an active transfer of resource-intensive applications on the power of graphics accelerators (NVIDIA CUDA , AMD CTM). Adobe Photoshop CS4 already uses this acceleration, video codecs also appear on these platforms. The result, according to reviews, is impressive. On individual tasks, you can get a gain in speed of 100-200 times compared with the calculations on the CPU. For example, see which desktop supercomputer can be made on 4 GeForce 9800 boards. Intel also does not deny that processors with thousands of cores have the future. But the transition to such numbers for universal CPUs is a matter of many years, and the GPU is already now. Therefore, very soon we will have a boom of desktop applications for the GPU.
From here, one simple conclusion is that practically any can choose from modern CPU lines :-) Within reasonable limits, of course. For a silent and cold system, I only took into account the mandatory production of the 45-nm process technology. Now a new series E5xxx has appeared , with a price almost 2 times lower than on E8xxx. It has a very small cache and no support for virtualization - for some it may be necessary.
CPU cooling system
Box coolers are not the quietest solution, so I bought an OEM processor and searched for a cooler separately. On the old Celeron, I used the Zalman 7000AlCu, which is hardly audible. This time I was going to buy its analog for Socket 775 (model 7700AlCu), but it wasn’t on sale at that time, so, unexpectedly, I bought a huge Scythe Ninja 2 (by the way, repeatedly seen in photos from the site silentpcreview.com)
By weight it is 700 grams, impressive heat pipes below. Quite somehow it does not look close to a tiny processor chip. The box says that it can work in passive mode, without a fan. Accordingly, the fan in it is optional, it is put on the radiator at will with the help of two wire fasteners. At first, I was distrustful of such an opportunity. Looking ahead, I will say that, despite the size (14 cm), the fan is not the quietest and makes noise at the same 1000 rpm stronger than the case. However, it can easily be replaced with something quieter. But still, for the sake of experiment, I took it off completely. In addition, Antec has two case coolers installed very close to the processor and drive air directly to the radiator. And then it became clear how effective in terms of heat dissipation is the 45 nm process technology. Even with a long 100% load, the processor with semi-passive cooling warmed up slightly above body temperature (the maximum was 38 degrees). In the unloaded mode, the temperature is kept around 26-28 degrees, i.e. close to the air temperature in the room. So I left the processor without a fan with a clear conscience.
The only minus of Scythe is that after mounting the radiator, the motherboard flexes quite noticeably. Maybe my hands are crooked, but a similar phenomenon was described on a website in a review. So install the radiator on the board will have very carefully.
Motherboard
If everything is more or less unambiguous with the processor, the choice of the motherboard took a lot of time. I had to study the capabilities of all Intel chipsets. I somehow immediately eliminated nVidia chipsets. because According to reviews, they are quite hot and not very stable.
Now about the manufacturer. Now among the main players can be identified only ASUS and Gigabyte. Quite popular are also boards Intel, MSI, Foxconn.
Intel, as a rule, offers models with rather limited opportunities and with some oddities (for example, integrated HDMI). MSI and Foxconn are not very common. I am not objective with Gigabyte after I bought a dead card and had to change it.
Therefore, I stopped at Asus. However, even within a single manufacturer, there were so many models that the eyes ran. Here and here you can compare the P3x (Asus P5Kx) and P4x chipsets (Asus P5Qx boards). I stopped at the P4x series, because all motherboards, regardless of bios, support the new 45nm processors, besides, these motherboards cost almost as much as the P3x.
All models within a single chipset differ in the set of interfaces and slots, the quality of chipset cooling (for overclockers :-), and the features of memory support. I dropped all the exotic options with simultaneous support for DDR2 and 3, abnormal FSB frequency and with integrated graphics. This was an extra overpayment for unnecessary features. Among the remaining options picked up the necessary set of interfaces. I needed the outputs of Fireware, eSATA (by the way, this interface is different from the usual SATA), and WiFi, COM, LPT were not needed.
