More fans ---> Less noise!

Show off your quiet rig.

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Tzeb
Posts: 144
Joined: Sat Apr 30, 2005 4:29 pm

More fans ---> Less noise!

Post by Tzeb » Wed May 09, 2012 4:34 pm

Just made some small changes inside the case and as i was reading about ASUS Fan Xpert 2 (mehing), i wanted to share my build and maybe some simple SpeedFan tips.

Parts:

Case - P183 v3
Cpu cooler - NH-D14
Vga cooler - Accelero S1 Rev. 2
Mobo radiators - HR-05/IFX + HR-09 S Type2 for mosfet
Psu - Some 400W mushkin (fan swap)
Cpu - Phenom 2 x4 (unlocked from x2)
Mobo - Asrock 970 Extreme3
Video - Ati 6850
Storage - 2xHD502HJ + 1 OCZ ssd
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Fans: A total of 8! :shock:

On the upper chamber we have 3 x Yate Loon D12SL and one NF-P14 FLX PWM, inside the D14. Another two AC F12 PWM are on the VGA cooler.

The lower chamber has another two YL D12SL. One inside the PSU and the other cools the hard drives.

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So how is this silent? The answer is obvious - have them spin at sane levels. 8)

The Asrock mobo has a total of 6 fan headers (2 PWM, four 3 PIN). One of them has zero fan control and the "cpu" headers (one pwm, one 3 pin) are shared by the same speed control and also don't display the fan speed in windows.

As i decided to ignore both CPU headers, i'm left with one PWM and another two 3 pin with full speedfan control headers:

- The three Yate Loons on the upper chamber share one 3 pin header
- The two from the lower chamber share the other one
- NF-P14 FLX takes the PWM header
- Both AC F12 PWM share the VGA header, using an adapter.

As Yate Loons have also 4-pin Molex plugs, chaining them is easy. The two in the lower chamber use a standard 3 pin two in one adapter.

Some more pictures and i'll explain how it all works after.

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Side panels - triple acoustipack layer for the lower chamber zone.... :twisted:

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So back to how the fans work. At idle, all 8 fans are kept at ~550-590 rpm, as the two in the lower chamber are further from the ear and can spin a little faster without hearing them. D14 is bigger --> kept closer to 500.
This is how things look at idle:

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And after CPU reaches the desired value....

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I wont bother with a pic of gpu load, as it just goes in sync with the rest of the fans, at ~800 rpm.

No need to gush at Fan Xpert2. It's a great new developement in fan control, but we've been doing that magic with speedfan for years + it has GPU header full control! You only need 2 headers to work with speedfan and have great results by chaining identical fans together.


As my case is full of acoustipack and the fans are tuned for "no noise at idle", i can be in the room at 1 AM with no lights, sit at ~1 meter from the case and not be able to tell if it's on or off!! :twisted:

A 700 rpm fan makes way more noise than 3-4 at 530 rpm. Same for one at 1200 versus 5 at 800.

Lsv
Posts: 108
Joined: Sun Dec 11, 2011 9:50 pm

Re: More fans ---> Less noise!

Post by Lsv » Fri May 11, 2012 2:07 pm

Very nice and tidy.

I agree on the more slow fans is quieter than a single high rpm fan. I've a crapton of Noctua's in my main rig and they're all around 400rpm. Much quieter than having just a few at 800 or less at higher rpm.

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