Noise of a system/Antec 300

I'm probably going to buy an antec 300 because it looks like a pretty awesome case. But I have an issue with how loud it might be.

I'm a fan of a really quiet PC with good cooling and I'm willing to pay for it to an extent. My current rig is near silent with a Accelero S1 + turbo module on my GPU, suspended HDDs, cut out the fan grill and put dust filters over any others to try to stop noise.

Problem is, I don't really want to mutilate my antec. My current one is a cheapo £10 case so I don't mind the fan grills being badly cut off with a cutter because I was going to replace it anyway. The fan grills were pretty thickish and I definatly noticed a drop after I removed them. Will I notice a big drop in noise from giving the antec some chopping? Because I noticed the honeycomb grills on them are alot thinner than the thick ones on my current case.

I'm going to be installing at least 1/2 120mm in the front of the case, and on the side. Any unused fan slot would be covered up either way.

I'm going to cut up the fan grills on the front 120mms because they're protected of prying fingers by the dust protector/front bezel. And you can't see them. The side I'll probably cut off because it'll be an intake fan and I'll put a dust protector (alu) over the top to minimize noise coming out of the hole and dust going in.

Final question will adding any foam stuff to the inside really reduce noise? I've never tried it so I'm skeptical if it will work on a steel case. Any other mods/ideas to reduce case noise? I'm going to fit it with a 650w moduler Xigmatek PSU which I've heard is pretty quiet.

Last question can anyone reccomend a good quiet CPU cooler. I want one that is prefrably no louder than my stock E8400 one and will manage to get me up to around a 4ghz OC. I'm looking at the scythe ninja rev 2. Anyone else got any ideas? I don't mind paying a little premium on this, but anything over £40 might push me a little. I was thinking about watercooling. Since I may get a GTX280 in a few weeks and would probably put that into the loop aswell as my CPU but im confused on watercooling as I've heard it's quieter than air, but then I've heard pumps can be loud as hell and rads require big noisy fans so IDK.

I know this is a long ass post so anyone who replies with some insight would be gladly appreciated :D.

Adding a dust filter basically negates cutting a grill out, but it will reduce fan noise.kodex1717

That's basicaly what I want it for. I don't so much want to get rid of it because of air flow. It's because when the wind goes through the gaps in a grill it creates a whistling noise which removing it can reduce. By adding a dust filter it prevents dust and because the gaps don't make a noise.

[QUOTE="kodex1717"]Adding a dust filter basically negates cutting a grill out, but it will reduce fan noise.death1505921

That's basicaly what I want it for. I don't so much want to get rid of it because of air flow. It's because when the wind goes through the gaps in a grill it creates a whistling noise which removing it can reduce. By adding a dust filter it prevents dust and because the gaps don't make a noise.

You won't here the whistling, what you here from fans is the spinning on the bearings. If you want a quite pc replace all your cooling with thermalright passive heat sinks then add noctou fans if need be. If you choose the right case then you should be able to mount your fans with rubber pins instead of screws and if you want truely silent HDDs the only way to go is SSD, they may be expensive but they're the only truely silend HDDs you can get and they boot quick too.

I'm talking about fan noise, not some magical whistling effect.kodex1717

It's not magical. When you cut out a fan grill you REDUCE noise because the air moves around and the air is cut by the grill. Go google it if you don't beleive me. You can knock 10 decibels off your computer noise by cutting out all the fan grills.

By cutting a grill out you reduce noise from the air cutting against the grill gaps. By then adding a dust protector it blocks sound from coming out as it effectivly covers the hole. Go look it up.

[QUOTE="death1505921"]

[QUOTE="kodex1717"]Adding a dust filter basically negates cutting a grill out, but it will reduce fan noise.markop2003

That's basicaly what I want it for. I don't so much want to get rid of it because of air flow. It's because when the wind goes through the gaps in a grill it creates a whistling noise which removing it can reduce. By adding a dust filter it prevents dust and because the gaps don't make a noise.

You won't here the whistling, what you here from fans is the spinning on the bearings. If you want a quite pc replace all your cooling with thermalright passive heat sinks then add noctou fans if need be. If you choose the right case then you should be able to mount your fans with rubber pins instead of screws and if you want truely silent HDDs the only way to go is SSD, they may be expensive but they're the only truely silend HDDs you can get and they boot quick too.

Sigh, again go google what happens when you cut out a fan grill. IT DOES REDUCE NOISE. I know you hear the fan spinning on the bearing but a fan grill ADDS NOISE. What passive heatsinks can you reccomend, and what noctou fans. I don't want a completely silent computer, so a suspended HDD is fine for me, I might get one of those new OCZ SSD drives though since they arn't complete rip offs.

