19 February 2004
I want to build a quiet game machine.
Yes, ok, the idea of a quiet game machine is rather an oxymoron. Either you have a fast machine or you have a quiet machine. Having both without getting into expensive exotic hardware is not really an option. Someone pointed out that games are loud so who cares how noisy the machine is - just crank the volume until you can't hear it. Excellent point. Well, I also want this PC as a general workstation for cpu sucking apps like video editing, image manipulation and audio processing. So it can't sound like a hair dryer. But above all, it had to be ready to play Half Life 2 whenever that ships.
So my goal is to build something with a reasonable trade-off between fast and quiet - a delicate feat of engineering.
I've spent days and days reading reviews around the Internet fretting over what components to select. The key to building a quiet and powerful machine is choosing the right components and making the right trade-offs. You can't just buy the latest and greatest and then try to muffle them. You buy quiet, fast and cool running components and then stick them in a well cooled case. That's the theory I read about anyway.
So here's the components I've ordered with a brief blurb about why I chose each one.
1) ASUS P4P800 Deluxe motherboard
This board is based around the Intel 865PE chipset. The 875P chips is supposed to be better because of something called PAT. However, Asus enabled PAT on this motherboard so it's as fast as the 875P but cheaper. The board has lots of other goodies and overclocks well. I don't do overclocking but I like having that option. It seemed to be an easy choice.
2) Intel Pentium 4 2.8C 800FSB
I wanted to go with the 3Ghz version but clearly there's a big jump in heat output above 2.8Ghz. You go from 69.7 watts to 89 watts. Bummer. I noticed manufacturers of silent PC's like Hush Technologies don't go above 2.8 either. The new generation of high speed processors all simply put out far too much heat. I made sure the motherboard can handle the Prescott generation of CPU's but it's unlikely I'll every upgrade to them.
3) Zalman 7000A AlCu
I used this cpu cooler on my last quiet pc project and I'll stick with it. It's not necessarily the quietest but it's quiet enough and very efficient.
4) 2 x Corsair 512Mb DDR400 CL=2.5
Having lots of memory is a cheap way to get more performance without generating much extra heat. Windows XP does fine with 512K and I could have stopped there to keep the power drain lower but with more memory, you get less swapping and fewer hard disk hits. I almost bought the memory from Crucial like I usually do until I noticed the Corsair memory was cheaper and had a lower CAS latency. The memory speed doesn't make much of a difference according to tests by Tom's Hardware so I decided not to go for high performance memory. It's much better to use 4 memory modules rather than 2 according to Anandtech to get the best performance but that would mean going with 256K modules. That would be waste when I want to upgrade memory so I stuck with two modules.
5) ATI Radeon 9700 Pro OEM edition
Choosing which graphics card turned out to be hard! A Radeon card with support for DirectX 9.0 seemed to be the way to go but which one? That took a lot of research. I almost went for an 9600XT until I realised I could pick up a 9700 Pro on Ebay for around the same price. I sacrificed getting video input though.
6) Artic Cooling VGA Silencer
At first my plan was to replace the fan on the Radion 9700 Pro with the passive Zalman ZM80C-HP heatsink. It worked great on my GeForce 4 Ti4400.
At the last minute I switched to the Artic Cooling VGA Silencer instead. Here's a review of it. I particularly like the fact that this device directly vents the heat out the back of the computer via the neighbouring PCI slot. A Radeon 9700 Pro puts out about 54 watts (my old Ti4400 puts out 40 watts). Given the 2.8C P4 processor is putting out 70 watts, the Radeon is quite a large source of heat. Rather than heating up the air that's trying to cool the processor, that hot air get immediately blown out the back instead.
I'm counting on the review being accurate about the cooler being inaudible from 1 meter away with the fan on the low setting.
The VGA Silencer also gives me the option to overlock. In a pinch, I can set the fan on high and push up the clock as much as the video card memory will allow.
7) Western Digital Raptor 740GD 76Gb SATA150
This was a difficult choice too. The Seagate 7200.7 was my first choice but then I read about it's annoying and frequent head reset noise. The Hitachi Deskstar 7K250 looks pretty good but after the problems they had with earlier Deathstars I'm a bit leery of them. I almost went with the Samsung SpinPoint PT80 since it seemed to be very well rounded with a confident 3 year warranty. But I finally gave in to my lust for this amazing 10,000 RPM SCSI eating hard disk. It's very, very fast. I know it's head seeks are going to be a bit noisy but I'm hoping I can find a way to isolate it well enough.
8) NEC ND-2500A DVD Writer
Time to get a DVD writer so backing up will be easier. This seemed to be getting good reviews and is great value.
9) Sony 1602 DVD Reader
Don't know whether it's any good but it's cheap and by a major brand.
10) NetGear Wireless 802.11b USB adapter
Unfortunately, this machine isn't going to be wired to my network and I'll have to use wireless.
11) Antec Sonata Case
Finally, all this stuff needs to go in a case. This was also a hard choice too but I finally decided to go with the Antec Sonata for a few reasons. First, it's not ugly. Second, they've put quite a bit of thought into the design of the case to make it quiet. It uses large 120mm fans. The drive bay design is excellent. It comes with a power supply unit. It may not be the best power supply unit but it saves me buying one on top of buying a case as well. If the power supply turns out to be the noisest component, my next choice would be a Q Technology Ultra-Quiet 350W with the 120mm fan. And if the case fan is too noisy, I'll probably replace it with a Papst fan. If the case isn't cool enough, there's room to add an extra 120mm fan in the front of the case.
So I'm now waiting for these components to arrive from an ebay seller, Dabs and PCSilent.
9 March 2004
Finally ready to build the machine. The Radeon 9700 Pro arrived from Re-Tek very quickly and was soon followed by my order from PCSilent. It took ages to get the parts from Dabs due to a delay getting the motherboard.
The build took about four hours but I'm pretty slow and careful with it. The Sonata case was a pleasure to work with. The drive bay mechanism is superb.
It was all going great until I tried to install the latest ATI Catalyst drivers. Then all hell broke loose.
23 March 2004
To cut a long story short, I've given up on getting the Radeon 9700 Pro to work with the ASUS P4P800 motheboard. I don't really know why, but the video card and motherboard won't work together. It's even acknowledged on the Asus website although the part number of the video card is supposed to be above the versions which have troubles.
I put in support calls to ASUS and ATI. ASUS have ignored it and never replied. I'm not sure I'll ever go with ASUS again. I've been receiving various automatic emails for ATI. Very impersonal but at least it's a service. The place I bought the video card was less than helpful offering to replace it with a 9500.
So I swapped the video cards with an older machine. It sucks because I've got a great video card on a slow machine and a so-so video card on my faster machine. I haven't bothered with the Artic Cooling VGA Silencer since I don't think my old machine will be the final home of the 9700. If I had known about these problems, I would have gone with a 9600XT.
Besides that, I'm pretty happy with the rest of my hardware choices. The Antec Sonata case is great except for how easily it picks up finger marks. Sometimes I wear gloves if I want to move it! The PSU isn't really quiet and would probably be worth replacing if I wanted to get the machine quieter. It doesn't bother me though. The machine seems a bit quieter than my first silent PC project. I haven't done any soundproofing or lowered the fans as much as I can yet.
The Raptor hard disk performs well and isn't very noisy at all. It's been great considering how often I've had to reboot the machine due to the video problems.
So the build list here is pretty good except go with the 9600XT or switch to a different motherboard. For hard disks, if I didn't go for the Raptor, I would have bought Samsung.