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Post by Oliver on May 26, 2016 21:50:47 GMT
My build is noisier than my VAIO was, which is disappointing. I blame the second hand 850watt PSU I acquired, the HTPC and PSU are not particularly noisy but I've been spoilt with my VGX-XL when is noticeably quieter when the TV is turned off. I have decided to upgrade the power supply to something more suitable for HTPC use and managed to pick up, for about half the usual selling price on Amazon, a second hand seasonic ss-650km3 f3 on eBay that was bought for an abandoned HTPC project and was "never used except for testing". Can't wait to hear the difference I looked at SeaSonic after hearing about IT Troll 's PSU I like the fact it is modular and can be used in fanless, hybrid or cooling mode. 650watts is much more sensible for my system, but it's still got plenty of headroom. Photo of my actual PSU from eBay..
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Post by IT Troll on May 26, 2016 22:27:53 GMT
650W is still almost twice what you need. But the semi-passive mode should help.
Have you got your CPU and system fans set to PWM in the BIOS and adjusted the profiles for silence? System fans default to voltage and so need to be changed to PWM. I have custom profiles so that the CPU runs at minimum up to 40 degrees and the same for the case fans up to 30 degrees.
I swear by Noctua fans. They are fugly, with their beige and brown colour scheme, but they are amongst the best for performance and silence.
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Post by Oliver on May 26, 2016 22:49:16 GMT
650W is still almost twice what you need. But the semi-passive mode should help. Have you got your CPU and system fans set to PWM in the BIOS and adjusted the profiles for silence? System fans default to voltage and so need to be changed to PWM. I have custom profiles so that the CPU runs at minimum up to 40 degrees and the same for the case fans up to 30 degrees. I swear by Noctua fans. They are fugly, with their beige and brown colour scheme, but they are amongst the best for performance and silence. All the noise seems to come from the PSU, it is not really loud but does make the system louder than my VGX-XL, my case and CPU fans always run on minimum about 800 spins/sec, but Ive not really tested my system yet, no CPU core has risen over 33 degrees yet, but the most demanding thing it has done when I've tested it, is play some h264 1080p videos I do expect to upgrade my graphics to possibly a GTX960 or maybe better at some point in the future and maybe again (though not as likely) to 2xGTX960 SLI if the price drops enough, whatever I decide to do, I didn't want the PSU to be a limiting factor plus I think I got a good deal.
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Post by IT Troll on May 27, 2016 21:13:56 GMT
Fair enough if you got it for a good price. In my experience SLI is seldom worth it. A higher spec single card will give more consistent performance, have fewer issues and generally run quieter. The new 16nm Pascal GPUs from Nvidia are looking awesome for performance and power usage. There isn't a "GTX 1060" card yet but one is expected before Christmas. One of these may well match dual SLI 960s and use less power than a single 960!
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Post by Oliver on May 28, 2016 0:35:42 GMT
After reading about SLi it really doesn't seem worth it, I now know that not even all new games can take advantage of two cards set up as SLI, I wrongly assumed it would be an advantage all the time.
The PSU I'm waiting on claims At least 87%, 90%, 87% efficient at 20%, 50% and 100%
So even if my system was only using 130watts it still manages 87% efficiency. If I have my HTPC for long enough it could potentially pay for itself, but the main reason I'm doing it is for a quieter system.
I will keep a look out for the GTX 1060, sounds amazing.
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Post by Oliver on Jun 1, 2016 0:33:16 GMT
My build is noisier than my VAIO was, which is disappointing. I blame the second hand 850watt PSU I acquired, the HTPC and PSU are not particularly noisy but I've been spoilt with my VGX-XL when is noticeably quieter when the TV is turned off. I have decided to upgrade the power supply to something more suitable for HTPC use and managed to pick up, for about half the usual selling price on Amazon, a second hand seasonic ss-650km3 f3 on eBay that was bought for an abandoned HTPC project and was "never used except for testing". Can't wait to hear the difference I looked at SeaSonic after hearing about IT Troll 's PSU I like the fact it is modular and can be used in fanless, hybrid or cooling mode. 650watts is much more sensible for my system, but it's still got plenty of headroom. Photo of my actual PSU from eBay.. View AttachmentI don't have much luck on eBay, the PSU came but it is not the SS-650KM3 I purchased, instead I've ended up with a much earlier version the 650KM the KM doesn't have the fan switch the KM3 (3rd Gen) has, it is also much older as the KM3 replaced it years ago. As this is a much older PSU than the one advertised, it has dust build ups in hard to clean places, and the screws threads have clearly been screwed to a PC case I don't believe the claim that "It's been out of the box and briefly tested, and that's it, so is therefore in excellent condition." or that it has been "Used once to test" Looks like I'll have to send it back as it is significantly different to how it was described. If it was advertised as "used" and as the older version it is, I would have bid less and I'm guessing the other bidders would have too. It is.. #Older than advertised #Wrong model therefore lacking features like the, Fan switch (which allows for Hybrid or Cool modes) #PreUsed not just "tested once", unless it was tested once but the test lasted years :/ The dust build up on "tested once" PSU... The advert.. The description.. I messaged seller as soon as the PSU arrived earlier today (well technically yesterday now), no reply yet. I feel I've been deceived Should have stuck to Amazon
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Post by IT Troll on Jun 2, 2016 12:44:56 GMT
I suppose they could have bought it used and just tested it once. However wrong model number and link to the newer version's spec are good enough grounds for "not as advertised".