I don't mind a little noise, from quite case fans and the stock CPU cooler is quiet as is my turbo module on my S1.

I've never heard of removing fan grills on the basis of noise. Ever. The point of removing them is to increase airflow. Maybe you've just been unlucky and bought a case with small air-inlet holes and high-power fans. Obviously, in that case you're going to get a hiss as air is forced through the holes. Saying that the hissing is present on all grills is nonsense, though.

Adding fan filters is going to negate airflow increases AND give you hissing, depending on the style of filter you use.

I've never heard of removing fan grills on the basis of noise. Ever. The point of removing them is to increase airflow. Maybe you've just been unlucky and bought a case with small air-inlet holes and high-power fans. Obviously, in that case you're going to get a hiss as air is forced through the holes. Saying that the hissing is present on all grills is nonsense, though.

Adding fan filters is going to negate airflow increases AND give you hissing, depending on the style of filter you use.

kodex1717

Seriously, alot of people who are building silent computers remove fan grills in order to negate noise. I use a alu dust filter (this) and I get almost no hissing and it does lower noise coming from the fan.

Maybe you've never heard of removing them for noise, because you've always looked at performance and want more CFM rather than noise and want less dcbs hmm?

P.S. Your sig is epic.

The problem I've always had was that my fans themselves were so loud that whether or not they whistled wouldn't matter. I recently took my intake's filter out when my computer was running (take off the front panel and pop the holder out). The only thing I got was high-pitched bearing noise when I took the filter off, so apparently it'll only really matter with fans that aren't loud in the first place. =/

P.S. Your sig is epic. death1505921

The problem I've always had was that my fans themselves were so loud that whether or not they whistled wouldn't matter. I recently took my intake's filter out when my computer was running (take off the front panel and pop the holder out). The only thing I got was high-pitched bearing noise when I took the filter off, so apparently it'll only really matter with fans that aren't loud in the first place. =/

[QUOTE="death1505921"]P.S. Your sig is epic. kodex1717

:D

Yeah my fans were only about 20 dcbs ish. So when I cut, well I say cut, more like mangled, the grill off it cut noise by quite a bit. What case do you have btw? The 300 had a feature likey you described in the front.

On the sig thing, that surely can't be a real quote can it?

My brother has that case and it is really, really quiet. It's quieter than my CM690 but i think my case is louder because of some of the case fans.

you really can't go wrong, its barley audible, i'd imagine the only time it would be noisy is if you are sleeping and leaving your computer on (assuming its in the same room as you) and still would be pretty quiet.

I'm probably going to buy an antec 300 because it looks like a pretty awesome case. But I have an issue with how loud it might be.

I'm a fan of a really quiet PC with good cooling and I'm willing to pay for it to an extent. My current rig is near silent with a Accelero S1 + turbo module on my GPU, suspended HDDs, cut out the fan grill and put dust filters over any others to try to stop noise.

Problem is, I don't really want to mutilate my antec. My current one is a cheapo £10 case so I don't mind the fan grills being badly cut off with a cutter because I was going to replace it anyway. The fan grills were pretty thickish and I definatly noticed a drop after I removed them. Will I notice a big drop in noise from giving the antec some chopping? Because I noticed the honeycomb grills on them are alot thinner than the thick ones on my current case.death1505921

The grill on the 300 looks fairly restrictive, so I'd imagine that snipping it will help reduce noise. Cutting out those front grills will be a double-edged sword for noise reduction, though. True, you'll lessen the backpressure against which the fans work, but you're also creating an unimpeded path for noise to reach your ears. Granted if you're already using quiet fans, that may not be too big a deal, but that depends on your noise threshold. I have my front fan running at about 750 RPM, but if I leave the front case door open, I can still hear it when ambient noise is low. This is why cases with indirect airflow paths, like the P182 and Solo, make for good quiet systems.

Have no qualms about cutting up an Antec! Half the fun in silencing is in the hardware mods, and besides, it makes your case unique!

Final question will adding any foam stuff to the inside really reduce noise? I've never tried it so I'm skeptical if it will work on a steel case. Any other mods/ideas to reduce case noise? I'm going to fit it with a 650w moduler Xigmatek PSU which I've heard is pretty quiet.death1505921

Foam really doesn't do all that much for computers. There are two main reasons for adding insulation to a computer case - mass loading/dampening and acoustic absorption/reflection. The first reason applies mostly to rattly aluminum or thin steel cases, which probably won't apply to the 300. (If it does, applying aluminum roofing tape, available at places like Home Depot, should fix it.) Sound absorption would be great, except the sizes that can fit in a PC case are too small to absorb most relevant sounds. Basically, products like Acoustipack and Dynamat do an excellent job at muting high frequency noise, which isn't usually a problem with the innards of a PC. Unless you've quieted your case so much that you can start hearing coil whine from your motherboard or PSU, foam will give a minimal improvement to your PC acoustics. However, adding a block of eggcrate-style foam to the inside of a PC can break up standing waves, which can create unwelcome case resonance.

