Silencing a Dell 530s

vibeweb · Post by **vibeweb** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 10:08 pm

I have a Dell 530s desktop.

Motherboard: Foxconn G33M
CPU: Intel E4400

I've identified the loudest noise: the CPU fan. My objective is to replace it with the least effort.

1. Is it possible just replace the CPU fan without replacing the heatsink in this system? That is, is the fan detachable from the heatsink?

2. If I can't just replace the CPU fan, what cooling options do I have for such a slim case? (It's only 92mm wide.)

I was thinking the Scythe Ninja Mini, but it's 110mm in height. I can't find any other silent cooling options that will fit in this case.

Can anyone recommend some silent coolers that will fit the dimensions (max):

92 high, 80 width, 80 length.

Any ideas?

Here are some pictures and dimensions:

jessekopelman · Post by **jessekopelman** » Tue Oct 21, 2008 1:09 am

Looks to me that is just a standard 80mm fan attached to a bracket on the heatsink. I can't tell if it's attached with screws or what, but I'd be surprised if you couldn't separate the fan from the bracket or failing that, remove the entire bracket. The real issue is not whether you can find a quieter 80mm fan (no doubt), but whether the quieter fan will provide adequate cooling coupled with that puny little heatsink. I'd recommend installing Speedfan so that you can get some idea of what kind of temperatures and speeds you've got going on right now. You can also try playing around with Speedfan to see how slow that fan needs to go to be silent (it's definitely a PWM fan so Speedfan will control it) and what kind of cooling you get at that speed.

As a follow up; have you enabled fan control in your BIOS and do you have EIST and Windows Power Management enabled?

Emyr · Post by **Emyr** » Tue Oct 21, 2008 2:12 am

Get rid of the dust and it should run cooler, so the PWM fan should spin slower...

vibeweb · Post by **vibeweb** » Tue Oct 21, 2008 2:27 am

Right now, it's spinng the slowest. More intensive tasks make it spin louder.

Also, I've cleaned the dust and it makes no noticable improvement.

Still, at its slowest, I'm not happy. During the day with open windows and doors, the ambient noise will drown it out to the point of inaudibility. But, during the middle of the night -- when I'm doing my most intellectually demanding work -- the noise is apparent. It just gets on my nerve.

http://reviews.cnet.com/desktops/dell-i ... 86101.html

I'm basically looking to rid this computer of CPU fan noise.

The closest viable option I've seen is: Zalman CNPS8700LED

Still, SPCRs review doesn't leave me confident about it's noise reduction capacity.

vibeweb · Post by **vibeweb** » Tue Oct 21, 2008 4:04 am

So guys, I found this: Scythe Shuriken Quiet Low Profile CPU Cooler

http://www.quietpc.com/gb-en-gbp/produc ... g/shuriken

Looks perfect for my case. Seems like it's easy to install, too.

jessekopelman · Post by **jessekopelman** » Tue Oct 21, 2008 10:46 pm

vibeweb wrote: Right now, it's spinng the slowest. More intensive tasks make it spin louder.

Those temps are nice and low. Use SpeedFan to make the fan spin more slowly. See how you like the noise and temps once you have it spinning around 1000RPM. No 80mm fan is going to be remotely silent at > 1,200RPM.