# Mussels PC - Kenny



## Mussels (Jan 16, 2008)

This was a system designed to be silent originally, I've had to settle for quiet lately with the blistering Aussie summer.

This is my rig in specs, reposting details here with extra info.
Processor:	Q6600 G0 @ 3.60GHz (Lapped)
Motherboard:	Asus P5K-E Wifi
Memory:	4x1GB DDR-II 1110 (5-7-7-28) @ 1000 (5-5-5-15)
Video Card:	Albatron 8800GTX 768MB
Harddisk:	Samsung 500GB 16MB sata-II
CD/DVD Drive:	Pioneer DVR 212 SATA DVD-RW
CRT/LCD Model:	samsung 226BW 22" widescreen LCD (1680x1050 res)
Case:	Antec P150
Sound Card:	Audigy 4
PSU:	OCZ GameXstream 600W (Fan modded)
Software:	Vista Ultimate x64
Benchmarks:	Superpi: 14.6s | 3dm05 - around 18k | 3dm06 around 13-14k if card is OC'd

Cooling: 
CPU: Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme (Lapped). 120x38mm CPU fan (panaflo low)
Intake: 2x92mm nexus @ 7v, 1x120mm nexus black @ 7v
Exhaust 1x120 antec 120mmx38mm exhaust, (on low). 1x120mm Yate Loon modded into PSU.
GPU: Thermalright HR-03 Plus, 120mm fan (antec on low)
Mobo: 40mm generic @ 7v on northbridge, 60mm @ 5V on VRM






Front with no cover





Rubber screws, reduces fan vibration (and mismatched colors too!)





The side sladesurfer and TK never show - the place the cables hide 





Of course, a good panel makes it hard to tell its a jungle behind it.





Angled shot of interior





Closeup of interior





System as it is, and the one damned pic that came off slightly blurry.



I'm open for advice on how to improve cooling without increasing noise, so feel free to give me advice.





Updated: 2nd may 2008 - this rig now runs the TV and surround sound system. It is utterly craptastic and i cannot stop smiling


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## Mussels (Jan 16, 2008)

some people have told me off-forum.... yes it is dusty. its dusty as hell here, so even the air compressor doesnt get it clean no more.


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## rampage (Jan 16, 2008)

i want my speakers back ....lol


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## tkpenalty (Jan 16, 2008)

You modded your P150?!?!??






Haha. I do it neater  I have several cable ties and ziplocks to keep cables in place from getting screwed over by the side panel's compression.

I see you realised that the front dust filter and panels kill airflow. Imho i'd get a mesh filter for your kama bay, and get slot covers already :S


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## baztop3 (Jan 16, 2008)

Nice spec,  But have you thought aboult a new case? the Coolermaster cosmos is designed for low-nosie and it's only aboult £110 not bad for one of the best looking case's out there.  just an idea.


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## tkpenalty (Jan 16, 2008)

baztop3 said:


> Nice spec,  But have you thought aboult a new case? the Coolermaster cosmos is designed for low-nosie and it's only aboult £110 not bad for one of the best looking case's out there.  just an idea.



You never tell an Antec SOLO/P150/Sonata PLUS/Sonata Designer (damn you antec for making so many models) to change cases :shadedshu




Hey mussles, with that massive heat wave, how were temps on your PC... I bet your PC was frying D:


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## baztop3 (Jan 16, 2008)

lol are you responsible for designing that case?  what did you use a ruler   Im not sure aboult cooling but you could line the inside with acoustic material to make it even quieter?


