Hi everyone. I have a bunch of the above fans in my case and in the process of setting up cooling profiles on my new ASUS Gryphon 1150 board (the first time I've been able to do this). I want to know if any of you have experimented with how low (sub 600) these fans will go for silent operation without failing or wearing out. Is there a standard rule-of-thumb?
AFAIK a fan wont fail or wear out from spinning slower, the only problem you may have is the fan stalling or failing to start. You may actually get more noise from slowing down the GT 1450 http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1266-page5.html
I have to say my fans are running at 945 right now and there's no tonal spike. I do have one fan that sometimes has a quiet (but annoying) whine though somewhere in its speed gradient, so that could be what they're talking about.
It all depends how the fan's speed is being controlled - by voltage, or by PWM. You may find that the fan makes noise with some fan controllers and not with others, such is the nature of the beast; the controllers all use different circuitry to achieve the same goal. Gentle Typhoons are much quieter at about 1000rpm than any other fan so you really don't need to go much lower than that. I used to run mine at low speed when I had two on the CPU cooler, but now I just use one at 1850 and it doesn't bother me. A GT should start up at 500rpm without any trouble - the friction is just so low it's easy for the motor to overcome the inertia of the impeller even at low voltage (eg 5v).
Yup The link i gave tested them with A PWM fan controller, at standard RPM, And by a regulated 0~12 VDC power supply at standard RPM points those being 1450, 1100, 900, 700, 550. The two GT 1450 that where tested both displayed the same characteristics, that's not saying all GT 1450 would be the same just the two that where tested. And the testing is done by a site whose MAIN concern is silent computing so the test where done in a Hemi-Anechoic Chamber. Its not like your average person would even notice or as you say need to run a GT 1450 any slower than the standard Rpm as they are very quiet fans out of the box IMHO.
Absolutely. Even at 1850 they are extremely quiet... they only become audible when placed next to something restrictive like a heatsink or rad. I am still astounded by the quietness of these fans.
You're right, I have no complaints about the sound, but just wanted to see what I could do with my new motherboard settings :3 At 945RPM the fans all together are quieter than my HD6870 fan.
