Help on quietening Server/HTPC

Whiffle

Whiffle

Whiffle

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Joined
27 Jul 2009
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386
Hi there,

I would really grateful for some advice on making my server as quiet as possible.

I have have this case:

http://xsreviews.co.uk/reviews/cases/xigmatek-midgard-white-knight/

with the stock fan at the back. I replaced the front fan with one of these:

http://vr-zone.com/articles/140mm-golf-ball-fan-sharkoon-silent-eagle-800/9444.html

I have this PSU - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-146-AN (Antec Gamer 400W) with the fan pointing upwards at the bottom of the case.

and an i3-2105 with stock cooler. http://ark.intel.com/products/55448/Intel-Core-i3-2105-Processor-(3M-Cache-3_10-GHz).

I have an SSD, a 500GB laptop HDD and 2 x Samsung F4 2TB hard drives in there.

What I would really like is some advice on quietening things down as I am sure it can be much quieter.

The review of that case says that the stock fans are quite noisy, so I should perhaps swap that out. The PSU is meant to have a very quiet fan, so there is nothing wrong there.

Should I perhaps consider a different cooler - i.e. passive or an active one with a 120mm fan?

The other thing I was considering is an automatic fan controller.

Given this PC is only used to record and view videos and stream to other devices on the network (and given it only uses 5,400rpm drives) I was thinking of getting a controller that only lets the fans kick in at all when the temperature is high enough. As far as I can see, the fans will probably rarely be needed as the CPU is never really stressed.

Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks very much.
 
First thing you need to do is work out which items are making the bulk of the noise.

There are a couple of ways to do this.

1) Stop each noise creating item and see what difference it makes.

2) Stop everything and introduce one item at a time to listen to what noise it makes.

From what you've posted I'd investigate that rear stock fan and the stock cooler. Intel stock coolers are small and adequate for use but I'd expect not particularly quiet with a small fast spinning fan. Better to get yourself a cheapish 120mm tower type cooler and have the installed (or replacement) fan running at super low speed via a resistor cable or controller (maybe 600 rpm or so). It's not likely that your i3 will cause too many problems for a larger cooler and most of them will just spin too fast at stock speeds for you.

The PSU might also be a noise maker. Anything with a 'Gamer' title is unlikely to made for silence and while it may not be overly noisy in a gaming rig it will be in a quiet rig/HTPC where there's no blower fan graphics card and 7200 rpm spinners.

Your hard drives may be sending vibrations through the case but it's less likely than if you had 7200 rpm drives. Saying that though I did find my 5400 rpm Green WD drive noisier than I'd like so I suspended it using bungee cord.
 
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The main sources of noise are indeed very likely the stock fan in the case (those Sharkoon Silent Eagle's are pretty quiet) and the Intel stock cooler, when under load they tend to make quite a racket really, being such a small heatsink the fan has to work hard and it's a small fan spinning quite fast ...this is pretty well always a recipe for noise.

Does the machine have a separate graphics card? ...they can be a major source of noise too.

You could also be picking up some hard drive resonance through the case, this is easy enough to check for though, by disconnecting them leaving just the SSD.
 
For me it is my PSU that makes the most noise, though there is no way to reduce that to my mind, apart from buying a new PSU
 
linwelin said:
For me it is my PSU that makes the most noise, though there is no way to reduce that to my mind, apart from buying a new PSU
Click to expand...

You can always change the PSU fan for something more quiet running, at the expense of slightly warmer temperatures, your warranty and potentially a nasty electric shock if you don't know what you are doing and touch, or worse, lick a primary side capacitor.

There's always a way to make things like the PSU quieter. Many PSU fans are designed for worst case scenario of a hot case with no ventilation. If you have good airflow the PSU only has to vent it's own air and therefore having the fan blasting at 2,000rpm is not needed. That's what I found anyway.
 
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Hi,

Thanks so much for all that.

I am indeed using the CPU's onboard graphics for the HTPC.

I have turned off both case fans before and I can still hear bit of a drone, so it does look like either the PSU and/or stock cooler are overly loud.

That is a very good point about the PSU - "gamer" does imply that perhaps it is not going to be the quietest thing around. I have just read a review of the model I have and it says that the fan is whisper quiet. Furthermore, this server is hardly taxing the PSU, making it unlikey that the PSU is having to speed up its fan unnecessarily.

Has anyone out there perhaps had any experience of the Antec High Gamer series and their noise levels?

Ultimately, I am going to have to try and stop the fan on the PSU first and then try on the CPU. Both of these are going to be tricky to do - do you think it is a case of simply using a fingure just to stop the fan for a few seconds?
 
For the CPU fan you should get away with a finger but you might hurt it. I've used a cable tie to slow and stop difficult to reach fans. It's not ideal but shouldn't cause any damage and provided you shove it far enough in it will provide enough resistance to stop most fans.

