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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AberDino" data-source="post: 128483" data-attributes="member: 11575">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 <a href="http://www.zalman.co.kr/eng/product/view.asp?idx=63&code=021" target="_blank">Zalman Reserator 1</a> to cool my Athlon XP2000+, in combination with a <a href="http://www.zalman.co.kr/eng/product/view.asp?idx=90&code=013" target="_blank">Zalman ZM-GWB1 GPU water block</a> 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 <a href="http://www.zalman.co.kr/eng/product/view.asp?idx=204&code=021" target="_blank">Zalman ZM-GWB3 GPU water block</a> for my new Radeon X1600 Pro HDMI, and a <a href="http://www.zalman.co.kr/eng/product/view.asp?idx=171&code=021" target="_blank">Zalman ZM-NWB1 Northbridge water block</a> 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.</blockquote>

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