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Thread: Water cooling vs fans for noise

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    Water cooling vs fans for noise

    Hey folks.

    So this is another topic for me where people have given totally opposite views on the 'net.

    Okay, that last bit isn't too unusual...

    But I'm buying a system now and someone in my team at work suggested watercooling for the win (and by win I mean for quietness).

    Does that help with quietness? Is it just a matter of not buying a terrible cooling rig?

    Cheers
    R

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    Senior Member watercooled's Avatar
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    Re: Water cooling vs fans for noise

    You still need fans for water cooling, to cool the radiator. They may be able to run more slowly than on an overworked air cooler, but you also have to consider the noise/vibration from the pump.

    It can be quieter or louder, just depends what you choose either way.

    Personally, I'm of the opinion that unless you have a specific reason for wanting some sort of water cooling (aesthetics or out of curiosity being perfectly valid reasons IMO), you should consider saving money and sticking with a half-decent air cooler. Something like a Hyper 212 Evo can be had for ~£25 for example.

    For some better recommendations, what sort of CPU are you wanting to cool, and is overclocking something you're considering?

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    Re: Water cooling vs fans for noise

    Ah great, thank you watercooled. I had forgotten about the need for a pump (assuming convection would be strong enough, subconsciously... although the head generated for that to happen would be... troubling, I imagine )

    The CPU is the 3700X and my thought on overclocking are it's not immediately something I'll do, but in a few years it seems like it could be a way to eke out some more life.

    The main reason I'd consider water cooling at the moment is noise - having bought a PC in December ('18) I then sent it back as it was too noisy (I mentioned explicitly it needed to be quiet when I bought it... it wasn't)

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    Re: Water cooling vs fans for noise

    The 3700X pretty much overclocks itself with Precision Boost to the point that manual overclocking really isn't worth it on these chips. The headroom at the top is tiny, and at the lower end I have yet to see mine drop as low as the official 3.6GHz (it tends to do all cores at over 3.9 and for work I do hammer it quite hard). So really all overclocking does is increase heat, which if you want low noise is exactly what you don't want.

    The box cooler is quiet when idle but makes quite a whoosh noise under load, so you might want to look at a tower cooler with a really big fan. I bought an Arctic Freezer 34 eSports as it was on offer, but not tried it yet.

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    Re: Water cooling vs fans for noise

    An important consideration for an aftermarket cooler is the minimum PWM speed - that'll define how quiet it can be at idle. My silverstone AR01 only goes down to 1000 RPM, which is why I've got a new fan on order. Aeroacoustic noise is proportional to the ~5th power of the speed, so a low idle speed is the most important part of finding a quiet cooler (with diminishing returns once it gets quieter than ambient in your room, of course).

    I am a bit curious about the arctic fans - they claim a very wide PWM range (200-2100 RPM, or 3.4 octaves), whereas a noctua fan that costs several times more (such as the a12x25) will only offer 450-2000, so 2.1 octaves. Once you try it, can you let us me know how low they go?

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    Re: Water cooling vs fans for noise

    Quote Originally Posted by Xlucine View Post
    I am a bit curious about the arctic fans - they claim a very wide PWM range (200-2100 RPM, or 3.4 octaves), whereas a noctua fan that costs several times more (such as the a12x25) will only offer 450-2000, so 2.1 octaves. Once you try it, can you let us me know how low they go?
    The arctic fans are ace, they do drop down to 200rpm. I have slightly different ones than on the Freezer - the P14 pwm. Use them on both the cpu and gpu coolers. Can be bought for not much more than a fiver. Stupidly good value.

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    Re: Water cooling vs fans for noise

    It can also be worth adjusting stock fan profiles as some can be a bit... silly?

    Basically, there's little point spinning a fan more quickly if the thing it's blowing on is already as cool as it's going to get. On my Skylake system, the stock fan curve would have the fan at close to 100% with light load because the CPU was getting warm, even though the heatsink was stone cold. Very annoying having it ramp up and down with something as simple as web browsing!

    What I did (obviously be sensible when doing this and try not to cook anything), max the CPU with something like y-cruncher, then keep turning down the fan speed until it actually makes a difference to temperatures, and bear that %/rpm in mind when setting up a fan curve. It doesn't hurt to have the curve spike up to a much higher value at actually high temps which also acts as a bit of an audible warning. Something else to bear in mind, your CPU/heatsink will likely be hotter when the GPU is loaded because of axial GPU coolers exhausting a ton of warm air back inside the case.

    Honestly, it's like whoever programs some default fan curves for a given platform has never actually taken the time to study the thermals of said platform.

