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Why in the world would you want to be doing that? If you want quiet build for quiet, which is almost always a terrible idea. IME building systems for people who want quiet builds they are imagining the noise. I've built systems where the ambient level at the users head was unchanged on or off and the buyer still claimed to hear something.
Build a system with quality components and lots of airflow so the fans don't need to run all that fast in anything less than stress tests and you'll hear nothing.
Which makes that case a waste of money. For $150 there are simply superior cases. Like any number that don't have enclosed fronts at all.
Well, at least it's not just me - thanks. (I actually put the RAM in before putting the MB in the case, which reduced the issue then - at least pending an upgrade.)
I'm a bit worried. I haven't had to use strength to put anything together in my desktop yet, although I still lack a CPU & CPU heatsink/fan.
I always build the system outside the case to the point where it can post just to make sure everything works and the stuff on the MoBo is seated correctly. putting RAM and coolers on in the case is more than awkward.
Check the RAM sticks. Are the retention clips, the little tabs on the sides of each slot, fully closed? It takes a bit of force to get the sticks in. If the clips aren't fully closed you need to press them all the way in till the clips close.
The major issue with putting in the cooler is getting the backplate connected to the frontside which differs from cooler to cooler but always involves flipping the board around and doing some screwing in an awkard position for the board.
As has been mentioned, the need to apply a significant amount of force to install certain components, particularly heatsink/fan assemblies, is certainly nothing new, and should never be something treated casually. I have experienced such difficulties many times over the years with a wide variety of different designs and combinations. Some of the worst were those old push-pin coolers for the Pentium 4's - I hated those. The fact that so much pressure was often required and the tops of the push-pin assemblies where designed to use a flat blade screwdriver of all things made me shudder. Nevermind the stress on the motherboard, I could imagine the blade on the screwdriver slipping off and gouging the surface of the board. Instead, I used to push down with my thumb squished into the top of the pins and crank my hand around to lock the thing. Sore thumb, but much safer.
One thing that I do to help with the issue and protect the motherboard during assembly is to use a large rectangle of flat corrugated cardboard between the work surface and the board to protect the underside. The cardboard is stiff enough to provide support but flexible enough to cushion the entire undersurface. The small amount of flex is well within the board's tolerances. And it's antistatic and costs nothing to boot.
Actually in this case I wa able to avoid thaving to grope round the back - I reoved one of the stock plastic bars from the AMD mount and attached the arms from the Noctua, with enough freedome to swing, then I tok the other plastic bar out, added the spacers, swung the arms, and locked them down. Last time I did have that issue and, as I recall, used a crocodile clip on one of the protruding legs at the front to stop it from slipping back through as I turned the board over.
I used newspaper, with the anti-static bag from an older motherboard on top. But I suppose actual newpaper is an exotic substance these days.
Yes, everything is seated and clips closed but no force. Even the GPU is clipped & screwed in (good thing it is heavy). The heatsink/fan clips in like Richard's original one as it is AMD cooler too. The motherboard os screwed in and supported by those bolts attached to the PC case. I guess I will find out when I try & power it up in a few weeks.
Intel still uses a variation on those push pin coolers. The poor sods who buy pre built systems get them and then wonder why their systems die so fast. When I sell people Intel systems, even when the Intel CPU includes that PoS, I always include a better cooler, usually the hyper 212 unless the guy is buying an unlocked chip.
Yes the Hyper 212's have been around a long time and have proven to be a pretty cost-effective solution. I wish more computer components were around long enough for them to perfect before re-tossing the salad.
This didn't seem to suit this case - the primary GPU, which wasn't doing anything in particular, went from about 38C to 50C during the tst render while the CPU hit 84/85 isntead of 80/81 yesterday. I assume that putting the fan on the other way round, so it is drawing air through rather than pushing it, is less effective since it is never the default? Otherwise I'd try flipping it over so that there was still more space between the coler and the GPU while still drawing air from below (which is where the intake fans are) and popping it out high (the outlet fan is at/above the CPU level, as well as the top of the case being meshed).
Building for quiet may be less efficient than building for performance, yes. You're a subject matter expert here, and I respect that. But I beg to differ on characterizing it as "almost always a terrible" idea. Noise can drive some people batty.
"It's all in your head", huh? Maybe that's true for some, but I think it probably isn't psychosomatic for all. Saying that it is doesn't make it true for everybody.
On balance, I don't have a problem with this logic...except for what I said above. Some people simply hear more or less at different frequencies and/or what they do hear bothers them more or less than the next person.
