Best way to achieve silence?

ViperVenom · 8 Jun 2014 at 16:48

Afternoon!

I've got pretty picky about fan noise/hearing my pc at all, I've got things pretty silent at the moment, for general usage, youtube/browsing (basically anything but gaming) you'd need to put your ear towards my case to tell its even on, I like this very much! its at the point where my 2tb hdd waking up is easily the most noticeable thing in day to day usage.

However, this HIS 7950 (which is meant to be one of the quieter ones?!), I let it idle at about 35-36% fan speed which is fine, can't really hear it but by about 47-48% it sticks out like a sore thumb and bugs me, it idles at a high temp anyway due to using 3 screens, mid 50's in winter, early 60s summer, not a great ambient room temp..

I toyed with swapping GPU's but that seems quite an expensive solution, so now I'm swaying towards trying a different case. I got this 700d a few years back with the intent of water cooling but its never happened and I'm generally fine with air which I know this isnt great for.

Any suggestions on a case solution? I considered something like a Fractal R4 to try and block the noise out but as my temps are already pretty poor this may just make things worse? So the alternative would be to get something with decent airflow, pack it out with some quiet fans and hopefully keep the card cool enough to not need to ramp up that high, I've got 4 Corsair AF120 quiet edition fans about I can use, but I'm not sure what my options are on decent airflow cases that I can still keep quiet, I don't care what temp things run at as long as I can't hear em!

Any ideas? price, I guess £100-150 tops

Space Monkey · 8 Jun 2014 at 19:05

I personally think that if you're happy with the case and fans in general, then I'd just get a decent 3rd party coolers for the GPU, will be less cost, and would really help temps and noise, just my opinion

katinacooker · 8 Jun 2014 at 19:17

The thing is, 'quiet' cases only really exist to make quiet components quieter, but a case will never make noisy components quiet. I have the same GPU as you, but i don't expect my H440 to make it quieter. Your best bet is as Space_Monkey said, get an aftermarket cooler.

almighty15 · 9 Jun 2014 at 06:18

Just buy an after market GPU cooler.

C64 · 9 Jun 2014 at 15:32

Is it a leaf blower style cooler ? if so those are known to be noisy cant stand them myself I'd neve rbuy a gpu that uses one.
Why not sell the 7950 and sidegrade / upgrade ? wouldn't have to lay out that much to get something like a secondhand 280x.

A new case isn't going to solve the noise it's the leaf blower.

ViperVenom · 11 Jun 2014 at 18:25

I see your points! I mean I know my GPU is "silent" to me providing it doesnt really pass 45% ish, I was hoping I could improve the cooling so it would never reach this point, if I stopped the fan at that speed I'd be having a bad time as I'm hitting late 80's now without much trouble in wildstar anyway.

Aftermarket cooler could be the way forward, I thought they only suited reference PCB's, I hadn't really looked into that path enough.

Or the side grade option, is appealing but I'd want to know up front that its going to solve my "problem" If dropping £250 on a card which guaranteed me silence (and obviously I wouldnt complain at a minor performance boost if it happened to have one..) I'd do it in a heartbeat. pesky leaf blower..

Thanks for the input! I'll have a look, wonder what 7950's sell for now..

ValiantUK91 · 11 Jun 2014 at 19:15

Use a headset so you cant hear the gpu just w.e game your playing

, or live mentioned above try a change in cards ive got a gigabyte windforce 280x and i can barely hear it can only hear it when its under aload of stress and the fans ramp up but then its very very quite

rene.agac · 11 Jun 2014 at 20:02

Get after market cooler (artic one?). I would if had same issue. But after owning ati 4870x2 i now have Gigabyte nvidia 670 and extremely happy with the upgade. Will only consider green cards for a while now. My Be Quiet! PSU is actually louder than the graphic card. Once Maxwell cards come out they should be very very efficient if you can wait.

katinacooker · 12 Jun 2014 at 15:48

ViperVenom said:
I see your points! I mean I know my GPU is "silent" to me providing it doesnt really pass 45% ish, I was hoping I could improve the cooling so it would never reach this point, if I stopped the fan at that speed I'd be having a bad time as I'm hitting late 80's now without much trouble in wildstar anyway.

Aftermarket cooler could be the way forward, I thought they only suited reference PCB's, I hadn't really looked into that path enough.

Or the side grade option, is appealing but I'd want to know up front that its going to solve my "problem" If dropping £250 on a card which guaranteed me silence (and obviously I wouldnt complain at a minor performance boost if it happened to have one..) I'd do it in a heartbeat. pesky leaf blower..

Thanks for the input! I'll have a look, wonder what 7950's sell for now..

If its the HIS 7950 IceQ 3Gb model it is a reference style card (according to EK waterblocks anyway)