Hi everyone I am looking for an 80mm PWM fan with decent airflow and low noise. It is to replace the standard fan on my CPU heatsink. The heatsink is a Dell model and it would be awkward to replace because it screws directly into a backplate and I don't really want to take the motherboard out. I have attached a picture so you can see the kind of thing I am talking about. Does anyone have any recommendations for a good, quiet 80mm PWM fan?
If noise is your priority, try looking at this: http://www.quietpc.com/gb-en-gbp/products/80mmfans This shows CFM ratings as well as noise, I myself have an Noctua NF-R8 and its great. It isn't a PWM fan but at full speed it is very, very quiet. You also get step down resistors with the fan so you can slow it down and quieten it even more.
Thanks. I looked there and found the Coolink SWiF2-80P which looks perfect and gets good reviews for silencing Dells.
Sounds good but make note of the CFM rating. A quiet fan is nice but not if it doesn't push out enough air to cool your CPU. It is the balance of air flow and quietness you need to focus on. Personally, I find that a fan that is under 20db is not intrusive so I look for the highest CFM I can get under that. However, everyone has their own idea of "intrusive" so it is down to personal taste/needs. I have a Coolink 120mm case fan that runs at 800RPM. You can't hear it at all but I ended up removing it because my stress/heat testing showed that it made absolutely no difference - it was just using power with no benefit. Fingers66 Edit: I just had another look at that chart link I posted - you should be fine, it has a good CFM rating, ignore this gloom and doom caution stuff - it's been a long day and I still in the office!
Why not just change the cooler altogether, it's not like they're expensive and you'll get the added benefit of better cooling .
I thought about that but because it's a Dell it isn't all standard. I don't really want to take the motherboard out either. Because it is a newer Dell, most of the parts are standard, but people have had trouble upgrading the cooler on my model, and to be honest I don't really need a new one. It's just that the CPU fan is now the loudest in my PC after I upgraded the case cooling with some decent Akasa kit. OK, the CPU can run quite hot (Q6600, 70C while running Prime95 for a couple of hours) but that's ok for me, and because it's a Dell, it's not going to be overclocked though.
Surely if it is running hot you would want to change both the heatsink AND the fan? Remember, the hotter it runs, the louder any PWM fan is going to be. If it runs hot, can you be sure that the fan you like is actually going to cool it down? Maybe the reason your current fan is loud is because you CPU is too hot and the fan is constantly on full bore. You say "non-standard", does that mean the holes in the m/b are in the wrong place for an after-market h/s & fan? What model Dell is it? Looking at your photo, I would hazard a guess that you would get much, much better cooling with a new h/s & fan that pushes the air out the back to the rear fan. Fingers66 (at home now)
its an screw on heat sink there is an plate behind the cpu (that i think uses standard threads that most after market heatsinks that use Screws to hold down the heatsink that is) if not you have to take the motherboard out to replace or take out the plate that CPU cooler good at been an dust bunny