I chose an Asus P5QL-E motherboard based on the P43 chipset (the main difference from the motherboards on the P45 is just one PCI-E 16x slot).
Honestly, I bought into the Asus Energy Saving Unit technology, which can automatically control the voltage and frequency of the six components of the system to reduce energy consumption. I hoped that it would be effective for a general reduction in heat generation, which is very important for a system with a minimum number of fans. However, EPU-6 is not necessary with such a cold processor, so I don’t use it.
Among other features of the board:
- 8-phase processor power, which, in theory, should increase stability;
- reliable solid capacitors that do not dry with time;
- Asus Express Gate (download a mini-distribution of Linux 5 seconds after switching on).
HDD
I traditionally prefer Western Digital, because never faced the failure of their drives. Many people like Seagate. The remaining manufacturers are less popular, but also find their followers.
Because I collected the most quiet (and cold) system; among the WD drives, the choice was obvious - this is the Green Power (Caviar GP) series.
The plates at them rotate more slowly - 5400 revolutions per minute, so the disc works very quietly: the spindle is not audible at all, the head is audible barely. At the same time, it is very weakly heated. There is also a version of RE2-GP - it works in RAID. Performance Caviar GP is not the maximum, but far from low, that one would expect from a disk at 5400 rpm. I bought a terabyte model and so far I am very pleased with it. Now terabytes on 3 plates of 333 GB each (I have 4) should already be on sale. They must work, apparently, even quieter, and warm even less.
RAM
Everything is quite simple here. I didn’t need overclocked memory with big radiators. Honestly, I do not understand those who buy expensive and fast RAM. Does it give a significant increase in speed? Perhaps this will be relevant only for Core i7, which does not have the concept of FSB.
I bought the usual Kingston KVR800D2N5K2 - 2 strips of 2 GB each. It is more reliable than 4 strips of 1 GB each, while maintaining dual channel mode.
I apologize for the bad photo from the official site.
Video card
Due to the fact that computing on graphics processors is only gaining popularity, I decided to wait until the technology settles, and buy a temporary yet very simple and cheap Asus EN8400GS Silent video card for 1000 rubles, especially since I do not play games.
So there is nothing special: passive cooling, cheap and slow processor. In the future, I would like to collect more information about the performance of video codecs and other resource-intensive applications on the GPU. In addition, nVidia is going to go to the process technology of 45 Nm, which should reduce heat generation. A successful AMD / ATI R770 processor is still expensive. In any case, those who need games right now will still buy something hotter and more funny. I decided to wait for the appearance of fast and cold video cards with passive cooling.
Conclusion
I omit the choice of optical drive and expansion cards - everyone has their own preferences.
In general, I want to say that I received a very quiet, powerful and stable system. Its noise is almost not audible. Now you can hear the noise of the aquarium compressor on the table :-).
I'm only going to look for quieter case fans and try to close the hole in the upper part of the case. After that, I think, the sound will not be heard at all.
UPD: After closing the top hole it became much quieter.
About stability: for 2 months of work hangs, blue screens and reboots, as well as problems with the drivers have never been.
Well, the final price tag for Moscow retail such (2 months ago):
- CPU: Core 2 Duo E8400 OEM. 4900 - OLDI
- CPU Cooler: Scythe Ninja 2. 1200 - F-Center
- Motherboard: ASUS P5QL-E. 2770 - OLDI
- RAM: 2x2048 PC2-6400 Kingston KVR800D2N5K2 / 4G. 2020 - F-Center
- HDD: Western Digital WD10EACS. 4472 - F-Center
- Video: Asus EN8400GS Silent / HTP. 1192 - F-Center
- DVD: Pioneer DVR-216DBK. 702 - F-Center
- Box: Antec P182. 5660 - F-Center
- Power: Enermax MODU82 + 525W. 3508 - X-Memory
Total 26424 rubles.
Now a couple of photos of what happened (update).
