Silent Hackintosh Challenge

[strwdle]

Has anyone build a hackintosh with low noise in mind? I have a budget of around £400 and plan to run three partitions with XP/Vista/OSX for keeping Pro Tools and my other stuff seperate. I've cross checked recommended hardware from silentpcreview.com with the HCL but non of the stuff really crops up.

 

First of all, if you guys were going to build a PC with OSX compatability in mind, what hardware would you buy that it known to work? Is there an ideal mix? or have most of you tried to make do with the hardware you have?

 

Secondly, how would you go about making it as silent as possible? I'm assuming silent CPU fans, and PSU as well as an insulated case?

 

any suggestions would be greatly welcomed

[R2k.]

bro if you want to run Pro Tools,Logic Pro and other "virtual studios" on your hackintosh,i don`t suggest you some cheap configuration for that ...

 

 

 

 

 

~R

[Headrush69]

how would you go about making it as silent as possible? I'm assuming silent CPU fans, and PSU as well as an insulated case?

Silent can be made to work with pretty much any hardware.

 

How serious and important is silence to you?

 

I had a Zalman Reservator ($200) + Zalman hard drive heatsink ($15) + and a good power supply with a variable speed 120mm fan and the system was essentially completely silent. (I admit the Reservator is big and might be too costly for some but it was extremely effective and cooled CPU, Video card and northbridge chip better than any other combination I had. Because of the size of the main heatsink chamber, the pump was dead silent.)

 

For budgets, take care of the CPU and video card and should be decently quiet. (Don't skip on fans, they vary greatly)

I found the Thermaltake Big Typhoon for CPU and the Arctic Cooling A64 series fairly quiet and cheaper options.

[strwdle]

bro if you want to run Pro Tools,Logic Pro and other "virtual studios" on your hackintosh,i don`t suggest you some cheap configuration for that ...

 

Why not? I run Pro Tools 6.7 and Cubase SX on XP with my current setup just fine and it's nothing fancy. Or are you suggesting that a hackintosh would not be stable enough to run such programs?

 

=

Silent can be made to work with pretty much any hardware.

 

How serious and important is silence to you?

 

Well I like to be able to play music quietly without the whirr of a computer so I guess pretty important.

 

I had a Zalman Reservator ($200) + Zalman hard drive heatsink ($15) + and a good power supply with a variable speed 120mm fan and the system was essentially completely silent. (I admit the Reservator is big and might be too costly for some but it was extremely effective and cooled CPU, Video card and northbridge chip better than any other combination I had. Because of the size of the main heatsink chamber, the pump was dead silent.)

 

The zalman looks ideal however is probably impractical and too expensive.

For budgets, take care of the CPU and video card and should be decently quiet. (Don't skip on fans, they vary greatly)

I found the Thermaltake Big Typhoon for CPU and the Arctic Cooling A64 series fairly quiet and cheaper options.

 

I've got a scythe Katana at the moment which is pretty good although I still get a lot of noise from a badly insulated case, the PSU and some very old IDE Hard drives. Can you still get AGP graphics cards without fans? Mine is a Radeon 9600 and just has a heat sink although it's really hard to find newer ones without fans.

[chris512]

Hi,

 

I've just bought a Zalman Reserator 2 system for my system. I bought the additional Northbridge and VGA Ram water blocks too.

I'm going to try it without any fans on the system at all. Not even on the case. The guys at QuietPC think it'll be ok.

I have an Asus P5B Deluxe WIFI AP with an Intel Core 2 Duo 6600 2.4Gig processor. Graphics card is a XFX Geforce 9600 GTO I think.

 

I'll let you know how it goes in terms of noise if you like? The fan noise on my system was driving me mad so I'm going to try this.

 

It might even be cool enough to clock the processor up a bit. I've heard that the Core 2 Duo is good for that.

 

Chris.

[Synaesthesia]

My 2c: Check out silent pc review, those guys are uber-obsessive with pc noise...

 

With the right components, and some good quiet fans eg. Panaflo or Nexus you can achieve almost perfect silence.

 

On your budget, you might wanna check out a micro-atx motherboard, with an intel e2160 or e4400 processor, which is quite cool-running. a good, cheap case is the Antec NSK3300, it gets favourable reviews at silentpcreview...

