CPU fan for Socket A3

pickarooney

I was annoyed to find that my new(ish) silent fan would not fit on my new motherboard as the plug is not the same shape. The fan that shipped with my AMD Athlon II X2 255 is really noisy by comparison so I'm in the market for a new PC component for the umpteenth time this month. (After my 'upgrade' I have a total of one piece left from the original PC!).

Anyone got a good recommendation for a quiet fan for this chip?

marco_polo

pickarooney wrote: »

I was annoyed to find that my new(ish) silent fan would not fit on my new motherboard as the plug is not the same shape. The fan that shipped with my AMD Athlon II X2 255 is really noisy by comparison so I'm in the market for a new PC component for the umpteenth time this month. (After my 'upgrade' I have a total of one piece left from the original PC!).

Anyone got a good recommendation for a quiet fan for this chip?

For a dual core no need to spend big bucks the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro is a solid budget option.

pickarooney

Interesting design! They retail for 30 euros on amazon here though.

marco_polo

pickarooney wrote: »

Interesting design! They retail for 30 euros on amazon here though.

France as per you location tag? QuietPC will ship there too (Although the Artic Cooler product page is still in English). Last time I got a delivery wasn't too too steep to Ireland either only €3.50 for an Accelero Twin Turbo VGA cooler and some paste. I presume it would be much the same to France. (They are really a UK retailler with numerous disguises as far as I can tell)

http://www.quietpc.fr/

pickarooney

What kind of decibel level should I be looking for? I might just pick a cheapo fan up in the shop if I can get something quietish for around a tenner.

marco_polo

pickarooney wrote: »

What kind of decibel level should I be looking for? I might just pick a cheapo fan up in the shop if I can get something quietish for around a tenner.

First off a disclaimer that like monitor specs such as response time, there is no standared method of measuring noise levels, so I will proceed under the naieve presumption that the manufacturer fans specs are reasonably trustworthy.

If it is a fixed speed fan then the question is fairly simple, the answer is the lower the dBA the better, no higher than the low twenties, preferably the high teens IMO.

If it is a variable speed fan then the noise levels will vary depending on the CPU temperature. If the temperature of the CPU rises a PWM controller fan is ordered to spin faster to disperse the extra heat, creating more noise.

It will just take the variable speed (PWM controlled) Coolermaster Hyper 212 as an example, it is noise rated between 13 - 32 dBA, (fan speeds 600 - 2000 R.P.M). Now 13 dBA is almost inaudible and 32 dBA fairly annoying. However because it is quite a good cooler, the tempertures of an average quad core CPU (for example) even under full load will stay farly cool, so the fan will never get remotely near to it max RPMs in normal operation (in fact it will probably never stray far from the minimum), thus staying nice and quiet at all times.

The cheaper the cooler the less effective it will be at cooling the CPU, making high RPMs and noise much more likely (Another point to consider is fan size the smaller the fan the faster it has to spin to create enough airflow). This is why many poor stock coolers get very loud when under load.

pickarooney

That's a pretty comprehensive reply. Thanks

pickarooney

I ended up going for what I thought sounded like a good buy for my needs - a Xilence 92mm. It's a disaster - three times as loud as the stock AMD fan that came with the chip in contrast to any reviews I'd read of it. It's been spinning full-on since I booted up even though all I'm running is Firefox.

All core temps are under 30 degrees, so it is at least cooling well.

Solitaire

I'm surprised you're finding the AMD stock HSF so loud. No surprise with the Xilence, its cheap trash and while most of their fans are quiet, they sometimes have iffy bearings

Get an Arctic Freezer Pro 7 Rev2 as the fan is darn quiet regardless of current RPM and it won't have to shift much heat sitting on an X2-255 anyway

marco_polo

First off I would check your CPU temperatures, if you don't have anything already installed try speccy.

pickarooney

CPU temp is about 22-25. Whatever about it being a cheap fan, I don't get why it's going full on all the time. The fan I had on my previous build was completely silent and the same size and a similar price. Can't remember the name off the top of my head though.

I may be suffering from that phenomenon where when you're listening for something it sounds louder than a pneumatic drill, but I really think it's excessively loud.

Solitaire

Most of the smaller fans are obnoxious at full RPM. Have you tried downloading and using SpeedFan? Or is it a cheap-and-nasty fan with a 3-pin plug? Proper CPU fans have different PWM from case fans and use four-pin plugs.

pickarooney

It has a four-pin plug. I presumed I couldn't use the old one because it only had a three-pin.

I'm running ubuntu, but I could look for an equivalent to speedfan.

Edit: 2800 RPM non-stop according to my sensors program

pickarooney

I found a BIOS option which I had never seen before on my travels and now the CPU fan is auto-adjusting and running at a pleasant 1500-odd RPM while maintaining a temp in the mid-high 20s. I feel a bit stupid but am going to blame the distracting wind-tunnel noise

marco_polo

Wow that is a fairly obscure bios setting, strange default setting for a motherboard to ship with. Hate to say this after you spending money on a new fan but it probably perfectly explains why the stock fan was so loud as well.

pickarooney

Yeah, that was the first thing that occured to me!