Gadgetory

respective manufacturers of silence focused PC cases like be quiet and Fraxel design typically use a number of tricks to keep the noise levels down these are specially designed fans thicker pads on the side panels for noise damping foam solutions sealed front panels and elaborately baffled vents we tend to prefer high airflow to silence when given a choice but that's the thing this is normally presented as a choice between the two we think with one solution you could achieve both before that this video is brought to you by the EVGA supernova g3 power supplies unlike other power supplies on the market that get easily tangled the EVGA g3 power supplies are modular and you sleeved cables so the PCIe connectors won't get caught in your hair when building system the supernova comes in several options including popular six with UI and 750 watt units and it's fully modular with a noise focused fan profile learn more at the link in the description below so here's the interesting thesis with this one the theory is if you have two systems one that's more open like this redline zero 6 from silverstone and the one one that's completely closed off like the silent basic so one we think you could take the open case slow down the fans and then achieve equivalent noise performance while having superior they're all in performance so that is the thesis for today what we're doing here is lowering fan speeds in a well ventilated case and checking if it's as effective or more effective than closing off the entire box to try and trap absorb or otherwise deflect the noise depending on the different solution that the manufacturer may have chosen in cases like this I base 601 you typically see things like this a side panel that's closed very tightly against the case no window here although there is an option and then extremely thick foam the foam is useful for things like high-frequency noise so the type of noise is something we're not testing here today we're just looking at basically volume versus thermals either way though this helps with high frequency noise because the idea is the sound wave hits the foam and then it just kind of bounces around until it breaks apart and doesn't really come out of the case in a way that's noticeable or as noticeable as it would otherwise another solution for noise is to deal with low for Quincy's by making thicker panels an example would be perhaps in winds aluminum panels that are very thick because those help with the lower frequency longer wavelengths and preventing them from escaping and get into the user that might be the difference between for example a higher frequency coil wine from inductors or a higher frequency fan wine versus a lower frequency hum from large fans that are just spinning away so those are two of the types of noise that you're dealing with with a silence focused case and to their credit be quiet has done an excellent job at making a quiet box they've done that here but a lot of that can be done just with good fans something will demonstrate here as well where something like the are l06 although it's completely open in the front and has a totally different approach to things it's using lower end fans they run a bit faster and so they're louder more so than just having an open front would otherwise allow a lot of that noise is just because they're louder fans by nature so if you have the test we're doing that we have the original test from the reviews we have the side bass 601 and 100% fans mean we always test to 100% speed configuration as the stock and that's of course fighting against the panel's at this point so when a higher percent speed that's about 36 DBA for the noise level measurement we have the sound bass 601 at fan controller level 1 which is their silence configuration at 32.8 DBA then we have the red line 0 6 at 100% 443 DBA it's actually one of the loudest cases on our bench when configured that way although it's also one of the coolest and it's highly affordable at that so the new tests we're doing are the are l06 at 58% fan speed we'll go over the RPMs in a moment and that's with noise equalized to the SP 601 so 58% fan speed on this thing leaving the CPU and GPU fans fixed and untouched allows for a 36 roughly DBA so we're at equivalence here between those two configs with this at 100% this at about 58% and the difference being the case at that point we also did the red line 0 6 at 36% front and 40% rear to equalize the SP 601 at it's level 1 quiet setting or about 32.9 ish DBA and the red line 0 6 took the 2 silent Wayne's fans were one other test the 140 millimeters and we shoved those and they're replacing the three stock silverstone which allowed for better silence because it had better fans in it so for that we equalised all fans to 55% which resulted in the SB 601 at about level one once again 32.9 DBA and then finally the SB 601 tested at 83% fan speed with the front panel removed this is important because this is our test with the least variable so what we've done here is we took the same case this one and we ran it with and without the front panel we've already done that but this time what we did differently from the review is we drop the fan speeds low enough that it is able to equate the same noise level as when that front panels on so the only difference is on versus off front panel the noise level remains the same but the fan rpm drops to reduce the noise level through a more mechanical form rather than something organic and native to the case so that's what we're looking at today let's go through the numbers and see if we can get these two cases to equalize and noise and then see which one wins for thermals in its original review the RL zero six was measured at 43 DBA with the fans running at 100% it has three 120-millimeter front intake fans behind a mesh panel and a filter and one slower and therefore a quieter rear exhaust fan meanwhile the SB 601 maxed out at 36 DBA or a 32.8 with the integrated fan controller turned it down to the minimum speed it comes with to appear wanes to 140 military fans they are high end fans one is intake behind a steel panel and a layer of foam and one is rear exhaust that intake fan is positioned at lower in the front panel and therefore benefits the GPU a bit more the first objective of testing was to normalize for noise so we matched the RL o 6 and SP 601 noise levels at 20 inches to equate one another this was done by decreasing atcase fan speeds to 58% on the Silverstone RL o6 bringing it to 36.1 DBA the silent bass 601 also sits around 36 DBA when I want 100% fan speeds and it's basically stock configuration that's because of the noise damping foam and the thicker paneling CPU temperatures or the RL o6 is a strongest aspect in the original review and they remained so even with reduced airflow the RL o 6 is baseline performance at maximum speed is about 48 degrees / ambience what remains one of the best results on our later shown comparative chart it's also pretty loud it's at about 43 DBA or thereabouts choking the speeds to meet a thirty two point nine DBA noise level resulted in 61 degrees over ambient as the CPU torture temperature is significantly outperforming the results when compared to the 73 degree results of the be quiet silent base 601 equivalent thirty two point eight DBA noise level there's no contest here but this still isn't a perfectly fair comparison