Completely silent PC build.....

arad85

arad85

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Andy
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Following on from Neils microserver build, I thought I'd document a completely silent PC build I'm doing. I want it to run some virtualisation software (VMWare ESXi hypervisor so I can have multiple machines locally on the network) and although it is NOT an out-and-out speed monster it is quite capable. I thought I'd document it, just in case anybody else is looking to build something completely silent.

My requirements:

  • Silent. Not very, very quiet, but silent.
  • Reasonably powerful (i5/i7-3xxx level) but not overclocked
  • Supports native virtualisation (this drove selection of the mobo and CPU - don't worry about this if you don't know what it is)
  • Small, but not at all costs (I could have found a smaller case, but at £100 more expensive!)
  • Room for expansion
  • Lots of memory and fast disk (I'm going to have multiple machines sharing the same hardware, so I/O needs to be fast and I need plenty of memory).
  • No graphics requirements beyond inbuilt in the ix processors.

I have ordered:

  • 4 x Kingston 8GB 1600MHz DDR3 (yes, 32GBytes!)
  • 1 x Asrock Fatal1ty Z77 Professional-m Socket 1155 micro-ATX (supports VT-d for virtualisation and regulators are heatsinked - good for passive).
  • 1 x Intel Core i5 3470S 2.90GHz Socket 1155 (around 7000 on CPU benchmark.nets comparison).
  • 1 x Samsung 256GB 830 Series SSD
  • 1 x Fractal Design Arc Mini Case
  • 1 x StarTech.com 5.25in Trayless Hot Swap (to hot-swap 3.5" disks when needed)
  • 1 x Nofan CR-95C IcePipe Fanless CPU Cooler (see: http://www.quietpc.com/nof-icepipe) - yes this is outrageously big and outrageously expensive (>£100 delivered), but needs must ;)
  • 1 x Silver Power SP-S460FL 460W Fanless PSU (actually, I already had this - it is my spare - I now need to replace this, but that's after the CC recovers!)

Total cost ~ £850 with case, PSU and cooler being ~ £300 of the build, but there are NO FANS and I should be able to run the CPU at full pelt all day long with that cooler.

CPU choice was down to the S CPUs with TDP of 65W or a standard part with 77W TDP. They are much of a muchness performance wise, so I chose the S part as it would be less power when running flat out (the heatsink should dissipate 95W passively, but the lower the better).. I wasn't worried about searching out the i5-3570S over the 3470S. i5 over i7 as I don't run much that can benefit from proper hyperthreading as opposed to more cores thrown at the problem. I do video encoding and this machine will be used for that, but it only gains 10% speed going from 4 cores to 4 cores+hyperthreading - not worth it for the 50% price hike.... Only one SSD for the moment - I will upgrade to two when I'm running out of space.

Photos and more info will follow (although I'm not going to be running any photo software on it).

Why - because I can :geek: I want to tinker with virtualisation through a bare metal hypervisor (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervisor) and I want to build a silent PC.

Some people hoard camera gear - for me, it's PC's (I now have 12 PCs in the house ;))
 
I would like to see pictures and hear more about this - I am not a pc builder or expert in ANY way but really enjoyed building a computer a few years back and way back then it was all about Noctua coolers and fans and a totally silent machine was virtually impossible without spending a massive amount. My current case is an Antec P180 and something smaller appeals so I may start pestering you with questions....
 
I'd just stick it somewhere you couldn't hear it and save the money! Or get ear plugs. Then it is silent ;)
 
neil_g said:
are you going to be running all (how many?) VMs from the single SSD?
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To start with - yes. I was just too stingy to spring for the second SSD - plus it'll be £20 cheaper next week.....

I've got 3 VMs I use a lot at the moment running in VirtualBox (for development type stuff). Once I have it running, I'm going to investigate running servers for SQL and probably an externally facing http/ftp server.

