Silencing an old rig

[grec]

The PC I usually use for gaming did its job well but while being insanely loud and a bit booky. Moved into a room with quite a thick carpet and the unfiltered 23cm side fan on my PC had to go, and the loud old HD7870XT went with it, as well as any other old case fans. Instead there's an RX580 Nitro, and
2x Noctua NF-P12 redux-1300 PWM
2x Noctua NF-S12B redux-1200 PWM
A 4 way fan splitter for the above and to replace the dying CM212Evo fan
1x Noctua NF-P12 redux-1700 PWM

Now it's whisper silent even with an OC

Old:

New:

 

[looz]

That's a very nice upgrade in both noise and graphics oomph!

 

[Avet]

That botched side fan. There was no compromise to performance back in the old days. Needs more cooling? Slap a big as* fan to it. (Man I'm old...) Now everyone would rather have a vertical GPU baking itself against the tempered glass panel rather than a cool system that doesn't throttle itself to death. As long as it looks good performance doesn't matter.

 

[guido]

Not too botched - you had the forethought to not drill holes which would have blemished your new smooth makeover

I have this same case (Aerocool QS-240 Micro ATX) but watercooled.


I cut out some of the metal honeycomb grid from where the front two fans go - it enabled me to mount my fans on the outer front skin of the chassis (very close to the plastic cover) and fit my radiator against them on the inside skin of the chassis.

 

[Dicehunter]

Nice !

I'd like to suggest 1 thing though, Purchase a little wooden platform to put the case on, To raise it a few inches from the carpet, Not just for ESD protection but so the case doesn't suck up more dust than necessary.


Something cheap from Amazon would do as it's only a small case -

https://www.amazon.co.uk/FITUEYES-M...n:2858800031&s=kitchen&sr=1-9&ts_id=200993031

 

[NeverBackDown]

How dare you disgrace my eyeballs to that... That awful half eaten apple thing Dice! ^_^


But in all seriousness it's a good idea to get a flat hard cleanable surface for it to sit on. Carpet will absolutely destroy the inside of your case within a week. I'd definitely clean the area often even if you rest it on something

 

[Dicehunter]

How dare you disgrace my eyeballs to that... That awful half eaten apple thing Dice! ^_^


But in all seriousness it's a good idea to get a flat hard cleanable surface for it to sit on. Carpet will absolutely destroy the inside of your case within a week. I'd definitely clean the area often even if you rest it on something

Better ?

 

[grec]

Yeah I've been looking into get a large wooden piece cut so I can mount my wheel's pedals too, for now just giving it regular cleans and hoovers nearby.

My old CM212 Evo didn't fit after I recently upgraded to Ryzen(And AM4 brackets with shipping to UK cost as much as a new cooler), I was planning to get an AIO watercooler or an NH-D-15 (Think it would just about fit height wise), this is how things look at the moment (Two fans right of the honeycomb on the right):

(Also finally got a phone without a smashed camera so it doesn't look like I've constantly hotboxed my room)

 

[Dicehunter]

If it fits I'd get an NH-D15, Zero worries about pump failure or leaking and on par or better than many of the top AIO's once heat soak sets in.

 

[grec]

Yeah my main heavy use cases are all quite sustained, and I don't like the sound of the risks. My case says 160mm so I think I could fit a DH15S at least(But it'll be super tight), which seems pretty close to the dual fan in performance.

 

[grec]

Finally fit one (D15S), got it £55 directly from Noctua "open box", seemed to have all the little bits in new packaging and all that, very tight, probably a mm or two in it in height, but not hard to fit.

Also since got another 1TB SSD and 32GB 3600MHz RAM, ready for CPU and GPU update probably coming in next month or two.

 

[WYP]

Hard to beat the old D15. Is that a Sabrent drive that you have there?

 

[grec]

Yep, the Sabrent Rocket Q 1TB, got it for £85 on Amazon recently, less than I paid for that SATA 1TB Samsung 860 EVO 6 months ago (Admittedly QLC vs TLC), been a lovely little performer so far

 

[looz]

Welcome to the club of barely fitting Noctuas! Looking good there

 

[grec]

With an RTX 3060 Ti FE and a Seasonic PX-750 I now genuinely can't hear at all it even under load with my ambient sound level.

It's also not really an old rig anymore I guess besides the trusty old Aerocool case

 

[g0ggles1994]

No dissing the Aero coolcase. I got that for a budget build I was doing for someone, it's a lot better than the pricetag would indicate.

 

[grec]

This little rig has come a long way in 2 years, from its FX8320/HD7870XT origins, these are hopefully the last two major upgrades in a while, no longer for silence but for speed, motherboard started playing up a little (ASRock B450M Pro4) so decided to replace it ASAP as I couldn't take any down time, went with the MSI MAG B550M Bazooka.

Despite official claims to the contrary, the old 1600AF CPU worked fine in this B550 board, apparently consistent with other MSI B550 boards. However I wanted a step up anyway, so with it I've got a 5800X too.

 

[looz]

That's a really impressive setup indeed!