Fan Question

[Macman]

Looking to buy a quieter yet more powerful fan;

what things must I take into question when buying a new one?

Appreciate any advice on this matter.

Macman

[Pob255]

What fan have you currently got?
What do you class as quieter?
What fan is this for?
How much are you willing to spend?
Do you mean fan or cpu cooler?

[DWhitley]

Is it simply to extract air from a case or will it have to overcome resistance by, for example, forcing air through a radiator?

Don't rush out and buy something fancy without reading around a bit. Think about static pressure as well as noise, cost etc. How will you control the speed? Do you have 4 wire (PWM) control or 3 wire (voltage) control?

If use is likely to be intensive, think about the type of bearing.

[Macman]

Is it simply to extract air from a case or will it have to overcome resistance by, for example, forcing air through a radiator?

Don't rush out and buy something fancy without reading around a bit. Think about static pressure as well as noise, cost etc. How will you control the speed? Do you have 4 wire (PWM) control or 3 wire (voltage) control?

If use is likely to be intensive, think about the type of bearing.

Once I've got the computer up and running, I'll get the appropiate details. What I'm simply looking for, is the fan the cools the Motherboard/Processor to be quieter as mines seems to sound like a hover when it seems to have a lot of things running.

Macman

[jim]

Ultimately, the faster a fan goes, the louder it will be. The only way to have a quiet fan is to spin it slowly.

Given that you want one for the CPU, the key is usually to get a speed controlled fan as DWhitley mentioned, and then your PC can spin the fan up to full speed if necessary to keep the temperatures down, and have it on low speed when the temperature is low. In that event, if it's still too loud, then you need to make the PC cooler either by underclocking/undervolting the CPU or improving airflow through the case.

SPCR have some of the best fan round-ups, so I would check there to have a look around. Ultimately though, assuming you buy a good quality quiet fan (e.g. some from Noctua or Scythe), unless there's a flaw with them, the noise will come from the air being moved, and therefore it's all a question of speed.

[Pob255]

Ahh it sounds like you want a fan for your cpu heatsink (cooler), what cpu cooler are you using?

Without being clearer about what exactly it is you need it's next to impossible to jive you any worth while advice.

You could go out and by a nice Noctua 120mm fan but if you're using a stock cpu cooler then you cannot just "fit" a 120mm fan to it.
Well you can if you get creative, but the results may well be worse as the smaller stock coolers are not designed for a big fan

[Macman]

This is the model of the computer I have:

HP Pavilion PC M8000

I'm pretty sure I have the intel and not the AMD version and also have the nVidia Gfx card 8500 GT-1.

[Pob255]

Have a watch of the Pacify Your PC videos Hexus did. http://hexus.net/search/?title_only=1&q=pacify+your+pc

Now you don't need to go as crazy as they did, but do watch the episode two at least.
http://hexus.net/tv/show/2008/10/Pac...re_s_the_noise
Locating the sources of noise is the first key step. Until you know where the noise is coming from you cannot take any meaningful steps toward making a pc quite.

One thing they didn't mention, is cleaning, esp on cpu coolers, you can get a mat of dust and fluff building up between the fan and heatsink sections of the cpu cooler, which restricts the air flow, if the pc is using a controlled pwm fan (which it probably is) then what will happen is as the cooler gets blocked up with dust and fluff the fan speed will be increased to try to keep the cooling levels constant.
So just cleaning out dust can help greatly, depending how bad the dust is.

Can of compressed air is fine for cleaning out dust (do it out side as you will create great clouds of dust), the alternative is just a vacuum cleaner.
A clean small soft brush (paint brush) is also very handy use the brush to losen the dust then blow or suck it off, you will get more off with a brush and air then just air.

However becareful esp with fans, if you just randomly poke around with a vacuum cleaner hose inside a case you could knock a capacitor off, just take your time and be careful, don't go in heavy handed and you'll be fine.
The issue with fans is that if you manually spin a fan the motor becomes a generator which will feed current back into what ever the fan is plugged into.
both a vacuum cleaner and even a can of compressed air can spin a fan far faster than it normally goes which can generate far higher currents which will be feed into whatever the fan is plugged.
eg you can kill a fan header on a motherboard, which normally outputs at 12v, spin a fan fast and you can feed anything between 20-50volts back into the header.
Again take care and you will be fine, unplug fans or immobilise them, stick a cable tie, cotten bud, coctail stick or similar (even your finger will work fine) between the blades so the fan cannot rotate and you're fine.