The photo helps to estimate the height of the Scythe Ninja radiator. Body fans blow directly at him. So CPU cooling is, so to speak, semi-passive. The top fan (clearly visible in the next photo) is going to turn off. And close the vent hole in the top case cover. I doubt only one thing: it blows the passive video card downstairs - will it overheat.
General view of the system in the collection. Please note that the board is fully open - all wires are hidden behind it and fixed to the side wall with special clips. The hard drive is in the bottom basket. It is removed if you unscrew the bolt and pull the ring. I removed the second basket from the case to increase the free space for better cooling.
Well, the historical frame "as it was." I could not resist :-)
Silence is important to all!
And in conclusion, I want to say that my choice took a lot of time. I hope that someone at least partially save this time. </ Lj-cut>
Recently, I published an article about choosing a modern monitor, which habrapayuz users highly appreciated. This gave inspiration for the second part. Like last time, I ask you not to consider the article as something academic, I just wanted to share information that took a lot of time to collect.
I set out to collect from components the most quiet system unit, while reliable and fast, for comfortable encoding of HD-video. That's how it was.
Housing
The computer case is just a box, more or less decent looking. However, if you pay attention to sound insulation, ease of assembly and cooling efficiency, then everything is not so obvious. For more flexibility, I considered the case without a power supply, because I have already chosen one of the quietest power supplies beforehand (see below).
I must say that it turned out expensive. I chose the Antec P182 case (pictured above). Without a power supply, they produce several models. The most famous series - P182 and P190 (much more expensive). There is still a rather small case without a PSU NSK4000, but in smaller cases the cooling is less efficient and requires more noisy fans.
Along with Antec, I read about the Lian-Li case. They are original in that they are made of pure aluminum. Look very stylish and made with high quality. But in Russia, even less common than Antec.
It was possible, of course, to find many good cases among the cheaper ones. What did I like about Antec?
The case is thought out to the smallest detail. Detailed reviews are, for example, here and here .
The walls of the case are three-layered, which effectively suppresses vibration and noise. If you knock on them - the sound is very deaf, like a tree :-). In the case of a fan with a diameter of 12 cm, have 3 rotational speeds that can be changed by a mechanical switch (for two of them it is placed on the back wall of the case). I have two fans out of three. At the minimum 1200 revolutions they are heard quite weakly, although some craftsmen change them to more expensive ones and claim that they are much quieter. I have not tried it yet, because quite pleased with the noise level, but to do this in this package is quite easy. To install the hard disk attached original silicone pads, greatly reducing the sound of the spindle and the head.
Convenience assembly above lauding. All hanging wires can be fixed on the back wall with special holders, which greatly facilitates access to the motherboard, and by the way, improves air circulation. The power supply is located at the bottom of the case in a separate compartment. It also isolates unwanted wires. The unit, however, must have long enough wires to reach the DVD drive in the opposite corner of the case.
Among the shortcomings I can point out a rather flimsy front door and a ventilation window in the upper part of the case - sounds partially pass through it, which reduces the value of sound-absorbing walls. I want to try to close it and watch the temperature. If it does not rise, I will leave. One more thing - a couple of times the fan did not start when turned on at minimum speed. But, probably, it was running. Later did not notice this.
The rest is all done, in my opinion, perfect.
The price, of course, is very high (5.5. - 6 thousand rubles), but there are no compromises with quality.
')
I also add that I tried the Antec Sonata III case with the standard Antec EarthWatts power supply. The speed of the 80 mm fan in its power supply is regulated depending on the load. The noise level is quite low at a low power system, but still uncomfortable, as it seemed to me.
Power Supply
Here, due to the large number of options, the choice was more difficult. Now almost all manufacturers announce models with the word "Silent", but their ideas about silence are quite different :-). The race for size led to the fact that there are many power supplies with a 140 mm fan. But, as it turned out, a low noise level does not give a large size as such, but a size plus a rotational speed plus design features, and the latter is not so insignificant. Fanless models (FSP Zen, Antec Phantom), I still excluded, because There is a high risk of overheating of transistors and other components inside the case - the power supply fan blows not only itself. Considered Cooler Master Silent Pro, various models of Zalman, FSP, Antec, Thermaltake. Most of them are very quiet, but not all provide stable voltages.
