noisy 6600 gt agp

[aoehlke]

well i bought the MSI one, as it was reviewed as the quietest of all 6600 cards.
all i can say is, it may be the quietest, but it's not silent! very disappointing, but a kick ass card otherwise.

but i got a zalman 700 alCu cooler for it, to replace the MSI stock one.
msi claims the stock one is copper, but it looks like a funny color copper, and i suspect its copper plated or something.
anyhow, the zalman takes idle card temps down from 50, to about 38... not bad!!! i'm not sure about load temps, but a guess would be high 80s.
this is a very effective, and quiet card now.
my sage pc is silent again... i really think all the nvidia cooling as of late are way too LOUD in general.

[something fishy]

Yep I use the Zalman cooler and it is excellent (on my not very quiet Leadtek 6600GT). With nexus fans and CPU cooler, and enermax noisetaker PSU and the Zalman the loudest part of my system is the HDDs and they are inaudible from more than a couple of feet away.

[aoehlke]

white noise is commonly overlooked when building an htpc.
it makes a huge difference in the enjoyment of the unit.
people should spend good dollar on psu's and cooling solutions that reduce noise.
these units typically also outperform the stock products, this giving longer life to the silicon as well.

i hadnt heard of nexus fans, i use vantec stealths, which arent all that stealth.
will have to hunt for them.

[aoehlke]

i should mention for silent HDD, look at samsungs or seagate barracudas, these are quietest on market.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by aoehlke

well i bought the MSI one, as it was reviewed as the quietest of all 6600 cards.
all i can say is, it may be the quietest, but it's not silent!

My 6800 is It's a passive Gigabyte.

white noise is commonly overlooked when building an htpc.

I didn't, you should look for the posts/threads my mdmint an I, we've gone somewhat crazy in the pursuit of quite HTPCs, and I'm 99% of the way there, I just need to replace one crappy fan with a better one.

i should mention for silent HDD, look at samsungs or seagate barracudas, these are quietest on market.

FWIW, IMO no modern 3.5" HDDs are anywhere near silent. People can say all they want but fact is that even Seagates (I have a 7200.7) are nowhere near quiet if you've done a good job silencing other things.

IMHO, the best way (maybe the only way) to silence a HDD, is to get a Laptop HDD and put your mass storage in another room. I've got a Toshiba 40GB 4200RPM (8MB cache) laptop drive in my HTPC and it gets my seal of approval for silent HDD. I can only (barely) hear it when it's seeking.

If anyone has a SPL meter that goes down to about 20dB I'd love to measure my HTPC and see just how much noise it actually makes.

[mightyt]

I'm almost there myself ...

Got my Silverstone LC-10M case and 3GHz CPU / Mobo combo about a month ago.

Just received my Antec Phantom 350 PSU via FedEx yesterday!! Can't wait to install it ...

After that I need to measure and see if I have the room for a Zalman CPU Cooler ...

Does anyone know if Zalman makes a GPU Cooler for an ATI All-In-Wonder 9700 Pro AGP Display Adapter? I was going to get a fanless nVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT Video Card but don't want to wait to save up enough money.

My hope is with the Antec, some Zalman's, couple / three quiet case fans and maybe the T-Balancer I will have a much quieter system than I have today.

Thanks, T.

[thatdude90210]

Another quiet option are the Arctic coolers. The best part about Arctic coolers are that they remove heat from the case, like both a slot cooler and VGA cooler in one.

[aoehlke]

glad to see this thread kinda took off, as I think it important for all builders to consider this stuff.

