PC Fans Too Loud (What Can I do)

Associate
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Hi Everyone, I built a new pc recently (Spec in my sig)

However the fan noise is getting to me now and I to do something.

At the moment it runs very cool :

Geforce 7800 GTX Cards run at around 47-50 c Idle and rise upto 60-70 When fully under load (i'm talking about 5 hours of BF2)

The cpu temp idles at 33-35c and rises to 43c at the most, the chipset (fanless let me add) idles at around 37-39c and rises to 44 max when my room is very hot (ie central heating on)

I've got :

1 x 120mm (lian Li supplied) Case fan as the intake, thats running with a molex connector plugged straight into the psu

1 x 80mm (lian Li supplied) Rear Case fan again connected to the psu with a 4 pin molex connector

1 x 80mm (lian Li supplied) Top Case fan, same as above again

1 x 120mm Papst running on a Thermalright XP-120 again connected to the psu with a 4 pin molex connector as the motherboard wouldnt be able to take this anyway on the headers etc.


I might add that I've got 4 (yes 4) hard drives, one raptor and the rest are samsung spinpoints.

The question I want to ask is can I do anything to make the system more quiet as the fan whirring noise is doing my head in.

I've had a look at some fan controllers but they all only seem to take 3 pin plugs, another option would be to use a old pc mods rheobus and cut all the molex plugs off and have them connected using a blocklike connector.

But how much noise will it get rid off I dont know.

Anyone any ideas before I go deaf :(
 
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Soldato
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It depends on how DIY you feel like getting. The expensive option is to get water/phase cooling going. Cheaper than that you culd get a few fan controllers and use those. Cheaper than that you could take one fan controller and mod it to handle greater current and support more fans. Cheaper than that you could make your own controller with a RC circuit and a few PWM outputs. Wire up a pair of circuits, one at 12V for best cooling, one at 7v for quiet operation with a breaker switch betwixt them to toggle operation. You could take power input from a 4 pin molex or two.

The last one is the one I'd be most likely to do becasue I like to play with electronics. Do you? :D
 
Soldato
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If the lian li 80mm fans have rpm cables then connect them to the mobo headers and use the mobo fan monitoring software to slow them down or use speedfan etc.

Fot the other fans you could get a fan controller, or fan reduction cables available in 5v, 7v, 10v and variable depending on what your after.

I'd guess even with no case fans that the vga card makes a good bit of noise though.
 
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ok chaps, thanks for the response,

firstly, water cooling is out of the question, i havent the time or money to be messing about with that, although it would be better I agree.

I'm going to have a play I think with the cables and try and reduce the voltage on each fan and see what temps and noise I get from doing that, as mentioned the graphic cards are still going to give a little noise and theres nothing really I can do about that unless I start adding more coolers, but I havent really got the time for anything major.

Thanks for the ideas I'm going to put a couple of them to the test.

Cheers
 
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Cheers mate, I'm going to try that and stick a 3 way switch so I can switch to 12 v Full, 7 v Mid and 5 v Low.

I've just disconnected all the fans apart from the heatsink fan and the rear one, and the graphics cards ones are still going also and the difference is massive.

The chipset temp has rose about 7c and the graphics cards have rose about 5c each idle, but it is mainly the top and front fan making all the racket.

So I'm going to try the mod mentioned above, should I mod the headsink fan also or keep that plugged in as normal?

Cheers
 
Last edited:
Associate
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Sounds like you're getting there........

Zalman Fanmates are a cheap way of triming fan speed.

Zalman do an excellent graphics card cooler which is very quiet.

Reseating the CPU and graphics card heatsinks with fresh thermal paste (e.g. Artic Silver 5) may help.
 
Soldato
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Try unplugging the top blow hole fan and see what effect it has on temps.

I had a top blow hole on my Coolermaster 111. Switched off the fan and it made zero difference to temps. Made a massive difference to noise though.
 
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