Water cooler needed, AIO cooler single 120 fan for Intel 1700 socket. I need a SILENT pump for a silent room and a silent computer.

Growltiger · 22 Sep 2023 at 11:56

This is all about silence, not about overclocking, powerful GPUs and running games. The computer cases are all of a silent design with low noise power supplies. There is no problem with using i7 processors in these cases, I've been doing this since the first i7s were made.

I just upgraded my wife's computer and it has just one problem. The Corsair H60 AIO cooler I have makes a noise. I don't care so much about fan noise, I expect a whoosh if the machine works hard. But this is a continuous whine/tone from the pump. It is quiet and I expect within its design spec, most people would ignore it, but I have good hearing and it is like having tinnitus. If I could attach a file I would let you listen to 10 seconds of it.

My computer, also in the same room, has an older similar cooler, bought from Overclockers in 2018, an Asetek 120mm 570LC, and its pump is truly silent. I have a second machine with the same cooler, also silent. I wrongly assumed that all these pumps were silent. I want to stick with water cooling, it has worked so well for me for the last 5 years.

I don't care about the lights, the computer cases have solid sides and top, so no light escapes.

So I want to buy an AIO cooler for an Intel 1700 socket with a single 120mm fan that has a silent pump. Cost is not an issue.
I've seen a brand called "be quiet" which might have a silent pump? but their only single fan products are preorder.
I need to fix this by the end of next week when she gets back!

All suggestions welcome.

snarloas1982 · 22 Sep 2023 at 13:06

Are you getting a I7 processor? i doubt any 120mm Aio's would be capable of keeping these cool. Unless you set max wattages/temps etc.

Growltiger · 22 Sep 2023 at 13:15

snarloas1982 said:
Are you getting a I7 processor? i doubt any 120mm Aio's would be capable of keeping these cool. Unless you set max wattages/temps etc.

Yes, all my machines are i7. I have two i7 machines using the Asetek 120 AIO running fine for 5 years. I am seeking silence not power.

snarloas1982 · 22 Sep 2023 at 13:35

12th/13th Gen i7's can pull some serious temps under load and especially on out of the box settings. i had the i9 on the 12th gen and now the 13th Gen. On out of the box seetings even my 360 aio would have throttled. i had to do some tweaking to get it running at a reasonable temperture.
Don't base these new gen processors to behave excatly like the older kit. You will also find posts on i7's in here with temp issues and running much better kit than a 120mm aio. You might get away with it for low usuage or maybe light gaming but i would expect a single fan to struggle. You might be better with a decent air cooler as you really need a bigger aio for i7's and i9's

Quartz · 22 Sep 2023 at 13:57

Growltiger said:
All suggestions welcome.

Air cooling will be quieter as there will be no pump noise. Take a look at the Noctua NH-P1, which can be run passively or semi-passively - if you have case fans you may not need a CPU fan.

Something you might consider is doing what I did: putting distance between the PC and the desk. I purchased 10m fibre-optic video cables and long USB cables. The prices for both are much cheaper than when I did it!

Growltiger · 22 Sep 2023 at 15:15

Quartz said:
Air cooling will be quieter as there will be no pump noise. Take a look at the Noctua NH-P1, which can be run passively or semi-passively - if you have case fans you may not need a CPU fan.

Something you might consider is doing what I did: putting distance between the PC and the desk. I purchased 10m fibre-optic video cables and long USB cables. The prices for both are much cheaper than when I did it!

What a weird cooler! I didn't know about that.

Thanks to you all.

Tetras · 22 Sep 2023 at 15:26

snarloas1982 said:
You might get away with it for low usage or maybe light gaming but i would expect a single fan to struggle.

Agreed, a 120mm AIO will never be sufficient for these CPUs, unless you massively power limit it (e.g. PL1 65, PL2 95).

Growltiger said:
I have a second machine with the same cooler, also silent. I wrongly assumed that all these pumps were silent. I want to stick with water cooling, it has worked so well for me for the last 5 years.

A lot of reviews will unfortunately only comment on fan noise.

You may be interested in the comments in this thread:

best performing AIO

I would recommend the Lian Li Galahad II Trinity Performance 360. And if you want RGB, there is a version for it also.

forums.overclockers.co.uk

Growltiger · 22 Sep 2023 at 15:37

Tetras said:
A lot of reviews will unfortunately only comment on fan noise.