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## keakar (Jan 16, 2008)

here are my thoughts for solving your heat issues while getting back to silent and not giving up any performance.

get rid of the 8800GTX and get the 8800GT http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130318
along with this ARCTIC COOLING Accelero S1 VGA Cooler http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835186016
which will cool fine as a passive cooler since it mounts under the card so air is drawn through the open slot across the fins so it gets good airflow and is totally silent.

replace the cpu cooler and rear exhaust fan with this one ARCTIC COOLING Arctic Fan 12 (AF12) 120mm Case Fan http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835186008 
 mounted with a non restrictive grill like this on the rear fan http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811999204

i would remove all front fans completely and cut out all those fan grills the case has and remove any filters, the holes in the case arent as small as some cases have but cutting them out of the way will increase each fans airflow by a few cfms. as for not having front fans, please try it first before you insist it cant run cooler that way because fan driven air is always warmer than air drawn in naturally. i would also remove the fan from the 5 inch bay fan.

if you find its still running warm then cut out a fan opening in the top of case where the warm air gets trapped and put another one of these ARCTIC COOLING Arctic Fan 12 (AF12) 120mm Case Fan http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835186008
 mounted with a non restrictive grill like this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811999204


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## tkpenalty (Jan 17, 2008)

keakar said:


> here are my thoughts for solving your heat issues while getting back to silent and not giving up any performance.
> 
> get rid of the 8800GTX and get the 8800GT http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130318
> along with this ARCTIC COOLING Accelero S1 VGA Cooler http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835186016
> ...



Or do what I did. Get 8800GT + 120mm fan at hdd bay. That method totally kills the dual 92mm setup in performance.


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## Mussels (Jan 17, 2008)

there is a few dings on the case/chipped paint, from taking it to LAN's every weekend.

keakar: i am testing an accelero S1 on the GTX soon.

"please try it first before you insist it cant run cooler that way because fan driven air is always warmer than air drawn in naturally." - what the? sorry, the air comes from the same place so its exactly the same. I also dont like 60-70C temps on my hard drives running them passively, so the intakes stay.


As for the heatwave, we had 42C outside a few times, so in this room it had reached 45C ambient a few times. Had to reset to stock for a while, 70C idle temps suck.


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## grunt_408 (Jan 17, 2008)

$hit mussels do you have no A/C at your house? 70C idle temps do suck indeed mate.


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## Mussels (Jan 17, 2008)

we have air con, at the exact opposite end of the house. doesnt really reach here.


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## grunt_408 (Jan 17, 2008)

Mussels said:


> we have air con, at the exact opposite end of the house. doesnt really reach here.



Got to hate that. Bring on the cool weather I cannot wait for it.


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## Triprift (Jan 17, 2008)

yeah if was gettin 70 odd idle with me lappy id be panicking and dont worry Craigleberry weel send some more hot weather over for ya


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## grunt_408 (Jan 17, 2008)

Oh thanks for that..... We dont need it though triprift.


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## keakar (Jan 17, 2008)

Mussels said:


> fan driven air is always warmer than air drawn in naturally." - what the? sorry, the air comes from the same place so its exactly the same.



if you were here i could show you a 5 ton a/c blower i used as a fan in my garage. with 76 degree air temperature you turn it on and after a minute it shows air temp of 79 degree air coming out of it and the motor itself is only warm to the touch. when you turn it off you can read the blades of the fan are also 79 degrees. 

the air moves accross the blades and it causes friction. the friction causes the blades to pick up heat which is transfered to the air moving past it but in a small computer fan it is a very small increase in heat, probably half a degree at most.

but if that is your hdd cooling then you are correct you dont want to take those away but removing as much grill out of the way will help get more air to them.


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## keakar (Jan 17, 2008)

Mussels said:


> there is a few dings on the case/chipped paint, from taking it to LAN's every weekend.
> 
> keakar: i am testing an accelero S1 on the GTX soon.



i didnt see anything saying it would fit on the GTX, if it does it would be good news because they are a lot of cooling in a small package


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## Mussels (Jan 18, 2008)

they may or may not fit, thing is because of the HR-03 plus i already have a HSI sink and ramsinks to fit.

A friend is ordering a S1 next week, so we're going to test and see if it fits.


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## InnocentCriminal (Jan 24, 2008)

I've decided not to vote on rigs that displease my eyes. Sorry chief!

*UPDATE:* I've just noticed that this is in the Project Logs - I will however be watching this to see if it improves, then I'll give you my vote. 

^^

P.S. Lose the stickers...


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## Mussels (Jan 24, 2008)

i'd rather you did that, than what others do and rate a 1 and post abusive/stupid comments.


