Quietest 120mm fans

chroniclard said:
Yes and no.

The quote was "And noctuas at full pelt are loud." which is just not true(for the ones I have at least).
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They are.

I've had two NF-B9, two NF-P12, one NF-P12 PWM, one NF-F12, one NF-P14 and one NF-P14r redux. I used to really like noctua stuff.

I had to run all of them using either the ultra low noise adapters, 50% PWM or 7V. By my standards they were too loud at anything but this.

Some people are fine with them at 100%. I wasn't.
 
Disco_P said:
They are.

I've had two NF-B9, two NF-P12, one NF-P12 PWM, one NF-F12, one NF-P14 and one NF-P14r redux. I used to really like noctua stuff.

I had to run all of them using either the ultra low noise adapters, 50% PWM or 7V. By my standards they were too loud at anything but this.

Some people are fine with them at 100%. I wasn't.
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Same for me when i had Noctua. Just got hold of 2 off of a friend so be interesting if i still feel the same as i used to with them. Awesome fans.
 
Disco_P said:
Brilliant explanation.
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Cheers :)

chroniclard said:
Yes and no.

The quote was "And noctuas at full pelt are loud." which is just not true(for the ones I have at least).
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But personally I would say it is true - but thats the point, there are several personal factors which determine if the fans are 'loud' or not, and the noise floor of the listening environment is one of them and often the most overlooked aspect.

Now I should clarify. I do think Noctuas are very good fans, certainly some of the best on the market. I'm not saying they are loud because they're bad, I'm saying they're loud because a 120/140mm fan spinning at 1200RPM is simply just loud no matter who makes it (largely due to air noise). The Noctuas probably are a few dB better than cheaper fans and that's worth it to me, but there is no escape from the noise of a fan spinning at those speeds. I would say that any fan that notability increases the background noise of the room is loud to me, and that happens even with Noctuas are full speeds. If I turn all my fans up to full speed (1200RPM) I can push the noise levels up by 15dB (to 36dB) - that's a 300% increase in noise. Now, to most people 36dB isn't super loud (and is quieter than most GPUs while gaming for example), but a 15dB increase certainly is certainly obtrusive once you hear the room without it.

It's all personal preference and environmental factors at the end of the day. If you find them okay then that's certainly fine, but to me I do find them 'loud' (obtrusive) at full speed, even if they are the best around. Unfortunately nothing beats running a fan at super low RPM for noise :)

Just for the nostalgia kick. I used to run a system with 5 Delta EHE fans in it around 12-13 years ago. Truly, no one has experienced a LOUD fan till they've heard one (or five!) of those things. They are monsters. They are rated at over twice the noise level of a Noctua industrial 3000RPM fan - 54.5dB. Talk about a jet engine :eek:
 
There are some really well thought out 120mm fan reviews here, plus 140mm and a load of other useful pieces of info when it comes to cooling your pc quietly:

http://www.silentpcreview.com/

The reviews don't just look at noise and CFM, but also noise quality and cooling ability. I've used these reviews to help me choose some fans for my Air 540 case (went with Noiseblocker Multiframe M12-S1s for the intake, and an eLoop B-14-2 for the exhaust, partly due to availability).
 
WYNIR0 said:
I find the Arctic 120 PWMs to be effective and quiet. Every Scythe fan I have is also excellent. The Nanoxia Deep silence fans are also good but get very rattly at full pelt.
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Yeah I have used the Arctic F12 non PWM, they are only a few quid and pretty quiet.
 
DarkBahamut said:
Cheers :)

It's all personal preference and environmental factors at the end of the day. If you find them okay then that's certainly fine, but to me I do find them 'loud' (obtrusive) at full speed, even if they are the best around. Unfortunately nothing beats running a fan at super low RPM for noise :)
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I run mine using the Asus Fan Xpert software, so all the fans are totally dynamic depending on how hot things are. You have complete control of all fan profiles, and can adjust them how you want, including whether they idle to stop or not. Right now, one is stopped, two are at 600rpm and one is at 230 rpm. Big fans that are slow and quiet in normal use, and ramp up gradually as and when they are needed are the way to go.
 
