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This review is focused on monitoring cooling performance and noise levels as we lower fan speeds with the goal of trying to remove them completely from the main system build. Ideally we would have liked to remove the Silverstone power supply and use a silent passively cooled Zalman unit, but samples are limited and the Silverstone power supply has been specifically designed for this chassis with custom cabling lengths. As it is downward firing, and filtered – we also have never noticed any noise emitting from it in the past and will put it to the test today.
Our ultimate goal is to get a reading of under 20dBa via our noise meter in our specially created sound room. More on this later.
Media Center – Minimal Noise build
Chassis: Silverstone Sugo SG07
CPU: Intel Core i5 655k Engineering Sample @ 3.2ghz
Graphics Card: Sapphire HD5670 Ultimate Edition (Single and Crossfire X reviews) – passively cooled.
Motherboard: Zotac H55 Mini ITX
Thermal Paste: Noctua NH H1 Thermal Compound
Memory: Kingston Hyperx 8GB DD3 1600mhz
Cooler: Noctua NH D9B SE2
Hard Drive: Crucial 256GB RealSSD
Monitor: Panasonic 42 inch NeoPDP 600hz Plasma
SkyTronic DSL 2 Digital Sound Level Meter (6-130dBa)
Thermal Diodes
Cinebench R10
Furmark
Recently we have changed our method of measuring noise levels. For most reviews we have built a system inside a Lian Li chassis with no case fans and have used a fanless cooler on our CPU. We are using a heatpipe based passive power supply and an Intel SSD to keep noise levels to a minimum. The motherboard is passively cooled and we use a Sapphire HD5670 Ultimate Edition graphics card which is also passively cooled. Ambient noise in the room is kept as low as possible. We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the chassis and 4 foot from the ground to mirror a real world situation.
Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on only the components we are testing. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635.
To test today we are using the Silverstone SG07 chassis with the supplied 600W PSU, we will be using the Noctua NH D9B SE2 in various configurations as explained on each page. We normally use air conditioning in our testing environment which generates noise levels around 21dBa. With air conditioning disabled our meter reads 16.2dBa ambient.
The room environment held fairly stable between 24c and 26c throughout all our testing.
KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refridgerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum
Most Noctua coolers are supplied with two noise adapters – a black coloured ‘Low Noise' cable and a blue ‘Ultra Low Noise' cable. We will be using both today and lastly removing the fan completely to see if our system can be kept in check. We won't be underclocking either as we want the full performance from the 655k processor. The chassis will be closed and placed on a table, just as it would be used.
That is one of the most creative reviews ive read in a long time, great testing and very very interesting for me personally.
That is wonderful. Noctua are my favourite company, wish they did a budget range however, but I can’t see that happening
This is why I love this site. the news is sometimes gossipy and funny and the reviews are some of the best online and not to be taken lightly !
I have no idea how you come up with all these ideas, but keep them coming, this is a great concept idea and one which a large audience will love.
Well that was a most enjoyable read and another high praise for Noctua. they do deserve it though. They should be giving you shares in the company Zardon, you must have sold them a few thousand coolers by now 🙂
Any ideas of stores near Paris for one of these?
they are around £40 in the UK, which is quite expensive as always for a cooler of this size, but that noctua for you, the ferrari of the cooling world 🙂
I would like that system myself, wouldn’t cost a fortune to build it either. I worked out a price list.
CPu £180
Motherboard £110
Cooler £40
Chassis and PSU £150
graphics card £100
Not bad value really for a silent, system 🙂
Add £100 to that for memory too Flo. would work out about £700.
Folks, thumbs up from me!
I found this web site just few days ago and quickly became my favorite!
Found it last week, here a couple of times a day for these reviews. brilliant.
Gotta love testing like this, so useful and not many sites do it, its all performance, overclocking, performance.
Noise is my main concern now, I want a small PC on my desk to do my work, something powerful enough to handle rendering and light gaming, but something I dont even know is on.
Just described this system and I am going now to order ALL the parts online to build it the same. (might go for Corsair memory though)
would it be possible to do the same with a 1055T Zardon? same price as 655k but 4 more cores?
I think anything under 25dBA is basically quiet anyway isnt it? 16.2db? thats incredible. I had heard on another site that silverstone were using a really efficienct PSU in this, that is basically silent until its loaded to about 500W, which isnt giong to happen with a single GFX, well unless its a GTX480.
655k seems great for low power cool running performance systems. with HT, it has four cores anyway so should be fine for the majority of tasks.
This was really really good reading Kitguru, so practical and not impossible or requiring tons of modding work either.
This SG07 (Star Gate 7 😛 ) is very very interesting case…
I just got a mod idea – this “Penetrator” fan looks very promising; Corsair H series or CoolIT self-contained water cooling is also very interesting solution; so if there is 180mm radiator combined with self-contained water cooling setup, can lead to a very promising solution…
So nice powerful ITX board combined with this case, super-duper GPU and the water cooling solution that I just dreamed of… well, I’ll just keep on dreaming… 😀
Hey Jordan, thats a brilliant idea. maybe another article for Zardon to handle for us later !
Or another mod:
Keep the “penetrator” but somehow attach H50 or CoolIT ALC to it.
Zardon, I guess you have the components… 😉
[sigh] I wish I could have the financial means… :-/ I would do it my self…
mmmm. wonder how you could mod the H50 to fit to the 18cm fan…….. possible probably.
Obviously the h50 or coolit products would be generating a lot more noise however, but temps would be much better. completely different article though I think.
H50 would probably fit in this if you could mod a bracket for the radiator to connect to the fan system in the chassis. Would mean you could get huge overclocks with not much noise, certainly wouldnt be 16dBa though. maybe 23-26 (still quiet).
excellent article, good read
Extremely good article. As I’m on the edge on buying a SG07 I really want to now all about the cooling options. Specially for the Zotac board.
Scythe Rasetu and Noctua CP12P SE14 would be lovely if fitted.
The case will not fit the Noctua NH-D14 because of the height considering that the NH-D14 has a 160mm height and the 180mm fan on top has a height of 32mm it will be in the way of the fan. It is your choice to take the 180mm fan off, wish they made it 3mm or 4mm taller.