Yes I own a couple of Scythe GT's, so you may think me biased; well there are 3 in my HAF 922 in actual fact, one is the rear extract, 2 for the rad, it also mounts 2 Sharkoon Silent Eagle 1000's on the side panel... The point being made I believe is yes some fans may have an actual superior high airflow (cfm) but it's not necessarily even the actual volume of noise they make rather the tone that your prepared to listen to when not playing games, listening to music etc. I give the Coolink SWiF2 Fans as an example http://www.coolink-europe.com/en/categories/23_29.html I tried a pair of their 120P's on my rad and there is no denying their effectiveness, and yes even when throttled back they did their job well but the tone they emitted regardless of speed was irritating at best...
As a quick update, along with some other bits, for upgrading both of my wc setups, the 2000rpm Ultra Kazes arrived... Yeah, so plugged one in briefly & they do create a distinctive tone, but certainly not one that's unpleasant or actually that loud imho - well they're vastly quieter than a fairly top end gfx card fan doing it's worst... Though obviously my concern is about lowering temps to increase o/c stability rather than having zero noise, & as the PCs have their own room in the house then it's not going to affect me unless i'm in here & that computer's switched on. i guess it maybe also be that i'm not that fussy about noise as i can happily do stuff (inc sleep) with a big water cooled/evaporative air con fan going at full pelt - roughly 595 cfm & certainly much louder than any of the noises from the computer fans (in more extreme heat i've a 2nd fan that gets switched on in here). Oh, & why would a tone bother you if you're not in the room? Quick addition - having actually gotten everything set up on Thursday, the fans have stopped making the noticeable tone... Whilst obviously not suddenly becoming quiet, it appears that when they are not securely attached to something solid (well a 480 rad with neoprene in between), they vibrate creating the tones that were described in that review & the tone i had originally confirmed. This does kind of suggest that the methodology in the review has not accounted for this - well, the dbA level was gotten from an independent lab however this is the *only* thing it says they tested for - "Not shown on the graphs, but also important, were the subjective observations we made about any particularly unpleasant noises produced by the fans. This is crucial, since the motors of some fans can produce sound at irritating frequencies, which can be very distracting, even if they’re not particularly loud." - which, as they only state that they fixed the fans to cardboard for the black bag experiment, strongly suggests that any comments about tones being produced on any fan may be inaccurate - in fact they if they only ran the fans whilst attached to the cardboard, their subjective opinion may be worse than i heard since the cardboard could well act as a resonator. Yeah, obviously they are still comparatively noisy fans (though not excessively so imho), but they are much more effective than the S-Flexes they replaced.
Hi erm, I'm in sort of the same situation as you with regards to water cooling. I was thinking of just the graphics card though, have you decided what pump you are likely to be using? Also have you read the Thread "http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=99891&highlight=water+cooling+guide" i found that this helped me alot.
