Looking for a quiet CPU cooler that will fit a small desktop

lenovo340 · Post by **lenovo340** » Fri Jan 09, 2009 8:34 am

I recently got a computer "upgrade" at my job - an IBM ThinkCentre. It looks something like this:

The CPU fan on this thing is loud as hell. I want to replace it just to keep my sanity. The desktop is tiny, so obviously I'm not going to be putting a 120mm copper Zalman fan on it. But is there anything that would fit that doesn't sound like a jet engine?

The current fan's label says:
SUPERRED
DV12V 0.61A
CHC8012CB-AH(E)(T)

Post by **NeilBlanchard** » Fri Jan 09, 2009 8:45 am

Hi & welcome to SPCR,

Can you take a picture of the inside of the unit? What size is the fan?

xan_user · Post by **xan_user** » Fri Jan 09, 2009 9:03 am

NeilBlanchard wrote:Hi & welcome to SPCR,

Can you take a picture of the inside of the unit? What size is the fan?

Also would help to see venting on back and sides if any. as well as PSU mobo and chip type.

lenovo340 · Post by **lenovo340** » Fri Jan 09, 2009 10:55 am

I made a mistake - the offending fan is a case fan, not the CPU fan.

I don't have a camera with me today, so I won't be able to take pictures until Monday, but it seems to be an 80mm fan. I measured with a 12 inch ruler - it's about 3" by 3" by 1.5". The part of the case that the fan is mounted to unfolds, and from the looks of the way it folds back into the case, it doesn't look like there's room for anything bigger. Also, it plugs into a motherboard port that says "fan1." The PSU doesn't have any spare molex connectors.

The disk hasn't been imaged yet, so I can't log into Windows to check all of the specs. According to the BIOS, the CPU is a Pentium D 2.8Ghz with a 800Mhz FSB, and I'm sure the PSU is a proprietary IBM thing.

frenchie · Post by **frenchie** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 3:47 am

I'd say swapping this noisy little 80mm fan with any other SPCR fan will help (80mm noctuas seem to be good with PSUs, so I'm guessing they're good with case ventilation as well).
I second the question previous posters have as to how the case ventilation is organized.

frank2003 · Post by **frank2003** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 6:00 am

You may have some luck in quieting the system with a fan controller like the FanMate if you don't ever plan on doing anything CPU intensive with this box.

If your work requires running tasks that use even 50% of the CPU (i.e. equivalent of 100% usage on one core), then I'd advise that you don't waste your time. The reason is the Pentium-D processor in that system. In my office my coworker had a Dell Pentium-D based system that was in a case twice your system's size and I could not stand the noise coming out of that beast even when it was under moderate load. And Dell is pretty good in building quiet systems, too.

The Pentium-D (a dual core version of the P4) is based on Intel's older Netburst microarchitecture. It's known to be very power hungry (when compared to today's Intel desktop processors based on the Core 2 microarchitecture) and generates a lot of heat. These P4 processors and variants are the arch enemies of quiet computing.