You may be interested in the comments in this thread:

best performing AIO

I would recommend the Lian Li Galahad II Trinity Performance 360. And if you want RGB, there is a version for it also.

forums.overclockers.co.uk

An interesting thread, thanks.

Has anyone come across the "be quiet!" brand's Silent Loop 2? Their website has a lot about their low pump noise, which excites me...
https://www.bequiet.com/en/watercooler/silent-loop-2/2258
PS. Note that it has two fans.

Tetras · 22 Sep 2023 at 15:44

Growltiger said:
Has anyone come across the "be quiet!" brand's Silent Loop 2?

Anandtech reviewed it recently here, but I'm not sure if they mentioned the pump noise specifically.

Growltiger · 22 Sep 2023 at 16:30

Tetras said:
Anandtech reviewed it recently here, but I'm not sure if they mentioned the pump noise specifically.

The review was positive, followed by a funny argument about how quiet a quiet room is, even including mention of the sound of cicadas.
It also refers to my desire for quiet as a niche market, which may be true. The room I am in is completely silent, in the middle of nowhere, far away from any road or person. Since the computers are silent the only noises are the odd plane flying over, the sound of my keyboard and the miaow of my cat.
I have decided to buy that two fan 120mm "be quiet!" Silent Loop 2, and hope it gets rid of the annoying hum. I'm also hoping it will work better than the Corsair.

Tetras · 22 Sep 2023 at 16:38

Growltiger said:
The room I am in is completely silent, in the middle of nowhere, far away from any road or person. Since the computers are silent the only noises are the odd plane flying over, the sound of my keyboard and the miaow of my cat.

I've been down this road myself and with modern stuff, it is a real pain. Squealing motherboards, graphics cards, even noisy SSDs (which are supposed to be silent anywhere you care to read)

Growltiger · 23 Sep 2023 at 17:25

Final report. I took out the Corsair H60 and installed the Silent Loop 2, the 120 version with two fans, one each side of the radiator. Very easy to install.

I should have said before that this has a standard i7-13700. The case is a steel box with no openings except grids at the back for the fan and power supply, and an input fan at the front concealed behind a door. Like the black obelisk in the movie 2001. Totally unlike a gaming machine, it is not for gaming.

The good news is that it is definitely better at cooling. The idle CPU temperature sits at 31, whereas before it was 38.
When one does things like launching lots of programs the temperature jumps for only a moment before getting back to 31.
Running Prime 95 it hits 100 but only after nearly 3 minutes (previously one minute). At this point the fans are quite noisy, as it does its best.
This is fine for this machine, it is never used at 100% CPU or anything like it. As I explained at the start, no gaming, no overclocking.

The bad news is that although it is very quiet, I can still just hear a continuous tone from the pump if I listen at the back of the machine, it is not completely silent.
This will have to do.

Growltiger · 24 Sep 2023 at 21:04

Breakthrough! The tone is gone.
I have made the system silent, there is no longer any audible noise when the system is idle or doing normal sorts of work.
The documentation for the Silent Loop 2 mentions that the voltage, normally 12V, must not fall below 9V. I realised that I had not appreciated that this pump is intended to be controlled the same way as a DC fan.
(Are AIO pumps normally given profiles?)
So in the BIOS I created a profile for the pump ranging from 9V below 40C then climbing to 10.8V at 70C and 12V at 90C.
The moment I switched it to DC control and applied the profile the sound vanished.
After applying a conventional PWM profile to the radiator fans, and a DC profile to the old input front fan (in both cases keeping the minimum speed to about 700 at low CPU levels, all is quiet.

I did a final test using prime95 to test the limits. Setting it (small FFTs) to 8 tasks, that gave me a CPU utilisation of 84%, and the temperature stabilised in the range 88-90C which seems acceptable to me.

I think this demonstrates that one can run a 13th generation i7 with good performance and do it in silence.

jrwagh333 · 25 Sep 2023 at 06:34

Growltiger said:
Breakthrough!...

I think this demonstrates that one can run a 13th generation i7 with good performance and do it in silence.

Start a YouTube page

Spikey · 25 Sep 2023 at 11:30

Just grabbed an Artic Freezer II 360 ARGB and the pump is extremely quiet! Went from a Corsair H150i which was really noisy on anything other than the quiet setting. Artic was only £110 as well! Not sure if they do a single fan version.