WC Newbie - Nearly Silent System (i5 + 5770, no OC)

Hey, anything below 20db goes down as a huge win in my books.

But right now I am having some doubts about whether this whole project actually makes sense. If I can use a passive rad, I'm definitely lowering the sound as compared to any kind of air cooling. But once I start using active rads, seems like I might as well just clump in a great big cpu cooler, a card with a sophisticated gpu cooler and call it a day ...

Mike

Yep, exactamundo. Your not trying to quiet down a powerhouse PC.

Get a well ventilated case with two 140mm fronts a 200 on the top and a 140 on the back.

Then a meglahem with a 140mm fan, and a cooler like the HR-03 from thermalright and slap a 120mm on it. Done, lots cheaper. And a new pretty case.

In case you still decide to watercool I tested a similar heat load to yours (using the Spartacus system in my sig) with a Q9650 at stock settings (95W) and a HD3870 (120W) using Prime95 and Furmark at 1280 x 1024. I turned the fans down until they were barely spinning then upped them a notch and from 6" away I couldn't hear them, just the hard drives.

The Black Ice GT Extreme rad in the system isn't ideal for low fan speeds as it has a high fpi. CPU load temps peaked at 41ºC and GPU 41ºC with an ambient temp of 19ºC. With a Black Ice SR480 or XSPC RX480 and lower fpi I'd expect better results.

With the fans at high speed the CPU & GPU load temps were 35ºC and 37ºC respectively.

With Scythe GT 1450s at low speed I'd expect the results to be roughly about the same, maybe 1ºC lower at best but at high speed the fans would be a lot quieter than the Noctua's

An hours surfing with the fans at low speed saw the CPU at 28ºC, peaking at 34ºC (running Spybot, up to 33% load) and GPU 32ºC peaking at 34ºC