Blog FeedIt’s Getting to That Time Again
I have been playing a lot of Team Fortress 2 lately, and it’s been fun. Despite being based on the same engine as Half-Life 2 and CS:Source (which my PC runs flawlessly), TF2 has been pushing my computer over the edge, with low framerates during the more intense firefights. On top of this, the performance of the Unreal Tournament 3 demo and the Crysis singleplayer demo has made it all rather obvious: my PC can’t hack it anymore.
On the one hand, I am loathe to spend so much on what will now only be used on a handful of games - unlike before, I now tend to just stick to a few treasured series. It will also be less of an upgrade and more of a… complete replacement. Most of the technologies inside my current box (AMD Socket 939, DDR memory, AGP graphics) are all well and truly out of date, and aren’t going to catch up to the demands of modern games with a simple component upgrade here and there. I’ve never had to buy a whole new box up straight before.
On the other hand, now I have a real job it is the first time I can actually afford to buy a whole new box. Getting Team Fortress 2 running well is important to me - Unreal and Crysis not so much. But beyond all these there is one absolute imperative: I must have a PC which runs StarCraft II without issue. Given that I don’t yet know just what the requirements for that game are, it only makes sense to prepare accordingly - but at least we can be sure it won’t be as demanding as Crysis, and I know what is needed for that.
The other thing I have decided is that I want a quiet PC. During all of my last upgrades, my computer has sat down in the study of this house with several others - all blaring out so loud that it was impossible to hear mine over the others anyway. Now I have it in the same room which I sleep in, I’d like to entertain the possibility of leaving it on while I sleep - though I will settle for just having it quiet enough for me to watch videos on it without the fans disturbing me as they do now.
Going for a silent PC can be pretty expensive. A high quality Antec P182 case (with sound-deadening panels) is going to set me back a fair bit. Thankfully quiet hard drives are no longer hard to find, with Samsung and Western Digital both making pretty big strides in this area, along with the rubber mounts for the case vibrations. For a power supply I’m looking at a rather expensive Corsair branded one, which is reportedly extremely quiet. The choices for a silent CPU fan/sink combo are many, so thankfully that’s not an issue either.
The video card, however, is. Right now I have a Zalman heatsink which I installed on my GeForce 6800 - it works a treat, but if I am spending even more money on a video card this time around (probably an 8800 GT) then voiding it’s warranty by installing one of those doesn’t sit well with me. I’ve heard my friends’ 8800 GTX’s wailing, and from the reviews it seems like the latest Radeons are even worse. Is there no company that sells high-end graphics cards with quiet fan/sinks? Ridiculous.
Lastly, there is a need for a screen. I’ve been unhappy with this BenQ LCD since day one, with the poor viewing angles and the uneven backlighting. Considering the number of hours I spend staring at the screen, it only makes sense to get a good one, and that’s exactly what I plan to do. The other week I noticed my optometrist had one of these. He said the high cost was justified because it’s excellent for looking at detailed digital photos of peoples retinae. That sold me.
And so without further ado, these are my rough plans for a new PC:
- A quad core CPU. We’ll see if AMD is a contender in another month or so
- 3GB of RAM, more doesn’t make sense as 32-bit Windows won’t use much of it
- The motherboard will most definitely be Gigabyte or Asus, purely for reliability reasons
- Samsung’s latest HDDs are a tad quieter than Western Digital’s. Size doesn’t matter
- For graphics, if this upcoming GeForce 8800 GT works out, it’ll be one of those
- An Antec P182 case, and probably a CPU tower cooler from Noctua or Thermalright.
- A Pioneer SATA DVD-RW drive. Hooray, no more ribbon cables!
- Corsair 520w power unit. Enough power despite what some graphics companies say
- Samsung 226BW 22″ widescreen LCD Monitor. But will it fit on my desk?
I actually haven’t yet decided if I am going to bother with a floppy drive. I don’t really think it matters too much these days, but when they’re only going for $10 it does make sense to be prepared for anything.
The plan is to have this thing last for quite a while. I don’t really want to have to upgrade anything inside of it except the video card in another couple of years. But then, looking at Nvidia and ATI’s record, that’ll need a new power supply too… damn this never-ending cycle.
28th October | Reply
For once I am jealous! I am poor now because while my tech job pays more hourly than my bar tending gig did, I can’t get enough hours in anymore. School takes up a lot of my time and it isn’t like the summer was. Upgrading for me probably won’t happen until next summer or a big bonus
You’ll be somewhat thrilled that you forced me to read this (ha!). Our programmer just got that same case last week. He’s got a eVGA motherboard and 2 7800GT SLi in there. I gotta say, I’d look at other cases. It is more quiet than his previous behemoth, but its not anything I’d be extremely surprised over.
