Hi! New member, questions about specific fan and case models

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mesaone
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Joined: Thu Nov 07, 2013 6:32 pm

Hi! New member, questions about specific fan and case models

Post by mesaone » Thu Nov 07, 2013 6:47 pm

Hi everyone, I was very happy to come across SPCR.

Long story short, I'm a sound engineer. A couple years ago I built a PC for my home studio, mainly running Pro Tools. Relevant things:
  • Antec 1200v2 case, stock fans (the two rear fans have been removed)
    LGA 1366 motherboard (sabertooth x58)
    i7 960 @3.2 GHz stock clock (HT off, no overclock or intel speedboost, all sleep and hibernation disabled)
    Kuhler 620 (one stock fan pushing exhaust, mounted in place of one rear fan)
Issue: my PC makes more noise than I would like it to. I have calibrated my playback system, and the fan noise is enough to interfere with mixing and voiceover work. This needs to be fixed!

I had a look around the site, and checked out the tests and whatnot. I have formed a plan of attack, which involves replacing 2 of the front case fans with Noctua NF-S12A ULN. I plan to swap the Kuhler's fan with a Noctua NF-P1, and move it to the front of the case, in place of the third intake fan. From there, I will place one more Noctua NF-S12A ULN at the rear of the case.

Would the above work out, as far as keeping my system quiet and below 80º C under full load? Assume ambient temp is 20º C. I do quite a lot of spectral repair and noise reduction work, which is fairly taxing on the CPU. This can sometimes result in full load across all cores for several minutes.

Thanks in advance for your help, everyone.

CA_Steve
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Re: Hi! New member, questions about specific fan and case mo

Post by CA_Steve » Thu Nov 07, 2013 8:06 pm

Welcome to SPCR.

I don't know what your budget is...but here's my take:
- The case isn't built for top end silent operation as compared to some others.
- the Kuhler 620 isn't particularly quiet. Even if you replace the fan, you'll still have pump noise. This review is a useful read.

You could do some fan replacement..and using some fan speed control, you could make the fans pretty quiet and stay within your temp limit. But then, you'd still have the pump noise.

What else is in this case? If you quiet the fans, are there lots of HDDs or other items in there? Is there a loud gfx card?

xan_user
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Re: Hi! New member, questions about specific fan and case mo

Post by xan_user » Thu Nov 07, 2013 8:41 pm

cases selection is nowhere near as important as choosing what's inside them. we could silence a milk crate, if it had the right components. :mrgreen:

mesaone
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Re: Hi! New member, questions about specific fan and case mo

Post by mesaone » Thu Nov 07, 2013 10:33 pm

CA_Steve wrote: What else is in this case? If you quiet the fans, are there lots of HDDs or other items in there? Is there a loud gfx card?

Thanks for the info. I'll check out the links in the morning, I figured I'd answer your question tonight.

Inside the case is an EVGA brand GTX470. I replaced the stock blower fan with an Accelerometer Xtreme plus, and it's hooked up at 4v. There are 3 HDD, an SSD, a firewire PCIe card, and optical drive.

edh
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Re: Hi! New member, questions about specific fan and case mo

Post by edh » Fri Nov 08, 2013 2:38 am

As you are not overclocking have you thought of undervolting? What you can get will depend upon motherboard but potentially even a tiny undervolt can make a massive difference to power consumption and therefore heat output so you can then turn down the fans a little.

CA_Steve
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Re: Hi! New member, questions about specific fan and case mo

Post by CA_Steve » Fri Nov 08, 2013 9:00 am

First steps:
- Go low tech - hold an empty paper towel tube to your ear and use it to isolate the prevalent noise sources.
- Benchmark your current set up's temps.
- Then, start unplugging case fans to see the effect on temp and noise (if they are already at the low setting).

I agree that the case fans need help. Here's the SPCR review.

Thoughts in no particular order:

You might not need all 6 fans...the front fans in the drive cages are pretty noisy at low speed. Partly due to the fans, partly due to the restrictive enclosure. Once you've done the first steps, then you can start doing fan replacements.

I wouldn't move the radiator to the front. Better to aim for unimpeded front to back airflow. Remove the drive cages you aren't using.

Do you need the big gaming GPU? Is it used for hardware acceleration?

What's the PSU?

Do you hear any HDD case-coupled vibration or seek noise?

This will be an iterative process. Find the noisiest part, replace/reduce it's noise, move on to the next source, repeat.

mesaone
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Joined: Thu Nov 07, 2013 6:32 pm

Re: Hi! New member, questions about specific fan and case mo

Post by mesaone » Fri Nov 08, 2013 3:50 pm

CA_Steve wrote:First steps:
- Go low tech - hold an empty paper towel tube to your ear and use it to isolate the prevalent noise sources.
- Benchmark your current set up's temps.
- Then, start unplugging case fans to see the effect on temp and noise (if they are already at the low setting).

