I am looking for suggestions on parts to build a silent system for gaming on a budget, World of Warcraft being the main game used. I do not need cutting edge high end/high speed performance, just above average. I already have a Geforce 6200 256meg fanless video card I plan to transfer out of my badly outdated P3 system to the new one and am happy with it.

Do the fanless PSU's work well? Which one to get if so?

I hope to have no case fans or VERY quiet ones. The house is never over 70 degrees F even on the hottest summer days.

The main thing that seems to drag down performance for me atm is waiting on the HD, I am considering a raid system to help that, any comments?

I like running several things at once and Warcraft is very memory hungry and I hope to run Dragon Naturally speaking at the same time, so am planning on 2gig of memory and hope to get a MB that could be upgraded to 4gig if I decide to.

What all else do I need? Am happy with my mouse, keyboard, & monitor already.

Also I plan to retire my P3 system to being just an MP3/video player, it's already a pretty quiet system except for the power supply, anything fairly cheap to quiet that down?

thanks for any ideas...

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Originally posted by: BBurk
I do not need cutting edge high end/high speed performance, just above average. I already have a Geforce 6200 256meg fanless video card I plan to transfer out of my badly outdated P3 system to the new one and am happy with it.

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Firstly, I'm going to say welcome and don't take the folowing the wrong way, I'm just telling it as it is!

The 6200 is absolute bottom of the pile and isn't good enough for gaming. If you want to have even a mediocre gaming rig you'll need something better I'm affraid. Also, if you're getting a new system it's beter to go for a new PCI-E card rather than an AGP.

What's your budget?

As for the silencing aspect, you've found the right place We'll start once we have a budget to work with. But be warned, a quiet system is always more expensive than a regular system.

About the only thing you can do to silence a vid card is to put on some after market cooling, but do that after you test the card for at least 24 hours of gaming. The silentest after market cooling options are artic cooling, zalman, and stasis.

For your hard drives raid offers really no performance vs a single sata drive. Remember the more hard drives the more heat. Getting a sata drive with acustic managment and with Jordan's help you can get that thing to produce bearly any noise.

Since you are noise contious look for a case that has 120mm fan mounts instead of 80mm fan mounts, the 120s move more air at a much quieter speed. If you have anything fanless you are going to need some good airflow in your case to get rid of that hot air, so make sure you get your case accordingly.

Since you like to multi task then either a P4 single core or dual core would be good but those run so hot it is hard to have a silent P4 system, or you could go with amd's dual core cpu.

Now come the optical drives i have no idea which ones are quiet but i do know that lite-on ones are not. My cd burner drowns out my entire system and my system is loud.

A budget will be able to finalize the setup, but we do need to know what platform you are going to go, AMD or Intel. If you have any questions, just ask.

Well I can tell you that for a silent rig the Abit AN8 Ultra fits perfectly for s939. May not be a super cheap board but its also not DFI priced but is very solid.

I already have the 6200 & it's doing ok for frame rate UNTIL I enter a new area in the game world, then things grind to a halt as the HD runs like crazy. I do like the PCI-E idea though, but still would not want to put much money into a vid card.
Just did a quick look on pricewatch, there's a fanless PCI-E 256mb 6600 for $101 or a 6200 for $57. My signifigant other would be happy if I moved the AGP 6200 into her comp, it's just using a 32meg geforce400, so it wouldn't go to waste.

I had been looking at the dual core P4s, I'd heard if you don't try to go over 3.0G they don't have to run that hot.

The only thing I want for an optical drive is a DVD burner, most all of the time it will be sitting there doing nothing in any case.

My usual buying method is to see who has things cheapest at pricewatch.com, then see if they have a good rep at resellerratings.com.

I would like to keep this all around $600 total, but trying to get 2gig of ram will be hard at that I know. Already have my mouse, KB, Monitor, & Speakers, just need the computer.

Right the logic here is all wrong

THE most crucial aspect of a gaming system is the graphics card. You should be spending more on it rather than dual core CPUs and multiple HDs in a RAID0 array.

AMD is a better choice for gaming for performance reasons and also for a quiet PC as they run much cooler than a P4.

See if you can get a 6600GT passive version from gigabyte, 1GB RAM (2GB later or now if budget allows), a 3000+ Athlon 64 and an Abit AN8 ultra with passive OTES for that budget.

The only problem is you may need a new case and PSU.

Jordan, if you read his inital post he said he likes to multi task. That is why i mentioned dual core. I agree with Jordan on the vid card, you really need something better than a 6600, at least a 6800GT. Now since you are on a budget there isnt a lot we can do ATM with a vid card.

Ok here are some tenative things to look at getting.

Nvidia GeForce 6800 PCI-E $169

AMD A64 3000+ Venice core S939 $138

Epox S939 with pci-e $75

Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 160GB SATA HD $94

Geil DDR 400 RAM 2x512 $83

Total of all of this is $560, but you still need a case, power supply, and optical drive. Now that vid card isnt passivly cooled, and the next best thing is an aftermarket cooler, but if the stock one isnt to loud then you should be fine there, but that is something you can get later on. If you really want 2 gb of ram you will have to save up for it, cause a pair of 1gb sticks are at least $200. You really need a faster cpu than what i put on there but since you are on that strict budget you cant do much about that unless you get some more money. The best bang for the buck cpu imo is the 3700+ San Diego core that only costs $238 and it would be the best cpu for you, but your budget is lacking so i left it out.