 

BTW They tested the Intel iMacs and mac mini's and called them the "Quietest computers they have ever tested"!

[rhalls]

Going to get a cheap system will not be the best way to get it cheap.

My QuadCore System is very very low noise - but it was about 1400.- Euros. (See my sig)

1) Good, low noise Power Supply (I use BeQuiet 500 Watt). About 75.- Euros.

2) Good, low noise Chassis, i have a LianLi - not cheap but nice and the three 12cm fans (that are driven by the PowerSupply itself) are unhearable. Theres one from LianLi that is supposed to be more quiet. About 170.- Euros.

3) a fanless VideoCFard. I use XFX 7600 GT. No Fan, no noise. About 80 Euros.

4) Good Fan for the CPU - but thats not the only thing. My 170.- Euos Intel BadAxe has a vefry good CPU-Fan-Control. Nothing to hear (if CPU works hard it gets louder) with the Original Intel Cooler. On my Asrock Board, even when the CPU isnt used much, the fan is noise - but its a better fan, an arctic Cooling 7 pro. But the borads bios drives it fasters then needed, so its hearable. Goiod Fan: Abou 20.- Euros.

Good Board: About 150.- Euros.

[hackintosh4life]

a nice cheap labtop is a acer aspire 5050 with a 512 graphics card (great nosie) all tho the heat gets a bit HOT lol

[Technobob]

I build my Hackintosh with silence in mind.

 

I bought the Antec Performance One P182 case and a Antec NeoHE 500W power supply. I also bought the Scythe Ninja CPU cooler and soon will be picking up a Arctic Cooling Accelero S2 Passive VGA Cooler to silence my noisy VGA card.

 

But with your limited budget I recommend the Antec Sonata III comes with a EarthWatts 500W power supply and has gotten good reviews for being a very quiet PC case, they can be had for $120CAD.

[Hara-Tiri]

I'm building myself a hackintosh and, although my primary concern is not silence, I'm hoping it will be very silent. I'm currently entirely refitting a PowerMc G5 case to accomodate PC hardware. It is a very time consuming process, but I guess this is where my primary concern comes in. I want it to be a perfect (or at least near-perfect) Mac Clone, not some hackintoshed PC. The first advantage to using a G5 case is that it is very well ventilated. It allows me to maximize ventilation and cooling and thus use less fan. For the main ventilation of the case, I use a couple of the fans used for the PCI-E cards ventilation which I rigged to run on standard power supply cables. Standard 80mm in diameter, they are about an inch deep. When plugged in 12 volts they are noisy as hell but drive as much air as the fan I use in my kitchen. When plugged in 5v however, they run much slower, are whisper quiet, and still drive more than most 120mm fans.

 

I'll use a 7300GT Silent video card until the 8600GT Silent are supported in OSx86, an E6550 C2D until the cooler, quieter 45nm CPUs come-out, on a P5K series MLB, with all the heatsinks to help cooling, and a 485w Enermax Noisetaker. This should give me a decent noise/performance ratio.

[gotoh]

7900GS with NVslencer

C2D with Arctic Freezer

Antec case+PSU

 

pretty silent and no so much expansive...

[BJMoose]

I built my system first as a windows pc, but definitely with osx86 in mind. It's pretty quiet without spending a fortune on special cases etc. I bought an CoolMax Greenpower moduler PSU with 2 120mm quiet fans. I replaced the case fans with 3 Scythe S-FLEX 120mm 800 rpm Quiet Computer Fans that run almost silently. I also replaced the 80mm fan on the back of my hard drive backplane with the aforementioned 120mm fan. I chose the MSI 7600GS 512mb gfx card because it runs fairly cool with just a heatsink...no fan necessary. For my CPU (check sig below) I chose the Scythe Ninja PLUS Rev.B Heatpipe CPU Cooler w/120mm Fan. It runs at only 1200rpm and again is very quiet while providing excellent cooling. With all those 120mm fans running fairly slowly, my case even under full load is the quietest I've ever owned (except for my Mac Pro). Direction of air flow is important so be sure whether you're using your fans as in/out flow. The only part of this setup that I really can hear is my optical drives which do make some noise when reading data.