I'd recommend that before you add a side intake fan, cover it up temporarily and see how that affects temperatures/noise. It's always good for quieting to reduce the number of fans in your system. (Though, if you get that GTX 280, you just might need one!)

Last question can anyone reccomend a good quiet CPU cooler. I want one that is prefrably no louder than my stock E8400 one and will manage to get me up to around a 4ghz OC. I'm looking at the scythe ninja rev 2. Anyone else got any ideas? I don't mind paying a little premium on this, but anything over £40 might push me a little.death1505921

You can buy a Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme plus a decently quiet Sharkoon fan on scan.co.uk for about £40 after VAT, and that's probably the best air cooler that fits in most cases. You could switch that Extreme for an HR-01 Plus and save about £5, but I'm not an overclocker and I don't know how it would work for that. The Xigmatek HDT-S1283 is also a fine option, since it's close to both of the Thermalrights in cooling ability while also including a fairly good fan and costing under £25. The Ninja is a great passive cooler, but it's fallen behind the competition in terms of active cooling.

I was thinking about watercooling. Since I may get a GTX280 in a few weeks and would probably put that into the loop aswell as my CPU but im confused on watercooling as I've heard it's quieter than air, but then I've heard pumps can be loud as hell and rads require big noisy fans so IDK.death1505921

The GTX series isn't compatible with the S1, nor any other air cooler on the market right now of which I'm aware. The stock cooler probably isn't very quiet, so watercooling might be your only option for reducing its noise. However, I know nothingabout liquid cooling, so I have no advice here. A better choice for quiet gaming is the ATI 4800 series, since it's compatible with anything that fits on a 38x0 (like, say, an S1).

I recommend this setup:

Thermalright IFX-14 CPU Cooler (Socket AM2/LGA775) may be too big if so go with: Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme CPU Cooler (Socket AM2/LGA775)

a bunch of these for your case: Noctua NF-P12 120mm Silent Case Fan - 3 Pin(you might not need them at all though)

then if you go for a thermaltake armor or kandalf case the grills will just popoue so you can replace them with what ever you want

I have the Antec 300, and it's the best case I've ever owned. The tri-cool fans in the back and top are near silent at low speed (You can set low-mid-high speed). I added 3 Scythe fans and a zalman fan controller. My case is pretty much silent and gets good airflow at low speed. When I want, I can crank it. You don't need to add anything. Get an Arctic Freezer Pro 7 and enable Q-Fan or the non-Asus equivalent.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811999171

Also, I only recommend Corsair Power Supplies, as they are fantastic.

DO NOT CUT THE GRILLS, it serves no purpose. No sound is perpetuated by the grills. If you want to do anything, add anti-vibration padding to the top and side.

I have an Antec Three Hundred that I built last month as new, general purpose box. The defualt Antec Tri-Cool fans are IMHO, fairly loud and dont move enough air to warrant thier noise. That goes for all their settings and for two of their three different Tri-Cool models. Both happen to be with the Three Hundred. Those would be the 120mm and the top mounted 140mm. Now I dont mean to make it sound like they are 40db fans that dont do their jobs and you should toss them. I'm just saying that they are far louder than many silent models that move the same or more air.

I cut the two front bezles out of mine, and removed modded the filter. I didnt like the look of the single, steel mesh front panle, as it sits next to a Antec Nine Hundred which uses real, steel mesh drive bay covers for each slot. The front airfilter on the Three Hundred has lines on it to help give the single mesh piece the same look as the Nine and Twelve Hundred cases. So I cut out the filter parts and left the lines in place. The main reason for cutting out the filter and front fan bezles for me, is for more air movement. I want lots and lots of air going through their and I dont care about dust. I clean the insides of all my boxes about once a month as my house if very old and dusty.

I replaced all the fans. It has four Enlobal 120mm's fans in it now. 2x in the front, 1x on the side and 1x at rear. The 140mm is an AeroCool Streamliner. All fans are running at max speed and are whisper quiet. The PSU has a 140mm fan, and is whisper quiet. The CPU fansink is the Xigmatek HDT-S1283 running at about 2/3rds speed. It's about the only things you can really hear and it's still pretty darn quiet. Does a great job cooling the cheap little lapped E2180 which is OC'ed to 3.62 GHz. The HDD's are pretty quiet in this case as well. Since it's a general purpose box with several OS's it's got a very basic and cheap 8600GT with an AeroCool passive heatsink I stuck on it. All in all, its very quiet when compared to my other boxes. Then again, I used an extra hundred bucks in stuff to make it so. I also used rubber pull mounts for the fans and placed the 120mm's in their own rubber sleves to boot. Getting the rubber mounts to work with the rubber sleves was a real pain and took a couple of hours of carful work so as not to ripp the mounts apart. The PSU also has it's own rubber sleve to prevent contact with the case. I already had all the fans and rubber sleves/mounts. I just swapped them out with the stock and will sell those to my clients.

