More silent pc without buying new fans.

[Ulti]

I finally decided I'll go through with making my pc more "silent" by reducing the speed my fans spin at.

My case is a budget Casecom one (out of stock so the link is broken :/) and it has 3 slots for a fan. I have an Akasa 965 that spins quite loud but offers nice budget performance. For the 3 slots I have the normal blue 120mm fan that came with the case as a side intake (this spins really quietly so I'll leave it), a loud-ish Akasa red 120mm fan as a front intake and a Silverstone 92mm exhaust fan. As it's at the back of the case it doesn't seem that loud.

Should I get a fan adapter for £4.49 for simplicity or should I get a fan controller for £6.00 (not too sure how to use one though I presume it would just be linking wires together as usual lol)

Both have P&P included.

Also, is it worth switching from the Akasa 965 to the Arctic Cooling Freezer Pro7 Rev2 as I've heard they're really silent and offer roughly the same performance. I don't really wanna spend much above £20 on all this so yeah...

Lastly, I'm going to be slowing down the intake fan as that's the noisiest but if I ALSO slow down the exhaust fan will it make that much of a difference to my temperatures?

Thanks per usual!

[Zhaoman]

There's only one way to find out I guess! Depending on how fast they are spinning at the moment it could make a big difference or no difference at all. If your fans are already spinning slow then slowing them down further will affect temperatures a lot. If they are very fast then it won't. If I were you I'd go for the fan controller it seems like good enough value for money.

[Pob255]

To start with, check which fan/fans are giveing you the biggest issues.
http://tv.hexus.net/show/2008/11/Pac...e_s_the_noise/
A very handy guide

I take it this is the cooler you have
http://www.akasa.co.uk/update.php?tp...r&model=AK-965
If so is quiet fan turned on in the BIOS? (the PWM mode) if not it's running at full speed all the time, swapping it for a ACf7p will have no effect as that would also run at full speed without PWM mode on and it will be just as noisey.

How wide is your case?

[BUFF]

thought of running your fans at 7V instead of 12V?

[Ulti]

My case is roughly 180mm wide and possible 160mm from the Mobo to the side of the case.

My Akasa 965 is set to 12.5% and to spin up to 100% after 55 degrees celcius. The one you linked is the one I have.

I remember doing a similar thing to that video and IIRC then the order of loudness when my pc is idle is:
1. Akasa 120mm intake fan
2. Silverstone 92mm exhaust fan I think.
3. 8600GT fan.
4. Akasa 965 @ 12.5%
5. HDD/PSU fan/Side intake fan

At load Akasa 965 and the 120mm intake one is pretty much all I can hear. (EDIT: I mean that they're so loud I can't hear anything else. I can't blame the Akasa 120mm intake though as it's around 30-50cm from my ear)

[Pob255]

You couldn't mesaure from the top of the cpu to the side panle could you?

The reason is I've just got my self a very nice cheap cooler, I've not installed it yet to test it as that will require takeing out my motherboard to swap back plate.
(I've mainly got it because it's very cheap and fits socket 1156)
Coolermaster hyper 212 plus, £18 + free p&p from play.com
It's a 120mm fan based tower cooler, 4 direct touch heat pipes and a nice looking & feeling 120mm pwm fan.
Again I've not tested the fan yet, but it feels decent, not cheap and flimisy and has blades shaped like the Akasa Apache.

Just measured it, the total height from cooler base to top of the heat pipes is 160mm, which is why I asked if you can measure from cpu to side panel.

If you can hear that akasa 965 when doing other things other than load tests then you're probably stuck, replaceing it with a different 92mm fan based cooler is not going to do much good as you'll just run into the same fan rev up under load.
And if your case is not wide enough to take a 120mm fan based tower cooler again you're stuck.

You could try a fan towards the cpu cooler instead of a tower cooler, or lower your overclock and drop that voltage a bit, that's probably going to have a decent impact on temps.

PS nice going on that overclock, I've been having a few voltage issues with my msi p35 Neo2 when trying to get past 3.2ghz and stable on my e6600
I've been getting some major voltage droop.