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    Re: Water cooling vs fans for noise

    Quote Originally Posted by watercooled View Post
    Honestly, it's like whoever programs some default fan curves for a given platform has never actually taken the time to study the thermals of said platform.
    To be fair, the Asus motherboard has an autotune feature that I did use with the 2200G but haven't run since I switched to the 3700X with its bigger cooler, so the thing is on default settings and they are very conservative. Perhaps I should have a play with that before I switch coolers to give a fairer evaluation of the new one.

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    Re: Water cooling vs fans for noise

    An AIO watercooler is often quieter as it will often have two or three very large, slow moving fans which moves the same air volume as a smaller one on your air cooler but at a much slower speed. The air cooler fan (can be two) is normally smaller due to space requirements so shifting the radiator away from space restricted areas means the rad can have more surface area, again reducing the need for high velocity airflow and therefore reducing noise.

    My PC is absolutely not designed for being quiet but is as a side effect of an AIO cooler. The pump is very quiet to me but I do tend to filter out constant noise quite well and don't notice it. What's fine for me would drive some people insane.

    A single small fan on an AIO is going to be just as bad as an air cooler, most likely. If you're looking to make things as quiet as possible, you need a large surface area and big, slow fans. Think of it in terms of volume of air moving over the fins.

    EDIT for clarity.

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    Re: Water cooling vs fans for noise

    Don't forget the pump noise too on a water cooled solution. My own experience is that a high quality (think noctua,) air cooling solution with the biggest fans possible, tweaked to slowest needed fan speed profiles will be quieter than any water-cooling solution.

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    Re: Water cooling vs fans for noise

    Done properly, pump noise and vibration is not a factor, even set to max.
    Most of the time, the loudest thing in my case is either the flow of air itself, or the HDD.

    Either way, I strongly recommend using Corsair ML fans. In all the builds I've done and redone, they've been the absolute best by a country mile!
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    Re: Water cooling vs fans for noise

    Better than Noctua's offerings?

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    Re: Water cooling vs fans for noise

    Quote Originally Posted by cptwhite_uk View Post
    Better than Noctua's offerings?
    As a blatant Noctua fanboy, currently rocking a number of their beige beauties in my current system... Yes, much better. Whenever I have some spare cash, I'm buying a load of ML120s!!

    Noctuas are great for general installation when you want the best balance between performance and quietness... but for a high-end custom loop, performance is the primary purpose, and if you know what you're doing in terms of matching fans to your specific radiators, MLs are usually the best option. They're not much noisier than Noctuas, but have a much higher performance ratio, making any noise increase quite minimal in comparison.
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    Re: Water cooling vs fans for noise

    Quote Originally Posted by Ttaskmaster View Post
    Done properly, pump noise and vibration is not a factor, even set to max.
    Most of the time, the loudest thing in my case is either the flow of air itself, or the HDD.

    Either way, I strongly recommend using Corsair ML fans. In all the builds I've done and redone, they've been the absolute best by a country mile!
    Oh and just something to add, based on a friend's recent experience - for the most part you want to make sure the pump is supplied with the full 12V and not being undervolted e.g. by the CPU fan header. My friend was confused why his stock 3900X was hitting the throttle point under an AIO, turns out the pump was barely moving any water and the rad was barely warm.

    I think some pumps are designed to be fed from the CPU fan header to stop the motherboard panicking, thinking there's no CPU fan, but I'd suggest either setting it to 100% in BIOS or just supplying it from the PSU directly if the motherboard is happy with that, just bearing in mind you may not have an 'fan alarm' then (whatever that means will depend on the setup I suspect).

    YMMV but as Ttaskmaster says I don't think it makes much difference to noise/vibration having the pump at max, and it can make a big different to thermals vs running at very low speed.

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    Re: Water cooling vs fans for noise

    Oh wow, thanks folks. Okay, so I've ordered some bits, but need to call Scan tomorrow (shipping to Guernsey), so I'll have more of a look now, and may pull the trigger (full system spec is here, btw: https://forums.hexus.net/review-my-b...0x-system.html).

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    Re: Water cooling vs fans for noise

    Quote Originally Posted by watercooled View Post
    I think some pumps are designed to be fed from the CPU fan header to stop the motherboard panicking, thinking there's no CPU fan, but I'd suggest either setting it to 100% in BIOS or just supplying it from the PSU directly if the motherboard is happy with that.
    PWM pumps take their control from the motherboard, but still get their power off the PSU. These are usually custom loop pumps, not AIOs and will follow whatever curve profile you set. Too much messing around for me, but it does work very well. You notice the difference as the pump ramps up, rather than being a constant noise like mine which is always set to max speed, but again that is mostly down to how you install and insulate the pump from making noise in the first place.
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