Custom built desktop pc - low power, quiet yet powerful

baby_frogmella

weegie.geek wrote: »

For all the energy a fan uses, this would be practically pointless. A passive cooler won't cool nearly as well as one with a fan either.

So which is the better CPU cooler: Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro v2 or the Corsair H50? I don't mind putting up with the noise with the former if it's significantly better.

tomsolomon

baby_frogmella wrote: »

So which is the better CPU cooler: Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro v2 or the Corsair H50? I don't mind putting up with the noise with the former if it's significantly better.

You kind of missed the point there lol.....
The Corsair is liquid cooling, and much more efficient than passive or air cooling, and is ok if you dont mind having water swishing about inside your PC.
Maybe you should go back to the drawing board and rethink what you want to put in your tower, and maybe read the descriptions properly...;)

baby_frogmella

tomsolomon wrote: »

You kind of missed the point there lol.....
The Corsair is liquid cooling, and much more efficient than passive or air cooling, and is ok if you dont mind having water swishing about inside your PC.
Maybe you should go back to the drawing board and rethink what you want to put in your tower, and maybe read the descriptions properly...;)

Sorry i got confused there :eek:

Anyway after reading this it seems the Corsair is a good choice, will consider replacing the fan though.

"However, if near-silent running is your goal and you choose the Corsair, then you'd either need to swap out the standard fan supplied, or use some form of PWM controller (your motherboard might have the required functionality in the BIOS), to throttle the fan down to around 1,200 rpm or less"

S0litaire

if you're only going to do general work why are you going for a Core i3??

I'd grab a Intel Atom dual core ION board

It runs virtually silent with the stock fan (the fan is usually optional if it's not running over 70% constant CPU load)
It draws hardly any power (i've got my ION board running on a 120w Laptop Brick style PSU) so it's silent!
Also if you stick it in that acoustic case then you'll never hear it even with the fan running!!

Handles all but the very latest games.
Playback of Blu-Ray/DVD HD movies without a sweat!

Stick on a SSD and 3-4Gb or ram and you'll have a silent fast machine that will do what ever you want at a fraction of power / cost...

weegie.geek

baby_frogmella wrote: »

So which is the better CPU cooler: Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro v2 or the Corsair H50? I don't mind putting up with the noise with the former if it's significantly better.

The corsair is a more efficient cooler, and should be quieter than the ACF7. the H50 still has a fan, btw.

Big difference in price between the two though, if that's a factor.

ddoris

A G41 motherboard and wolfdale cpu would be powerful enough ,low power consumption (v. easy to cool) and really cheap.

weegie.geek

I wouldn't buy new S775 kit now tbh, there's no upgrade path.

baby_frogmella

In the end went for the spec listed below.....decided to go for a more powerful system mainly cos i use Autocad and Microstation. Very happy bunny now


CASE
Antec P183 Advanced Super Mid Tower

MOBO
Asus P7P55D Deluxe

CPU
Intel Core i3 530 2.93GHz - Overclocked to 4.4 Ghz

CPU Cooler
Corsair H50

MEMORY
4GB (2x2GB) Corsair XMS3 DDR3 PC3-12800 (1600)

GRAPHICS CARD
XFX ATI Radeon HD 5450 512mb

PSU
650W Seasonic X650 PSU 80plus Gold Efficiency

HARD DISK
1TB Samsung Spinpoint F3, SATA 3Gb/s, 7200rpm

OPTICAL DRIVE
Pioneer DVR-S18LBK - DVDRW

CARD READER/WRITER
Akasa AK-ICR-07S 3.5" Internal Multi Mem. Card Reader Incl. M2, Micro
SD & USB port

SOUND CARD
Sound Card Not Required Use On Board Sound

WIRELESS ADAPTOR
Edimax EW-7728In 300mbps 802.11n PCI WiFi Card

OPERATING SYSTEM
Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit

banger9365

looks like a nice little pc you have thier ,but why Ultimate,pro and Hp would have been cheeper and pro is almost the same apart from 35 Multilingual User Interface,BitLocker Drive Encryption for only a few to speak off