Suggestions how to get system even more quiet ?

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Dobby
Posts: 59
Joined: Thu Jun 03, 2004 10:33 am
Location: Finland

Suggestions how to get system even more quiet ?

Post by Dobby » Thu Sep 30, 2004 8:24 am

Seems that I have hitted the wall with my current system:

Antec 3700AMB (back fan grille removed)
Enermax Noisetaker 370 W (apfc)
Abit nf7-s (passively cooled)
Tbred 1.33-2Ghz + Sharkoon HPS1 + Nexus 80mm (guesstimate @ 9V)
512 Mb DDR400
Hercules Radeon 9600 (passively cooled)
Hitachi 7K250 120 GB
Antec case fan 120 mm (1600 rpm version @ 5 V ~25 cfm)

Have to admit that its already pretty quiet system and a huge improvement to the previous one. I guess expectations just grew bit too high along the road. Currently, the primary noise originates from the Antec case fan and its quite pleasant pure air flow wooshing. At close range its also possble to pin-point other noise sources: PSU (fans) and hard drive, but those will fade away. Main problem is what to do when that air flow is essential in aiding CPU cooling. New slower fan or disabling it al
together will just force to add noisier CPU cooler and possibly also PSU will speed up in stress. I'm also bit skeptical whether the fan change will make any improvements that can be really heard (currently no disturbing side noises), especially after trying Nexus 80 mm (its a good fan but doesn't have any better cooling/noise performance than other good have fans I have come up with).

All I can think myself are sort of trade offs, so I need suggestions how to remove air at least 25 cfm without any noise. :) Low power mobile CPU upgrade or passive watercooling probably would both work, but I think larger upgrades have to wait a bit.

markjia
Posts: 171
Joined: Sat Apr 24, 2004 4:31 pm
Location: Vancouver BC

Post by markjia » Thu Sep 30, 2004 9:37 am

Why not get a better CPU heatsink so you don't need to be as concerned about the case temperature? The Zalman 7000 comes highly recommended. You can get a quieter case fan (maybe 120mm Nexus or Globe)

Orbit
Posts: 31
Joined: Fri Sep 24, 2004 4:44 am
Location: Perth, Western Australia

Post by Orbit » Thu Sep 30, 2004 11:24 am

hehe, just give in..
Get one of those Zalman Resorators ;)
fanless watercooling.... doesnt get much more silent
Then all you'll have to worry about is HDD heat and PSU noise :/ (I guess?)

Dobby
Posts: 59
Joined: Thu Jun 03, 2004 10:33 am
Location: Finland

Post by Dobby » Thu Sep 30, 2004 11:16 pm

Orbit wrote:hehe, just give in..
Get one of those Zalman Resorators ;)
fanless watercooling.... doesnt get much more silent
Then all you'll have to worry about is HDD heat and PSU noise :/ (I guess?)
I guess you are right, by tinkering current system I could perhaps shave db or two away, but that's it. Building resorator based or true mobile a64 are both quite tempting, just need to save some money, soften my wife to the thought (which probably takes a while). :oops:
I sort of came up myself an idea that I could try to control case fan with speedfan program so it would start only at the full setting (or lets say when it would start when CPU temp reaches 50). I do web surfing and other lightweight stuff at under-/undervolted state, so temps start to raise only when I do demanding work. It would be sort of cheap temporary solution.

burcakb
Posts: 1443
Joined: Tue Mar 09, 2004 9:05 am
Location: Turkey

Post by burcakb » Thu Sep 30, 2004 11:29 pm

Couple of ideas and questions.

Is the Antec fan the stock one that came with the case? That's one very quiet fan at 5V. If you're hearing that, then I'm guessing that either you're still using the fan cage or you're not running it at 5V. What version does it say on the fan? v1.6 is quieter, slower, v2.0 is noisier and vibrates a hell of a lot.

As for the CPU cooling, yes the Zalman 7000 is very robust and will work wonderfully at much higher in-case temps. You DO need to get it undervolted to around 3V though for it to compete noisewise with a 9V Nexus. On the plus side, you can use that cooler with any Athlon64 you might upgrade to (provided, it fits the Abit board without mods)

Another way might be getting rid of vibrations. Even nexus fans transmit a lot of vibrations into the case and only recently I've realized how much vibration a PSU can generate. I used very elastic windshield wiper rubber to line the grill edges and rest the fans on that. If you're in the US you could experiment with EAR grommets, u-channel molding, etc.

One other disturbing noise I notice is the metallic ding that forms when air flows through the case. A thin layer of melamine foam could possibly get rid of that (I've yet to try this, so don't take my word for it)

Other than the Zalman, the above aren't expensive mods; wife shouldn't complain too much, except perhaps this fixation on noise ;)

Dobby
Posts: 59
Joined: Thu Jun 03, 2004 10:33 am
Location: Finland

Post by Dobby » Fri Oct 01, 2004 12:05 am

Burcakb:
Fan is v1.6 and currently mounted with rubber sticks. Sound I can hear is quite low and hollow (like it would echo somehow from the case), but its quite possible that vibrations play part in this. Noisetaker was surprisingly tight fit, so it might transmit vibrations to the back panel. Thanks for the suggestions, I will take a look onto these when weekend arrives. :)

Dobby
Posts: 59
Joined: Thu Jun 03, 2004 10:33 am
Location: Finland

Post by Dobby » Fri Oct 01, 2004 11:07 am

Ok, I think I figured out the source of the "hollow" noise.

Image

This is a slightly older pic, but configuration was identical, 80 mm cpu fan pulling slowly air to the case fan. I'm pretty sure that noise was not present until I had to rip system apart while changing the new PSU and at same time I changed fan cage to the rubber sticks. Now I simply tried to change CPU fan to the push side and voila - noise is gone. So it was probably due to that 2 fans were too close together in some non-optimal way. CPU temp difference seems to be only +1 in push-mode, so I see no reason trying to fix it into pull mode. Now I could say I'm satisfied with overall noise level, something is still vibrating occasionally, but I have to figure out what it is.

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