More for fun really - although I am using VMs more for work now ;)

EDIT: The reason I got 32GB was that in order to put the memory in, you have to take the heatsink off. Fit and forget ;)
 
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srichards said:
I'd just stick it somewhere you couldn't hear it and save the money! Or get ear plugs. Then it is silent ;)
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The two places it will fit (read, where I have Gbit networking) is in my 10ft x 10ft office (which already has 4 computers running 24/7 so noise is important ;)) or in the lounge (where fans have 0 GAF). Cupboards etc all need thermal management for a 24/7 system, so those are out too...
 
arad85 said:
To start with - yes. I was just too stingy to spring for the second SSD - plus it'll be £20 cheaper next week.....

I've got 3 VMs I use a lot at the moment running in VirtualBox (for development type stuff). Once I have it running, I'm going to investigate running servers for SQL and probably an externally facing http/ftp server.

More for fun really - although I am using VMs more for work now ;)

EDIT: The reason I got 32GB was that in order to put the memory in, you have to take the heatsink off. Fit and forget ;)
Click to expand...

good stuff, never used EXSi before will be watching with interest. was thinking of a second N40L next year to run VMs if i pull my finger out and get on with going for an MCSE (or whatever they rename it to..).
 
Interesting thread...

How mini is the Arc Mini? still looks quite large/standard tower sized.

My boss uses ESXi Hypervisor for his virtualised environment at home.

Did you go for the black or cooper ice pipe cooler?

Can you hot swap ssd's - never really thought about it - suppose it makes sense.
 
We use hyper-v as our bare metal hyper visor, you use the same management tools as normal to manage the server, just add in the hyper-v manager tool. We can also monitor and basic controls through PC monitor on my phone, tablet etc.

Sounds fun
 
If you wanted a REALLY cool and REALLY silent PC have you considered the advantages of putting it in a freezer unit (This IS a serious question BTW).

Apart from having to drill a few holes to take the various leads (for an external Re-Writer and maybe an extra HDD) it wouldn't need much re-working.

Obviously you would need to make sure it was very dry inside but apart from that should be excellent AND you can get small stand freezers for less then the cost of your cooler:

http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/4810430.htm#pdpFullProductInformation

You could probably fit 2 computers in there and with the door shut the only sound would be the occasional hum of the compressor.

AND you would probably use LESS electricity because of the reduced need for fans etc.
.
 
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arad85 said:
1 x Nofan CR-95C IcePipe Fanless CPU Cooler (see: http://www.quietpc.com/nof-icepipe)
Click to expand...
Jeees. It's HUGE. ABSOLUTELY MASSIVE. Some pictures later

@bl0at3r I went for the silver (I ordered the copper, but changed it for the silver as £20 wan't a lot on top of the total cost and it will look better with time as it won't tarnish). The mini hasn't arrived yet, but you need a fairly large enclsure for the heatsink!!!! If you want something sexier have a look: http://www.quietpc.com/nof-cs-70 but I wanted to save the £100, have room for more disks and I was worried by the plate above the PSU - I want to mount the PSU with the grilles facing upward which would havbe hit the plate above it in that case. Plus, did I mention the £100 I saved :D

@Peter: putting it in a freezer is less efficient than just dissipating the heat - you have to dissipate the heat generated by the freezer as well. It's the old "if you put a fridge in a sealed room with the door open, does the room get colder or warmer" question (it gets warmer).

@Dale: yup - a purely for fun project (well... that and rationalising things a bit).
 
:LOL:
arad85 said:
Jeees. It's HUGE. ABSOLUTELY MASSIVE. Some pictures later

@bl0at3r I went for the silver (I ordered the copper, but changed it for the silver as £20 wan't a lot on top of the total cost and it will look better with time as it won't tarnish). The mini hasn't arrived yet, but you need a fairly large enclsure for the heatsink!!!! If you want something sexier have a look: http://www.quietpc.com/nof-cs-70 but I wanted to save the £100, have room for more disks and I was worried by the plate above the PSU - I want to mount the PSU with the grilles facing upward which would havbe hit the plate above it in that case. Plus, did I mention the £100 I saved :D

@Peter: putting it in a freezer is less efficient than just dissipating the heat - you have to dissipate the heat generated by the freezer as well. It's the old "if you put a fridge in a sealed room with the door open, does the room get colder or warmer" question (it gets warmer).