I was almost going to buy the mentioned Cooler Master , but at the last moment I read the review of the power supply unit Enermax Modu 82+ ( another review appeared recently on iXBT), which is not very common here until now. And then it immediately became clear that I would buy just such a power supply.
Its fan is “only” 120 mm, but it has an exceptionally quiet mechanism and rotates extremely slowly - up to a power of ~ 400 W the speed remains constant at about 500 revolutions. At such a speed, it can be heard only if you attach the ear to the body. In addition, the tests showed that the stability of the stresses produced by the unit is almost a record in its class. Finally, modular (removable) cables make it possible not to use extra wires in the case. There is another option Pro 82+, which differs only in the absence of modular cables and at the same time is cheaper. Price Modu 82 + at 525 W is now about 3,700 rubles, Pro is about 1000 cheaper.
CPU
Now, about the actual stuffing. With the choice of the CPU manufacturer, I personally had no questions. I am not a supporter of the holy wars Intel vs AMD. Now, objectively, Intel makes better processors. This is sad from the point of view that there is almost no competition, which means that there is no progress that could be. However, so far the situation is as follows, although 2-3 years ago it was not so simple.
But there is one big BUT. The performance of desktop processors has long met the requirements of the absolute majority of applications. The speed in games depends on the processor (within the current lines available on the market) not very much, a good video accelerator is much more important here. The only area where the processor is still very significant is video encoding. And a significant role here is played by the number of cores, and not the frequency. Unfortunately, for Intel processors, the price depends almost linearly on the number of cores. So, the Core 2 Duo E8400 now stands from 5 thousand, and the Core 2 Quad Q9450 (the lower model with a full 12 MB cache) - from 9.5 thousand.
I was guided by the following considerations:
- it is necessary to choose a processor with 45nm technology, since it is less heated and does not require active cooling;
- Core 2 Quad I am not ready to buy because of the high price;
- The price of processors of the E7xxx series is not much different from the E8xxx, so it is better to take the 8th series with a full 6 MB cache right away.
Hence the choice was small and fell on the model E8400, as having a “round” frequency of 3 GHz :-)
Now, about the possibility of a potential upgrade. As experience shows, by the time you are ready to upgrade, there is a cheaper and productive platform on the market, and therefore it is more profitable to replace the entire bundle of board-processor-memory at once. I think that Core i7 (Nehalem) processors will be a much more profitable investment in a couple of years than an upgrade to the Core 2 Quad, which was completely outdated by that time. Now, only enthusiasts will be waiting for the release of Nehalem, because the new platform will be expensive, as in its time Core 2 Duo (new top motherboard, expensive DDR3 memory). In addition, it is better to wait until the novelty settles, cures all childhood diseases and greatly reduces the price. And it will happen, it seems to me, not earlier than in a year and a half.
Well, one more, most important note. The last year there has been an active transfer of resource-intensive applications on the power of graphics accelerators (NVIDIA CUDA , AMD CTM). Adobe Photoshop CS4 already uses this acceleration, video codecs also appear on these platforms. The result, according to reviews, is impressive. On individual tasks, you can get a gain in speed of 100-200 times compared with the calculations on the CPU. For example, see which desktop supercomputer can be made on 4 GeForce 9800 boards. Intel also does not deny that processors with thousands of cores have the future. But the transition to such numbers for universal CPUs is a matter of many years, and the GPU is already now. Therefore, very soon we will have a boom of desktop applications for the GPU.
