Is it viable to have fanless watercooling?

gaz_m2k5

gaz_m2k5

gaz_m2k5

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I'm considering adding a watercooling loop to my system. The aim is to make my computer as silent as possible for 2 reasons:
1. I record (instruments and voice) so in low operation, zero noise is preferable.
2. In games I hate the sound of the fans speeding up and whirring in the background. And before you suggest it; I don't want to wear headphones.

My current set up is:
i7 920 overclocked to 4.0GHz
AMD R9 390 which turns fans off in low-medium operation
Corsair AX760 PSU which also turns fans off in low-medium operation

At the moment, in low operation I just have the 2x 140mm case fans and the CPU fan going, which generally isn't picked up by a microphone recording a few feet away.

But in more demanding games the GPU and CPU fans spin up.

The dream is to add water cooling blocks to the CPU and GPU, add a 420mm rad to the front of my case (removing the front intake fan) and a 360mm rad to the top. The 140mm rear exhaust fan would also be there.

I would then like be able to be in low operation (ie recording software, desktop etc.) with NO fans, it would just be the pump running.

In games, the fans would ideally spin no faster than 1000rpm.
(total fans: 3x 140mm on front rad, 3x 120mm on top rad, 140mm rear exhaust, 120mm PSU fan which is rarely on).

A few questions:
1. Is this possible? or is it overkill?
2. Is the pump noise going to be noticable with no other fans? As long as it's quieter than the fans I have running now then it's fine.
3. Are there better solution to achieve what I want to achieve?
 
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it is possible but with a fan speed of 20-30% they are not audible and still provide cooling.

Having no fans wouldnt be the best idea as the radiators will have nothing to help them remove the heat. You however could do a passive setup and have them switched off for desktop, recording etc and gaming where the radiators will need to remove the heat and have them come up to 20-30% speed. Trust me they really are inaudible at that speed.

You would also need a quiet pump. 10 fans on 30% speed or around 5-600rpm and my pump is the only thing i can hear on setting 3. This is with an EK D5. similarly if you get a pwm pump hook it into the cpu 4 pin you can have it speed up to comfortable levels while gaming and a slow speed for desktop.
 
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It wouldn't be a good idea to run your current setup fanless, you run pretty power hungry parts plus areas like the vrm still need to be cooled.

Having your fans running at 1000rpm while gaming will be fine but I would personally class 1000rpm as pretty loud.

Depends which pump you have and at what speed if you will hear it or not, personally I have a D5 pump on setting 1 & you can barely hear it. I would be far more worried about hearing your hard drives than pump.
 
gaz_m2k5 said:
A few questions:
1. Is this possible? or is it overkill?
2. Is the pump noise going to be noticable with no other fans? As long as it's quieter than the fans I have running now then it's fine.
3. Are there better solution to achieve what I want to achieve?
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1.Yes it possible,its only over kill in that you would be having excessive rad space for your components,but that is the simplest method to have a extremely quiet WC rig allowing you to run very low speed fans.


I run my rig on with a D5 and 360+240mm rads using Noctua F12's.At desktop/general use i run the fans at 350rpm(so silent) and ramp them up to 700/800rpm during gaming,at these speeds the fans are still barely audible.

With this setup the loudest part of the PC is regular HDD's when they are accessing data.They key thing is getting fans that can run a very low rpms and having a way to easily control them ;)

Pump noise wont be an issue if you get a D5
 
Thanks for the input.

I had chosen watercooling parts. I was planning on using a D5 pump, would the PWM version be quieter?

I was planning on getting the non PWM version and running it at a set speed, thinking that the noise would be so low that it wouldn't make much difference.

Also how do people usually control fan speeds for water cooling loops with a GPU? There must be a fair few applications that use a lot of GPU power but not CPU power. What's the norm?

I guess I would just attach one rad's fans to the GPU fan header, hopefully it's a 4-pin one.
 
I have a set up like that. I use a 3x180mm rad. The fans are controlled by the motherboard and only ramp up once the CPU gets past 60 degrees. I don't really worry about the GPU the hottest it ever got was around the high 60's in the summer.

Kind of pointless for me in the end because I can now hear the whine. ATM keyboard, PSU and GPU have it.

D5 is audible but just barely. I only notice it at night time when there's no traffic.
 
Just noticed you would be recording, depends on how well your room is ventilated as well.

Another solution would be to have the computer in another room.
 
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It's definitely possible, I used to run distributed computing projects (which generate a lot of heat) on a Q6600 and 260 passively watercooled. I had quick release couplings on the back of the case and ran the tubing out to a Phobya extreme nova 1080 radiator which was horizontally mounted about a foot off the ground, to allow airflow.
 
My living situation is too temporary to make a loop that goes into another room. Also it's a 1 bed flat so it can only go into the bathroom or kitchen, meaning I wouldn't be able to close those doors.
 
just get pwm fans and run them at the slowest speed like EK vardars. 25% fan speed and its inaudible. you will breath far louder than the noise the fans make. i literally cannot hear mine at that speed even with my head in the case. even at 50% my sp120s are barely audible.

fans on slow speed and quiet pump and then you have a nice quiet rig. Run the fans into a pwm splitter and then into the CPU OPT header and control manually via cpu temperature to keep them at a slow speed or increase them with temperature if you so wish.
 
Another option is use a larger external rad with low rpm fans.

I use a 560 rad(L x W x H): 620x145x60mm + 4x140mm fans 1000rpm cooling a 4930K:4.4GHZ + SLi 670.
 
and another alternative is to use your swimming pool to cool your computer instead :)

no seriously - have a google, there are mad people out there who actually put the water from their pool through the rads to cool their systems!!

Nox
 
tyler_jrb said:
just get pwm fans and run them at the slowest speed like EK vardars. 25% fan speed and its inaudible. you will breath far louder than the noise the fans make. i literally cannot hear mine at that speed even with my head in the case. even at 50% my sp120s are barely audible.

fans on slow speed and quiet pump and then you have a nice quiet rig. Run the fans into a pwm splitter and then into the CPU OPT header and control manually via cpu temperature to keep them at a slow speed or increase them with temperature if you so wish.
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Mmm, fair enough. I guess I'll do this.

I don't mind a bit of noise whilst gaming, it's just immersion breaking when there's suddenly a silent bit in a game and you can just hear your fans whirring.

But for recording, silence is great. TBH even now my mechanical hard drive is by far the loudest thing in my case, the microphone doesn't really pick up the 3x fans which are spinning around 700rpm at idle.

I'll just have fans running at 300-700rpm idle and then 700rpm-1000rpm in games.

Is 2 rads still the way to go? I would have 6 fans instead of 3, so would be able to have lower speeds, but I guess the pump speed would have to increase.

nox_uk said:
and another alternative is to use your swimming pool to cool your computer instead :)

no seriously - have a google, there are mad people out there who actually put the water from their pool through the rads to cool their systems!!

Nox
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That is mad. Surely you'd get loads of gunk in your loop and have to have a powerful pump. Or use filters to remove the gunk and need an even more powerful pump. I guess not needing rads would decrease the restriction though.
 
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