@Dale: yup - a purely for fun project (well... that and rationalising things a bit).
Click to expand...

Agreed - saving money is good :LOL:

I am really happy with my Shuttle(s) - have had a few now, current one I have is the Shuttle SH67H7 - not totally silent I admit but still quiet and efficient.

shuttle_xpc-barebone-SH67H3-SH67H7.jpg
 
arad85 said:
@Peter: putting it in a freezer is less efficient than just dissipating the heat - you have to dissipate the heat generated by the freezer as well. It's the old "if you put a fridge in a sealed room with the door open, does the room get colder or warmer" question (it gets warmer).
Click to expand...

Since the only heat the freezer needs to dissipate comes from the computers this would seem to be fairly negligible (apart from a few watts the compressor needs).

And of course you wouldn't be keeping it at -15C or whatever.

It's something I'll be trying out soon myself if I can get a S/H small freezer unit since my latest build (an i7 3770) only has the bog standars Intel cooler - fine at 3.4Ghz but even a modest overclock ramps the heat levels way up over 60C.

Love the looks of the Shuttle BTW Bloat3R.

.
 
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neil_g said:
60C is fine, my i7-2600k oc to 4.4Ghz tops out at 77c after about 10 hours at 100% load.

but yes the stock intel coolers are toffee and should be binned asap.
Click to expand...

I know Intel CPUs can handle quite high temps but even with all the safeguards built in the spectre of thermal runaway still haunts me even though I've never yet had that problem with PCs.

But I much prefer temps around the 20-25C range.

.
 
arad85 said:
The two places it will fit (read, where I have Gbit networking) is in my 10ft x 10ft office (which already has 4 computers running 24/7 so noise is important ;)) or in the lounge (where fans have 0 GAF). Cupboards etc all need thermal management for a 24/7 system, so those are out too...
Click to expand...

How about the loft? I was considering moving some of my gear (CCTV) into the loft - obviously seasonal temp extremes may be detrimental to stability:shrug:

What else are you going to run as a vm? I can understand the need for a test machine running win7 or to play about with win8, or to run MacOS for example - would you actually virtualise physical workstations? Could you have an almost dumb terminal in the kids room that boots into the vm on the server?

Sounds fascinating - my boss has all sorts of vm's running, but I can't see what I would do with it in my situation (no kids, no servers, just a pc, couple of laptops and couple of iPads.)
 
bl0at3r said:
The ice pipe technology is the same in the shuttles except...
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Most high performance CPU coolers use some form of heatpipe to get rid of heat (heatpipe uses a low boiling-point gas to boil, transfer heat elsewhere by condensing back again).
 
bl0at3r said:
How about the loft? I was considering moving some of my gear (CCTV) into the loft - obviously seasonal temp extremes may be detrimental to stability:shrug:

What else are you going to run as a vm? I can understand the need for a test machine running win7 or to play about with win8, or to run MacOS for example - would you actually virtualise physical workstations? Could you have an almost dumb terminal in the kids room that boots into the vm on the server?

Sounds fascinating - my boss has all sorts of vm's running, but I can't see what I would do with it in my situation (no kids, no servers, just a pc, couple of laptops and couple of iPads.)
Click to expand...

id be wary about lofts, our server room at work is basically in the roof. in the summer its hot because the sun is heating it and in the winter its hot because hot air from the heating is heating it.

* when i say hot, obviously we have aircon in there but its warmer than it should be.
 
bl0at3r said:
How about the loft? I was considering moving some of my gear (CCTV) into the loft
Click to expand...
No gigabit there....

bl0at3r said:
obviously seasonal temp extremes may be detrimental to stability:shrug:
Click to expand...
Actually, our loft gets very, VERY hot in the summer (it has a black slate roof), so isn't ideal.

