Help With Quiet Cooling

GazaM

I recently built myself a new PC, with fairly good specs (AMD64 3200, Radeon X700Pro PCI-E, 19" Flat-screen, Thermaltake Xaser case, etc.) but I have a minor problem. I want to use this PC as a TV replacement in my room, for watching tv (with a tv card like of course :rolleyes: ) and DVD's, but the noise from the fans (5 case + 1 CPU) is just too loud to make that a real possibility at the moment. What type of cooling would be a good solution for keeping the noise way down while still offering good cooling for some overclocking. I was thinking something along the lines of water-cooling maybe? Any help appreciated.

BloodBath

It depends how quiet you want it. The main sources of noise are;

cpu cooler, graphics cooler, northbridge, psu and case fans.

Water cooling is probably the best solution. You could cool the card, northbridge and cpu off the same kit cutting all that noise out (but adding the noise of a pump). You could replace your case fans with quieter ones or get a fan controller to turn them down.

You can pick up decent kits that will give you silence pretty cheaply but if you want a good kit that will give you decent overclocking potential then your looking at forking out for better gear.

Plenty of the lads here have good kits, i'm sure they can recomend you something if you tell them how much your willing to spend.


BloodBath

dubdvd

as bloodbath has said there is a couple of things you can do ...but its also down to how much are you willing to spend firstly you need a fan controler to adjust the level of power going into your fans ...so for example you want to kick some butt in counterstike you push the fan speeds up and then you want to watch t.v. but them down all the way ...handy....
then there is your cpu and gpu card ..if cash is low id go for the likes of the zalman CNPS7000B-Cu cpu cooler which can be adjusted aswell and a arctic cooling for your gpu ....
but if you have a bit of spare cash i,d go for the Zalman Reserator 1 this will cool down both cpu and gpu ...i used for a good while and there wasnt a sound out of it ...and my main rig was in the bedroom ,so i know what what high noise is like watching tv .but if you want to do some extreme over clocking dont go for the zalman it will overclock but not heavy extremeoverclocking ...then take a look at your psu and see what kinda sound is coming from it ..if you can get one with 120mm fan this will give less noise and some have a fan cable coming from it so you can even put this on to your fan controller which will help ...the bigger the fans the better as in if you can get a 120mm in where you have your 90mm or 80mm fans the noide will be a lot less ....hope this helps you ... and welcome to boards.ie and our now famous tweaking and modding forum ...enjoy

heres some links
http://www.zalmanusa.com/usa/product/view.asp?idx=141&code=

http://www.zalmanusa.com/usa/product/view.asp?idx=63&code=

http://www.arctic-cooling.com/vga1.php

gline

fan controller and silent fans usually improve things, turn down for watchin tv, turn up when playing games. Also psu is usually the other culprit, get a quiter 1 if it is that , that is causing it

GazaM

Well, the Thermaltake Xaser case I have has a fan controller on it already and if It didn't the motherboard has smartfan controls as well anyway, but only two of the fans are actually smartfans which can be adjusted so the others may be causing all of the noise. The PSU is a Thermaltake Silent PSU with a 120mm smartfan in it so I doubt if that's causing any problems. The Northbridge fan on the motherboard is tiny and when I look in the BIOS it says it's going at over 7,000RPM! Perhaps that's a big culprit, as could the small fan on the Graphics Card. I think in the long term I'll probably go for water-cooling, as I've heard the pumps don't really make much noise, just a low humming sound.

gline

thermaltake psus arent silent and the northbridege fan could be causing a lot of noise. you are right about watercooling, pumps are usually quiet

GazaM

gline wrote:

thermaltake psus arent silent and the northbridege fan could be causing a lot of noise. you are right about watercooling, pumps are usually quiet

I didn't mean that I think the PSU is silent, the name of the PSU is actually 'Thermaltake Silent Purepower' :rolleyes: but it is pretty quiet. I've come to the conclusion that it's probably the smaller fans on the Northbridge and GPU causing most noise.

unklerosco

GPU n Northbridge fans r usually noise, the case fans r noisy too n not really needed. I had one of those cases n was using a watercooling setup... I disconnected all the fans as they make a racket. Keep an eye on the temps n disconnect fans n wee how the temp changes... Change the northbridge to a passive heatsink r hook it up to the fan controller n slow it down, get an arctic cooler for the GPU as they're near silent. What cooler have u got on the cpu??

GazaM

I've just got the normal AMD heatsink/fan that came with the CPU. I was wondering though, if I was to put a watercooling system in would I have to mod the case at all to fit in the various parts of the system or can I mount some of them outside the case?

unklerosco

I just mounted them outside the case.. Here's a thread i started a while ago about my watercooling setup in my Xaser case, u can see in the pics i just left the rad outside the case. I was completely silent apart from the slightest hum from the psu but u could only hear it when u where near the case. I was able to boot my 2.8p4 at 3.8... ran stable at 3.6... Would deffo recomend it..

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=171568&page=2&pp=20