EDIT: here's an idea for you, that akasa fan probably came with an adaptor to run it off a molex, I know the akasa adaptors, it's pritty easy to swap the pins on it (you can use the tube from a ballpoint pen to get the pins out)
Try swapping the pins over to 5v then see what your front fan is like on that.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

How about wearing some ear plugs??!!

[Ulti]

You couldn't mesaure from the top of the cpu to the side panle could you?

The reason is I've just got my self a very nice cheap cooler, I've not installed it yet to test it as that will require takeing out my motherboard to swap back plate.
(I've mainly got it because it's very cheap and fits socket 1156)
Coolermaster hyper 212 plus, £18 + free p&p from play.com
It's a 120mm fan based tower cooler, 4 direct touch heat pipes and a nice looking & feeling 120mm pwm fan.
Again I've not tested the fan yet, but it feels decent, not cheap and flimisy and has blades shaped like the Akasa Apache.

Just measured it, the total height from cooler base to top of the heat pipes is 160mm, which is why I asked if you can measure from cpu to side panel.

That looked like a bargain but unfortunately it's out of stock. Also, I just went and measured and i've only got about 142mm damn it :/

If you can hear that akasa 965 when doing other things other than load tests then you're probably stuck, replaceing it with a different 92mm fan based cooler is not going to do much good as you'll just run into the same fan rev up under load.
And if your case is not wide enough to take a 120mm fan based tower cooler again you're stuck.

You could try a fan towards the cpu cooler instead of a tower cooler, or lower your overclock and drop that voltage a bit, that's probably going to have a decent impact on temps.

Well when idle I can't really hear it as it's only spinning at 12.5%. Encoding doesn't really push it above 55 degrees celcius either (that's when it spins to 100%) Not sure about gaming as usually I'm talking to people when I play games so I forget about stuff like that xD Watching films etc doesn't push it above 55 degrees either. I thought that the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro was really quiet though? I've got a Arctic Cooling Alpine Pro 7 and that's really quiet but it's not very good in terms of thermal performance (I only tested it once though and maybe I didn't seat it properly or something)

PS nice going on that overclock, I've been having a few voltage issues with my msi p35 Neo2 when trying to get past 3.2ghz and stable on my e6600
I've been getting some major voltage droop.

Yeah my voltage does vary from about 1.368v to 1.400v which is rather annoying. However when I run IBT it stays on 1.392v. Not sure how the E6600 OC so I can't really comment. It takes around 1.42v to be stable at 3.6ghz for me though so I just left it at 3.5ghz.

EDIT: here's an idea for you, that akasa fan probably came with an adaptor to run it off a molex, I know the akasa adaptors, it's pritty easy to swap the pins on it (you can use the tube from a ballpoint pen to get the pins out)
Try swapping the pins over to 5v then see what your front fan is like on that.

Could you expand on this point a bit? I've got 2 of these adapter things but I forgot which one was from the Akasa fan. Also I'm not sure how to swap the pins over... Hope you can expand on this, thanks!

How about wearing some ear plugs??!!

Lol

[Pob255]

Just dug one out of my draw, Ahh, my mistake the akasa ones don't make good modders
you want one like this. (top of these two)

On the adaptors, notice the leads running out of the 4pin molex to the 3pin fan header, they go to the yellow and black molex leads.
On a molex yellow is +12v, black is earth, red is 5v.
on a fan black is earth, red is +12v, yellow is rpm monitor.

What you want to do if you have one like the top is swap the yellow and red pins on the molex over, so the fan is now connected to the red +5v and (ether) black earth, and thhen running the fan off the 3pin adaptor makes it run at 5v

To remove molex pins, it's normally easiest to remove the male pin (the pointed one, not the hollow one)
Although the process for removing ether is the same.
you can buy a pin removal tool but you can also make one with a ball point pen.
http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=78805

(the lower of the two in the pic is a 12v to 7v mod, it involves feeding the 5v into the 12v line as an earth to cause resistance, I'd not advise it personally)

[Pob255]

For a better cpu cooler you could look at the Thermalright SI-128 @£26 (no fan)
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Therm...-(Without-Fan)
It's 92mm tall, a standard height fan is 25mm wide so that's only a total of 117mm

A cheap 120mm PWM fan is £7
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Akasa...cone-pins-incl

Although I recogmend the Akasa Apache for a very good 120mm PWM fan @ £11
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/120mm...nd-Rubber-Pins

PS it's not cheap but for a red led replacement fan fro the front you could look at the new enermax Apollish
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/120mm...hermal-Control
See how many pritty red led's it has.