[shoarthing]

. . good topic & interesting to see whether you can manage it on a tight budget: I know from firsthand knowledge over the past half-dozen years or so that a 'silent' computer is very expensive indeed; but nowadays you can make a fairly quiet one on a moderate budget.

 

Detail is all - just one whiny little Northbridge or VGA fan can make an otherwise quiet system irritating. If you are aircooling it makes life much simpler to start with a heavy enclosure designed to take [only] slow-running 120mm exhaust fans: the Antec P180/P182 are good examples.

 

As others have said, check out silentpcreview . . . tho' many of of the best widgets [esp high-end watercooling stuff] come from Germany & are not that easy for English-speakers to source or find out about.

 

My hackintosh cost roughly 85% as much to build as a 24" iMac; I've compared the two side-by-side & it is a fair bit quieter than that notably quiet computer

 

. . worthwhile to do the research to find a mobo & other components that are known to work properly with OS X's sleepstates.

 

PS: 'silent' = you don't know the thing is turned on . . .

 

. . at 3 ayem, in deep traffic-free countryside . .

 

. . . unless you look at it . . .

 

Good luck

[strwdle]

On your budget, you might wanna check out a micro-atx motherboard, with an intel e2160 or e4400 processor, which is quite cool-running. a good, cheap case is the Antec NSK3300, it gets favourable reviews at silentpcreview...

 

hey Synaesthesia, thanks for the recommendation. I'm a bit confused re. the intel chips you suggested as they're all socket 775 whereas the micro-atx mobos I've found say that they're socket AM-2 (or is this the same thing?)

 

Also, wouldn't it be easier just to stick to 32bit?

 

. worthwhile to do the research to find a mobo & other components that are known to work properly with OS X's sleepstates.

 

Does anyone know how I would go about finding this out?

 

I'm going to go for the Antec P180 Case and Corsair HX 520W PSU but I'm still clueless with regards to the mobo and cpu. Also I can't find hardly any graphics cards that are compatible which don't have fans!

[rhalls]

MoBo Intel Bad Axe 2 or possibly Gigabyte P35 D4, VideoCard XFX 7600 GS 256 MB, works very well with Natit 0.1 or 0.2 and is fanless (some versions) http://www.xfxforce.com/web/product/listCo...roductId=198676

[frizbot]

One PSU 140mm fan on low. Passive Thermalright 120 Extreme for Core2Duo ~2ghz. GMA950 passive onboard video (OS X native). Beat that.

[hecker]

My advice to you would be to get a passive heat sink for your CPU and the biggest (therefor slowest and most silent) fans you can afford to kill the main sound generators.

I would also recommend using the "sandwich" & "hammock" (DIY, heavy duty metal enclosure) method to silence your HDDs.

 

Cheers,

 

hecker

[fruktsallad]

Check out my sig. I researched extensively for the exact same silent hackintosh purposes and came up with that setup. Originally opted for a Gigabyte GA-965P-DS4, though, but I sadly got hold of a fruity sample and went with the Asus P5K vanilla instead. That was a bad choice, had to make it in a rush. Go with the P5K Deluxe if you want P35, othwerwise stick with the 965P platform. Tried, tested and negligable performance loss in comparison to the newer boards.

 

Otherwise I find It's a great configuration with balance between price, power, silence and hackintoshability ;-). You might wanna go with the new CPU's from Intel (i.e. E6550) as well, since they give you more bang for the buck.

[Findibulator]

INTEL BOXD975XBX2KR

INTEL CORE 2 DUO E6420 - Stock Intel Fan

ASUS EN7300GT SILENT/HTD 256M GEFORCE 7300GT 256MB

2x SATA 160 drives

D-Link Bluetooth 2 dongle

2 external 500G firewire drives

Antec P-150 Case

 

The case has 1 120-mm fan. The power supply is inaudible.

If it set the fan to its slowest speed - I cannot hear the system running at all.

The case also has suspension mounts for the drives, and sound dampening material. It's excellent.

[mumford]

Also add case damping, use 2.5" laptop drives, and deploy fanless power supply.

 

I am building a quiet hackintosh now, and already have sticked 11 sq feet of Dynamat Xtreme and 4 sq feet of edead V4 acoustic foam inside a Lian-Li PC-A05B case.

