Quiet cooling

[doyll]

OK, so I put the i7-3970X EE with the recommended Noctua NH-D14, an ASUS Rampage IV Extreme, 16GB or DDR3-1866 RAM, an EVGA nVIDIA GTX 680, 1 SSD and 4 HDDs in my old Cooler Master Cosmos 1000 case.

Idling the system on the BIOS, with the case open (both side panels removed) but no case fans running, the CPU temperature is 25C (ambient is 18C).
If I close the case but still run no case fans the temperature rises to 45C.
Running the case fans in a negative pressure configuration (bottom intake, top and rear exhaust) the temperature lowers to 38C.
Running the case fans in a positive pressure configuration (botton and top intake, rear exhaust) the temperature lowers to 34C.

Are these temps normal?

The problem is that running the 5 case fans the noise level is just too high. You were right, the Noctua NH-D14 cools very well while being quiet, but the effect is wasted due to the case and its fans.
The case fans are Noctua NF-S12B FLX with the normal 3-pin connectors, so they are no cheap noisy crap, but they do not modulate and are running at full all the time. I could buy PWM fans (4-pin) and hope the RIVE knows what to do with them, or is this a problem with the case and no matter what fans I put in it, it is going to be the same?

Thanks for your help.

FD

If your case is cooling properly you should only see a 3-6c maximum increase in CPU temp when you close up the case. My thought is your case is not flowing air like it should.

I run 3x TY-140 intake fans and no exhaust fans.. but my bottom intake vent and back exhaust vent have the grills cut out.. so does the PSU vent on the bottom.. and my case sets 50mm off of the floor to give the bottom vents/fans full unobstructed airflow. My HDD cage is moved back 10mm to help quiet down the airflow. Define R2 came with 120mm front fans and I've modified it for 140mm fans. All fans are PWM controlled by motherboard CPU fan PWM signal so they idle and speed up same as cooler fans.. Idle at 660rpm and full load is 950-1100rpm at about 50c on a stock i7 980 (53c on i7 920 @ 3.55GHZ). So you can see the fans are not near full speed and everything is nice and cool. The difference between having the front open and closed is 3-4c at full load. I see maybe 2-3c difference with or without side cover on case. This data is within +/-2c with Silver Arrow, Silver Arrow SB-E and PH-TC14PE coolers.. all using TY-143 fans. (fans could be any of the TY-14x series; TY-140/143147. All perform the same. Although I have not used the TY-141/145 fans I'm sure they would give same results.