Vandi's Silent Dual 252 Opteron
Inspired by MaxxxRacer. Thanks! You're chipset struggle made me want to do this. :D
http://img92.imageshack.us/img92/3446/dscn14559go.jpg
Been trying to keep my system cool and silent for a while now. It gets pretty hot in the summer where I live. In a house with no AC, +105F degree weather can make a room pretty hot, let alone a case with a couple hundred watts. The biggest noise maker for me was a humming case and the stock cooler on my 6800. I even bought a Zalman VF-700Cu which seemed to cool ok and didn't make much noise. But the design of the case let all of the hot air get stuck around the AGP slot and the video ram wasn't getting enough cooling. So on days that got +100 degrees my screen would freeze up and get all scrambled. Opening the case brought it back to normal. So I had to go back to the damn stock cooler. Until now....
Temps and noisy case before:
http://img64.imageshack.us/img64/471...idle4xo.th.gif http://img58.imageshack.us/img58/423/dscn02812bl.th.jpg
Temps and case after:
http://img64.imageshack.us/img64/917...idle4me.th.gif http://img67.imageshack.us/img67/298...case4xi.th.jpg
http://img67.imageshack.us/img67/114...15896zw.th.jpg http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/543...15984ps.th.jpg
Custom Cooling:
http://img67.imageshack.us/img67/1079/cooling1av.th.jpg http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/161...15380dc.th.jpg http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/326...15578hg.th.jpg
Stock A64 HSF:
http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/863...14693hg.th.jpg http://img56.imageshack.us/img56/769...14869gv.th.jpg http://img83.imageshack.us/img83/122...14889qc.th.jpg
As you can see the temps are good and I can assure you that the noise levels are really low. The loudest part of this system are the four hard drives. At full load the GPU only gets to 65C and the Opterons don't get past 38C. All is good and silent. :D I expect this baby to easily handle a +100F room but only time will tell.
- Vandi
