The 30dB kinda quiet build. Modding a Silent base - Didn't make 30, but it's close.

[it_dont_work]

First off I'd like to give a big thanks to Be Quiet!, for making me pay for your products. Without your excellent good looking an reasonably quiet products I probably would of just bought Fractal Design. 

 

So lets get to it!

 

With Kaby Lake and Zen around the corner, my new build is going to wait till then. This may of also had something to do with a metric F'tonne of bills...or all the new gear on my target bow...maybe it was the new motor in my car. Ok so it's a mystery where the money to upgrade went, truly an impossible one to solve. What I can't stand especially while folding though is how god dam loud my system is now, due to a combination of the Thermaltake v9 being cheap and before a lot of isolation became kind of standard in cases, but also to dead noisy bearings on my 6970HD. My current box is just over 6 years old now, and now it's time for a refresh before a full upgrade, here's what 'Leviathan' looks like atm, aka 'Roast Potato'. (the dell is just a pentium d for xp games)

 

 

Just the kinda ugly you can love, and its hard to tell but the cooler is scratched in deep on the case window.

 

So I picked up the silver non windows Be Quiet Silent Base 800 mainly because I liked the looks of it over the Fractal Define series. Dear lord is this thing big, I could probably fit the old dell in it with my new system...wait a minute that might be the next mod.

 

 

For now though there is only really a few bits and pieces to get out of the way.

- Test all the buttons, and i/o on the silent base

- Remove the blue lighting from my the old case.

- Clean up the wiring on the led's, remove the coolermaster fans leds from the ground switch.

- Mount an on/off switch behind the front bezel of the new case, and try to fit the lights along both the inside front wire grills on the silent base.

- Drill mounting holes in the case side to fit a 140mm fan.

 

If a few people are interested I'll also do a review of the case, but that's unlikely as there are a heap already.

 

There's also one other hurdle I forgot in all this...Like I said it's big, and doesn't fit under my bloody desk! Need to reshape this little bit of timber and open it up about 30mm, while the case fits under it, there wont be any space to reach the top i/o otherwise. Guess design flaws are expected when you build a desk in the middle of the night after moving house in a drunk fury of power tools, left over builders scraps and alcohol.

 

 

 

So off to the bandsaw to reshape that bit of wood. Then it's time to dig out my old sound gear and take a base line measurement for sound level at idle and load. But to give you an idea I can hear my pc clearly over the rain on our tin roof at idle.

[Cereal5]

you could probably just shave 1.5cm off each of the legs on the side. 100% structural rigidity retained

[it_dont_work]

1 minute ago, Cereal5 said:

you could probably just shave 1.5cm off each of the legs on the side. 100% structural rigidity retained

Nar that wont work, remember I build this desk from scratch and re-sawed and dressed the timber frame(left overs from the house framing). It's also far easier to remove 2 screws and the front fascia to nip out a grove on my bandsaw. Problem is vertically it fits, just no room for your hands to plug anything in.  

[DrMikeNZ]

I got the Silent Base 800 windowed version, they are nice cases, smaller than what I usually get but very tight for fitting a 280mm radiator, and a bit restrictive in the exhaust.

The whole quiet build is wasted with the system sitting next to a 40+dB file-server though.

 

5 minutes ago, it_dont_work said:

Nar that wont work, remember I build this desk from scratch and re-sawed and dressed the timber frame(left overs from the house framing). It's also far easier to remove 2 screws and the front fascia to nip out a grove on my bandsaw. Problem is vertically it fits, just no room for your hands to plug anything in.  

I would probably just get a USB3 hub, and mount it somewhere on the desk and not worry about the IO on the top of the case.

[it_dont_work]

 

 

1 hour ago, DrMikeNZ said:

I would probably just get a USB3 hub

Maybe I should of read that 30minutes ago...

 

I do have a usb3 lead tied to the top of my keyboard's wire so that's what I usually use. I had a similar problem with a server being noisy, lucky for me a power serge fixed the 'noise' problem and left another problem.

1 hour ago, Cereal5 said:

 

That's what I meant by doesn't fit.

 

Sorry for the crappy photos as well, Seems the battery for my camera has gone walk about.

[it_dont_work]

 

Little update.

 

Desk chop

Spoiler

Of course before using any tools capable of removing your own fingers through a lack of attention, use a clean workspace. Or like me just be lazy and move a couple of things

,

Mark out the design and clamp to some scrap about the same size, this helps with two things. First it gives you plenty of room to maneuver the work piece away from the blade, and secondly helps to keep the piece stiff throughout cutting and sanding (as 4mm of pine is pretty flimsy)

 

Cut out, leaving the line, I sand down the line in this case on my edge sander. I have a rather thick blade in this little machine, so you can see where I tested how tight I could swing the piece in at.

To get into the radius, I just cut parallel to the inside edge, and then quickly cut out in steps.

 

Finished up on my edge sander and put screwed it back on. All up was only about 20minutes work.

Fan splicing.

Spoiler

Fan splitters were going to take a couple of weeks so I just spliced together the two front fans, and then the top two fans. Usually when I do most wiring I number things to make it easier since I'm partially colour blind, so I did as I always do and only realised all the wires were black after I finished.

 

 

 

Usually a good idea to test things before packing up, I was planning to monitor how much noise at a particular voltage these fans make. In the end though I decided it was much easier to just see if they worked by grabing an old atx psu, rather than lugging out my variable benchtop unit. Silentpc.com says the sweet spot is about 70%, and their equipment is setup better than mine so thats good enough for me.

