Could I have some silent cooling advice?

[akumu27]

This will be my first pc build, so here's the low-down. I've got about $40 to my name, and no job to speak of. As such, it'll probably be 6-8 months before I can start building, so I just need a ballpark figure so that I know how much to save up before I star buying the parts, as new stuff is always coming out. I just need something that will be really efficient at cooling, but also relatively quiet. I'll probably be 18-19 before I get my first place (yes, I'm a mamma's boy), so I don't want to wake her up with my 3 AM WoW sessions. Also, while I'm there and after I get my new place I'll be helping with the electric bill and then completely paying it (in that order, obviously), so I don't want it to suck up too much juice. I'm alright with paying around $2k for the tower/keyboard/mouse, because I already have a moniter and speakers, but anything above that is just too much, and I'd prefer something around the $800-$1200 range, or at least a heat efficient case so that I can upgrade the rest later. Any ideas?

 

[asgallant]

It's relatively easy to do a quiet CPU on the cheap - an Athlon X2 BE-2350 or one of the 45 or 65W C2D's with a large fan CPU cooler will run fast and quiet. The problem will come with the video card. How good do you want your graphics to be? If you're talking a Geforce 8800 or a Radeon 2900 (or whatever the high end is when you build), then you can pretty much kiss quiet computing goodbye, short of water cooling. That being said, I don't think you can hear a Geforce 8800 or a Radeon 2900 through a wall, so unless you plan on gaming in your mom's bedroom - if so, you have problems that go deeper than what I can help you with - your computer itself is not likely to wake her up.

If you make noise while gaming, though, the level of noise from your computer is irrelevant (speaking from experience).

 

[lockdownx1x]

No mean to disrespect but.......
A lot will change in 6 month so be patient and post then......

 

[HYST3R]

just remeber that the less fans you have the quieter it will be. and like posted above, wait until you have the money to back this project before you start picking out hardware. that will save you alot in the long run.

 

[jumpman]

just thought i would throw this in here...there is a silent cooling device being sold for the geforce 8800 that just uses a heatsink, no fan. from what i've read it's almost as effective as the stock fan. ill post a link once i find it

 

[akumu27]

Like I'd said (if you'd taken the time to read the entire post) I'm not trying to figure out what parts will be invented in the future, I just want a regular ballpark figure of how much I'll need to save up so I can invest my money properly. And to answer asgallant (thank you for the helpful advice, btw) I don't really need anything special, it'll just be WoW mainly, and aside from that just older games such as the Myst series, the older Blizzard games, Black & White, etc. Pretty much, if I can muster up 1 gig of ram and maybe a 256 meg gpu, I'll be fine.

 

[CNeufeld]

Why don't you figure out how much money you can save in say, 6 months, and then just figure out then what you can buy for that much money.

If you want to play now, figure out how much money you could save in 6 months, and then figure out what you'd buy now with that much money. Give you an idea of whether you're in the right ball-park.

You've also got to figure out what's important to you. AFAIK, WoW isn't nearly as GPU intensive as something like Biosphere or Oblivion.

In any case, it more important to figure out how much money you want to save (and then save it), IMHO. Having someone else tell you that you need to save $2000 is pointless if you can realistically only save $1200. And people play WoW on $500 systems, as well as $2000 systems.

Clint

 

[jaguarskx]

First, you will need to buy an energy efficient power supply. The PSU ultimately determines how much power your computer will consume. An inefficient PSU will cause your PC to consume more power than an efficient PSU. Take the follow as an example:

Your "high end" PC consumes 200w when idling and 350w when gaming. PSU #1 is 70% efficient, PSU #2 is 85% efficient. Below is a simplistic estimate of power consumption:

PSU #1 - Idling = 200w / 70% = 285w
PSU #1 - gaming = 350w / 70% = 500w

PSU #2 - Idling = 200w / 85% = 235w
PSU #2 - gaming = 350w / 85% = 411w

The "wasted" power will be converted to heat by the PSU which makes cooling the PC a little harder.

Efficient PSU brands that I recommend are Seasonic, Corsair (made by Seasonic) and PC Power & Cooling.

 

[akumu27]

Hmm, thanks for the tips! I'll go check out the PSU's right now.