EDIT: fixed the first link

[sadbuttrue]

Is there an unused room/junk cupboard nearby?

Total silence

[Ulti]

Is there an unused room/junk cupboard nearby?

Total silence

That is one hell of a good idea lol, unfortunately I would like my pc next to me xD

Well I managed to use both of the adapters to cool down my intake and exhaust fan. Down side is that they're less bright now and that I got a bunch of ugly wires in my case. However it is now much quieter. Also, the CPU is only about 2-4 degrees hotter so not much performance lost.

Thanks Pob255! Maybe I'll change the cooler another day but seeing as the E5300 only cost me £50 I can't see the justification in spending over £20 for a cooler.

[Pob255]

Well if that worked then you may want to get a couple of the fan resistor adaptors.
Zalman 5v
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Zalma...our-3-pin-Fan)
or
Sharkoon 9.5v (not as much reduction, but it my be enough)
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Shark...RPM-and-Noise)
Ok shipping will be more than the adaptors, but something to keep in mind if you're thinking of ordering any thing from scan in the future, main advantage would be cableing will be simplier.

With your current case you're very limited on coolers (it's just too narrow) only thing left to sugest would be one of the large "flower" type coolers
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/North...-and-fan-alarm
With a 120mm fan it should be less noisey but how well it will perform compaired to your current cooler I don't know.

[peterb]

<---snip

(the lower of the two in the pic is a 12v to 7v mod, it involves feeding the 5v into the 12v line as an earth to cause resistance, I'd not advise it personally)

Er no! Nothing to do with resistance. The 5V and 12V lines are both with reference to a common lines. Voltage is a potential difference, so there is a PD of 7 Volts between the 12V and 5V lines. Perfectly satisfactory electrically (particulaly because there is no resistance involved, so you aren't dissipating additional energy as heat).

However modifying a connector could cause problems if you subsequently used it for something else by mistake.

[Ulti]

Well if that worked then you may want to get a couple of the fan resistor adaptors.
Zalman 5v
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Zalma...our-3-pin-Fan)
or
Sharkoon 9.5v (not as much reduction, but it my be enough)
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Shark...RPM-and-Noise)
Ok shipping will be more than the adaptors, but something to keep in mind if you're thinking of ordering any thing from scan in the future, main advantage would be cableing will be simplier.

With your current case you're very limited on coolers (it's just too narrow) only thing left to sugest would be one of the large "flower" type coolers
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/North...-and-fan-alarm
With a 120mm fan it should be less noisey but how well it will perform compaired to your current cooler I don't know.

Hmm, if that worked then what's the point in buying a fan adapter? Is it just to clear up the mess a bit or will it like stop working or something after a while?

And I'll find out about CPU coolers myself xD Thanks! Don't think I'll be justifying an upgrade though as I got rid of my 250GB HDD and now it's really quiet xD

[Pob255]

Just to clear up the mess, as you can then just plug the fan cable stright into the motherboard (via the resistance adaptor which is only an inch or tow long)
So not need to run molex cables about just to power the fan.

Er no! Nothing to do with resistance. The 5V and 12V lines are both with reference to a common lines. Voltage is a potential difference, so there is a PD of 7 Volts between the 12V and 5V lines. Perfectly satisfactory electrically (particulaly because there is no resistance involved, so you aren't dissipating additional energy as heat).

Well I ment to give the same effect as adding resistance.
I've never been too happy with the 7v mod because you are feeding the +12v back down the 5v like the 5v was an earth, if you've got an El-cheapo PSU I dread to think of what would happen.
Oh and it can generate heat, quite a bit.
I personally found out something you should NEVER do with 7v mod, that's if the fan adaptor also has a speed monitor cable as well then do NOT plug that into the motherboard.
What happens is the normally earth wire of the monitor cable gets red hot (ie glowing red) but that's after the plastic coating has melted and caught fire.
And it burns out the fan header it was plugged into on the motherboard.
All in under 30 seconds.