I tried out ATI Tray Tools, but it only offers full auto / one speed manual fan control (same as the Catalyst drivers). It's taking a surprisingly long time for quiet versions of these cards to come out.

Bought a Sapphire 6870 Vapor-X based on the fact that it was the quietest/fastest card available (ie. there are no quiet 6900 series cards yet), and I'm a bit disappointed. It can be quiet. It's inaudible when my monitors are asleep. It was even perfectly quiet running a single 1280x1024 screen whil...

An update. Got my fans today, stuck an S-Flex 1200RPM at the top blowing in at 500 RPM. Now the voltage regulator is staying 6 degrees cooler, and as a result the front/rear case fans are able to run 200 RPM slower (850-950 RPM) at the same settings, making the whole thing quieter and cooler than be...

Fan speed isn't really an issue at this point. But for now I'm using the motherboard's utilities, which are quite unobtrusive. Haven't tried Speedfan, but the way thing are now there's CPU (CPU temp obviously), Front, Back (both use voltage regulator temp) and Aux (uses IOH temp, I was going to use ...

I'm nearly done building my new system housed in the P183. The last system I built 4 years ago is in a P180. Although I don't yet have the SSD I want (it arrives Monday) for the past week and a half I've had my system built simply for stress testing purposes, and to mess about with benchmarks and su...

I have the P183, CP-1000 and 4 HDDs as well. Here's what I did: I used the last two connectors of two separate power cables (since one cable only comes with 3 connectors), and interwove them. So cable 1 feeds drives 1 and 3, while cable 2 feeds drives 2 and 4. The connector on each cable closest to ...

Very true. Silence means different things to different people with different needs. My personal systems need to be cutting edge, but as silent as possible. I absolutely do have a much smaller acceptable noise threshold than the "average" persion, but I know I can't get that kind of power with total ...

From a noise concept, I like the idea of 0 RPM. However this is a high-end system (i7-990X), and frankly I need the air movement, even if slight. For example, last night I "balanced" the fans. The default setting for the CPU fan was to start ramping up at 71C. The problem is, the CPU fan/heatsink is...

As mentioned in an earlier post, the BIOS only has "on" and "off" for speed settings. Also, when the system turns on, it doesn't actually spin the fans at full unless the system was away from power. Otherwise they start at the BIOS reduced settings (which is a bit odd as my other Intel m/b systems u...

Well, here's some more. I installed Intel's tuning utility and it DOES let me adjust all of this. The minimum CPU fan duty cycle allowed by the software is 15%, which results in 93 RPM (assuming I start the fan manually). The default duty cycle was 20%, which results in 150 RPM. The minimum duty cyc...

No, the BIOS only offers "enabled" and "disabled" for CPU fan control. Also I should note that the motherboard does NOT support voltage regulation on the CPU fan, only PWM.

Installing a new PC with a Venomous-X heatsink and a pair of Slip Stream 120mm PWM fans, hooked up to the motherboard (Intel DX58SO2) via a PWM fan splitter cable. First, both fans work fine at the full 1300 RPM when PWM control is disabled. If I enable it, I've noticed something odd: the fans don't...

I'm just getting the parts to build a new system for my father... I know how to keep the CPU, case and HD quiet, the sticking point is always the video card (especially since I do prefer to keep those stock unless necessary). In my own not-very-new system I use an HIS 4870 IceQ3 card, and I really q...

I'm curious what the quietest stock HD4890 card would be. I've been using a HIS 3870 IceQ 3 for a while now and I've been quite satisfied - can't hear it when idling, and it's barely noticable when playing games (and shuts off as soon as I quit the game). I also had an HIS X1950 with IceQ, which was...

Responding to my old post but... When my original Phantom 500 died in January 2007, I started using a brand new one in my new PC right away. That unit has been working 24x7 since then without issue until late last night. I tried to start up a game and the video card wouldn't initialize (intro video ...

I probably won't be installing it in anything for a little bit. I've been using a NeoHE 500w in that system since the Phantom went, and after the amount of work it took to get everything fitted and neat and tidy... and considering that the system will no longer be my primary, I think it's probably g...

Received my warranty replacement Phantom 500 on Friday - a brand new one still shrinkwrapped. Took a while, but yay!

Yeah, I noticed this as well... when you make the Noctua work to move air it hums/whines (even at full 12V). The 1200RPM model was particularly noisy in the lower chamber of my P180, but only with the side panel closed. The only thing I've found to keep it quiet is have an equal (or even greater) CF...

One of the annoying things I've noticed about the Noctua is that it makes a strong hum if you make it work to move air. For example in the lower chamber of a P180, or even in the main chamber blowing out when you don't have an equal CFM blowing in. So far the Turbines don't seem to mind working to m...

Well, it's still under warranty and I've got an RMA number and will be sending it in... so I think I'll let them handle it!

Well, I ended up getting an HIS X1950 XT with IceQ3 cooler. I'd imagine this SHOULD be running at a similar temperature to my X1900 XT, but it's not - not only is the stock cooler a heck of a lot quieter at all velocities, but it seems to be generating about half the heat of my X1900 XT (and that's ...

Well, there was a large fan blowing directly on the Phantom to help keep it cool, and it does have its own backup fan if it gets "too hot"...

So, I've been building a new PC while continuing to use my old one. Today I decided to do the swap, turned off my old PC (which has run 24x7 for the past 16 months perfectly) and removed it. Put in the new PC, turned it on, got everything working, everything's fine. Now I still needed to copy a few ...

I've got the Phantom 500 in my P180 plus four hard drives and an Aerocool Turbine 1000 fan, and everything seems cool enough. Before I put the turbine in I had a much slower fan down there that moved next to no air and I *did* hear the Phantom's fan come on once during a stress test. It was really q...

Yeah, I'll try this on Rage3D. Though I'm not sure how concerned with "silent" most of their patrons are...

Sounds like a Noctura NF-S12-800rpm may be in your future.

I prefer fans that are quiet enough right at 12V. Saves the whole control issue.

It might still matter, since I might want to salvage the X1900 XT. :-) I've been thinking about why some VF900's work well and some don't, and in addition to case airflow (I have good "silent" case airflow so it is *not* high volume by any means), I wonder if CPU scaling has anything to do with it.....

Thanks for the feedback. As my new PC is completely ready to roll EXCEPT for the noisy video card I went ahead and ordered the HSI X1950 Pro already. Should be here Tuesday, I hope. Since the rest of the system is cutting edge (quad core CPU, 4gb memory, 2tb disk space) it's a bit of a shame to put ...

So, seems that my X1900 XT isn't happy running with my VF900. Idle temperatures look fine, but loading up a game (Half Life 2: Lost Coast) and just letting it sit there, after 10 to 15 minutes the heat builds up enough that either an overtemperature warning message comes up, or (and more common) the...