Is everyone's PC (near) silent at idle?

[BeeP]

I remember my first few overclocked pc’s, that’s was a real thing. I have hi and low speed switch on on the front of my case and when gaming it had to be in high.

Back when I used to use the stock coolers that came with chips (early 2000's) then it really was quite a thing, I've pretty much always gamed with headphones on so it never really bothered me until my son came along and stole the spare room (my former man cave lol). Now the PC is in the bedroom with me I cant have a hovercraft in the corner.

 

[Mr Evil]

There's no real reason for a PC to make noise at idle unless it's something out of your control like pump noise/coil whine.

Almost all PCs will have at least one fan that doesn't stop at idle, so they are going to make some noise. The massive difference in cooling between truly passive airflow and even a really slow fan makes it usually not worth turning all the fans off.

 

[ATIorNvidia]

Almost all PCs will have at least one fan that doesn't stop at idle, so they are going to make some noise. The massive difference in cooling between truly passive airflow and even a really slow fan makes it usually not worth turning all the fans off.

I'm talking about perceptible noise. You can easily get away with running your fans at minimum speeds when idling, which for most decent fans will be somewhere between 200-500rpm... below the noise floor of even very quiet rooms.

 

[throwaway4372]

Mine isn't silent but it's pretty close, it's under the desk and I can't hear it unless I try. Same for idle or browsing, and in game the game audio covers any noise up.

 

[Mr Evil]

I'm talking about perceptible noise. You can easily get away with running your fans at minimum speeds when idling, which for most decent fans will be somewhere between 200-500rpm... below the noise floor of even very quiet rooms.

I guess it depends on where you live and your hearing, but I've never found a case fan that's completely inaudible at minimum speed, and I've tried a lot of 120 and 140mm fans. It's hard to say exacly how noisy the best ones are because it's close to the noise floor of my quietest microphone (20dB SPL).

 

[Wing-Man]

I’m running a case full of D30’ now and at around 500rpm they are silent to me and also in YouTuber testing(lol)

At load I have them running at about 1000rpm and under gaming sound, without headphones they can’t be heard.


my psu and zero fan. My GPU as zero fan and my cpu cooler as D30’s on it

 

[haaammit]

Yes - utterly silent. Custom loop for GPU & CPU. Fans at 31% power (655rpm) and pump at 50% (52lph). Fan curve is set to follow the Delta T of ambient temp/coolant temp. Hardly ever ramps up unless gaming for a long time, and even then, not by much.

 

[wookiee87]

Have custom fan curves setup at idle/browsing pc is very quiet 500-600rpm and when in games they spinup to around 1100rpm, you can tell when they do but it's very pleasant on the ears either idle or load.

Using noctua PCC 3000rpm industrial fans x 6 in a Corsair 3000d

 

[Dreadi]

My fans are always sitting at max rpm because I only ever game on my pc and I always wear headphones so why not keep it as cool as possible ? I can't hear it so I don't care if it sounds like a vacuum cleaner
But if I set cam to the silent profile then yea, wouldn't know it was on if it wasn't for the RGB

 

[smilertoo]

Mine is, fractal r7 case and all noctua fans where possible.

 

[pc-guy]

Yeah mine is silent enough on idle or light work load.

GPU doesn’t spin up, power supply is on silent. Fans spin at 600rpm which is practically silent D30 fans.

The AIO makes no noise.

The only time it gets noisy is during boot up and shut down and in game but I don’t hear the Pc as would be wearing headphone

 

[Zeebedy]

I recently changed the fan profile in the BIOS, holy hell its made my pc night and day. Sooo quiet now, idle and under load.

 

[Jay85]

dead silent, even the pumps are not audible. I sometimes miss the gentle hum of a fan spinning.

 

[Delta3D]

Power supply has zero fan mode at low load

I recently swapped out my motherboard and CPU and had a weird faint noise I could constantly hear going, thought it might be a fan but went through and stopped all 9 fans in my case/gpu/cpu cooler, still there. Gave up looking and put it down to maybe just some stupid noise coming from the motherboard like coil whine from GPU's used to sound like.

Reading your reply just switched a lightbulb on for me, I remembered I flicked the PSU switch from ECO to Standard. Flicked that back and it stopped. PSU fan! Back to a silent PC now...

 

[koolpc]

I remember when i used to mount the HDD on elastic bands in the case to stop the noise vibrating!! Air cooled system too and it was almost dead silent.

 

[PC777]

Very close to completely silent, eco mode PSU with fan not running almost all the time. GPU fanless mode till 59c.

ML120s and 140s, so no bearing noise from fans at all, at full blast 2000 rpm they're extremely loud, but at 500 or so rpm are as quiet as be quiet silent wings at same rpm that I use on my cpu cooler.

Had to stop using HDDs even for storage as they were by far noisiest part of my system, been using SSDs only for 5 years.

Some fan wont let you tune them to silence in bios due to having a minimum operational rpm, but you can use software like Argus system monitor to override that in software. I kept a Corsair AF 140 for that reason that normally has 700 rpm minimum and is loud, on startup Argus is set to switch it to 500rpm at which point you can barely hear anything.

Most all fans set at 500rpm or lower at idle will make for a very quiet to silent PC. I actually highly rate MLs for that purpose as there will never be any bearing noise from them at all and they're just as quiet as quiet designed fans at low rpms.

 

[Cyber-Mav]

Something up with YouTube or the adblocker im using which spikes single core use and temps causing fan noise these days

 

[vian_siu]

Not quite silent but all my fans are under 1000rpm. I can't hear it under the desk even on full load if my room is not completely slient.

 

[Murray]

I can only really hear mine if I listen closely and there isn't any background noise. Last time I remember hearing it was when a fan started rattling but replacing it was a quick fix.

 

[R3X]

Mines silent at full load