My only beef with passive type vga cooling(ie heatpipes and sinks) is that they dont hold up well in newer games with all eye candy settings enabled. at least not in my experience.

for example, my old sapphire 9600 ultimate edition which was passively cooled, coudlnt handle half life2 at high res with all eye candy settings enabled. I had to run at 800x600 and scale down some of the advanced features... it was simply getting too hot! Nevertheless, sage is not *that* demanding on your vga card(3d engines arent used), so passively cooling an HTPC should be relatively easy.

stanger, you're right about the HDDs not being silent, but they are tolerable, and for me at least, inaudible from about 3 feet. when gaming i dont care, as speakers are cranked up... but for movies with quiet scenes, there is nothign worse then the buzz, whirl and whine of system fans.

samsungs are far quieter then seagates actually, but they are hard to find.
Ideally though, one would use client boxes and have some kind fo huge disk array off int a closet or in another room... my budget doesnt afford this, and my PC has many roles, gaming and acting like a TIVO via sage are only 2

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by aoehlke

Nevertheless, sage is not *that* demanding on your vga card(3d engines arent used), so passively cooling an HTPC should be relatively easy.

Actually VMR9 does use the 3D engine.

stanger, you're right about the HDDs not being silent, but they are tolerable, and for me at least, inaudible from about 3 feet. when gaming i dont care, as speakers are cranked up... but for movies with quiet scenes, there is nothign worse then the buzz, whirl and whine of system fans.

I could hear mine from 10-12ft.

[GbrNole]

(3d engines arent used) yeah there's just too much truth to that comment!

if we could just get sage with an exclusive full screen video mode then we could make proper use of the vmr9 engine and ALL enjoy tear free playback.

ps. i also have the msi 6600gt and fortunately my pc is a noisy s.o.b. locked away in my entertainment center so i don't hear it - great card though! how do you connect your card to the tv? dvi, component breakout or vga/transcoder

[something fishy]

Even with a big PVR you can make huge differences to the noise profile easily. My Sage box has 3 HDDs, 2x capture cards (the main source of heat), a power hungry GPU (6600GT). Yet it is still inaudible from one yard away.

I use:
A Silverstone desktop case (sorry no model number but its identical to the LC03V without the VFD). This comes with one (noisy) 60mm fan on the back that I removed and an option for an 80mm fan on the bottom that I use to cool the video HDDs.

Enermax noisetaker 375 watt PSU. Very quiet in my experience and moves a lot of air out of the case (shame the cables are so inflexible)

I'm only using a 2GHz P4 so I use: http://www.endpcnoise.com/cgi-bin/e/PHT-3600.html. Its cheap, small, cools well enough for my use and is silent at the speeds I run it.

For the GPU I use (as discussed) the VF700: http://www.endpcnoise.com/cgi-bin/e/VF700-ALCU.html., is silent at low speeds.

The case fan is an 80mm Nexus: http://www.endpcnoise.com/cgi-bin/e/nexus80mm.html) – you must cut the stamped “grille” out of the Silverstone case as you will get more noise and less air with it in place. I’ve found that a silicone gasket on the fan helped also (I think they’re made by antec)

GPU, case and CPU fan are at minimum RPMs on a Zalman fan bay controller: http://www.zalmanusa.com/usa/product...idx=1&code=017 (the leds are very bright so I wouldn’t recommend this unless your case has doors over the 5-1/4 bays)

With only the one case fan (blowing in) and the PSU acting as exhaust my case temps are stable around 40-45C. Ambient around the box is 30C (86F) – I live in the tropics – and the system is run 24/7. I’d rather shorten the life of the components a little (new parts are cheap and better than the old) than compromise on noise. I have never had any temperature related unreliability or artefacts.

The main heat offenders are not the CPU or the GPU but the Hauppauge cards. I've a PVR350 and a PVR250 next to each other. They are on the far left of the Silverstone case (the PSU is far right) a blow hole above them would help enormously and add nothing to the noise signature. (If Silverstone are reading a grille above the PCI slots would be a big plus).

From 3 feet away this is inaudible when operating (the case is quite heavy and seems to damp HDD noise, I don’t use any fancy HDD mounting arrangements). I suspect that getting rid of the last few dB would be very hard but reducing the noise to where it is at present was just a matter of component selection and already makes a massive difference in useability.

[stanger89]

You must be less picky than me

[mdmint]

Originally Posted by stanger89

You must be less picky than me

Someone using a Mcubed T-Balancer and laptop harddrives would say that!

