Reducing PC Noise

[thermique]

Hi, guys in my current state PC is not overly noisy, but certainly annoying, so im looking to reduce it.
At present i have a P4 2.8C Northwood, with stock cooler, a Lian Li PC65 with the 4 stock fans (ADDA or some other brand), and a Hercules 9800SE AIW with stock fan. Hence i am looking for

1. A S478 cooler
2. 4 80mm fans
3. A graphics cooler.

The third is not as important as the first two. For me noise is more important than performance as none of my components are overclocked. For the cpu cooler i was considering a Scythe Ninja, but am open to any suggestions you guys may have.

Thanks

[NightshadowUK]

CPU cooler - Scythe Ninja

80mm case fans - Sharkoon 2000s

GFX cooler - Zalman VF700-CU

Enjoy the near silence.

[Biscuit]

80mm case fans - Sharkoon 2000s

If your gunna get the 2000rpm fans i would go with a controller as 36dB is not that quiet. The fan controller could aslo control the graphics card fan (i think).
with a controller you can crank it up when in games or doing rendering etc and have it low when browsing the web etc. Or you could just find a suitable medium

[thermique]

Dont really do as much heaving vid rendering or game playing as i used to, in fact almost none, so id prefer to avoid a fan controller. Id heard good things about Noctua and nexus fans, are they worth the extra money? Alternatively Akasa Ambers are 4pin so i could 7v mod some of those.

[NightshadowUK]

The 80mm Sharkoon 2000s are rated at 17.8dB, you're thinking of the 120mm ones Biscuit.

You won't need a fan controller they're as good as silent and kick around a nice amount of air.

[amjedm]

CPU cooler - Scythe Ninja

80mm case fans - Sharkoon 2000s

GFX cooler - Zalman VF700-CU

Enjoy the near silence.

I'm with NightshadowUK on the recommendations, however

I would recommend a fan controller to use with the existing fans. If you feel they're not quiet enough then swap them.

Dont really do as much heaving vid rendering or game playing as i used to, in fact almost none, so id prefer to avoid a fan controller. Id heard good things about Noctua and nexus fans, are they worth the extra money? Alternatively Akasa Ambers are 4pin so i could 7v mod some of those.

Noctua and Nexus fans are good but there is something about the Noctua - because of the design the back pressure or cooling ability isn't as good as some other fans.

I would avoid the Akasa Ambers - they're not in the same league as Nexus, Sharkoon, Noctua, Yate Loon etc.

[Biscuit]

The 80mm Sharkoon 2000s are rated at 17.8dB, you're thinking of the 120mm ones Biscuit.

You won't need a fan controller they're as good as silent and kick around a nice amount of air.

oh yeah so they are sorry

[thermique]

Thanks for the advice guys, the Sharkoons look good and stack up well to the Nexus, how do the Sharkoon Silent Eagle 1000's compare? Also im not sure the zalman fits AIW cards.

Edit Specs for the 1000 seem a little poor 11CFM, and 8.9Db seems optimistic.

[NightshadowUK]

Yeah don't bother with the 80mm Sharkoon 1000s, they be useless.

And you're right it'd seem the VF700 doesn't fit onto the AIW 9800Pros... maybe try something like the Vantec Iceberq 4?

[thermique]

The Arctic VGA Silencer Original (Rev 3) looks my best bet, but very hard to find.

[amjedm]

Thanks for the advice guys, the Sharkoons look good and stack up well to the Nexus, how do the Sharkoon Silent Eagle 1000's compare? Also im not sure the zalman fits AIW cards.

Edit Specs for the 1000 seem a little poor 11CFM, and 8.9Db seems optimistic.

I have one of those 80mm 1000 Sharkoons. As you've guessed it doesn't push much air but is very quiet

I have it pointing at the cooler of a fanless Radeon X550 graphics card.

[thermique]

^ Thanks for the advice, i think given that im replacing all 4 of my system fans the 2000 provides a good noise/performance balance, whereas with a fanless graphics card you can get away with the 1000.

[thermique]

Also how would the Zalman CNPS7000A-Cu compare to the Ninja, in terms of noise?

[jimbouk]

Do you really need 4 80mm fans? If your temperatures are ok maybe switch off/get rid of a couple - less noise the cheap and easy way!

[djphatic]

resonance/vibrations may be causing some noise on the side panels, best way to get rid of it is to use blu-tack.

Feel the side panels and locate where the vibrations are coming from, on my Akasa Eclipse the motherboard tray was vibrating a bit, sticking some blu-tack in the gap stopped that.

You may want to consider soft mounting the case fans with rubber or decoupling the hard drives from the hard drive bay which is a little bit more work.

Hope this helps

[frazered]

Also how would the Zalman CNPS7000A-Cu compare to the Ninja, in terms of noise?

the zalman is a very good cooler and a hell of a lot easy to fit and more compatible with mainboards

the ninja can suffer from the sheer size - i could not fit it on my mainboard as it pushed some of the capacitors back...

go for the zalman, £15 is a great buy and you can turn it down to 1300rpm and it is silent...