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Post by jwa4 on Jun 2, 2016 14:06:46 GMT
eBay (or at least some its users) are really starting to annoy me.
The most recent case was when I picked up a couple of Type II MXM cards from separate sellers (one private, one business), they both arrived in standard paper envelopes with no anti static bag or other packaging and were both dead on arrival. Then there was a HTPC shipped in a box that was no deeper or wider than the HTPC itself with hardly any packaging taking up the extra height, this arrived destroyed. Also purchased what was described as brand new and unused slimline slot loading IDE Blu-ray burner (a little hard to find these days but I needed it for an older system), this turned out to be well used and partially faulty.
This is just the stuff from the past two months but I could go on, even worse is that all four of these sellers somehow had excellent feedback. I've started to go zero tolerance on business eBay sellers who pull this crap and immediately attempt to nail them to the nearest wall, private sellers I try to be more patient with and give them a week to sort it out.
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Post by Oliver on Jun 2, 2016 17:03:53 GMT
I suppose they could have bought it used and just tested it once. However wrong model number and link to the newer version's spec are good enough grounds for "not as advertised". The seller has messaged me back today and said he "bought the PSU new from an eBay electronics store a few months ago." I'm guessing it was secondhand or refurbished or something as it was discontinued years ago when the newer model replaced it. I'd rather have a new(ish), tested once, version 3 for the £62 that I paid but the seller has offered me a £10 refund, I guess that £52 is a good price and I don't think I'll find better value, plus it saves me the hassle of returning it and maybe arguing over who is responsible for the return postage. (eBay says you get a full refund including original postage, but is not so clear who has to pay return postage) I'll test the PSU tonight and if it works as expected I'll probably accept the offer.
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Post by Oliver on Jun 2, 2016 17:20:44 GMT
eBay (or at least some its users) are really starting to annoy me. The most recent case was when I picked up a couple of Type II MXM cards from separate sellers (one private, one business), they both arrived in standard paper envelopes with no anti static bag or other packaging and were both dead on arrival. Then there was a HTPC shipped in a box that was no deeper or wider than the HTPC itself with hardly any packaging taking up the extra height, this arrived destroyed. Also purchased what was described as brand new and unused slimline slot loading IDE Blu-ray burner (a little hard to find these days but I needed it for an older system), this turned out to be well used and partially faulty. This is just the stuff from the past two months but I could go on, even worse is that all four of these sellers somehow had excellent feedback. I've started to go zero tolerance on business eBay sellers who pull this crap and immediately attempt to nail them to the nearest wall, private sellers I try to be more patient with and give them a week to sort it out. I'm sure people mislead to get a better price, it rarely happens the other way round, with you getting a higher spec than what you bid for, either sellers just blindly copy specs from the internet of any item that looks like there item without checking if it's the same spec or even complete, it doesn't seem to be until it arrives that anyone actually checks or matches the description. I had hoped I had just been unlucky, from the sounds of it, it is more likely than I thought. I 'won' my Silverstone case and was sent it without and the HHD caddy or support bar and received a lower spec without USB 3.0 despite the actual title quoting both USB 3 and 6xHDD. Prior to that I won a custom HTPC which I thought was a good price, the postage was £25 and it came well wrapped up, but the seller had an aftermarket CPU cooler that he left attached and in transit it pulled the AMD A10 CPU right out of the socket, the heatink and CPU had been rattling around inside doing god knows what damage and the CPU had multiple bent pins, buyer offer me £40 discount to buy a second hand CPU for it but I sent it back, finally I managed to negotiate the return postage, guess im not the only one to have these issues.