[willemse]

Mounting a larger fan(s), 80 mm or +, for case and/or CPU cooler and running it at lower RPM speed helped me a lot. So same air movement due to larger fan and less noise due to lower RPM.
A lower RPM was created by connecting the fan power wires, (normally connected to ground and +12 volt) between the +5 and +12 volt, so in net effect it is running at 7 volts instead of the standard 12 volt. I use MBM (temp monitor) to ensure temp does not get to high on CPU etc.
Cheep solution and effective.
Ambient case temp at 35C and CPU at 45C max in my situation.

Also use a fan less (=silent) silverstone powersuply with great satisfaction
For evaluation of the power supply see: http://htpcnews.com/main.php?id=silverstonepsu_1

The case is silverstone LC03 modified with two fans at the back as described in evaluation report see: http://www.htpcnews.com/main.php?id=silverstone_lc03_2

[aoehlke]

i find the zalman vf700 to be excellent on the msi 6600 gt agp.
the card is now silent by my standards.

I cannot hear my HDDs (which are seagates) from 3 feet. 12 seems a bit much but maybe i am half deaf.
even when i can hear them, its not a constant whine, but rather a light crunchy noise.
i also use a aeorgate II fan controller, and most of my system fans run at 1200 rpm or lower... that is a big help.
also the antec neo power 480W psu is very quiet also.
the hauppage does get very hot! damn! i may move it down a slot and get a fan blowing over it. I am also wondering how hot the sigma will be when it shows up.
Doesnt VMR9 just use the overlya plane and not the 3d pipelines? if memory serves me correctly, the overlay plane is near the end of the sequence for output, and is a pretty much DMA from the GPU and the video ram... in essence, i am saying using vmr9 wounldnt contribute to heating of a card much. IMO anyhow.
now trying to push around a few million polygons for half life 2 or other such games is a different story.
note: the zalman vf700 took my idle temp on my gpu down 7 degrees and gaming temp down 4 from the stock cooler. (celsius by the way). that not bad seeing as how it makes not a sound... even at 1800 rpm! i only hear it when its up past 2200 rpm.

[stanger89]

VMR9 renders video as a texture on (a) polygon(s). In fact, VMR9 in Renderless Full-screen exclusive mode runs just like a game.

As far as HDDs go, it greatly depends on your other components, if you've got a couple fans I could see where they wouldn't be noticeable, but with a passive PS and video card, well, it stands out.

[something fishy]

You must be less picky than me

I was surprised myself at not being able to hear the disks - the location helps (it on an open shelf under the TV but this creates a few "baffles" around which the sound has to travel). But I suspect that I was just lucky with the case - I use an aluminium coolermaster case in my "upstairs" home theater PC (the PVR is my "downstairs" TV PC) that I had to treat with dynamat to get down to the required noise levels.

Cheers
Eric

[aoehlke]

so the video is a 2d texture on a 2d polygon... the only reason it goes through the 3d pathway is due to the fact that its a texture and supports transparency.
still, its only 1 large polygon... not 100s of thousands per sec etc etc.
I havent measured, but I would guess my GPU core wont shoot up to 70-80 celsius whilst running vmr9. will have to check it out.
even older games like prince of persia get that GPU cooking at like 60 C or so. oddly Nvidia doesnt seem to think problems will arise til it hits 140C !!!!!

[jptaz]

Gee...I prefer my method of having the PC in the next room...totally silent...only a small hole where all the cables come into the living room to the back of the entertainment center.

What is sad is that I used to sleep in that other room. 2 PCs in a closet, the main server has 7 Hard Drives all 7200 RPM. Even with the closet door closed you can hear all the fans. It took me about a week to get used to sleeping in the silence of my new master bed room. It is a guest bed room. I will probably have to shut everything down when we have visitors since it is so loud and most people aren't used to it.
It is funny what you will get used to. Now if I am having trouble sleeping I will go and sleep in the guest bed room with the noisy server and client PC because it helps me sleep.

John

[jptaz]

Will I be happy with 6600 for DVI out to my HD TV or will I kick myself for not spending the extra money on the 6800?