How silent is a silent case?

craig_t

craig_t

craig_t

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I wonder if am expecting too much here, so thought I would pose the question. Is a 'silent' case, meant to be well silent? I have seen Dell/HP PC's from the shop which run silent and occasionally a little fan noise if it gets warm, not for very long either.

I have a corsair 800D, Dual rad at the top with two Be Quiet Shaddow Wings 120mm, a 140mm pointing to the hot swap bays, a 140 under the bottom part near PSU. No other fans, CPU and GPU are W/C.

Is it my PSU that I hear? It is a Seasonic M12 750W I think, it has one big fan and a small 40mm that runs if it gets hot. I've tried putting my head 'in the case' but I can't work it out. Regardless of that though, I can quite easily hear that the PC is on.. Is this right? I may as well use a big fan CPU cooler and the stock GPU fans, if I can hear it?
 
Are you controlling fan speeds? For me when my fans are around 500RPM (I have a cheapish PSU and D5 pump + 4 fans) the PC is very near silent.
 
Teuton said:
Are you controlling fan speeds? For me when my fans are around 500RPM (I have a cheapish PSU and D5 pump + 4 fans) the PC is very near silent.
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Motherboard controls them, they run 500rpm ish.

billysielu said:
Turn off the fans and see what difference it makes.
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I did that, and could hear noise but then wondered if it was my water pump as it's beside the PSU.

Are PSU's 'silent'? Mines old now, may need a new one?
 
Well my fans are one of the most expensive out there and showed as one of the lowest DB on stats. Maybe I will look at a new PSU and see what difference it makes.
 
You need to isolate all sources of noise. The case is silent, fans are noisy ;)

You should be able to see/hear the fan in the PSU if it's spinning, other than that your noise sources will be hard drive(s) and pump.

My 1 mechanical drive is louder than all my fans when spinning at low rpm.
 
PSUs can be noisy, I have replaced all mine for semi passive psus. The psus I have don't spin up till the power draw is over 500w so they are basically passive all the time. You can also get a lot of noise from the pump if its not decoupled and running at full speed. As suggested above turn off your fans for 30 seconds and source where the noise is coming from. I would also make sure if you have any mech hdds that they are set to power down whilst you do the test as they can add a fair bit of noise/vibration.
 
Scottland said:
You need to isolate all sources of noise. The case is silent, fans are noisy ;)

You should be able to see/hear the fan in the PSU if it's spinning, other than that your noise sources will be hard drive(s) and pump.

My 1 mechanical drive is louder than all my fans when spinning at low rpm.
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haha beat me to it.
 
Although my signature says otherwise, I don't have any and only have 3 SSD's in now. My pump is 'suspended' two tubes going through the bottom rubber grommets and the pump is in the air so it can't vibrate onto the case.

I'll check but think it will be the PSU. I will look into these semi passive PSU's as mentioned above.
 
I've had similar problems in the past and it turned out to be one on of the hard drives vibrating that I could hear. Bit of isolation with neoprene pads cured it.
 
Most of the 'modern' semi passive PSU's will not kick the fan in until it hits a certain load (About 60% usually).

What's also worth noting is that some of them have a physical switch to turn the fanless mode on/off.
 
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