Within a range, your own experience is different too. You can't know what I hear or if it interferes with me unless you can be inside my head and body, and hearing things through my ears and processing centers.
This may be true and it could be a waste of money. I have a mesh-enclosed case, including the front. It doesn't bother me, but then I did eliminate the CPU HSF in favor of a pump with a radiator. And yes, my radiator has fans. Maybe it's where I placed the radiator, or maybe it's how I have the push-pull configuration or the CPU fan speed set, I don't know. But it's for certain that this arrangement is quieter in my space with a sound meter, and in my head, with my ears.
I did not "build for silence", but I sure did tweak for it. It is what it is. I'm not going to say you must do it the way I do it. I don't think for this topic, anybody can say with imperical truth that one way is the one true answer. That didn't work with the Grapefruit diet, and it didn't work with the Cabbage diet, either. Open minds, lots of possibilities. Oh, and Water Cooling FTW. But only if that's one's thing, of course.
Pumps are usually the loudest component in WC systems. Adding one to get a quiet case is always counter productive. Yes some people are more sensitive to high frequencies but, unless you buy one of the BeQuiet cases with baffles, foam and metal, what the case in question is made of, transmits those sounds very efficiently. A closed case interferes with low frency sound not things like coil whine.
I think there was a miscommunication. I meant switch the side the fan is on. That way it would pull outside air in across the cooler and then into the space between the cpu and the gpu where the exhaust fan on the back could get rid of some of it and the gpu cooler would dump the rest.
Those noctua fans just clip on, IIRC, so switching it to where ever you want should be pretty easy.
No, I did understand and do that (at least I think I did - rreading I may still bemisunderstanding) - I was wondering it reversing the springs and reattaching the fan on the same side (top) so that it was drawing air through would work as well as having the fan blowing from below, since in this system blowing through from above does not seem to work well, was an option or if drawing the air through is inherently less effective than blowing, given that it seems never to be the default behaviour. I thought if workable it might be better as it would leave more space for air to flow through between the bottom of the CPU assembly and the top of the first GPU, though I don't think the gap is any narrower with the fan below than it would eb with the whole thing turned ninety degrees for the default orientation. For now I've put it back to blow through from below, will see how it is in a little while (it is of course possible that the worse performance was because I'd somehow dislodged it while fiddling with the fan).
Speaking as a professionally trained sound engineer, the key thing people in the computing world tend to overlook when the issue of noise from computing systems crops up is the difference between considering sound pressure levels as just a single overall averaged statistic (what decibel meters give you) versus as a continuous set of discrete measurements covering the entire audible frequency spectrum (what an audio spectrum analyzer gives you.) For better or worse the human ear perceives noise in certain parts of the frequency spectrum as being much louder than in others (see equal-loudness contours for specifics.) Meaning that - depending on the specific noise spectra of the sounds involved - two identical decibel meter readings can easily result from situations where noise is considered irritating versus non-existent. You have to consider the specific frequencies involved - not just the measured dB. Especially since there are multiple weighting systems in common use on decibel meters right now (eg. dB-a vs dB-c.) Which further muddies the waters where reaching meaningful conclusions is concerned.
Flipped the fan from blowing down fro above to blowing up from below, it went back to 80/81C for the CPU (and this one was allowed it run for a little over an hour). I was surrpised that the GPU still got warm, but only to 45C instead of 50C as with the other arrangement I tried. I haven't, however, looked at tweaking the GPU fan profiles yet.
With very minor differences push vs. pull orientation doesn't matter. There are plenty of bigger air coolers with 2 fans, one push and one pull. IIRC there are even some 3 fan ones with a fan in between the two stacks.I generally go with push but that is just habit. Case fans it certainly makes a difference as positive pressure is better, it reduces dust buildup, than negative pressure so always try to have more intake than exhaust fans.
Thank you.
Thank you? I think?
Transferred my old drives over tonight (which was more effort than expected since the second GPU was covering the SATA ports, so I had to partially dsassemble).
One of the two came in as a Foreign, Dynamic drive (the en that had my documents and DIM downloads, on two logical partitions). Fortunately right-click>Import Foreign drives has opened it, but it's still showing as dynamic (which I don't think it was on the other machine - though it may explain why Wndows made me ceate a third logical drive and link it to the DIM drive when I wanted to allocate that more space). I am currently, very slowly, moving the DIM downloads over to the new drive - then I can do the same for the stuff on Docuemnts and try reorganising the whole thing.