the 601 is using significantly better fans primarily in that they're capable of lower noise levels at higher CFM this is something for which be quiet gets credit but to even it out we transplanted those fans into the RL o six with the 600 once fans in the RL o six and a thirty two point nine DBA noise level these same as the silent basics are one on its silent setting the RL o six ended up at fifty five degrees over ambient this is a massive lead over the equivalent 73 degree result or noise equivalents anyway and illustrates just how much the fans matter these are the same fans the SB 601 used but in a more open case and spun down to a lower rpm for equivalent noise the RL oh six has the same perceived volume but the cooling difference is one of being usable versus unusable for non idle workloads matching the two cases instead 236 DBA the Silverstone RL o six ends up at fifty five degrees over ambience with a silent bass 601 at about 63 degrees in this instance the be quiet front panel is more readily overcome by extra pressure of its intake fans and so it fares better than at the quiet speed setting we saw earlier there is a nonlinear loss in performance as pressure is reduced against that panel here's the interesting part if be quiet had a more open front panel but instead reduced fan rpm to match its original noise level 36 DBA the performance climbs 256 degrees over ambient that's rough equivalence with the RL o6 when using these stock Silverstone fans and that rough equivalents illustrates the point that silence can be had with an airflow oriented case while still achieving equivalence of performance just for reference here's a comparative chart with a lot of other cases on it at 36 DBA the RL o six with stock fans at 58% speeds up around the Defiant r6n age 500 P original case not great not great positioning at all but it's at nearly half the fan speed to be fair from its 100% configuration not bad when given the quieter focus and certainly better than the 600 ones near bottom results it's doing better actually than a lot of these silenced focus cases on this chart despite being airflow focused and still very quiet in this configuration or reasonably anyway for GPU thermals the Arlo sticks at 1,400 rpm establishes a clear baseline for maximum performance between these two cases this one is at 47 degrees over ambient followed most closely by the SB 601 without a front panel this is a switch up from the CPU charts where the rlo 6 dominated in all performance classes the SB 601 does better here as it has greater breathing room between the GPU and the case paneling and also it only has one stock intake fan and that fan is pointed straight at the video card following this 50 degree it results is the SB 601 at its maximum speed putting the be quiet fans into the RL o 6 and setting them to 32.9 DBA improves temperatures to equate the stock RL or 6 fans at 36 DBA again this highlights the huge advantage of a good fan we're at the same performance level but audibly lower noise levels humans tend to notice noise differences of approximately 3 DBA are greater just for reference that's not to mention by the way that the cheaper cost of something like the RL o6 would allow for more budget to buy those good fans the difference between the two quietest stock fan results is marginal with the silent bass and our low 6 roughly equal at the low end for perspective here's a comparative GPU chart well highlight the our low 6 and silent basics r1 results the our low 6 descends the chart rapidly as fan rpm is reduced as airflow dynamics in the case tend to favor the CPU this is further reinforced by the proximity of case paneling to the video card the result then indicates that the thesis pretty much stands you can definitely achieve the same acoustic performance as a high-end silence focused case by using an airflow focused case and these are often cheaper because they use fewer materials and are definitely a lot more mainstream so big difference there as well because if you're producing more volume manufacturing volume that is not noise volume then it is cheaper to produce that said it takes more effort you have to do more manual fan work if you are okay with setting things like fan speed curves then this might be a project that's worth doing for you you can still achieve silence you can at least achieve mostly the same level of quiet as this while still being an operable range and that's a big deal here too because technically ultimately this case could go quieter if you had no case fans or something like that you're just dealing with component fans at a hundred percent the quiet focus case will have a lower floor at some point though you're fighting the noise floor of your room and you're also fighting the temperatures to a point of it's questionable whether you can even operate at the higher temperatures you would be running that with a silenced focus case there's another difference here that we also didn't test or actually two of them one of them is open loop configurations if you're going to open loop for the most part your water can do a lot of the work and of course having a case like this versus the are l06 there will be a difference and so far as yeah it's the same thing you could run the fans lower speed and a more open case but also you can run the fan slower speed anyway because it's water and at some point really it doesn't matter if you're at 50 degrees or 60 degrees they're both good unless you're doing something like competitive overclocking so once you're on liquid or at least high-end liquid open-loop liquid really it doesn't matter quite as much because you're just you're way under thresholds for thermal issues anyway and then the other thing we didn't test or demonstrate is type of noise so theoretically and audibly it's not really that different to us but theoretically a case like this on base 601 will have a less annoying type of noise because it's specifically targeting things like higher frequencies and you've got open paneling everywhere here that then always can get out but the noise level is the same between the two when you normalize it so you're just left with type of noise and that's completely subjective we'll leave that up to you to figure out but anyway interesting experiment to do it's not saying that these silence folks cases are in any way worthless because they're they're very high quality when they're done right and they do an excellent job at dealing with noise without forcing the user to do a lot of tuning now that said hyoeun fans like the be quiet fans from this case which are extremely good at what they do into a case like this one does get you pretty darn close to noise out of the box with a little bit of extra tuning on top of that so just something for you to think about we're not saying that it's better to go one way or the other because clearly both these cases have a reason to exist in the market they both do what they do very well it's just that one mode takes a bit more tuning than the other and this silent focused case does still have some upsides that the airflow case doesn't have and vice versa same same goes for both of them so something to really think about subscribe for more as always go to patreon.com/scishow sexist elfs not directly or stored on cameras access net to support us there with a purchase and we'll see you all next time you