SPCR

Hi everyone.

My computer is loud. I opened the case. The main culprit is the fan on my Intel Core i5-750. It's the stock fan. Is it supposed to be this loud? (Obviously, I don't have a dB-meter, but it's way above the ambiant level in my apartment).

The system:

Antec Sonata (Elite? I bought it 2 months ago, new) w/ stock fans
Intel core i5-750 w/ stock fan and heat sink
Sapphire ATI 4770 (idling [fan off] most of the time)
4 gigs of ram, 1TB WD Caviar Black.
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-P55M-UD2

I don't need it to be uber-quiet, but I'd like to do what I can (that doesn't cost too much) to get the noise down a bit.

What is my best option? I'm guessing aftermarket CPU cooler; in that case, what would be a good, relatively cheap one?

Thank you for your time.
[edit: silly me, forgot the motherboard]

Xigmatek S1283 ($41CDN) with a LGA1156 mounting bracket ($10CDN) would be a decent combination at a reasonable price. You might find the PWM fan that comes with it a little loud, depending on the other parts of your system.

A Scythe S-Flex E 1200rpm fan would be a good alternative CPU heatsink fan, either using voltage control in BIOS for your CPU_FAN fan header or set at a fixed rpm (you can choose what speed by using a Zalman fanmate 2).

Is fan control enabled in the bios? Usually it`s enabled by default but you might want to check it just in case. A friend`s stock cooler sounded a lot louder than it should until we did that.

I have had some issues with a Core i5 750 and Gigabyte GA-P55M-UD2 motherboard. With BIOS default settings and using an alternative XMP profile, it was running extremely hot and causing the CPU fan to make a lot of noise. Depending on the BIOS version, the problem for me appears to be a combination of voltage settings and CPU power saving features. This problem is corrected by setting all the BIOS CPU and MCH/ICH voltages to 'Normal' (default is 'Auto'), and setting BIOS CPU advanced features related to power saving to 'Enabled' (default is 'Auto'). This reduces the idle power consumption to about 1/4 of that with the BIOS defaults and allows the CPU fan to run at minimum speed.