I want silence! Watercooling? (1 Viewer)

[AberDino]

My house is located in a very small village with no through roads, so a very quiet environment indeed. The HTPC is placed in my HiFi rack and is used purely as a HTPC, controlled with only a MCE remote. The unit is switched on pretty much 24/7. After trying a few, what were supposed to be, virtually silent fans I took the plunge almost two years ago and upgraded my HTPC with the Zalman Reserator 1 to cool my Athlon XP2000+, in combination with a Zalman ZM-GWB1 GPU water block for my Radeon 9800 Pro and a Silentmaxx watercooled 450W PSU. That setup was completely fanless, and although it was quite an investment at the time, it was worth every penny.

I have made some changes over time. After about a year the water pump in the Reserator started to rattle. This apparently was a known fault and a replacement pump was available, but the design of that pump hadn't changed so I probably would have had the same problem again after a while. I therefore opted to remove the pump from the Reserator and fit a different (Alphacool) pump inside the HTPC case, mounted on foam pads. This pump has a higher throughput, and the other advantage is that it is switched on and off with the HTPC itself.

In October last year I decided to upgrade my HTPC with an Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 processor, which also meant upgrading the motherboard, RAM and video card. At the same time I upgraded my DVB-t card and hard drive. I was very pleased to find out that I could still use my Reserator 1 and CPU block, I just had to fit a socket 775 support clip that was already included with the Reserator at the time. I ended up buying a Zalman ZM-GWB3 GPU water block for my new Radeon X1600 Pro HDMI, and a Zalman ZM-NWB1 Northbridge water block for my Northbridge which was getting a bit hot without the airflow through the case. I am very pleased with this system; it is much faster than my previous setup, yet uses approximately 50W less power and is running a lot cooler. The aluminium case helps to radiate the heat that is generated inside the case (hard drive). The "noisiest" component in the case is the hard drive (Samsung SpinPoint), as you hear it when it is spinning up and when there is a lot of disk activity. As gxtracker rightly notes, vibration can be an important contribution to noise, especially from a hard drive. I fitted mine with gel pads and that made a big difference. I believe there are water cooled hard drive enclosures available, but I don't have a need for one of those at this stage.

 

[Olyrous]

Aberdino, I certainly like your hardware and cooling options. That's some smartly picked up hardware.
Concerning the pump, I think you should try the Laing D5 pump (Laing D5-38 Vario DC Pump). You can find it on many cooling on-line stores like swiftech (USA), watercooling.fr and others or possibly from your local Laing distributor (check Laing website, lainginc.com, however I'm not sure if the one from your local distributor will come with molex power connector, so check). This pump is a true gem, especially for systems like the reserator that don't need high-speed circulation because you can set this pump at the lowest setting where it is very quiet and has minimal vibrations.
I want to ask you though about the Silentmaxx. Does it buzz by any chance? Also, your case being literally a sealed box, aren't you worried about it in the summer (tv cards,sound cards, cpu voltage suppliers, ram also get kinda hot you know)?

My own cooling setup is like this: Zalman Reserator 1 Passive Watercooling system (CPU, GPU & Chipset Zalman waterblocks: ZM-WB2 Gold, ZM-GWB3, ZM-NWB1), Laing D5-38 Vario DC Pump (setting 1, suspended with tubing & shoelace), Tygon 3603 clear tubing (mostly), mCubed BigNG T-Balancer: 12cm Nexus Fan in PSU (AcoustiFan mounts) & 12cm Nexus Fan as intake (suspended with shoelace), HDD 2.5" in "Smart Drive 2002 copper" box, AcoustiPack Deluxe v2 SoundProof material


CPU: AMD64 X2 3800 (s939), PSU: Seasonic S12 430W, HDD: Hitachi TravelStar 160GB SATA 2.5" , GPU: nVidia GeForce 6600TD/256MB, Sound: Creative SB X-Fi Elite Pro, TV: Pinnacle PCTV Dual Hybrid Pro PCIe

 

[AberDino]

Thanks for the feedback, always nice to hear from somebody experimenting with similar items. I'm happy with my current pump, but will keep your suggestion in mind when I come to replace it.

With regards to my Silentmaxx PSU, I can confirm it doesn't buzz, in fact it doesn't make any noise at all.

Heat inside the case due to lack of airflow does not seem to be an issue. The case does have holes in the back where one could fit some 60mm fans, and from a previous setup I have a 'man-made' 80mm hole in the top of the case where I used to extract hot air (not visible because the case is part of my audio rack). In addition, it is an aluminium case which radiates the heat quite well.

 

[littlematt]

I have an antec nsk2400 for my case review here http://www.silentpcreview.com/article591-page1.html
Its got 2 120mm fans, designed from the ground up to be an HTPC case - quiet and doesnt look out of place next to other component.. I have an athalon 3800x2 (I think heh) that is cooled by a zalman CNPS9700. I have speedfan controlling eveything. In normal running, the 2 120mm fans are virually inaudible unless I put my head right up to the case. They draw air out of the case so its a negative pressure thing. They draw enough air across the heatsink to keep my CPU at around 38 degrees WTHOUT THE CPU FAN! I have set speedfan up to only turn on the CPU fan if the temp goes over 40 which only happens if Im compressing video or something, or doing lots of channel changes with time shifting on. I CAN hear that but because its only on when Im doing something Ie there is sound in the room from my spreakers, its still not noticable. A perfect solution for me. I had to modify the HS a bit to get it into the case but wasnt hard. I have put green scouring pads over the intake vents on the case to keep the dust out. I really cant recommend the antec case enough. If you want to spend more money the antec fusion case is designed the same. One thing I dont have which might make a difference to you guys is a grunty (hot) GPU but Im not using my HTPC for gaming or anything 3D so why bother?

Cheers,
Matt

 

[jwhyche]

Have you thought about just getting a quieter fan?

 

[James]

How about one of these:

http://www.coolermaster.com/index.p...H-ANU2-GP&other_title=+RR-CCH-ANU2-GP+GeminII

Can passively cool an E6600

 

[jwhyche]

My shuttle HTPC does something like that. Instead of a cpu fan it has block that sits on top of the cpu. It moves the heat through 4 heat pipes to a large 120mm fan and radiator set. When everything is working properlly, meaning there are no dust hippos on the radiator fins, its the most quiet PC I've ever had.