bl0at3r said:
What else are you going to run as a vm?
Click to expand...
I have the following in mind:
  • Test machines for new O/S
  • Development machines for work - I sometimes have to compile/test code here and a clean install of Fedora (what we use for development) is always a good idea.
  • Development machine for PBX software. I have a mini IP based PBX here, running an embedded processor that I am playing with...
  • Test environment for firewall software - again, I run a custom firewall here, and taking the box offline to test upgrades just isn't an option....
  • Compute server - I will run video recodes on the machine in a linux environment
  • MySQL server. Machine solely dedicated to running SQL (used for xbmc and MythTV). This would offload the functionality from my fileserver which doesn't have as fast a CPU.
  • Externally facing http & ftp server. I have a block of 8 static IPs here, so should use them....
  • Second filestore/backup server running either PC-BSD or OpenIndiana (which supports ZFS which I love). I would probably want to move the machine into the living room then, but don't know how quiet mechanical disks would be in a fairly open enclosure like the Fractal Arc Mini
  • Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera :D
Basically, it's a way of me coalescing lots of things onto a single silent PC rather than running things on different machines. It might also replace the E8400 machine I have here as well (xbmc and mythtv server) but I'll have to see how nicely that plays first - with PCI-e passthrough it should be possible though.

bl0at3r said:
Could you have an almost dumb terminal in the kids room that boots into the vm on the server?
Click to expand...
Not sure why you would want to do this.

bl0at3r said:
Sounds fascinating - my boss has all sorts of vm's running, but I can't see what I would do with it in my situation (no kids, no servers, just a pc, couple of laptops and couple of iPads.)
Click to expand...
It's only recently I've come to love VMs - I can try more things out that way, and discard them very easily!
 
petersmart said:
I know Intel CPUs can handle quite high temps but even with all the safeguards built in the spectre of thermal runaway still haunts me even though I've never yet had that problem with PCs.
Click to expand...
Intel CPUs throttle automatically when they get to their TDP design window.

petersmart said:
But I much prefer temps around the 20-25C range.
Click to expand...
99% of devices you use today have much higher working temperatures than the CPUs. We guarantee our STB chips to run 24/7 at 125 deg C on chip and advise manufacturers to heastsink for that (plus a little bit)....
 
Nofan vs stock Intel (which has a fan and is sitting in a plastic enclosure raising it an inch higher than the Nofan (which is resting on the bit to attach to the CPU). Apologies for the pics, but my studio is in the garage and it's tipping down out there!

P1010123-800.jpg


P1010124-800.jpg


It was worth the money just for that!
 
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Reminds me of a huge lens on a camera... mount the lens and let the camera hang off it. You'll have a cooler with a PC attached :)
 
neil_g said:
have you checked ram clearance etc? :D
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Yes :D

Edit: the only definitive thing I couldn't check was case clearance above the cooler (i.e. to the top side of the board when it is mounted vertically as the heatsink spills over it). It should fit, as the case I have is designed to have 40mm radiators inserted...
 
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No. You mount some pillars on the board with a bracket and then screw the heatsink onto the pillars from the front. You're supposed to do it in-situ in the enclosure...

Have to say it looks a very well made bit of kit.... (everything else has turned up now, but I have a shedload of stuff to do for work :()
 
neil_g said:
just looked at their site, yeah its basically bolt through with a backplate
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But not in the usual I-could-really-do-with-3-hands bolt through of normal heatsinks...
 
The heatsink was the easiest to install I've ever had - recommended. Although PCI-e slot 1 is useless as it sits over the top of that (although I knew that before I started). PCI-e slot 2 is only JUST usable, but is only a x1 slot so isn't too bad as that's likely to have a low profile card in.

Fractal case is great - even comes with a 5.25->3.5" adapter tray so all I need is a 3.5->2.5 tray and I can have 2 SSDs and 6 HDDs (plus a hot-swap bay).

Photos to come later (I've been distracted...)
 
arad85 said:
Nofan vs stock Intel (which has a fan and is sitting in a plastic enclosure raising it an inch higher than the Nofan (which is resting on the bit to attach to the CPU). Apologies for the pics, but my studio is in the garage and it's tipping down out there!

P1010123-800.jpg


P1010124-800.jpg


It was worth the money just for that!
Click to expand...



That's a woppa :D
 
I will be reading these threads with interest but clearly I have no need for any kind of server, virtual, real or otherwise - not enough data and don't do anything other than web/email/itunes and lightroom :LOL:
 
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