[Help] Cool and quiet

[badsyntax]

Recently I bought a CoolerMaster Seidon 120V. This was partially impulse and also because my existing Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 was getting past its best (despite a strip & clean).

The Seidon won't be staying. I can't seem to get it to stay quiet enough. I tried a custom fan profile but it's loud at 1100 RPM and under load it's downright nasty. It's not pure volume (whoosh), more a steady tone (whine).

So before I take it out I thought I'd order a replacement for the Freezer 13. Clearance wise it needs to sit on an ASUS P8 Z77-V board and keep an i3570K happy. The board also has 4x Corsair Vengeance (not LP) sticks in place.

I guess I'm looking to spend up to £40-45 on this. Temps were never a huge problem - noise levels are more important. I only run a single GPU (not overclocked) and I'm fairly light on the CPU overclocks too.

Any recommendations? I'm looking for actual usage and if anyone has replaced the Freezer 13 with something else then even better.

Thanks for any help with this.

Edit - forgot to say that I'm assuming that I'll be going back to air.

[herulach]

This is a couple of years old, but things haven't moved hugely in that time:
http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/coolin...-test/?page=12
What makes you think the freezer 13 has had it?

[badsyntax]

There's a noise - nice and vague I know. I'm probably only hearing it because I've heard it and now I'm sensitive to it. I started noticing it whilst watching videos because of the loud & quiet compared to listening to music.

It's a sort of intermittent washing noise. Not fully unbalanced but when I swapped GPU, PSU and cooler (for stock) I couldn't trigger it.

Thanks for the list. I'm going to give Scan a call in the morning and see what they suggest too.

[Jasp]

Having got the Dark Rock Adv and been using it for quite a while now it really is silent, loudest part of my build is the GPU. This rather large mind you and can interfere with the ram slots on smaller boards.

[dfour]

How about just replacing the fans with Corsair Air Series SP120 Quiet Edition as it sounds like it must be a fan issue with the freezer 13.

[MrJim]

So before I take it out I thought I'd order a replacement for the Freezer 13. Clearance wise it needs to sit on an ASUS P8 Z77-V board and keep an i3570K happy. The board also has 4x Corsair Vengeance (not LP) sticks in place.

I've got almost the same setup, except my RAM is LP. I use this cooler:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/therm...1-amd-am2-am2p

It's extremely quiet, & keeps my 3570K cool even at 4.5Ghz, but it is extremely big...it only just fits in my case, & obscures two of my RAM slots.

[Wolmack]

That's a nice looking cooler!

[Refious]

If you're not worried about the price, I would go for the latest Noctua NH-D15. It's the best air cooler at the moment in terms of cooling and noise. It's very cool and quiet and performs just as well as the AIO coolers like the Corsair H100i.

Another great thing is, unlike the previous cooling king Noctua NH-D14, it's redesigned to allow maximum RAM clearance so now even taller RAM will fit. Just make sure you have enough space in your case as this is a big cooler.