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## King Wookie (Jan 24, 2008)

Mussels which way is the air moving trough your HR-03?

My previous gfx card (7950GT) was passively cooled, with the heatsink just under the cpu.

I found it was pushing up my cpu temp by 5-8 Deg.


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## Mussels (Jan 24, 2008)

the air is blowing down.

Unfortunately if i have it hanging down below the card, i cant fit my sound card in the PCI slot.

I'm waiting on either a smaller cooler to come out for the GTX, or just a smaller card in general


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## Wile E (Feb 6, 2008)

keakar said:


> if you were here i could show you a 5 ton a/c blower i used as a fan in my garage. with 76 degree air temperature you turn it on and after a minute it shows air temp of 79 degree air coming out of it and the motor itself is only warm to the touch. when you turn it off you can read the blades of the fan are also 79 degrees.
> 
> the air moves accross the blades and it causes friction. the friction causes the blades to pick up heat which is transfered to the air moving past it but in a small computer fan it is a very small increase in heat, probably half a degree at most.


There's a small flaw in your removing the front fans theory. The point isn't necessarily to get cooler air to come in, but to get air to flow across all of the heatsinks, dissipating their heat.


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## billco (Feb 19, 2008)

Nice rig, I'm very curious as to which BIOS you're using on that board...  I've got a near-identical build with some heavy-duty TEC watercooling and my bottleneck is the board itself.  I also live in a much colder part of the world (Canada), ambient is usually around 20-25 depending on how loudly the wife complains 

In fact, any OC with a 9x multi causes instability, even though I can easily hit 3.6ghz with an 8x multi.  It's not even a heat issue, temps stay around 55-60'C under Prime small-fft.  I've tried BIOS 504, 601/602, 802, each one worse than the last.

It's quite irritating as I've hit 4.2ghz on this CPU with an NForce board (yuck!).  Got any tips ?


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## Mussels (Feb 19, 2008)

billco said:


> Nice rig, I'm very curious as to which BIOS you're using on that board...  I've got a near-identical build with some heavy-duty TEC watercooling and my bottleneck is the board itself.  I also live in a much colder part of the world (Canada), ambient is usually around 20-25 depending on how loudly the wife complains
> 
> In fact, any OC with a 9x multi causes instability, even though I can easily hit 3.6ghz with an 8x multi.  It's not even a heat issue, temps stay around 55-60'C under Prime small-fft.  I've tried BIOS 504, 601/602, 802, each one worse than the last.
> 
> It's quite irritating as I've hit 4.2ghz on this CPU with an NForce board (yuck!).  Got any tips ?



update to the latest bios. It adds a 400FSB strap, so the board actually runs 400 FSB at 'stock'

I'm limited by temps, but i've ran 460*9, before heat got to it and it crashed.


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## REVHEAD (Mar 29, 2008)

You really need a bigger case, and the dust omg the dust lol. A bigger case will help with cooling.


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## Mussels (Mar 30, 2008)

how would a bigger case help cooling...

smaller cases often cool better, it all depends on the fans. bigger cases need more fans, since theres more air to be moved.

and dust isnt so bad, thank god for the built in filters to teh case.


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## Mussels (Apr 17, 2008)

update - here is a 3dm06 run and all relevant info after swapping the GT into this system (GTX in the lan rig)


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## Mussels (Apr 17, 2008)

and 3dm05


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## Mussels (May 2, 2008)

Update: post 1 now has a pic of the system in its new home. System has changed slightly in specs - see my user profile for details. (notably: auzentech X-plosion, Z-5500D speakers and 8800GT)


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## hbkl (Jun 14, 2008)

wow  u got a nintendo wiii  great!!


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## caleb (Aug 6, 2008)

Clean the room dude.
Imagine its a case and if all cables arent in order you will get +5C on ambient.


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## Mussels (Aug 6, 2008)

caleb said:


> Clean the room dude.
> Imagine its a case and if all cables arent in order you will get +5C on ambient.



this threads rather old, i dont even live there anymore.

its also winter... i want that +5C thanks


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