From here, one simple conclusion is that practically any can choose from modern CPU lines :-) Within reasonable limits, of course. For a silent and cold system, I only took into account the mandatory production of the 45-nm process technology. Now a new series E5xxx has appeared , with a price almost 2 times lower than on E8xxx. It has a very small cache and no support for virtualization - for some it may be necessary.
CPU cooling system
Box coolers are not the quietest solution, so I bought an OEM processor and searched for a cooler separately. On the old Celeron, I used the Zalman 7000AlCu, which is hardly audible. This time I was going to buy its analog for Socket 775 (model 7700AlCu), but it wasn’t on sale at that time, so, unexpectedly, I bought a huge Scythe Ninja 2 (by the way, repeatedly seen in photos from the site silentpcreview.com)
By weight it is 700 grams, impressive heat pipes below. Quite somehow it does not look close to a tiny processor chip. The box says that it can work in passive mode, without a fan. Accordingly, the fan in it is optional, it is put on the radiator at will with the help of two wire fasteners. At first, I was distrustful of such an opportunity. Looking ahead, I will say that, despite the size (14 cm), the fan is not the quietest and makes noise at the same 1000 rpm stronger than the case. However, it can easily be replaced with something quieter. But still, for the sake of experiment, I took it off completely. In addition, Antec has two case coolers installed very close to the processor and drive air directly to the radiator. And then it became clear how effective in terms of heat dissipation is the 45 nm process technology. Even with a long 100% load, the processor with semi-passive cooling warmed up slightly above body temperature (the maximum was 38 degrees). In the unloaded mode, the temperature is kept around 26-28 degrees, i.e. close to the air temperature in the room. So I left the processor without a fan with a clear conscience.
The only minus of Scythe is that after mounting the radiator, the motherboard flexes quite noticeably. Maybe my hands are crooked, but a similar phenomenon was described on a website in a review. So install the radiator on the board will have very carefully.
Motherboard
If everything is more or less unambiguous with the processor, the choice of the motherboard took a lot of time. I had to study the capabilities of all Intel chipsets. I somehow immediately eliminated nVidia chipsets. because According to reviews, they are quite hot and not very stable.
Now about the manufacturer. Now among the main players can be identified only ASUS and Gigabyte. Quite popular are also boards Intel, MSI, Foxconn.
Intel, as a rule, offers models with rather limited opportunities and with some oddities (for example, integrated HDMI). MSI and Foxconn are not very common. I am not objective with Gigabyte after I bought a dead card and had to change it.
Therefore, I stopped at Asus. However, even within a single manufacturer, there were so many models that the eyes ran. Here and here you can compare the P3x (Asus P5Kx) and P4x chipsets (Asus P5Qx boards). I stopped at the P4x series, because all motherboards, regardless of bios, support the new 45nm processors, besides, these motherboards cost almost as much as the P3x.
All models within a single chipset differ in the set of interfaces and slots, the quality of chipset cooling (for overclockers :-), and the features of memory support. I dropped all the exotic options with simultaneous support for DDR2 and 3, abnormal FSB frequency and with integrated graphics. This was an extra overpayment for unnecessary features. Among the remaining options picked up the necessary set of interfaces. I needed the outputs of Fireware, eSATA (by the way, this interface is different from the usual SATA), and WiFi, COM, LPT were not needed.
I chose an Asus P5QL-E motherboard based on the P43 chipset (the main difference from the motherboards on the P45 is just one PCI-E 16x slot).
Honestly, I bought into the Asus Energy Saving Unit technology, which can automatically control the voltage and frequency of the six components of the system to reduce energy consumption. I hoped that it would be effective for a general reduction in heat generation, which is very important for a system with a minimum number of fans. However, EPU-6 is not necessary with such a cold processor, so I don’t use it.
Among other features of the board:
- 8-phase processor power, which, in theory, should increase stability;
- reliable solid capacitors that do not dry with time;
- Asus Express Gate (download a mini-distribution of Linux 5 seconds after switching on).
HDD
I traditionally prefer Western Digital, because never faced the failure of their drives. Many people like Seagate. The remaining manufacturers are less popular, but also find their followers.