Steampunk said:
I run mine using the Asus Fan Xpert software, so all the fans are totally dynamic depending on how hot things are. You have complete control of all fan profiles, and can adjust them how you want, including whether they idle to stop or not. Right now, one is stopped, two are at 600rpm and one is at 230 rpm. Big fans that are slow and quiet in normal use, and ramp up gradually as and when they are needed are the way to go.
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I tried fan xpert. Once.

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I now use grid+ v2. 9 fans spin at around 600rpm and ramp up to around 1000rpm under load.
 
Things that make noise:

- Fan bearings.
- Vibrations from spinning fan.
- Air moving through fan.
- Air moving through mesh, grille, filter, radiator, HDD cage, or even big empty case hole.
- Air moving around internal components (w/c tubes, wires, cables, GPU, mobo components).
- Air bouncing around inside case.
- Air bouncing off other airflows from other fans.
- Side panels vibrating.
- Various 'quiet' noises all combining (imagine one person talking softly, versus fifty people doing it at the same time).

For the record, the quietest I ever had were Corsair Quiet Editions, but they were fairly crap at cooling.
My personal best balance for low noise vs high performance are still the Noctuas on a fan controller (because my mood and thus noise tolerance can change) without the LNA (because I have the fan controller).

But really it comes down to trying them out in your particular setup and against your personal measure of what is/isn't noisy and to science the **** out of that would be more of a mission than it's worth! :)
 
Disco_P said:
I now use grid+ v2. 9 fans spin at around 600rpm and ramp up to around 1000rpm under load.
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Disco, how do you find the Grid+? Is it worth the money? I am specifically wondering how stable and "bloaty" the software is.

Looking for something to control five 140mm fans (3 x intake, 2 x rad) and maybe an 80mm chipset fan also... but I want them set up to be inaudible during browsing / office work, but ramping up to be nice and effective when gaming (with headphones!).

Cheers,

Su

[edit] Alternative to the Grid+ would be something cheap like this:

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Noctua NF-F12s are awesome.

Scythe Gentle Typhoons too (but they can be harder to get now).

Noiseblocker eLoops have a great reputation too.
 
Steampunk said:
Looks like you're using an older version than I am. I've never had any problems with it.

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Unfortunately I am using a Z77 Sabertooth. Thermal radar couldn't properly detect CPU temperature and only let me set a minimum fan speed of 40% which was too loud. There was no fan xpert for the board so you had to download it for another board and pray that it worked.

Sumanji said:
Disco, how do you find the Grid+? Is it worth the money? I am specifically wondering how stable and "bloaty" the software is.

Looking for something to control five 140mm fans (3 x intake, 2 x rad) and maybe an 80mm chipset fan also... but I want them set up to be inaudible during browsing / office work, but ramping up to be nice and effective when gaming (with headphones!).

Cheers,

Su
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The Grid+ V2 (make sure to get V2 for individual fan control) is bloomin amazing.

Software has never crashed is fairly decent for monitoring lots of stuff. It's still being improved too. Uses about 100MB of RAM and between 1-3% of my 4.5Ghz 2550K.
 
My only gripe with the Asus software is that is doesn't briefly run the fans at 12v before going to the required voltage on boot, which causes one of my CPU fans to not spin sometimes as my set speed is under the reliable starting voltage, but it runs fine at it as long as it starts. Means the temps have to rise before it gets going or I have to manually start it myself. My board is fairly old (Z68) so this might be better in newer versions of Ai Suite, but I can't use those.

My board also doesn't support control of 3 pin CPU fans, but I got a 3pin to PWM converter off here which did the trick.

