Blogs Noise versus performance

The exhaust for my case is two 80mm fans, which kick up quite a whine at 2000 RPM. Unfortunately until my new fans get here (darn Canada, takes forever to ship stuff across it!) I only have them and my PSU for exhaust, so I'll be putting up with them for a little while longer at least. After the exhaust fans my case is so quiet I can't tell what the second loudest component is, but I think it's the stock Intel i7 cooler.

 

I once ripped out the stock cooler on a 9800 GTX card and replaced with an Arctic Cooling Accelero extreme. What the ! . .. the gpu with the Nvidia Stock cooler on IDLE used to be 60 C. The Arctic Cooler dropped the idle temp to 40 C.

On load (hours of heavy gaming), the temp doesn't even reach 60 C (even during the recent heatwave).

In terms of noise levels, I only realized how loud the nvidia stock cooler was when I replaced it with the aftermarket cooler. I can hardly hear the Accelero. The accelero has 3 'quiet' fans which are much more quieter than the stock cooler's single blower. I also notice now that the ambient case temperature is significantly cooler than before, even though the Accelero does not push the heat out the back of the case. This has allowed me to further reduce the speed of the case fans.

 

Personally, i've got my entire machine dipped in about 20 litres of oil so any noise it makes doesn't bother me. What's more the noise of the 400mm fan on the industrial air conditioning unit who's radiator i have commandeered is not noticeable. The main issue is pump noise but i just tune that out using my nice noise cancelling amp and speakers which do exactly what they say on the tin. In the past though, i had an antec 1200 and really didn't mind whatever noise it made.

 

Welcome to the forums!

However, I must now inform you that you are contractually obliged to post pictures of this setup.

 

you're missing the option of using 3 (or more) extremely slow fans on a radiator to get the same (or better) cooling performance as 1 faster fan on a heatsink with much lower noise

i also run w/c setup for low noise, combined with an SSD, P182 and what mechanical disks i do have powering down it is extremely quiet and i wouldnt have it any other way

 

I run a water setup its not really that quiet but what it is, is consistent, my main issue running a high end SLI setup was the continual ramping up and down of fans and how noisy they can be, even when you doing something thats not that graphically intensive.

On water I have no controllers etc, so its just one low noise whatever the computer is doing, works great.

 

capnpedro, your wish is my command. the pictures and descriptions will be up soon on the pimp your mod thread under the modding section of the forums

 

If you read my full post, you would have noted i didnt miss the point of more, slower fans at all. In fact have a look at the bit you quoted. Have a look at the IFX-14. Its a big enough heatsink to support many (140mm) fans

 

the article forgot to mention the industry's need for automatic fan controllers. almost all fan controllers i see are manually adjust the fan speed. it's good when you want a quiet PC or a performance PC. but what if you want a quiet PC when it's idling/surfing and a performance PC when you are gaming/under load?

Abit uGuru has been fantastic. set the temperature parameters and allows the fans to spin up when a particular sensor temperature reaches a mark.

Imagine:
-quiet PC when you are surfing the web, without any noise, so quiet, WD Green's hard drive spinning can be heard.
-a performance PC that gives the overclocked GPU and CPU performance when you start a game. noise now isn't an issue.
-put those 2 into a single PC, the user don't have to do ANYTHING to switch between the two apart from launching the game.

my p182 is setup like that, silent when idling/surfing. and GPU automatically overclocks (goes to 3D clock) with its fan spins up when gaming. CPU goes from 2.2Ghz to 3.4Ghz automatically when the need for processing power is there. the fans only spin up (automatically) when the CPU has been loaded for a while.
don't forget all of those magic are done by Abit uGuru, not Speedfan or such. result is that even in Hackint0sh, the system noise are still under control.

so, ask yourself. which is better: ultra-expensive silent computer or a silent computer that gives you performance only when needed?? (and saves electricity)

