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Message: <blockquote data-quote="dcwp" data-source="post: 398543" data-attributes="member: 25562">I managed to get a day at home this weekend even though I'm supposed to be away until next weekend.  So of course I took that time to work on my htpc build.Right now I'm concentrating on heat and noise.  Since I've been getting very high temps from the chipset, I removed the stock cooler.  There was a tiny dab of thermal compound on one corner of the chipset, no wonder it was getting hot.  So I removed it (very sticky, took a long time), cleaned with alcohol, applied silver-based compound, and reset the stock cooler.  That seems to have gotten me somewhere between 5 and 10 degrees already.  I'd like to have slightly cooler temps, but this is a start and much cheaper/easier than getting an aftermarket heatsink.  With the structural elements inside my case I don't actually know if I could put a large heatsink inside.  That's frustrating since it's a very tall case, but que sera sera.Anyway, I was able to fiddle with SpeedFan and change the target temp for the GPU to 45 degrees.  With that setting, all fans stay around 50% under load and two drop to 0 at idle.  That has made a very nice difference in noise already.Now the bulk of the noise seems to be coming from the HDDs.  They are quite loud and one is running hot as well, staying around 41-42 degrees all the time.  I'm running three 3.5" HDDs for a total of about 1.25Tb right now and I want to reduce the number of disks to save noise and heat.  So now I have to figure out the best strategy. I had been planning to eventually go to an NAS setup with all my HDDS in a separate case in the attic and just a 64Gb Solid State Drive in the main box.  That would definitely be cool and quiet, but would also be a hassle.  I have never built an NAS and don't really have time to build and maintain a separate box.  I do have the hardware though and was planning to use the leftover parts that I replaced with this build.  Now I am thinking that for about the same cost I could buy a large WD Green Disk.  They are supposed to run very quiet and cool plus I would eliminate two disks entirely and hopefully get very quiet operation.  If I go this route, I'll sell the components from the old build and most of the old drives to pay for a 1.5Tb green disk.  I'd love a 2Tb disk, but they are still way out of my price range compared to 1 and 1.5.  I think this is the best option since I have begun to focus on streaming media more than onboard and I don't see myself buying a lot more DVDs or CDs since my budget has gotten tighter.  I'm still not 100% convinced since I do have another Tb or so of archived disks that I could put on the system and for the last few years my driving purpose has been to grow storage.  This all goes back to the minimalist inspiration for this machine since it let me box up all my external media and move it out of the living room.I'm curious what experiences people have had with the WD Green Disks.  Are they really noticeably quieter than standard?  If I ran two Green Drives, would it still be relatively quiet or would they make roughly the same noise as a single large standard drive?Thanks for any input!dcwp</blockquote>

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