It's one of the oldest questions around, but which fan(s) should I get?!!?!?!? I'm making my own aluminium case, and want to make it quiet enough to sleep in the same room as comfortably. I've been looking at the Panaflo L1A fans since I know they're as close to silent as you can get really. I have enough room for 1 120mm, 2 92mm or 4 80mm as input fans and pretty much the same room for output. I am planning on making some kind of fan control unit, be it temp controlled or manually using a switch to take them down to lower voltages at times also. I don't want a wind tunnel PC, been there, done that, got the t-shirt, hated the noise I just want something that will be able to keep an XP2000+ cool (if only I could afford one, but I don't wanna be upgrading my fans with my CPU). One last thing. I'm probably gonna get a ThermalRight AX-7. Which fan do you recommend for that?
Wow, sounds like you have a lot of room in there. Some of the best fans I haven't had to listen to(haha) in my case are those enemax adjustable fans. I would make a strong case for getting some of those. I have one of those in my case and it's very nice, also a friend has several of them and the case is quiet. It's unreal. My friend had several panaflows in his case and the dam thing was like jet engine firing up. Now, there's hardly any noise.
I dont know why everyone wants to quiet theyre case. i like mine to be noisy, it lets me know its still running i just got a new 40 gig hdd and its driving me nuts!!! its soooooooooo quiet. im serious i took just about everything out of my case at one time that made noise and put my ear up to the hdd and still couldn't hear it. I NEED TO HEAR THE CLICKING!!!!!!!!!! does anyone else have this problem? im thinking of getting a new hdd so i can hear it. seriously. i mean you cant hear anything, the disks spinning, the clicking, nothing. if it werent for the hdd light i wouldn't even know i hadd a hdd in the comp.
stop complaining... i'd love a silent hdd... mine are too noisy... but not as much as the cpu fan tho :/ they annoy me when i'm trying to goto sleep at 4am
yeah, just use a bath of nitroglycerine and put the computer in there, that'll cool it down without any noise (maybe the PSU will act weird, like ... explode, but you can't have everything, can ya )
Hehe. A load of replies there. I'll take a look at those Enermax's. Are they only so quiet because you can adjust them or are they still whispery when at the full 12v? Since I'll be making my own control unit anyway, adjustable things don't bother me much.
Quietest fan I've got is a Papst Variofan 80mm NGMV, 20-34 cfm depending on temperature, with noise under 13dBA at slow speed up to 26dBA at full blast. Highly recommended (if you can find one). There are two other Variofans even quieter, but flow not as useful. My other 2 case fans came with the case (Antec 1030b) and are silent at 7v, with case grilles removed. Better than my Panaflo L1, most disappointing after all the fuss the Americans make of them. The Antec psu fan is thermal-controlled and was a bit noisy until I cut the stamped grille out for a wire one. Made a big difference. CPU fan is running at 8.25v, adds another 3C to stressed temperature but I'll swap that for the low noise. To answer stewe151 - what's the point of listening to cd-quality sound with background noise louder than the quiet bits? I stopped that game when I binned the vinyls. NiHiliSt: for your HS I'd look at Pal8045 with a Papst 80mm M fan voltage-controlled to a compromise temperature. Then you can turn up the flow on hot days, down at night.
Okay, so I've learnt that the Panaflo's aren't all they cracked up to be I know ADDA fans are very quiet and unintrusive with their sound due to having a few in cases over the years. Is there anywhere you can actually buy those things though?! What about the Evercool fans. I've heard them a lot, so what are the other fans mentioned like compared to them if anyone knows?
If you start out with a quality fan of any flow rating and control it, noise will drop with volts. Most fan noise is wind, directly related to flow and rpm. See the graph here Even Delta make some quiet fans