If the fan in the PSU is like the 520w model, ie a 135mm 1700rpm Adda, then you would expect it to be fairly quiet at low power draw, maybe spinning at around 800, which is about comparable with a 120mm fan spinning at 1000 rpm.
 
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Tealc said:
For the CPU fan you should get away with a finger but you might hurt it. I've used a cable tie to slow and stop difficult to reach fans. It's not ideal but shouldn't cause any damage and provided you shove it far enough in it will provide enough resistance to stop most fans.
Click to expand...

Use a biro, there's no torque on the fans so should be fine.

I've replaced all the fans in my case with Akasa Vipers (including CPU) and installed a Gelid Tranquilo CPU cooler. The vipers are PWM so the motherboard spins the one on the CPU up and down as needed, the others are connected to a tiny little fan controller which is velcrowd inside the case and has 3 stock speeds plus a variable.

I also fitted a custom Arctic Cooling cooler to the GPU and use a slower 5400 RPM hard disk. Finally, there's a quite pricy Enermax Revolution PSU in there.

All of that is in a smallish Fortress 03 case, the main noise is from ocasional optical drive use.
 
Hi,

I did some messing around with the fans and it seems that the 140mm Sharkoon on the front and the PSU fan are virtually silent.

The stock case fan is noisy but the CPU is really quite noisy - compared to my old Athlon II x2 stock fan that I have another pc, it is noticeably louder (not sure if this is a common problem with intel coolers).

I checked my temperatures and they are unbelievably low -that case comes with a manual fan control that plugs into both case fans and I have it on the lowest setting. I am currently watching back a program on Mediaportal that I am currently recording and it is showing 23 and 26C on the two cores and the hard drive is hovering around 20C.

What I am thinking is to upgrade the stock case fan to something quieter, replace the stock cooler with something quieter and then adding an automatic fan controller that will control the fans depending on the temperature.

What would you guys recommend in terms of my options?
 
That looks like a great cooler - not too expensive either.

If would be great if I could indeed run it without a fan.

Budget-wise - I was hoping to spend no more than £100 on the cooler, the exhaust fan and the fan controller.

One quick question I think I need to get my head round at this stage is how, exactly, an automatic fan controller works.

I know that my motherboard is able to monitor CPU temperature, Hard Drive temperature and system temperature (as evidenced by Speedfan).

Is there any way that a hardware fan controller could lock into this information or are temperature probes on the end of wires the only the way to do this (i.e. are the motherboard sensors only available to software fan controllers)?

Also, although I would like to look at going passive for the CPU fan - if I were to use an active fan on the CPU, would I connect this to the hardware fan controller or should this particular fan always be left connected to the motherboard?
 
Automatic fan controllers usually work off their own temperature probes which you place in strategic places, normally in the airflow area of the fan that is being controlled.

Other alternatives is to use the PWM output of your CPU fan header to control all attached fans by using PWM splitters and 4 pin PWM fans.

As fr the CPU fan it is advantageous to have this controlled by the motherboard as if it were to experience a runaway temperature issue then the motherboard would sense it an adjust speed accordingly. Using a fan controller with probes that can't respond fully to the CPU temperature leaves you at risk of over heating, although to be fair it's not so likely with an i3 cooled by a tower cooler.

Oh and you will need to go for a bigger cooler for passive use.
 
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Right - I think, I am starting to understand now.

So, I could, as you say, connect a four pin splitter to the CPU header and then connect two case fans in addition to the CPU. I take it, therefore, that as the CPU gets hotter, all three fans would speed up and slow down.

Does this not have the disadvantage of, say, if you were copying a large amount of data between hard drives, but this was not CPU intensive, the fans would not be able to speed up to cool down the hotter hard drives?

I think I shall go with the first option - i.e. leave the CPU fan connected to the motherboard but have the other two fans being automatically controlled by the probes. Could you possibly suggest anything that might fit the bill?

I have read a few reviews of various models but they all seem to be a bit flawed - e.g. they are not fully automatic or in the case of this particular one http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BB-001-NX, it can actually make some fans more noisy.

With regards to the cooler - what sort of model would I be looking at for passive? I don't want to have to go too big, otherwise, I might just consider an active cooler with a big/slow fan on the top.

Thanks again.
 
I ran an e8400 with a Scythe Ninja completely passive. The 8400 has the same TDP as the i3 you linked to, so as long as airflow is OK in the case, that or something similar should be OK. The new Ninjas come with a PWM AND backpanel controlled fan. I'm using one on my i7-2600K (o/c to 4.3GHz) and have the back panel set to reduce the voltage as much as possible so it is effectively silent for most of the time. When the processor is ramped to 100% CPU, the PWM increases the fan speed as needed.
 
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