One of my experiments didn't pan out - trying to copy the DVD for Adobe Creative Suite 6 to a flash drive errored out. Can anyone recommend external optical - ideally Bluray - drives? The better reviewed one at Scan had short cables which wouldn't work with this case, and since it was a Y cable to get power from a second port a simple substitute cable wasn't an option.
I could also do with getting a better keyboard - this one is not very comfortable for me. The old one, which was OK, was a Cherry (under the Dan Technology branding) from 1999, so I assume mechanical or at least not the modern-style soft keys (I'm not sure what this oen is - Kensington Value Keybord).
Mechanical keyboards are available from a bunch of brands with many kinds of switches.
So you first need to know what switches you like. Do you like clacky ones, like an actual typewriter or the old IBM keyboards? Silent ones or something in between? How hard do you type? The harder you type the higher the actuation distance you want. Also do you want to feel when the switch actuates?
For instance I like the noise and tactile feedback and type pretty hard so I buy Cherry mx Blue keyboards. After that its jkust a matter of what features I want and how much I'll pay.
I want programmable macros, a braided cable and a USB port for my mouse. So I got the Corsair K95 but it's a $200 kb if you can find one.
Once you know what switches you prefer then you should be able to find a kb that has those switches and the other features you want.
This is the one I'm buying: USB 3.0 BR/DVD when I buy one to rip all my DVD/BR to a 3.0 USB 5TB Seagate HDD. I have a DVD reader/writer but I believe it's USB 2.0.
At the rate the AMD Ryzen 5 3600 and AMD Ryzen 7 2700 keep selling out I will be getting a Ryzen 5 3600X or Ryzen 7 2700X instead. I sort of wanted the extra quietness of the non-X model CPUs though. I also liked the 65W TDP instead of the 105W TDP.
The main switch types are as follows
Cherry Blue - Clicky
Cherry Red - Tactile
Cherry Brown - Somewhere in between
All the above differ from the old system in that they're individual replaceable keys, as opposed to a dome-type pad for the entire layout. There are lots of other key types too, like Romer, and now that the Cherry patent has expired, there are plenty of knock-offs of that design with different names.
I've been researching mechanical kbs, but it's a bit of a swamp. For a start, there are very few wireless ones, and I hate wires. I'd also prefer a TKL (TenKeyLess or no NumPad), which narrows the field even further. Then there's the whole RGB thing. Most of them have the option to switch it off, but almost every kb uses its own software for RGB, which (to me) is yet another pain. And of course, RGB means using more power, so even if you can unplug the power cable, the charge won't last as long. Of course, the sensible thing is to not use RGB at all, but you're still paying for it. A lot of kbs also have replaceable and/or programmable keys, so you can indulge wildly in customising not only the look of the kb, but also the key functions.
There are quite a few cheaper mechanical kbs, or you can go right up to the Logotech G915 at $250. Right now, I'm still searching, but I may end up sticking with my 10 yo Logitech wireless.
I use this one and enjoy it very much:
G.SKILL RIPJAWS KM780R RGB On-the-Fly Macro Mechanical Gaming Keyboard, Cherry MX Brown
Amazon had it cheaper but the URL was ridiculous so I opted to instead put the description here.
Reds aren't tactile. They're silent. Brown's and Blues are tactile. Browns are basically Reds with tactile feedback.
The trouble is there are not a lot of places around here to try the keyboard out as a test of the feel (not to mention that randomly pressing keys isn't the same as actual use). I think I do want a fair travel - the issue, in part, with this keyboard is that the keys seem to stop short when I press them. Not too bothered either way for clicks. That's all helpful comment, anyway, and will nform my looking - thank you.
That looks like fairly short cabling again - with this case I probably need about 60cm or more to have the thing plugged in at the top and resting securely on the desk, more to use the back panel connections.
Ah, right. I've been watching too many videos, all with different terms for clicks. I know Browns are (sort of) a mix of the other two, but I didn't know how to phrase it.
If you want long travel without a click you want red or brown (all cherry switches have a about the same travel).
Still looking at keyboards and burners, but I have most of the the software installed now.
Yes, I failed to check her feet and so on but it was just a test - ROG Medieval Fantasy Bedroom plus the one figure took 6886MB, so too much for the 1660 but would have been OK on an 8GB card. Ran out of samples at 17 minutes, 30% converged, the 2080Ti was hovering on 70C for lest half of that so I'd think it would have stayed there with more samples too.