Antec p183 and the Antec CP 850

Thronsen

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I am looking for a very quiet, very efficient, case and power supply. Is the Antec p183 and Antec CP 850 a good combination?

I dont need that much power, in fact I worry a bit from what I have read that power supplies get less efficient if you dont use that much of them. The overall config is i7-920, 12 gb ram, GeForce gtx 260, 1 SSD, 2 620 7200 rpm HDDs.

But the biggest priority is quiet, both for the case and the PSU.

Thanks for any help.
 
Solution
I bought an Antex P182 case (again, very similar to the P183) based on the article about it at the Silent PC Review web site. I'm quite pleased with it. I'm running a Core i7 920 with 12GB of memory and a passively cooled Asus EAH4350 video card.

I've covered the rear vents around the power supply and removed the fan from the lower chamber as described in the Silent PC Review article, so that the PSU fan draws air through the lower chamber to cool the hard drives. I have 3 hard drives and have never seen temperatures over 40C. I use an Enermax 82+ Pro power supply and it's cables are long enough to reach everything they need to. I chose a 525W model because it's most efficient at half load and that's about what my system uses.

In...

will_chellam

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Jun 5, 2007
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i have a p180 and a neo power HE 550 running a core duo rig with an intel motherboard and passive 7950gt, which is very very quiet.

The p180 is pretty simialr to the p183 apart from a few much needed upgrades like being able to run the sata power cables direct from the psu bay to the bottom hdd bay. most important very very quiet case. I would reccomend getting an antec power supply as the atx connecter needs to be pretty long to go through the slot in the top of the bottom mounted psu chamber and to a standard motherboard position at the top - as far as i know all antec psu's will accomplish this.

The antec tricool fans have been excellent on low speed and are still respectable when turned up.
 

Pailin

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Dec 1, 2007
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hiya

Last year I set up my P182 Q6600 setup.

I felt the TriCool fans were a little low on airflow at low speed and too noisy at med and loud at high speed.
(try them out though, they are pretty good and can be upgraded any time)

I bought a bunch of Sharkoon fans to replace them as appeared to have very good reviews and tests --- Their airflow might be good but the "dimples" (like on a golf ball) caused an annoying noise that maybe a DB meter does not register as loud, but was an irritating "mechanical" airflow noise to me that grated on my senses

I have those running through a fan controller - still too loud

I added 7v resisters in line with the fan controller

Now is Very quiet and still has decent airflow.

There are some good fans out there now, like maybe the reasonably priced:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FG-022-SY

(without doing more than reading user opinions and seeing a blade design similar to another very good fan I have - creates smoother purring whisper as it runs compared to my Sharkoon 120's (even though maybe DB is the same))

Bear in mind when ordering a PSU that (if the 183 is the same as my 182) you will need some fairly long cables coming from it.

I have a Seasonic S12 500W Silent which will be more than enough to run your proposed system - is very quiet and reliable. (maybe now superseded by a newer model ??)

My system has:

Q6600 @ 3.6GHz
8800GT still
Xfi-Gamer Sound Card
6 HDD
Usual other nice bits

All this only draws about 265 watts under load - you really won't need a bigger PSU.

Am sure others here can recomend some other good PSU's - I can personally not mention other brands as I'm not sure which ones have long enough power cables to reach from the bottom of the case

Am very happy with mine, Good luck with yours ^^
 
I bought an Antex P182 case (again, very similar to the P183) based on the article about it at the Silent PC Review web site. I'm quite pleased with it. I'm running a Core i7 920 with 12GB of memory and a passively cooled Asus EAH4350 video card.

I've covered the rear vents around the power supply and removed the fan from the lower chamber as described in the Silent PC Review article, so that the PSU fan draws air through the lower chamber to cool the hard drives. I have 3 hard drives and have never seen temperatures over 40C. I use an Enermax 82+ Pro power supply and it's cables are long enough to reach everything they need to. I chose a 525W model because it's most efficient at half load and that's about what my system uses.

In the upper chamber I use a Thermalright HR-01 with a Scythe Kama fan to cool the CPU, along with front, rear and top fans to draw air through the case from front to top/rear. All of the case fans are the 3-speed Antec fans that came with the case, and they're all set to "low". The highest IHS temperature (ie, the CPU case temperature) I've seen is 66C after running Prime95 for six hours, and the GPU temperature seems to sit at around 50-55C. Mind you, I'm not an overclocker, nor do I run games (as you probably guessed from my choice of video card!)

The whole system is very quiet. I can hear a low whoosh of air, but no fan noise. The front filters are effective and very easy to remove and clean. That unit is very well built and the drive bays fit like a precision machine. I'm very happy with this case and I think Antec's dual chamber design is a real winner.
 
Solution

Thronsen

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Thanks so much everyone for all your help. I have ordered a bunch of components from Amazon, just waiting for them to arrive and hopefully my boyfriend will help me put them together.