Care to help a newb give their rig the silent treatment?

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C--
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Joined: Sun Jul 13, 2014 10:27 am

Care to help a newb give their rig the silent treatment?

Post by C-- » Sun Jul 13, 2014 8:04 pm

Hey SPCR, I'm new to the scene of silencing a PC and I think I'm already hooked :P . My case is an Antec 1100 (Like the P280 with a mesh grill front and windowed side panel (which I have since replaced with the P280's plain steel panel)). Inside, I'm packing a GTX 480 (awful at load but relatively low noise at idle and basic UE3 games) and 4.3 GHz overclocked 3570k with a 212 Evo and stock fan. PSU is a Corsair TX750 (silent at load). Now, as you've been waiting for, case fans: five Yate Loon D12H's (2000 RPM) and the 200mm 800 RPM Antec top fan mated to a Lamptron FC5v2 fan controller, with a spare 800 RPM Slip Stream running silently at full speed on the back panel. All are hardmounted using screws, or, in the case of the middle two Yates, the clip system in the case.

The back fan is primarily turbulence noise from 1000-1500 RPM, as is the Antec from 600-800 RPM. No real problems there. However, the front two fans have REALLY bad problems with vibration resonance. It's a droning WUM-WUM-WUM-WUM sound that is highly irritating past about 800 RPM. It's particularly bad with the middle fans that use retention clips. When gaming, I actually crank the fans close to max because that's the only way to eliminate the vibration sound.

My first thought is to use Anti-vibration fan plugs, but I have two problems; my fans use closed screw shafts, and the clearance for rubber grommets is very small; 3mm for the front with the fan filter and probably about 1mm for the middle. I need to eliminate that sound. Does anyone know the best course of action?

Thanks for helping a new guy out.

P.S. Is the fan on the 212 Evo economical to replace?

frenchie
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Re: Care to help a newb give their rig the silent treatment?

Post by frenchie » Mon Jul 14, 2014 6:32 am

Welcome to SPCR !!!

The first thing you can try, is to remove the filters on the input side, just to see if the noise changes.
You can also try to stop one fan at a time, or slightly change the speed of one : sometimes the resonance between 2 fans can cause the symptoms you describe, and changes in speed can be enough to tone it down.
There is a page somewhere about cutting the fan corners so that you can use the soft mounting grommets ;)

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