Fans?

DampDog

DampDog

DampDog

Soldato
Joined
19 Oct 2010
Posts
2,683
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North Staffs
Daft question of maybe not. Is it worth spending the extra money on buying quiet fans. My system is pretty old anyway and I've noticed (or imagined) it's a little bit louder than it used to be. All my fans are simply what came with the case.

Is it worth replacing them with quiet alternatives, or are the quiet versions not that much better than the cheaper alternatives?

Must it, it's something that I'd never thought of until I read a snippet the other day. Think I have 2X 140's & 2X 120's.
 
Fans can and do fail from time to time and depending on what case you have the fans that come with them tend to be of low quality.

New case fans will both improve air flow and noise levels in most cases, as you you want quiet I'd recommend Be Quiet! Silent Wings 3's as they offer a good balance of air moved and are virtually silent..

If it's just air flow you want, then I'd probably suggest Noctua fans as ugly as they are.
 
No issues with airflow, I'm not overclocked, so everything is nice and cool. it would just be nice if I could get it a little quieter.

It's not massively noisy anyway, just thought I's ask. Doesn't help that my system is up on my desk next to my left ear. Cheapest thing would be tuck it away behind the desk.

Cheers anyway...
 
Silly question, but do you keep the PC dusted out? That might be part of the problem.

Fans made to be quiet often achieve this by running slower, which means reduced performance. Of course there is the perfomance/noise balance factor and for that I would also recommend Noctua. They also come in dark grey/black nowadays, if caramel brown and fudge beige isn't a colour scheme to your taste.
However, other high performance fans may also deliver great cooling eprformance without needing to spin at full chat, thereby also delivering a quieter experience. For that, I would personally favour the Corsair ML120s.
 
ttaskmaster said:
Silly question, but do you keep the PC dusted out? That might be part of the problem.

Fans made to be quiet often achieve this by running slower, which means reduced performance. Of course there is the perfomance/noise balance factor and for that I would also recommend Noctua. They also come in dark grey/black nowadays, if caramel brown and fudge beige isn't a colour scheme to your taste.
However, other high performance fans may also deliver great cooling eprformance without needing to spin at full chat, thereby also delivering a quieter experience. For that, I would personally favour the Corsair ML120s.
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I've just updated my graphics card so took the opportunity to give everything a good clean, everything is shining like a new pin at the moment. I suspect it's just age, some of the fans must be 6-8 years old. I was simply curious rather than it being a big issue for me.
 
mrbazmondo said:
Keep an eyes out for the db rating and remember its not a straight scale. Stay away from the ones with a higher number if you want it to be quiet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decibel
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What marketroids stick to ads is mostly lies.
Only quaranteedly relevant thing in specs is rotation speed.

For similar design and size fans unless having bad resonating material or bad bearing/motor noise follows closely rotation speed and airflow.
And fancy design curiosities like some notches etc rarely improve acoustics.

Vibration is another noise source, because it makes parts of case to vibrate along with fan creating more noise.
Hard stepped bearing/motor of Noctuas at least up to NF-F serie is bad in that:
When fan doesn't rotate smoothly when you push it with finger stopping very jerkily how can it even rotate smoothly when in use?
Shows well in that very jerky stopping of fan:
Good for noise bearing/motor rotates smoothly to minimize vibration, instead of being vibrating roller.
 
I
tamzzy said:
the jump between a semi-good -> good -> great fan is often minimal (performance/sound-wise)
but cost on the otherhand...tends to increase exponentially.

for example bitfenix spectre (semi-good/good) vs noiseblocker eloop (great):
My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £61.84 (includes shipping: £9.90)
​
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Not think that's a directly fair comparison as you've compared case fans with PWM. But you're right, fans that are 90% as good as £20 fans can be had for a fiver.

Fan speed is the real factor, as mentioned. If you have PWM fans or a fan controller, your fans will slow down unless the system is under heavy load. I really like the Arctic F series PWM (F12 PWM is 12cm, F8 PWM is 8cm etc). Cheap, quiet, available in multipacks for a discount.

If you're as obsessed with noise as me, with a little bit of tweaking of case layout and fan temperature/speed curves, you can tune a system to go from silent to whisper. Whereas default settings often tend to ramp up and down distractingly.
 
LuckyBenski said:
I dunno, you seem like you're up for a fight?
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not really, seeing as we're both saying the exact same thing...
tamzzy said:
the jump between a semi-good -> good -> great fan is often minimal (performance/sound-wise)
but cost on the otherhand...tends to increase exponentially.
Click to expand...
LuckyBenski said:
But you're right, fans that are 90% as good as £20 fans can be had for a fiver.
Click to expand...

seems like you took issue with me comparing a pwm vs non-pwm fan, so i compared all non pwm fans and now i'm the one itching for a fight?
odd.
 
"Took issue with"

Attempted to have reasonable discussion with. Sorry for trying to add, like my opinion or some useful information to the discourse. Jeez.
 
It's good as far as I'm concerned peeps, all views, observations and opinions are welcome.

One thing I have noticed is that all of the fans in my system are mounted directly to the chassis. Do the little rubberised mounts help isolate the case from little resonances coming from the fans?

As I've said it's not really an issue for me, but if I can quieten things down cheaply I don't mind having a play around.
 
DampDog said:
Do the little rubberised mounts help isolate the case from little resonances coming from the fans?
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Personally, I didn't think it did.
I didn't hear any change by using the screws or rubber grommets. But I do have my fans screwed down pretty tight.
 
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