The construction is really nice but the layout is flawed. Check out this picture: http://www.antec.com/images/400/p182_q_op.jpg
See that black cover in the far left above where the power supply goes? It causes all sorts of cable issues and makes for a really uncomfortable fit for the PSU. It wants the cables to all snake up through this hole then onto the mobo but you need extremely long PSU cables to make the journey, not to mention forcing that mess to make a 90 degree angle so quickly out of the end of a PSU. There is a fan right there too which is nice but it clogs up the area further and I wouldn’t be surprised if it made a ‘dead zone’ of air colliding from PSU exhaust and the air blowing in.
I think his PSU was a 900w so maybe it was bigger but I don’t think so. I’d just look around a bit more as the full installation took the better part of 7 hours and wasn’t really as impressive as we originally thought. It does look smashing though.
Maybe check out the Lian Li models, I quite love those cases. Also I had a Zalman CPU cooler that is extremely quiet. I’ve seen fanless version of lower end graphics cards but all the high end ones seem to need it with a honking heatsink.
Are there no companies that don’t void the warranty with a new fan installation? Or offer quieter models? I haven’t looked into this stuff in a while.
Good luck! And share your knowledge so I can vicariously upgrade.
28th October | Reply
I am aware of the many issues surrounding the P180 and P182 cases. The PSU compartment down the bottom is indeed too small for many modern PSUs but at the same time, those fans down there are superfluous. Because the PSU is in a separate compartment anyway, it doesn’t get hot air going in at it’s intake like in cases where the PSU is up the top. So the PSU runs cooler already just from that.
Plus, I won’t be doing the installation. For the first time ever, I plan on getting my favourite retailer to build the entire system for me to my specifications. My friend just did it with them too, using a P182SE case (the mirror one) and the cabling job was immaculate. Because his GTX video card was so long though, they had to move the hard drive bay down in to the CPU compartment. I don’t, however, expect to have that problem with the card I end up buying.
Of course, having two 7800GTs with stock fans on them are going to cause a heck of a lot of noise. Having the Antec case isn’t meant to be the first aspect of sound reduction - it’s the finish. To reduce sound you need to start at the source, and then the P182 is meant to deaden those small sounds. The case comes with three TriCool fans which have 3 speed settings - if he had them on anything but “Low” then they would have made a lot of noise too.
The one concern I do have is that the way the deadening panels work is that the sound is really just directed out the back of the case instead, so for people like me who have their case on the floor, you’re still going to hear something. On top of that, the thing weights 14 kilograms on it’s own, which is ridiculous, so I will keep looking at other cases. Lian Li’s are bloody expensive though, for a set of aluminium rectanngles. I’m not sure of their acoustics.
As for the video cards I haven’t looked in to any changed warranties but I can’t imagine they’d be happy with you taking the card apart. HIS used to make excellent “IceQ” versions of Radeons with big silent coolers on them, and more recently PowerColour sold Radeons with 3rd party coolers from Arctic Cooling. Unforuntately none of this has translated over the the latest high end DX10 cards.
28th October | Reply
Well it seems the first comprehensive 8800 GT review is in. It’s performance is fantastic but the heat and noise is outlandish. I may just have to bite the bullet and install a 3rd party cooler afterall.
28th October | Reply
Actually the P182 only has two externally adjustable case fans, the third one is by the PSU/Lower Hard Drive cage and is not externally adjustable. Still, the case fans hardly make any noise at all, even at medium speed. At high speed, which is what I’ve set it to, you’ll really start hearing them though… well, provided you don’t have a noise canceling headset like I do
There is one component however which generates a lot of noise, and I’m certain it’s not quite the one you were expecting: Intel’s Stock CPU cooler (on my E6750). It might cool like a behemoth (30 degrees after 4 hours of full load), but it sounds like one too. If you want to have a truly quiet PC, then you might want to consider looking around for alternative cooling for your CPU. That said, the behemoth of a CPU cooler does allow for some insane overclocking
As for heat: my 8800 GTX is the only thing generating any … and it generates a lot of it. I’m still testing how hot it gets on stock driver settings, but up ’till now I’ve simply manually overridden driver settings and ran my GPU fan at 90% speed so that it stays below 70 degrees (under full load).
