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Quietest 970?

HardwareGeek

HardwareGeek

HardwareGeek

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Joined
17 Oct 2010
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1,073
Looking to do as silent a build as poss and want to ask you guys which way to go 970 wise.

i know asus and msi have a fanless mode at idle, do any others? maybe evga?

Also worried about coil whine so looking at the galaxy infinity black but afaik this just has a single fan mode not fanless, how much noise does this make?

Aiming for a sub 10db build when idle ideally worse case sub 20db

Thanks
 
For me I find the acoustics of reference 970 best. The Asus Strix, MSI gaming and Galax are all very quiet too. :)
 
Thanks for the reply, is there any chance of a fanless mode (maybe by bios update?) on the infinity black then it would be absolutely perfect? would be silent at idle and no coil whine.

leaning towards msi just for the fanless mode but worried about risk of coil whine

System is on 24/7 and in a bedroom so looking to spec everything to be silent at idle, so far evga 1200 plat, shouldn't even spin up at idle maybe even during gaming, noctua s12b 6db fans and reuse an existing dh-14 but maybe change fans or reduce speed/fan profile etc

Ps. room is air conditioned so not too worried about temps
 
ALEXAROTH said:
you can 'fake' the fanless idle mode in MSI afterburner by making a custom fan profile that keeps the fan at 0% for temps under your desired value
Click to expand...

I like the idea of a fanless idle mode - I run a quite PC also - cept my sapphire 7950 isnt exactly quite :)

when the sapphire isnt running in a game my system is fairly quite.
 
I'm not really bothed for pure silence but I don't hear my 970 (MSI) after hours of gaming over my case fans running at 800RPM!

I assume this goes for most 970s with similar design such as the Asus, Galax etc.

Even though the Galax fans don't go to 0db I believe when idle below a certain temp only 1 out of 2 fans spins at a virtually silent RPM.
 
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0 RPM fans is stupid. Why keep you GPU at 50-60 degrees just to shave off 2-3 db, probably less? The two fans on the MSI 970 make no sound when spinning at 500-700 RPM, and setting the fan profile at minimum of 500 rpm keeps the temp down to 25-26 in idle for me. That is tremendously better than keeping it at 50-60 degrees constantly.
 
ALEXAROTH said:
0 RPM fans is stupid. Why keep you GPU at 50-60 degrees just to shave off 2-3 db, probably less? The two fans on the MSI 970 make no sound when spinning at 500-700 RPM, and setting the fan profile at minimum of 500 rpm keeps the temp down to 25-26 in idle for me. That is tremendously better than keeping it at 50-60 degrees constantly.
Click to expand...

This is why the Galax keeps one fan spinning and is not audible to my hearing. :)
 
I have Gainward GTX 970, MSI GTX 970 Gaming 4G, Asus GTX 970 Strix, Zotac GTX 970 and Palit GTX 970 Jetstream. The Palit card is easily the quietest of them all since the fans doesn't spin untill 68°c is reached... and even them it's more quiet than the MSI card when the fans start spinning.
 
Gripen90 said:
I have Gainward GTX 970, MSI GTX 970 Gaming 4G, Asus GTX 970 Strix, Zotac GTX 970 and Palit GTX 970 Jetstream. The Palit card is easily the quietest of them all since the fans doesn't spin untill 68°c is reached... and even them it's more quiet than the MSI card when the fans start spinning.
Click to expand...

Hows the strix comapred to the others you have?
 
djxput said:
Hows the strix comapred to the others you have?
Click to expand...

It's my least favourite of the bunch. Mine has buzzing noise (not real coilwhine), and while it's silent when the fans aren't spinning then it's definitely noisier than my MSI cards when spinning up. They make a whoosh sound which I think is quite noticeable. All in all I'm not really that fond of this card.
 
ALEXAROTH said:
0 RPM fans is stupid. Why keep you GPU at 50-60 degrees just to shave off 2-3 db, probably less? The two fans on the MSI 970 make no sound when spinning at 500-700 RPM, and setting the fan profile at minimum of 500 rpm keeps the temp down to 25-26 in idle for me. That is tremendously better than keeping it at 50-60 degrees constantly.
Click to expand...

No wear on the fans when they don't run. I had a GF4 4400TI at some point, and its fan eventually started making a horrible noise. Not easy to replace a fan on an old videocard without paying a price not worthy the card.

Quite happy to have the Strix sit at 0 rpm most of the time... But if you don't like that, it also takes custom profiles.
 
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