Because I collected the most quiet (and cold) system; among the WD drives, the choice was obvious - this is the Green Power (Caviar GP) series.
The plates at them rotate more slowly - 5400 revolutions per minute, so the disc works very quietly: the spindle is not audible at all, the head is audible barely. At the same time, it is very weakly heated. There is also a version of RE2-GP - it works in RAID. Performance Caviar GP is not the maximum, but far from low, that one would expect from a disk at 5400 rpm. I bought a terabyte model and so far I am very pleased with it. Now terabytes on 3 plates of 333 GB each (I have 4) should already be on sale. They must work, apparently, even quieter, and warm even less.
RAM
Everything is quite simple here. I didn’t need overclocked memory with big radiators. Honestly, I do not understand those who buy expensive and fast RAM. Does it give a significant increase in speed? Perhaps this will be relevant only for Core i7, which does not have the concept of FSB.
I bought the usual Kingston KVR800D2N5K2 - 2 strips of 2 GB each. It is more reliable than 4 strips of 1 GB each, while maintaining dual channel mode.
I apologize for the bad photo from the official site.
Video card
Due to the fact that computing on graphics processors is only gaining popularity, I decided to wait until the technology settles, and buy a temporary yet very simple and cheap Asus EN8400GS Silent video card for 1000 rubles, especially since I do not play games.
So there is nothing special: passive cooling, cheap and slow processor. In the future, I would like to collect more information about the performance of video codecs and other resource-intensive applications on the GPU. In addition, nVidia is going to go to the process technology of 45 Nm, which should reduce heat generation. A successful AMD / ATI R770 processor is still expensive. In any case, those who need games right now will still buy something hotter and more funny. I decided to wait for the appearance of fast and cold video cards with passive cooling.
Conclusion
I omit the choice of optical drive and expansion cards - everyone has their own preferences.
In general, I want to say that I received a very quiet, powerful and stable system. Its noise is almost not audible. Now you can hear the noise of the aquarium compressor on the table :-).
I'm only going to look for quieter case fans and try to close the hole in the upper part of the case. After that, I think, the sound will not be heard at all.
UPD: After closing the top hole it became much quieter.
About stability: for 2 months of work hangs, blue screens and reboots, as well as problems with the drivers have never been.
Well, the final price tag for Moscow retail such (2 months ago):
- CPU: Core 2 Duo E8400 OEM. 4900 - OLDI
- CPU Cooler: Scythe Ninja 2. 1200 - F-Center
- Motherboard: ASUS P5QL-E. 2770 - OLDI
- RAM: 2x2048 PC2-6400 Kingston KVR800D2N5K2 / 4G. 2020 - F-Center
- HDD: Western Digital WD10EACS. 4472 - F-Center
- Video: Asus EN8400GS Silent / HTP. 1192 - F-Center
- DVD: Pioneer DVR-216DBK. 702 - F-Center
- Box: Antec P182. 5660 - F-Center
- Power: Enermax MODU82 + 525W. 3508 - X-Memory
Total 26424 rubles.
Now a couple of photos of what happened (update).
The photo helps to estimate the height of the Scythe Ninja radiator. Body fans blow directly at him. So CPU cooling is, so to speak, semi-passive. The top fan (clearly visible in the next photo) is going to turn off. And close the vent hole in the top case cover. I doubt only one thing: it blows the passive video card downstairs - will it overheat.
General view of the system in the collection. Please note that the board is fully open - all wires are hidden behind it and fixed to the side wall with special clips. The hard drive is in the bottom basket. It is removed if you unscrew the bolt and pull the ring. I removed the second basket from the case to increase the free space for better cooling.
Well, the historical frame "as it was." I could not resist :-)
Silence is important to all!
And in conclusion, I want to say that my choice took a lot of time. I hope that someone at least partially save this time. </ Lj-cut>
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/43406/
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