Temps idle: CPU ~31C (one fan not running) / GPU 38C (Both fans off)

Temps gaming: CPU: 45-48C (CPU/case fans 850 RPM) / GPU 68-72C (GPU fans 1000 RPM)


Ai suite 2 really isn't much to look at compared to the new versions..

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DarkBahamut said:
My only gripe with the Asus software is that is doesn't briefly run the fans at 12v before going to the required voltage on boot, which causes one of my CPU fans to not spin sometimes as my set speed is under the reliable starting voltage, but it runs fine at it as long as it starts. Means the temps have to rise before it gets going or I have to manually start it myself. My board is fairly old (Z68) so this might be better in newer versions of Ai Suite, but I can't use those.
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It is better in AI Suite 3 (I am using a Z87 board). You profile the fans first, tell the software where they are mounted, and then it knows what they are doing and how much voltage they need as they ramp.

If you look to the right of the individual fan view, you can see my board knows at what point a fan spins and when it doesn't. The red zero reading at under 20 percent fan power shows the CPU fan doesn't spin up, and the software knows that.
 
DarkBahamut said:
They are, you just find them not to be due to various reasons.

This is the whole problem with fan recommendations. Noise is so subjectively perceived that any recommendation is basically 100% worthless.

Someone will say a fan is 'silent' at >1000RPM, when in practice that is basically impossible. But maybe they have a room with higher ambient noise, or maybe they have worse hearing, or maybe they just don't can't about noise that much?

It's such a minefield that without full detailed analysis of noise level and noise quality (frequency spectrum) all these comments put you in no better position at all. The only way to really get low noise is to set a fan to as low a RPM as you can get away with. Someone mentioned <800RPM, but even that is too fast if you really want really low noise. My 2 Noctua's are definitely audible at ~800RPM. Personally all mine run at 550-570RPM during idle and only increase while gaming (To around 700-900RPM depending on load).

This should be given some perspective. The room my PC is in is currently showing a noise level of ~20dB with the PC running. By all accounts an extremely quiet room. Some people could easily have a room 10dB+ higher than this even with a PC off during the day (this room increases to 24dB during the day). That 10dB would buy you a lot of room for a fan to sound 'silent' to one person, but be actually loud to someone like me.
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Spot on, and is why I went for a totally passive system under idle/low load, the only time they ramp up is during gaming and even then they don't get anywhere near their 900RPM max speed.

I went with silent PC reviews old 120mm reference fan, the Nexus 120mm which cost me the grand sum of £12 for 3. I also have some Arctic F12s here to try and some other cheap £3 fans which no doubt offer similar performance. I wouldn't fork out £15/16/17 for Noctuas or the like these days.
 
I went from £15+ Noctua fans to £3 Arctic cooling fans and found they were about the same performance at the same noise level. Then went to £4 Silverstone/OcUK fans and knocked a couple of C off at the same noise level.
 
Disco_P said:
I went from £15+ Noctua fans to £3 Arctic cooling fans and found they were about the same performance at the same noise level. Then went to £4 Silverstone/OcUK fans and knocked a couple of C off at the same noise level.
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Link to those fans? Were they quiet?
 
Just changed my case to a corsair vengeance c70 from a cm enforcer. went for cm sickle flow 120mm fans all round (6 in total) because Ive used them before. only been fired up for 2 hours now looking for new ones. very loud especially the two on the window.
 
fozza_99 said:
Just changed my case to a corsair vengeance c70 from a cm enforcer. went for cm sickle flow 120mm fans all round (6 in total) because Ive used them before. only been fired up for 2 hours now looking for new ones. very loud especially the two on the window.
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as a test try moving the fan a couple cm back from the window while its running and see if there's a massive difference. I found that some fans make horrible noise pulling air through it, for instance one of those corsair fans designed for rads/restricted airflow made an absolute racket. i fixed the problem by adding a couple foam fan filters in front of it. I'm sure i reduced the airflow greatly but i cant hear it now where as before it was making twice the noise of my ek vardar FF5-120's on my rad that were spinning at 2-3 times the speed.
 
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