 

my pc is my tv, radio, alarm clock and evrything else so it needs to be quiet aswel as keeping it all cool. so a fan controller along with bios controlled fans keep the rpm down when im not gaming but its only a couple of clicks in speedfan and the turn of a couple of knobs when i pop in a game disk and the turbine spins up. 6 120mm fans @ 1600 rpm can get loud but as its only when im gaming it doesn't matter becasue then i cant hear my fans over the awsomness of my fragging skillz

 

My old motherboard (the same IP35 Pro that wuyanxu has) was admittedly brilliant at keeping things under control but my case was pants and let things down. My new motherboard gives me far less control but I have moved into a slightly better case so at the moment things are fractionally better. Once I have worked out a way to control the 120mm fans which only have molex connectors we should be flying.

Is daisy chaining them from a different fan that can be controlled bad? I don't know, and am trying that...

My general aims are to get it as quiet as possible without going overboard. I am not a fan of noise but equally don't just want to throw cash at making it slightly better. A quiet PC whilst internetting and a somewhat louder one whilst gaming is fine by me.

 

Without a doubt, I put a premium on noise reduction over performance.
Aside from the occasional tinker, I'm not really into heavily overclocking my rig.

Currently cooling my i7 with a Scythe Mugen 2, 4870X2 retrofitted with an AC Accelero Xtreme, Scythe Kaze Master Ace fan controller, 4 x Noctua 120mm case fans...etc etc

The system is whisper quiet. Even during gaming, the Accelero Xtreme does it job, it's barely audible.

Personally, cannot stand a cacophony of buzzing, screetching fans, no matter what task i'm doing on my PC.

 

I have a nice air cooled set up with a front fan controller for them. Goes quite close to silent but not quite silent as when you are getting used to quiet you notice every little noise. Mine is quieter than outside, but when I game I whack the fans up to still quiet levels. Just a low frequency hum most of the time. But then I get a louder noise from the wall which I assume is vibrations from the boiler or something, so you get to a point where further improvement isn't giving any improved experience really.

 

Noise has always been an issue for me too. Well, more for the wife than me, but if it's her issue then it's mine too!

I solved most of it with a decent Zalman CPU cooler and a passive cooled video card... pretty dated now but as I just do a bit of causal gaming it's fine for me. The loudest component is the HD now. Recently I rebuilt this system into a HTPC case and with no sound you can hear the system running if you pay attention, but with the littlest sound (gaming, media player, movies, etc.) going it easily covers up the bit of drive noise.

My current day to day machine is a laptop MacBook Pro mostly running XP that is usually nearly silent unless you push the video on it (usually a game) at which point it spins up the fan(s?) to a very annoying level.

On the other hand, in my server room at work I've got a couple dozen HP DL360 and 380 servers with upwards of 20 fans in each plus a NAS system with 60 spinning hard drives and a handful of switches and routers thrown in. With dual 5 ton cooling systems you can hear someone else in the room speak if you talk loudly. When one cooling system fails and the temperature starts to rise the servers spin up to a loud whine and it's almost impossible to talk in the room then.

 

My main 'gaming' pc (Core i7 / GTX260-216 SLI) is relatively quiet although most of the time I use it I have the manually fan control on my Jeantech Phong set to low. The interesting thing about this case is that despite its relatively small stature and low fan count (two 120mm fans, 1 intake & 1 exhaust) I have found it to do a perfectly admirable job of cooling my components, without sounding like a aircraft on afterburner. It has the perfect push/pull cooling design and plenty of breathing room for the main components. If only it looked better......

My HTPC which is also my gaming laptop (I have it hooked up to a 26" HDTV in the bedroom along with a PS3/360) is lovely and quiet. The laptop fans in the Advent 6555 chassis (actually the MSI 1700 series chassis) manage to emit a low drone rather than the normal high picthed whine laptop fans are normally endowed with. Any noise it does make however is drowned out by the tv / distance it is away from the bed anyway so its a non-issue.