Hi, My desktop pc is very noisy, can you recommend a cheap but quiet cpu cooler, the motherboard is asus K8V-MX micro ATX, socket 754 I think,
I cleaned all the dust out of the pc but hasn't made much difference,
your help is appreciated.
PC sounds like vacuum cleaner
Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee
Hi Dan-E,
Welcome to SPCR!
First thing is to identify the noise makers.
The aim is remove all noise makers and then add back one at a time to see how much noise each adds.
First turn off the PC at wall or back of PSU. Unplug the CPU fan (cable only - leave heatsink on CPU), the hard drive(s) power and the case fan(s). If you have a video card with a fan remove that (the whole card) too.
Then turn the PC on, it won’t boot as the HDDs disconnected etc. The only noise maker should be the PSU fan(s) This gives you a baseline noise level, if it’s too loud you’ll need a new PSU or swap/slow the fan in the one you have.
Be Quiet! PSU
Silverstone PSU
Don’t leave PC on long (<30 seconds) as CPU fan is off!
Turn off PC and reconnect CPU fan and turn on again. If this adds a lot of noise it’s the CPU cooler / fan you need to look at.
Your motherboard?
As your motherboard manual makes no mention of fan control (Q-Fan in Asus speak) I’m guessing it doesn’t have any so you’ll want a fan controller, eg
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/136405
There is also the Zalman Fanmate.
You may find that your existing CPU cooler is OK with the fan speed slowed down, what CPU / cooler do you currently have?
You can use Speedfan to report the temperatures and fan speeds of your system to see if you have cooling headroom to reduce noise.
As far as I know s754,s939, AM2/AM2+ all use the same mounting, this is good as gives you lots of choice
Example of fairly cheap CPU heatsink that’s compact but should perform well is Xilence IceBreaker
Much better but also taller cooler Xigmatek S963
These are both 4pin PWM controlled so you will want a fan controller with them,
You can then power off the PC and connect the HDD(s) and see what noise they add to your system. Repeat with Case fan(s) and, if applicable, the video card.
After all this you’ll hopefully have an idea what needs to be tackled and we can offer further advice.
Good luck, Seb
Welcome to SPCR!
First thing is to identify the noise makers.
The aim is remove all noise makers and then add back one at a time to see how much noise each adds.
First turn off the PC at wall or back of PSU. Unplug the CPU fan (cable only - leave heatsink on CPU), the hard drive(s) power and the case fan(s). If you have a video card with a fan remove that (the whole card) too.
Then turn the PC on, it won’t boot as the HDDs disconnected etc. The only noise maker should be the PSU fan(s) This gives you a baseline noise level, if it’s too loud you’ll need a new PSU or swap/slow the fan in the one you have.
Be Quiet! PSU
Silverstone PSU
Don’t leave PC on long (<30 seconds) as CPU fan is off!
Turn off PC and reconnect CPU fan and turn on again. If this adds a lot of noise it’s the CPU cooler / fan you need to look at.
Your motherboard?
As your motherboard manual makes no mention of fan control (Q-Fan in Asus speak) I’m guessing it doesn’t have any so you’ll want a fan controller, eg
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/136405
There is also the Zalman Fanmate.
You may find that your existing CPU cooler is OK with the fan speed slowed down, what CPU / cooler do you currently have?
You can use Speedfan to report the temperatures and fan speeds of your system to see if you have cooling headroom to reduce noise.
As far as I know s754,s939, AM2/AM2+ all use the same mounting, this is good as gives you lots of choice
Example of fairly cheap CPU heatsink that’s compact but should perform well is Xilence IceBreaker
Much better but also taller cooler Xigmatek S963
These are both 4pin PWM controlled so you will want a fan controller with them,
You can then power off the PC and connect the HDD(s) and see what noise they add to your system. Repeat with Case fan(s) and, if applicable, the video card.
After all this you’ll hopefully have an idea what needs to be tackled and we can offer further advice.
Good luck, Seb
Not knowing what went on behind the scenes, we could also assume maybe he had a friend who wanted it and now he can worry about putting together (or buying) a newer, quieter machine. Or maybe he's been trying to sell it for a long time, wasn't getting any offers, and as a last-ditch effort was coming here to try and shut it up, but got an offer at the last minute and no longer had to care about it being noisy (let the buyer worry).xan_user wrote:You gotta give SPCR more that 24 hrs to respond before throwing in the towel.
(And he did of course have a reply within two hours, so it's certainly not for lack of response time here.
)Good for you! Now that you are out with the junk, I hope you will build yourself a nice computer using all the knowledge and techniques you will find here. You won't be disappointed.Dan-E wrote:Thank you for a very informative reply, I'm happy to say I've sold the pc, but I will keep your reply fof future reference...
Uday