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Post by IT Troll on Jun 2, 2016 21:13:22 GMT
The seller has messaged me back today and said he "bought the PSU new from an eBay electronics store a few months ago." I'm guessing it was secondhand or refurbished or something as it was discontinued years ago when the newer model replaced it. I'd rather have a new(ish), tested once, version 3 for the £62 that I paid but the seller has offered me a £10 refund, I guess that £52 is a good price and I don't think I'll find better value, plus it saves me the hassle of returning it and maybe arguing over who is responsible for the return postage. (eBay says you get a full refund including original postage, but is not so clear who has to pay return postage) I'll test the PSU tonight and if it works as expected I'll probably accept the offer.
£52 sounds quite high for an old PSU with unknown history. Especially if it doesn't have the semi-passive mode you wanted.
Take a look at the EVGA SuperNOVA 550 models which will still give you plenty of headroom, are fully modular and gold rated. They have a GS model which is actually made by Seasonic and a G2 model which is made by Super Flower (another very well regarded brand). I actually have an 850 G2 in my gaming PC.
With regards to eBay, buyers can be just as bad. I sold an old 17" laptop which was in pristine condition. Prior to sale I gave it a clean O/S install to make sure it was running as best as it could. My listing had loads of pictures, full specification and Windows Index benchmarks. It didn't fetch much but the seller opened a complaint with eBay on the grounds that it was not as described because it was "too slow for their work". I have no idea what their work was because they never emailed me during or after the sale to ask any questions. I guess they were expecting some sort of mobile supercomputer.
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Post by Oliver on Jun 2, 2016 21:37:04 GMT
The seller has messaged me back today and said he "bought the PSU new from an eBay electronics store a few months ago." I'm guessing it was secondhand or refurbished or something as it was discontinued years ago when the newer model replaced it. I'd rather have a new(ish), tested once, version 3 for the £62 that I paid but the seller has offered me a £10 refund, I guess that £52 is a good price and I don't think I'll find better value, plus it saves me the hassle of returning it and maybe arguing over who is responsible for the return postage. (eBay says you get a full refund including original postage, but is not so clear who has to pay return postage) I'll test the PSU tonight and if it works as expected I'll probably accept the offer.
£52 sounds quite high for an old PSU with unknown history. Especially if it doesn't have the semi-passive mode you wanted.
Take a look at the EVGA SuperNOVA 550 which will still give you plenty of headroom, are fully modular and gold rated. They have a GS model which is actually made by Seasonic and a G2 model which is made by Super Flower (another very well regarded brand). I actually have an 850 G2 in my gaming PC.
Hi IT Troll I was hoping someone would reply as I've been unsure what to do. This unit is Gold rated and it is Semi Passive, the lacking fan control switch give the option to turn off the Semi Passive feature enabling Cooling Mode, in cooling mode the fan runs continuously (I guess if your pc was running hot you could turn this feature on and it would be like having an extra case fan), this model only has the Semi Passive mode and hence doesn't have a switch. TBH I wasn't expecting to use the switch, but it would be nice to have the option should I ever need extra cooling inside my case. I've actually just stated installing the PSU, I tested it on a PSU tester I bought for a couple of quid on Amazon (from China) and it all seems ok. I did have a quick look at second hand PSUs on eBay and the KM3 model does seem to be fetching over £75 with delivery, new I might find it for £120 delivered Amazon. I looked at other brands on eBay too, but honestly didn't see anything better for the money but if you can suggest a better buy with Semi Passive cooling, I might be prepare to reinstall my old PSU and return the Seasonic and order something else? Thanks again for your reply, still questioning what i should do. I could suggest a larger refund, but don't really like doing that sort of thing, didn't want to be that guy. I I did ask for the larger discount the original offer might not stand
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Post by IT Troll on Jun 2, 2016 22:38:54 GMT
The EVGA SuperNOVA models I mentioned would be my recommendation, the 550 GS is made by Seasonic, comes with a 5-year warranty and costs around £70 from online retailers. The 550 G2 is about £75 and comes with a 7-year warranty.
The 850 G2 I have in my gaming PC has a 10-year warranty! Now that shows confidence in the quality of your product.
For my HTPC, which I leave running 24/7, I wanted the smallest gold rated I could find. Which is the only reason I didn't go for one of the EVGA models myself.