I agree that the case fans need help. Here's the SPCR review.

Thoughts in no particular order:

You might not need all 6 fans...the front fans in the drive cages are pretty noisy at low speed. Partly due to the fans, partly due to the restrictive enclosure. Once you've done the first steps, then you can start doing fan replacements.

I wouldn't move the radiator to the front. Better to aim for unimpeded front to back airflow. Remove the drive cages you aren't using.

Do you need the big gaming GPU? Is it used for hardware acceleration?

What's the PSU?

Do you hear any HDD case-coupled vibration or seek noise?

This will be an iterative process. Find the noisiest part, replace/reduce it's noise, move on to the next source, repeat.
No paper towel needed - it's definitely the fans. I've already removed one... Once I replace the fans with quieter ones, I only plan to have 3 in the case (two in front, one in the rear) plus one fan for the 120mm radiator. I have all the fans on low (top exhaust is a two pole switch, three front fans have knobs that are turned all the way down)

I figured placing the rad in the front will dampen the noise by a certain amount, since it would be completely enclosed by the case. I also figured pushing intake through the rad would be a more efficient way to go, as opposed to blowing recirculated air out the back. Did I figure wrong? I plan to ditch the liquid cooler at some point, but right now it's all about "harm reduction". In any case, I'm trying to install a quieter fan on the rad to cut the noise down as much as possible.

The gaming GPU is currently inaudible, actually. The third-party heatsink I installed (with Ramsinks and VRM heatsinks as well) is running at a constant 7v. I do use it for some image and video editing, and I probably find about 1/2 hour of gaming time a week. Thwe work it does for me is worth way more that I could possibly sell it for. I'd like to keep it, and in my next build I'll be using a GPU with a passive cooler.

Power supply is a 600W Cooler Master "Extreme Power Plus". Sitting on rubber decouplers that antex were kind enough to include with the 1200 case.

As far as benchmarks go, stress testing the CPU gets me around the 70°C, and it idles at around 32-35°. GPU idles around the same, and with a furmark test it hits late 50's to early 60's, depending on how long I run it. Which is actually pretty great, as far as I am concerned.

I would like to thank you for your help, I'm glad I came across this forum.. I figured this would be, as you said, an iterative process. My intention is to first go head to head with the fan noise, and move the rad if needed. I am hesitant to undervolt or do any other more serious tooling until I get a better idea of what $80 in new fans can do for me. Pro Tools is a notoriously finicky beast, especially on PC. I am fortunate enough (and maybe my planning worked in my favor as well) to have built a machine that is a rock solid Pro Tools rig. I wouldn't want to upset the apple cart. Fans and HD placement and other things like that represent the most favorable risk:reward ratio, as far as I can tell.

CA_Steve
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Re: Hi! New member, questions about specific fan and case mo

Post by CA_Steve » Fri Nov 08, 2013 4:51 pm

Your temps are great. Keep the radiator where it is. Try turning off more fans and see what happens. In fact, turn everything off except the radiator fan, the other rear exhaust fan, and the front intake fan closest in line with the GPU. Put a towel over the top fan vent to get a feel for how closing the top off would affect temps and noise.

Heck, you could try turning off the rear exhaust fan, too.

If that keeps the temps in line, then you know what you need to buy.

Other thoughts for the future: less wattage -> less cooling needed ->lower fan rpms, etc.
- your PSU is ~ 77% efficient with CPU and CPU/GPU loads. There are some great passive and hybrid (passive at low load) PSUs out there that are 90+%.
- your Gfx card idles at 30W and has a TDP of 215W. The GTX 650 Ti has similar performance, idles at 10W, and has a TDP of 110W. You can move up from there for gaming needs or down to just an igp if you don't.

mesaone
Posts: 4
Joined: Thu Nov 07, 2013 6:32 pm

Re: Hi! New member, questions about specific fan and case mo

Post by mesaone » Fri Nov 15, 2013 6:21 pm

CA_Steve wrote:Other thoughts for the future: less wattage -> less cooling needed ->lower fan rpms, etc.
- your PSU is ~ 77% efficient with CPU and CPU/GPU loads. There are some great passive and hybrid (passive at low load) PSUs out there that are 90+%.
- your Gfx card idles at 30W and has a TDP of 215W. The GTX 650 Ti has similar performance, idles at 10W, and has a TDP of 110W. You can move up from there for gaming needs or down to just an igp if you don't.
Yeah... Originally I had planned to have two computers... One for games and video rendering, and an iMac for Pro Tools. Unfortunately that couldn't happen for money reasons, and it looks like I might just have to experiment with quieter fans and (like you mention) whittling the number of fans down until I have a happy medium between cooling and noise. Thanks for your help

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