SPCR

So I am doing an ITX build using a Caselabs Mercury S3 and wanted to get as quiet of operation and I could with a neat look. I decided to give the DS Fans a shot, I got a pair of Blue 140 for the front and a pair of Grey 140 (no LED) for the top. All four fans are set to intake.

I used the supplied 7V adapters to the fans and fired it up. I was kind of surprised at how loud the fans are. When I tested outside a case the fans where much quieter. I am going to try dropping these to 5 volts and see how they do. Should I be using different 140mm fans to get the quietest operation?

DS fans? Care to link them for a little bit of more info?

And how did you mount the fans? Using screws?

http://www.aerocool.us/accessory/images ... 4blue.html

I mounted the fans using screws with a rubber washer between the fan and the case frame.

Mopar63 wrote:Should I be using different 140mm fans to get the quietest operation?

I got somehow similar issues with other fans (Enermax Cluster, BitFenix Spectre Pro in Antec and Corsair enclosures): as far as I know usually it's due to how the specific fans with the particular grilles.

What seems odd is that (set aside the colour scheme) those fans seem to have nothing fancy, and even those stock Case Labs honeycomb grilles look fairly unrestrictive.

So, broadly speaking, yes, different fans may give you a better (or just different) outcome, but given what I noted just above, I don't feel comfortable recommending any alternative option. Maybe a video (or audio file) of the specific noise might help a bit (it's like rushing air? It's a vibration? Something else?).

Eventually, don't you have any other fan (even 120mm ones) in handy, just to quickly test different blades/frames? Did you try to mount those Aerocool fans as exhaust ones, in order to see whether the noise were similar, or not? Did you hooked up those fans to any controllable mobo header, in order to record the relevant parameters (I mean mainly how much noise at which speed)?