Anyway, on the Geforce 8800 GT front there really aren’t a whole lot of in-depth brand comparisons yet. But I’m sure that the manufacturers will follow similar practices to their 8800GTX counterparts. Which means that if you get an EVGA ( 8800 GTX EVGA ) you’ll have lifetime warranty and can even replace stock cooling provided you don’t damage your card, and still retain your warranty.
XFX offers a similar warranty deal ( 8800 GTX XFX ) although, as you probably know, these brands are also the most expensive.
28th October | Reply
A 3rd party CPU cooler was always on the cards, and my retailer actually doesn’t stock too many so thankfully I don’t need to spend ages deciding between a dozen excellent contenders. It’ll likely be a Thermalright. I don’t care to overclock, but my room gets very hot in summer so extremely good cooling is a must even at stock speeds.
Thanks for the info on XFX and eVGA cards. My 6800 GS is an XFX, and interestingly, the eVGA cards which I’ve seen down here are actually much cheaper than I was expecting - well below BFG and Asus, other quality brands. Hopefully the 8800 GT will also be priced reasonably.
I emailed my retailer and they said they wouldn’t put VGA coolers on themselves because of warranty issues, but depending on how flexible the manufacturers are, I might be able to convince them otherwise. Or I could just do it myself again. Putting the Zalman on my GeForce wasn’t hard, it just felt risky at the time. But hey, now I’ve got the experience I suppose.
30th October | Reply
Judging by the most recent Geforce 8800 GT reviews, you’d be crazy not to buy one. It outperforms the GTX on some fronts, particularly with AA/AF off in lower resolutions. Meanwhile it generates less heat than a GTX, less noise than a 320MB GTS and consumes less power than a 320MB GTS. Even the more expensive Radeon HD2900XT is outperformed on all fronts.
It doesn’t really matter what ATI/AMD have done to their new altered version of the R600 chip (out on the 15th) - it’s simply not even going to get close to this. As long as you don’t start laying down insane loads of anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering in your games, you should be fine for GTX-quality performance at half the cost. Yikes.
31st October | Reply
Just thought I’d point out a little news item I encountered today:
http://www.sparkle.com.tw/News/SP8800GTpassive/news_SP8800GT_passive_EN.html
An 8800GT with passive cooling.
31st October | Reply
I highly recommend eVGA. I’ve purchased both nVidia cards and nForce motherboards from them and each time the price was reasonable and the product really great. I actually got a free motherboard from them when I got my 7800GTX.
And the warranty on self-modding cards is pretty impressive. They always seems to feature one of the higher factory overclocked cards at the best price too.
It looks like the world is begging for you to upgrade chris. All the pieces are in place! That sparkle card sounds too good to be true and the website looks a little sketchy but if its true I’d be interested.
31st October | Reply
Sparkle is a well-known budget brand down here, and given how hot this GPU runs I am extremely wary of any passively cooled versions. That said, I am eager to see a full review on it, and if Sparkle can do that, then it brings with it a good chance that others may try some more interesting cooling options as well. So that is really an awesome find, DarkFlow.
So far my usual retailer has only one 8800GT listed, from XFX and rather overpriced. Hopefully the rest of the brands they stock (including Sparkle) will show up soon.
1st November | Reply
Being the friend with the P182SE, I have to say, I love it.
The mirror finish is just awesome and it keeps things noticeably quieter than my old case. Upon opening the front door you can hear a subtle difference as the higher pitches of the fans begin to escape. Still, even with the side off, my machine is fairly quiet (XFX 8800GTX, Gigabyte mobo with stock heatsink, Q6600). The loudest component I have is actually my PSU (Chris I think you may have mistaken that noise as coming from the 8800). For the record, it’s a Silver Stone.
I have my pc on the desk to my right so if it’s too loud (like my old one was despite water cooling) it can be very frustrating.
I keep my system fans on low and have no problems bar the PSU.
Personally i prefer to go for quality over cost as in the past I’ve been burned by the cheaper option. That said, not everyone has $3000 to blow on a new pc.
Only problem I’ve faced is lousy graphics drivers for 64-bit Vista. Still, I tried to future proof as much as I could so in the long run I’m sure it will pay off. Other than that I would recommend anything in my pc with the exception of the power supply.
Looks like it’s time to bite the bullet Chris and spend some money. Can I suggest only ordering in-stock parts from your supplier as I had to wait several weeks for parts to come in which wasn’t much fun!
Oh, and make sure you get a burner this time!