You will be able to play games with these components, but i have no idea how much usage Dragon Naturally speaking takes so you migh tbe able to run it with WOW but you might not.

Let us know what you think of this.

Zalman do some good aftermarket passive coolers I think. I know they do northbridge and GPU ones.

http://www.ichibanpc.com...ion=VIEWPROD&ProdID=1792  the board your talking about? I see it comes with a chipset fan on it, it quiet?

Any reccomendations on case and PS?

thanks for your help

Passive OTES basically uses a heatpipe to cool down your northbridge and as a result means a totally silent motherboard.

The GT makes a fair difference on the 6600 series.

And yes any AMD system at the moment on s939 ought to run everything you want to just fine.

PSU wise check out Antec, Tagan, Thermaltake, Hiper, Enermax, Seasonic.

Since i havent used Dragon since like their first version of it i have no idea how much resources it takes up. If it is similar to what i thinkit is then what is specified would work just fine. When you run games like WOW they take up lots of your system resources, and running stuff in the background is ok but if that program tries to use to much your game will lag. Basically can you use dragon and wow at the same time on your computer now? I can run UT2004, xfire, and ts and not have any stutters ingame as long as i stay away from any internet games cause i have dailup and that is my only fault. So i believe that Dragon would work with the parts i specified.

For your vid card the reason i pointed out the 6800 was because it is around the same price of the 6600gt and performs better. Let me say this if you get a 6600 that would be a very minimal upgrade from the 6200 you have. Dont cheap out on your vid card, you will be sorry, i was stuck with a crappy vid card for over a year and a half cause i wanted to save $60.

As for a case, get what you want but please dont skimp on the psu. For a good psu it will cost you at least $40, probably $60. For a case just get what you like but if it does come with a psu if it isnt on our reccomended list then i would just save it in case you need a spare psu in the future.

Since i know you are silent minded i would like jordan to give you the heads up on the case and psu since silence isnt my area of expertiese. I did however make sure that the mobo i picked didnt have a fan for the chipset cause i know those can be very noisey. The stock cooler on the vid card can be loud but it really depends on how loud the rest of your system is. You will probably want an aftermarket gpu cooler from either zalman or artic cooling.

http://www.ichibanpc.com...ion=VIEWPROD&ProdID=1792  the board your talking about? I see it comes with a chipset fan on it, it quiet?

Any reccomendations on case and PS?

thanks for your help

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Cheers Drago. Yeah I didn't see the multi-tasking bit. Generally gamers don't like ANYTHING else running when gaming though...

BBurk, the Mobo you linked to isn't the Abit AN8 Ultra with Silent OTES that I spoke of

For the PSU and case look at:
Antec SLK 3000B with a Seasonic S12 PSU
Antec P150 (includes PSU)
Antec Sonata 2 (includes PSU)

Theose are in order of quiet (top) to slightly less quiet. I think the P150 is the best looking, but probabaly the most expensive.

If those are too expensive get the Antec SLK3700BQE which includes a reasonbly quiet, high quality PSU.

http://www.newegg.com/Pr...c3watch&ATT=Motherboards  this board? How good's the sound card with it? I have about 60 gig of MP3's and plan to wire it direct to my main stereo system. Saw this at $115 The mic I use for speech input is USB, so the sound card doesn't matter for it.

I found the Antec SLK 3000B for $48 delivered. $84 on Seasonic S12 PSU 430w.

Either the 6600gt or the 6800 is just over $200, my problem with the 6800 is I didn't find any fanless versions?

There a reason not to go with WINTEC AMPO 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM Unbuffered DDR2 400 (PC2 3200) for $77?

thanks again

The BEST fanless grapics card available is an X800XL by Gigabyte. Remeber, your system will unlikely be "silent" so you can go for a low noise graphics card and you won't have to worry about heat as much. Sapphires "ultimate" X800XL is a good solution and if it's cheaper than the Gigabyte passive version I recommend it.

That is the Mobo, yes. The on-board sound is more than decent and it is something you can try out and if you're not happy with it, add in a better sound card later.


"There a reason not to go with WINTEC AMPO 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM Unbuffered DDR2 400 (PC2 3200) for $77?"

In this case, no. If you are going for a P4 then you need DDR2, A64 DDR. Don't be lead into believing that AMD is at a disadvantage by using DDR, DDR2 isn't any faster

I have a PC Silencing Guide on HardwareHell in which I detail the heat differences between the top CPUs; check it out. I also recommend the best heatsinks for silencing too, you'll want one of these also.

Let me say one thing, you dont see any of the high end vid cards with pasive coolers cause they run to hot to have one on there. Any fanless vid card will work in a system as long as there is some airflow, but if you dont want any case fans or only have one then your system will run horribly hot and your vid card has a very good chance to overheat. You need a powerful card to play WoW or any new game that will come out and since you are a gamer then skimping on the vid card is not an option. You can get a 6800 for $170 and then spend some money on an artic silencer and it will run as close to silent as you can get with a fan.

I would try the stock cpu cooler and see if it is to your liking or not, you can always get something else later and since you are on a budget the closer you stay to it the better.