 

Replaced all the fan mounts with Noctua isolation mounts. The included fans on the silent base all come pre-installed with rubber grommets for mounting, I bought the Noctua ones without knowing that, but these should isolate better than the semi rigid mounts standards, since I'm going for a little more on the air flow side of things than the silent side this might help with some vibration I'm hoping. Also the rear 120mm came with a low noise adapter witch was nice.

Removed the lighting from my old case and taped it into the front of the Be Quiet!, automotive doublesided tape is bloody good stuff, I almost broke the leds getting them out. Then again the same tap is holding the fender flares onto my 4wd, so I should of expected that.

 

Spoiler

 

Next up will be to finish sleeving and wiring in the leds with a switch on the ground, work out solder in a disconnect of some sort so I can take the front panel off. Then I'll either make a 120-140 fan adapter, 3d print one, or just drill out 140mm fan mounting holes in the side case. Problem is the modular vent covers in the side panels interfere with flush mounting a 140 in the side panel.  I'll work something out as I really would rather use large fans to gain better air flow at lower rpm with less noise.

[it_dont_work]

Finished up wiring the case lights for now, didn't work as desired so I'll probably replace them soon with brighter full length ones.

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[it_dont_work]

Base line testing - Thermaltake v9

 

All measurements are being taken in place with my PC under my desk in a room with soft furnishings and carpets to around 25% of the room. The more soft furnishings or acoustic treatment in a room the quieter the room will be as a higher % of energy from sound waves are absorbed and not reflected. Which brings me to my testing methods, since I don't have an appropriately quiet room or the equipment to test under 30dba that is why my aim is for 30dba, it could be quieter but while I do have access to better equipment to test and a vocal booth, the studios I used to work in are busy and I don't want to push the friendship too much. Owing people a favor can backfire if they give you an hour of studio time for free...and last time that happened I ended up re wiring a breakout box on a 64ch balanced multi-core into a wall box...

 

Current setup (hardware is a little old, but upgrade is coming soon enough)

 

-Thermaltake v9 case (original with window)

Cooling

CM 140mm intake 100%

TK 23cm turbo exhaust 100%

NZXT 120mm exhaust- Slaved to cpu fan

Thermaltake frio with 1 120 @ 7volts

Sapphire 6970 2gb - need to look at bearing noise.

 

Idle: 47dBa av, peaks in low 50's

Load: 58dBa av, peaks in the 60's

Room: 38dBa

My load measurements are with all the system fans at 100% and HDD spun up, cpu is an fx 6100 at 4.1ghz oc and 1.36v vcore, with a slight gpu oc. Idle measurements taken with custom fan curves in speedfan.

-temps while not so important for this test are pretty good, cpu highs of mid 60's and gpu consistently under 70c. idle temps cpu:33, gpu 49-50c.

 

First problem with my testing which I haven't had time to address is 1) the house being built next door and 2) other noises in my house. The quietest It gets here during the day is around 40dBa, so I'll have to edit this post for room levels late late tonight. Yet all things considered I doubt I'm going to hit my 30dBa target now, not at the very least without a new gpu fans, and considering the age of my card and upgrading the whole system in another 2 months isn't going to happen. So if I can't reach my target now since new hardware is in general quieter and more heat efficient hopefully I'll get to pretty near silent later on.

 

Updates to come

-New led's are in the mail

-installing my system into the silent base 800

-Testing and tinkering to see just how quiet It'll be

-Modding the thermaltake v9 for better looks and cable management

 

I'll also be doing some basic air flow testing in the Silent base 800 since there's a lot of talk about it being air flow restrictive. While by the looks of the case I do agree with, but a comparison to the open flow zero pressure design of the v9 will be interesting.

 

Then I'll see how far I can push the overclock on the fx 6100, at 4.1, my single core geek bench performance is just above the  fx-8350, which while interesting isn't anything to call home about. More just evidence of the lack of improvement in the fx line up of cpus (I've had this cpu on a 990fx board since launch) 

 

I also realise i derped and connected both taco signals on my fans, so I doubt they'll be read properly on the mobo, oh well.

[it_dont_work]

Base line testing - Be Quiet Silent Base 800

 

Updates- v9 went in the shed to probably never be seen again.

 

*measurements at 1 meter

 

Silent base testing done

Idle:  less than room ambient (outside my ability to measure accurately)

Load: 43dBa av, peaks in the low 50's

Room: 38dBa

 

With everything at 100% fan speed for benchmarking 59dBa peak

 

 

Photos! I've also found my dam camera since these were taken.

 

 

[it_dont_work]

Updated testing, unfortunately I seem to have failed the 30dBa goal, probably not far off but at the moment the loudest single thing in the system is the 3.5" hdds.

 

Also there has been some upgrades since those photos were taken, and I've been kind of busy lately.

 

Also was busy with this little bastard...at least he's stopped shitting on my carpet.

 

[KrMaH]

DOGGIEEE!!!!
love dogs!
I assume its a new pup? puppies are awesome!
congratz!

[it_dont_work]

Well it wasn't much of an upgrade, but I threw in parts over Christmas, given I didn't spent any money on the upgrade I either swapped for parts (all new stuff actually) or sold on eBay and bought with the money. I did spend some cash on the r9 fury nitro though since at the time it was about $30 cheaper than a 1060 or rx 480.

 

So the old roast potato is currently

 

CPU: FX-8300 @ 4.3ghz (swapped for an old laptop)

RAM: Kingston 1866 16gb (sold an 8gb g.skill sniper kit and bought the 2x8 fury no extra outlay)

GPU: 4gb R9 Fury Nitro

SSD: Just a 256 850 evo

HDD: 3x 2tb WD blues (two going in my nas soon)

Fans: too fucking many, 2 nice maglev on cpu. 

 

Most amazing thing is, at idle and light gaming load it's still pretty dam quiet.