Anybody have an Athlon system they would classify as particularly quiet?
I'm really interested in a new game rig and have been looking hard at Micron's XP2 -- only thing is, a good number of user reviews mention the fan noise as a drawback. I can't abide a lot of fan noise. I do know Athlons generate a lot more heat, so will all Athlon systems sound like a vacuum cleaner?
My other option, of course, is to just go with a cheap PIII 1ghz system. I'm running a PII 400mhz right now, so anything would be an improvement...
I have a 1ghz athlon with a cheap nasty standard power supply thats quite noisy.
Saying that my flat mate has a 900Mhz athlon that is quite a bit less noisy. I think it mostly comes down to the quality of the fans/cooling built into the PSU. I am upgrading my PSU to an 430W Enermax Whisper Quiet Dual Fan PSU - AMD Approved EG451P-VE which will cost me about 75 pounds sterling (inc. next day delivery). They are meant to be really quiet compared to standard issue athlon PSUs.
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Athlon 1Ghz
Gigabyte GA-7IXE4 Motherboard
ASUS 8200 Geforce 3 Pure
Aureal Vortex2 Quad
3x 128Mb PC133
Logitech i-Touch cordless key&mouse
17" Monitor of unknown type
CPU: Intel i7 2600K @ 4.6Ghz
Mobo: Asus P8P67 Pro B3 Revision
Mem: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1866MHz
Video: 2 x MSI HD5850 Twin Frozr II (CrossfireX)
HDD: Crucial C300 128GB SSD, Seagate Momentus XT 500GB
Sound: RealtekŪ ALC892 8-Channel High Definition Audio
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit
As Arris pointed out, you can purchase quieter fans to use with your Athlon system. My fan (specified below) does not generate much noise and generates quite sufficient cooling.
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Athlon T-bird 1GHz
Globalwin WBK38 w/Sanyo Denko 55cfm 92MM fan
Asus A7V133
384MB SDRAM
Quantum 7200 ATA-100 20GB hard drive
Fujitsu 5400 ATA-66 10GB hard drive
Creative Soundblaster Live MP3+ 5.1
Creative Annihilator 2 GeFroce 2 GTS 32MB
NEC Multisync XV17+
Realtek ethernet card
XP 1700
WBK38 w/Sanyo Denko 92MM fan
Asus A7V133 rev7
256PC133
Quantum 7200 ATA-100 20GB
Fujitsu 5400 ATA-66 10GB
SB Live MP3+ 5.1
Creative Annihilator 2 GeForce2 GTS 32MB
CTX 21"
Yeah, I guess the way to make sure it's quiet is to build the thing and pick out a decent fan setup. Total water-cooling might be a little too hardcore for my taste though
i am a quiet case freak, i have a t-bird 1.2 with an alpha pal with a ys tech fan which is much quiter then the delta fan it could have come with. it doesnt keep it as cool but still within spec @56C under full load.
i also have an enermax p/s, which enabled me to take out both of my 8x8cm case fans as it has a really quiet intake/exhaust fan set up.
its nice because the cpu fan is sucking the air out from the h/s and the enermax intake fan is directly above it sucking that air straight out of the case.
i've also lined my case with an ashphalt backed aluminum matting and it really helps keep the noise down.
i can hardly hear my fans anymore, nice for dvd's and mp3's on the headphones
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man created god in his own image
Not 100% sure what chip its got in it, but with his rig I don't think it would make a difference.
He's buried his watercooling res 6 feet underground to keep it cool and has been slowly watercooling absolutly everything in his system over the past few months. Last I heared he still had 1 fan in his PSU, Watercooled CPU, Northbridge and GPU with plans to watercool the PSU as well. Hes a nutter, but his system rocks.
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AHHH, I think my computer's got a Virus!
Oh no, that's Windows 98
AHHH, I think my computer's got a Virus!
Oh no, that's Windows XP
Chimaera: Twin Athlon MP 1900+ @ 1824Mhz, GeForce 3 TI500, 512Megs Crucial RegECC, 100GB Total HDD, SuSE Linux 7.3 + Windoze XP Pro
Also if yo're not going to overclock look at either Taisol or (if your feeling rich) NoiseControl Sivarado CPU coolers, they are pretty quiet (though the sivarado has 50g of Silver as a baseplate so its a bit expencive)
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AHHH, I think my computer's got a Virus!
Oh no, that's Windows 98
AHHH, I think my computer's got a Virus!
Oh no, that's Windows XP
Chimaera: Twin Athlon MP 1900+ @ 1824Mhz, GeForce 3 TI500, 512Megs Crucial RegECC, 100GB Total HDD, SuSE Linux 7.3 + Windoze XP Pro
Loud would be an understatement for my system. But, it does not really bother me. My computer room is one of the spare bedrooms in my house. The room just happens to be located next to the front porch. I can hear the whine of the Dragon Orb3 outside at my front door. I do shut my system down at night. If it is quiet in the house, I can hear the computer in every room except for the laundry room. That's with the second power supply and all of the extra fans and with the bedroom door closed.
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