[strwdle]

Check out my sig. I researched extensively for the exact same silent hackintosh purposes and came up with that setup. Originally opted for a Gigabyte GA-965P-DS4, though, but I sadly got hold of a fruity sample and went with the Asus P5K vanilla instead. That was a bad choice, had to make it in a rush. Go with the P5K Deluxe if you want P35, othwerwise stick with the 965P platform. Tried, tested and negligable performance loss in comparison to the newer boards.

 

Otherwise I find It's a great configuration with balance between price, power, silence and hackintoshability ;-). You might wanna go with the new CPU's from Intel (i.e. E6550) as well, since they give you more bang for the buck.

 

Sorry for my ignorance, but does the Gigabyte support 32-bit chips as well as 64-bit? I don't really want to move to 64-bit quite yet as I know loads of my software won't run.

 

Here's my list so far:

 

Corsair HX 520W ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU (CMPSU-520HXUK)

Antec P180 Advanced Super Midi Tower Case

Gigabyte GA-965P-DS4 Socket 775 Motherboard

Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.33GHz (1333FSB)

2Gb Patriot DDR2 PC2-6400 800MHz CL4 Extreme Performance Dual Channel kit

Samsung SpinPoint T HD501LJ 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache

Asus EN7300GT Silent/HTD/256M-256MB PCI-E DDR2 DVI HDTV Graphics Card

 

Total is around £490 (without delivery) so I'm over budget.

 

Maybe I can go for a less expensive mobo and slower chip (especially if I stick to 32bit)?

Does anyone have any RAM recommendations?

many thanks

 

Owen

 

[fruktsallad]

Sorry for my ignorance, but does the Gigabyte support 32-bit chips as well as 64-bit? I don't really want to move to 64-bit quite yet as I know loads of my software won't run.

 

Here's my list so far:

 

Corsair HX 520W ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU (CMPSU-520HXUK)

Antec P180 Advanced Super Midi Tower Case

Gigabyte GA-965P-DS4 Socket 775 Motherboard

Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.33GHz (1333FSB)

2Gb Patriot DDR2 PC2-6400 800MHz CL4 Extreme Performance Dual Channel kit

Samsung SpinPoint T HD501LJ 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache

Asus EN7300GT Silent/HTD/256M-256MB PCI-E DDR2 DVI HDTV Graphics Card

 

Total is around £490 (without delivery) so I'm over budget.

 

Maybe I can go for a less expensive mobo and slower chip (especially if I stick to 32bit)?

Does anyone have any RAM recommendations?

many thanks

 

Owen

 

 

Well, AFAIK the new Core2Duos are, at least partially 64-bit. Enough for OSX to count them as such anyways. Going true 64-bit, I.E. Xeons is absolutely not worth the $$$ for a normal PC user.

 

I think your list looks fine, the PSU kicks ass and the HDD is both fast and quiet, but you should be aware that the P180 is a really, really huge case. Unless you plan on slamming like five HDD's in there, I'd definitely recommend going with the Antec Solo, which is an updated P150 with built-in suspension for quietly mounting your disks. I'm really satisfied with mine. Also, if you're going to be any gaming, I'd recommend getting a better gpu than the 7300GT.

 

Stick with the DS4 if you need firewire, otherwise go for the somewhat cheaper (but otherwise equal) DS3. RAM doesn't really matter what you choose. If you wanna be on the safe side, go with any of the bigger brands (although I've been using no-names for years without a hitch).

[Technobob]

I'm going to go for the Antec P180 Case and Corsair HX 520W PSU but I'm still clueless with regards to the mobo and cpu. Also I can't find hardly any graphics cards that are compatible which don't have fans!

 

You picked a good case, if it's not to late I would reconmend you buy the Antec P182 case. The cost differance here in Canada is only $20CAD. The P182 is a much improved P180 they corrected some of the design flaws.

 

The power supply placement in the Antec P180 & P182 is a tight fit if you have a long power supply because there is a fan right in the middle of the bottom chamber. This makes it tight for running cables and if you go with the P180 case then you will have very little cable storage area.

