I have just built a new PC consisting of the following :
Abit AN8 Ultra - fanless
Athlon XP 64 3000+
Thermalright XP-120
Sapphire Radeon X800 GTO Ultimate (fanless)
Creative Soundblaster X-Fi FPS Fatal1ty
1Gb Ram
160Gb Samsung HD
Sony DVD Writer
Seasonic SP-12 430W PSU
I am not sure what case I have. I bought it some time ago and cost me about £80. It takes 120mm case fans front and back and has a removable hard drive structure which has pre-installed rubber grommets (or whatever you call them) to help reduce the hard drive vibrations.
Anyway, I am currently using 3x120mm accoustifans on the heatsink and front and rear case fans. At 8v, this is a bit louder than I like. The reason for 8v is that the Abit AN8 allows you to adjust the fans down to this level and I prefer this than adding any other fan controllers (at least for now).
Are there any better 120mm options ? I have considered the Nexus Real Silent Fan but am a little concerned at the airflow considering I am running a fanless motherboard and fanless graphics card.
Any thoughts ?
Edit: The case is a black Antec SLK3700 (just looked it up)
Someone please recommend me a 120mm fan ?
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NeilBlanchard
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Greetings,
You would be able to make things quieter and cooler if you snip out the fan grill(s). The air flow is much better (does the 3700 have hex holes, or round?), and then you can turn the fans down to 5-7volts.
The Nexus or the low speed Yate Loon are your best bet. The medium speed Yate Loon is also worth considering. And check the recommended list, too.
You would be able to make things quieter and cooler if you snip out the fan grill(s). The air flow is much better (does the 3700 have hex holes, or round?), and then you can turn the fans down to 5-7volts.
The Nexus or the low speed Yate Loon are your best bet. The medium speed Yate Loon is also worth considering. And check the recommended list, too.
I know certain Acoustifans are considered quiet, but I'm not sure if you're using those or higher speed ones. If you look around in these forums there are a few generally recommended 120mm fans: Nexus (really just slowed down yate loons), Yate Loon, and Papst. Some Enermax fans (the ones made by Globe) and certain acoustifans are also considered fairly quiet.
With your configuration, you could probably get away with replacing the Acoustifans with Nexus 120mm Real Silent case fans. At 12V, they're pretty good, and should be very quiet down at 8V, but they don't move much air even at 12V. I would go for Yate Loon fans and turn the voltage down to 5-7V. Investing in a few Zalman fanmates will do wonders for noise. You could turn the Zalman fanmate down about halfway, then connect it to your motherboard. That will get your motherboard to vary voltage from about 5-9V instead of 8-12V.
You might also want to look into other ways to control your fan speed rather than just your BIOS. Certain windows utilities such as SpeedFan can control fan speed for many motherboards, and can usually ramp down to lower voltages than eight. Do a search on the internet for it, its a free program IIRC.
With your configuration, you could probably get away with replacing the Acoustifans with Nexus 120mm Real Silent case fans. At 12V, they're pretty good, and should be very quiet down at 8V, but they don't move much air even at 12V. I would go for Yate Loon fans and turn the voltage down to 5-7V. Investing in a few Zalman fanmates will do wonders for noise. You could turn the Zalman fanmate down about halfway, then connect it to your motherboard. That will get your motherboard to vary voltage from about 5-9V instead of 8-12V.
You might also want to look into other ways to control your fan speed rather than just your BIOS. Certain windows utilities such as SpeedFan can control fan speed for many motherboards, and can usually ramp down to lower voltages than eight. Do a search on the internet for it, its a free program IIRC.