In my opinion it is not worth risking your system with an unknown PSU to save £10 to £20.
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Post by Oliver on Jun 3, 2016 1:48:15 GMT
The EVGA SuperNOVA models I mentioned would be my recommendation, the 550 GS is made by Seasonic, comes with a 5-year warranty and costs around £70 from online retailers. The 550 G2 is about £75 and comes with a 7-year warranty.
The 850 G2 I have in my gaming PC has a 10-year warranty! Now that shows confidence in the quality of your product.
For my HTPC, which I leave running 24/7, I wanted the smallest gold rated I could find. Which is the only reason I didn't go for one of the EVGA models myself.
In my opinion it is not worth risking your system with an unknown PSU to save £10 to £20. Is the EVGA SuperNOVA semi passively cooled though? I didn't mention it when i read the specs. Out of the passively cooled PSUs I could find this seemed the best value. I'm hoping that with a quality PSU, when it ultimately blows up it won't take my system with it, I guess any PSU can blow, but yeah I'm maybe chancing it more going second hand. I've installed the PSU now and spent some time on my cable management. The PSU seems great, totally silent but i think the fan has yet to kick in. The box suggests that the fan only starts (on slow/quiet) at 25° and that this temperature is reached at "20% +/- 5%" As my system doesn't have a graphics card and only a 35watt CPU I think I'll struggle to use even 20% of my PSU (130watt) though with future upgrades I'm sure I'll be using more. I've just ran NovaBench and everything seemed ok (touch wood).
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Post by IT Troll on Jun 3, 2016 6:06:36 GMT
Yes these EVGA models also have a semi-passive mode. The fan does not run below 25% load and above that slowly increases as required. They also have the override switch on the back. The EVGA website has fan profile graphs for them. www.evga.com/Products/Product.aspx?pn=220-GS-0550-V1However I guess if your eBay PSU is installed and working you are probably not going to want the hassle. It is a quality brand PSU and so hopefully won't give you any trouble.
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Post by Oliver on Jun 3, 2016 8:47:58 GMT
Yes these EVGA models also have a semi-passive mode. The fan does not run below 25% load and above that slowly increases as required. They also have the override switch on the back. The EVGA website has fan profile graphs for them. www.evga.com/Products/Product.aspx?pn=220-GS-0550-V1However I guess if your eBay PSU is installed and working you are probably not going to want the hassle. It is a quality brand PSU and so hopefully won't give you any trouble. Dam! I read the feature list on the link you gave and didn't see any mention of it being Semi Passive, which I assumed would have been a key selling point. Must have been tired last night. Yeah I don't think I'll swap PSUs now, but it looks really nice and much better value than anything I found. Edit: I looked here under features, if Semi Passive or silent mode or anything similar was mentioned,I would have been returning my SeaSonic today. I though you thought the Seasonic wasn't semi Passive and was comparing it to a non Semi Passive PSUs, I e now that all I had to do was scroll down the page a little further. Can't believe it wasn't listed as a feature on the official website.
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Post by IT Troll on Jun 3, 2016 13:20:42 GMT
The dangers of viewing mobile versions of websites I guess. You don't know what are missing.
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Post by Oliver on Jun 6, 2016 17:43:59 GMT
Original Post updated with pictures of build progress.
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simon214
Junior Member
Posts: 24
VGX-XL: VGX-XL100
CPU: D 945 pentium dual core 3.4Ghz
RAM: 4 GB 533mhz DDR2
Graphics: NVidia GT 710 1gb
BIOS: Mod V1.2 (Standard)
HDD/SSD: 1TB
Optical Drive: standard
TV Tuner 1: Philips 210SE DVB-T
TV Tuner 2: none
Keyboard: kensington trackball
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Post by simon214 on Jun 17, 2016 13:41:40 GMT
can you get a dust filter for the pci card input slots? if you have all those fans running extract? i see it comes with two filters id hope so for that price.
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Post by Oliver on Jun 18, 2016 6:13:49 GMT
can you get a dust filter for the pci card input slots? if you have all those fans running extract? i see it comes with two filters id hope so for that price. I only have 2 extract fans, both are slow spin. Though my CPU fan does aid the 2 extract fans. My vented PCI slot covers do not have dust filters, but they was only £4.50 for a pack of 5. The case has filters to the side vents, but they is still plenty of areas where dust can creep in. Not had any issues with dust at all, but it's obviously early days. Not a big deal for me to open up the case hoover it out periodicity.
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