So all in all, I would highly recommend the case if you want something that is quiet and cool running on air. You will have to work at it a bit. You dont need to change all the fans, but you should make sure to buy the other two optionaly fans. It might be three fans at this point. Antec was shipping an extra fan with the case since there was a problem with a large batch of fans a few months back. A recall would would cost to much (shipping issues, setting up a department to deal with it and what to do with all the returned fans), and not doing anything would look real bad. So they just gave in and tossed in a free second fan. This is a temp thing and it may be over now. You'll have to find out on your own.

Good luck with your case and I hope you enjoy the Three Hundred as much as I do. It's a very fun case.

Overclocking an E8400 to 4ghz and Silence don't really belong together unless you have a big budget (watercooling).

Currently, the all-round best passive heatsink is the Scythe ninja due to the space between the fins. Lots of people use setups with the scythe, and just 1 120mm fan at the back cooling the entire system and it works while being silent. However, that's not with overclocking ;)

I agree with kodai, the fans that come with the 300 are sub-par. Invest in some nice noctua fans, or scythe FDB fans (they have very little bearing noise, I used to own one).

Honestly, the antec 300 isn't really a case intended for silent pcs (thin material, no front bezel). You should look at the 182.

kodai

where do you get these sleves from? I've only ever seen rubber pushpins for fan mounting

In response to Kodai I'm probably going to replace two 140mm wit hthe AeroCool, and the 120mms with Scythe S-Flex 120mm. All put into the case using rubber mounts. What do you mean by rubber sleves?

I'm going to try to find some rubber mounts for the bottom PSU aswell not sure if I can find any about though, and doesn't the 300 come with rubber mounts already on the base of the case?

For cutting out the grills I'll definatly cut out the front two, and the side one if I cut it out will be covered by a dust filter.

My PSU im going to upgrade to is a a 650w moduler Xigmatek which is only about 25dcbs which is fine for me. I'm not going for that all out silent system. But I do want whisper quiet.

On the CPU cooler side I'm thinking of getting a TRUE and then mounting a S-Flex 120mm on it. Hopefully then the loudest thing in my case will be the GTX 280 which is only supposed to run at about 35dcbs.

how does the price of the xigmatek compare to a Corsair 620 or a 750? If there's not much difference, I would go with a corsair (Not saying there's anything wrong with the xiggy, but the Corsairs have been tried and tested, so you cant go wrong with them). Mr_NoName111

Corsair 620 is £20 more. Roughly $40 more. The 650 is about the same price as the xigmatek. I was going to go with the Corisair 650, but the xiggy has got good reviews and I'd prefer moduler tbh over the sake of having a corsair. If it was like the difference of an "eazycool" one and a corsair one then maybe yeah, but xigmatek is a good brand too.

To answer your previous questions, Death, I have a Rocketfish-branded LIAN-LI case. It's a full-tower made completely out of aluminum. There's a picture of it in my sig, but that doesn't reflect the window that I added to the side of it. I got the case at Best Buy (an American electronics retailer) for $50 when it went on clearance (was $200). It's a really nice case, but the stock fans make a decent amount of noise. However, I don't really mind it, as long as it's not high-pitched.

And, yes, that's a real quote in my sig.

EDIT: Since you're all here already, does anyone know of a cheap power supply that's really quiet? It doesn't have to do much, as I'm just putting it in an HTPC. Anything that wont start a fire is great. Thanks!

EDIT: Since you're all here already, does anyone know of a cheap power supply that's really quiet? It doesn't have to do much, as I'm just putting it in an HTPC. Anything that wont start a fire is great. Thanks!kodex1717

The Corsair VX450W, $40 after promo code and mail-in rebate at Newegg. If the promo code doesn't work for some reason, then the Earthwatts 430W for $30 after mail-in rebate.

(Aside: The fans in the Rocketfish can actually get pretty quiet if you hook them up to a fan controller. Mine are practically inaudible after being reduced to half their top speed :))

I was talking cheap. The least I can spend on this build, the better. I found the Antec Basiq 350W, and it should do just fine.

And, yes, I know I could use a fan controller, but that's in my other computer. =)