I built my first major gaming/editing rig at the start of last year. 12 months on (and with the water cooling loop due a clean) I wanted to take the opportunity to reassess my setup slightly.
Largely the system has been running like a dream (apart from some issues with screen tearing in most games). It's running stable with a decent OC on the CPU (temps rarely exceeding 50C when mid-game).
My main gripe is with the system's fans...
I bought a bunch of NZXT FX-140LBs. Have 2 strapped to the front as intakes and 2 strapped either side of my XSPC EX280 rad in push/pull exhausting air from the top of the system (this rad only cools my CPU for now as the GPU has its own cooling built in). These 6 fans are all plugged directly into my ASUS RIVF.
I have another 4 emergency fans that are plugged in to an NZXT Sentry 2 fan controller just incase things got a little too heated. The first 2 are placed inside the case to direct air flow up towards the GPU, the third sits at the top of the case towards the front as an exhaust, and the fourth sits at the rear as another exhaust. I've not had to turn these on once and feel they are a bit overkill. I'm considering removing them entirely.
My issue with the 6 fans plugged into my Mobo is that they seem a little noisy even when on the lowest speed setting. I'm pretty limited in options to control them. One of them has also started rattling when the system is first turned on. It stops after a few minutes but as it is still under warranty I'm going to send it off to get it fixed.
Ideally I wouldn't have to replace any fans and would either...
- have 2 rad fans running when the system turns on and then the remaining 4 fans would kick in if temps went too high
or
- I'd run all 6 fans under 40% speed to quieten them down a bit.
However, I've tried using SpeedFan but it doesn't seem play all that nicely with the RIVF. I've been using AI Suite II's Fan Xpert but control through that is limited - I can't control individual fans, set them to turn off at low temps, or decrease speeds below 40%. Apparently Fan Xpert 2 solves this but it only works with AI Suite III which isn't available for the RIVF. I played around with Q-Fan in BIOS yesterday and set profiles to silent but it pretty much achieves the same result as Fan Xpert.
I could use a manual controller but to be honest I'm pretty underwhelmed with the Sentry 2. I would prefer a solution that automatically adjusted speeds and turned fans on and off for me so I don't have to keep watching temps.
I've been looking at the Phanteks PH-F140TS as a quieter alternative to the NZXTs if there simply is no other way. However, as they cost about £16 a pop I want to make sure that I definitely don't have another option for having more control over the fans I already have.
I'm going to play around with the number of fans that run at any one time to see how that impacts temps and noise but thought I'd seek out some further wisdom here...
Thanks!
P.S. The NZXT fans I already have are not PWM fans. How much of a difference would PWM make?