Reduce noise R9 280

[c4610939]

So I have a R9 280 gpu which is not so quiet.
The main problem is that the fans dont go lower than 20 or 25% even at idle.
I dont mind the fans blowing when playing a game but I would like them to stop completely at idle.
But it does not seem possible. Would lubricating the fans do them any good?

[quest_for_silence]

Would lubricating the fans do them any good?

It depends of the specific fans: if it's a good card, those may be ball bearing fans (you can't lubricate), and if they were cheaper sleeve variants, they may be sealed. So, YMMV.

Said that, if the noise you hear is not a bearing noise (but just airborne one), likely lubricating (if possible) won't help at all: in case, you might also think to lubricate them with some more dense lithium grease (or similar compound), which will slow down the fan pace to some degree, but it may be a rather dangerous tweak (personally I can't help how to correctly do that).

[Olle P]

The main problem is that the fans don't go lower than 20 or 25% even at idle.
I don't mind the fans blowing when playing a game but I would like them to stop completely at idle.

I used a R9 280 until recently, and my perception of the noise was the very opposite.
At low load the standard fan setting was 20%, which I thought was well below my tolerable noise level but also fairly low in terms of cooling.
Then the fans didn't go up much in speed until the temperature got very high, at which time the fan speed would jump to 100% causing decidedly irritating noise.
During prolonged high load (gaming) the fans would alternate between ~40% and 100% in ~20s intervals.

My solution was to set minimum speed to 30%, which I found to be benign as a background noise, and then apply many smaller increments in fan speed starting at lower temperatures. My maximum tolerable noise during gaming was reached with the fans at 55%, and by having the fans reach this speed well below the maximum temperature the cooling was sufficient to keep the temperature within acceptable limits without increasing the fan speed any further and without annoying constant alterations of the speed.

Whether or not you can have the fans turned off completely at low load is (mostly) a software issue. Many control programs don't allow it, but I suppose some do.

[c4610939]

So I had decided to modify my gpu (its not new anyway :p)
I took off the heat-sink, re-applied thermal paste, put it back on but left off the plastic plate holding the 2 fans.
Then I mounted 1 120mm cpu fan with a converter cable. Everything works fine although the card gets a little hot under load. (88C with maximum fan speed 75%)
My pc is now finally quiet on idle. But there is room for some improvement under load (noise and cooling wise)

My thought was to add another fan to the gpu, so I can maybe keep my fan speeds at around 50-60% under load. (guess)
What noctua redux fan would you recommend?
And should I go 2x 120mm or 2x 80mm? (80mm fits best on the heat-sink, 120mm sticks out on the side 1 or 2 cm but will move more air with less noise?)

[Olle P]

And should I go 2x 120mm or 2x 80mm?

... or somewhere in-between? There are some 92mm and 100mm fans to pick from as well. These should audibly perform better than 80mm fans and fit better than 120mm fans.

Unfortunately I can't give any concrete recommendations as to what model(s) are good.