 

If your looking to cut cost go for less performance RAM and use a smaller hard drive. Also buy a cheaper PSU, I used an Antec NeoHE500 $100CAD for my P182 case. I would take some of those savings and buy a 7600GT, you have fast CPU & RAM, hard drive but your main bottle neck will be that 7300GT.

 

You want to build a system that is balanced, you don't want your CPU waiting for your video card to do it's job and you don't want your CPU waiting on your RAM.

[strwdle]

Well, AFAIK the new Core2Duos are, at least partially 64-bit. Enough for OSX to count them as such anyways. Going true 64-bit, I.E. Xeons is absolutely not worth the $ for a normal PC user.

 

So does that mean I can run everything in 32-bit? I basically need to run my current version of XP and all the 32-bit software that I use as well.

 

I think your list looks fine, the PSU kicks ass and the HDD is both fast and quiet, but you should be aware that the P180 is a really, really huge case. Unless you plan on slamming like five HDD's in there, I'd definitely recommend going with the Antec Solo, which is an updated P150 with built-in suspension for quietly mounting your disks. I'm really satisfied with mine. Also, if you're going to be any gaming, I'd recommend getting a better gpu than the 7300GT.

 

You picked a good case, if it's not to late I would reconmend you buy the Antec P182 case. The cost differance here in Canada is only $20CAD. The P182 is a much improved P180 they corrected some of the design flaws.

 

Think I might go with the solo as the 180 maybe seems like overkill. I'm not a gamer at all so maybe I can go for something less than the 7300GT?

 

Stick with the DS4 if you need firewire, otherwise go for the somewhat cheaper (but otherwise equal) DS3. RAM doesn't really matter what you choose. If you wanna be on the safe side, go with any of the bigger brands (although I've been using no-names for years without a hitch).

 

I need two firewire ports for sure. might be cheaper to get something else like the ds3 and a firewire card.. was thinking of going for one of the bundles from here:

 

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/bundles.html

 

The power supply placement in the Antec P180 & P182 is a tight fit if you have a long power supply because there is a fan right in the middle of the bottom chamber. This makes it tight for running cables and if you go with the P180 case then you will have very little cable storage area.

 

How would it be with the Antec Solo?

 

If your looking to cut cost go for less performance RAM and use a smaller hard drive. Also buy a cheaper PSU, I used an Antec NeoHE500 $100CAD for my P182 case. I would take some of those savings and buy a 7600GT, you have fast CPU & RAM, hard drive but your main bottle neck will be that 7300GT.

 

I basically chose the PSU on silentpcreview's recommendation. how's yours for noise? I'm not really concerned about graphics as I'm not a gamer (I don't have the time!!)

[Technobob]

Think I might go with the solo as the 180 maybe seems like overkill. I'm not a gamer at all so maybe I can go for something less than the 7300GT?

 

I would not go below a 7300GT even thou your not a gamer you still need a good card. If you go with a slower card you may find problems playing back HD video. You also benefit in Mac GUI having a faster card because it's not just 3D you need to look at but also 2D performance.

 

I need two firewire ports for sure. might be cheaper to get something else like the ds3 and a firewire card.. was thinking of going for one of the bundles from here: http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/bundles.html

 

Have you looked at Intel's Bad Axe 2 board it also has 2 firewire ports, this is what I'm running and it's very Mac friendly. The only problem I'm having with this board is the sound just not working for me but I have external USB sound card so no big deal. One thing to keep in mind is Intel's ICH8 southbridge chipsets have limited SATA support. I had a Dell with the 965 ICH8 chipset and I could only use 2 of my 4 SATA connections.

 

How would it be with the Antec Solo?

 

I don't know much about the solo case so I can't help you but it looks like it does have lots of room for the power supply. Have you looked at the Sonata III $125CAD it comes with a 500W EathWatts PSU that is also a high efficient PSU so you can save a lot money going with this case.

 

I basically chose the PSU on silentpcreview's recommendation. how's yours for noise? I'm not really concerned about graphics as I'm not a gamer (I don't have the time!!)

 

I went with my PSU because it's a highly efficient so it produces less heat and less heat means the fan can run slower so less noise. Antec rates the noise output at 18dBA I can barely hear it and thats with my ear inches away.