Better heatsink advice

goldstar0011

goldstar0011

Ex. Club Member
I could do with a better heatsink on my PC, when on heavy load it's quite noisey.

First don't suggest watercooling, I don't overclock so it would be a waste of effort.

Just after something quiet but effective but also cheap.

I can't remember what kinda fan I need, I think I have a 775 chip (P4-HT 3GHZ)
 
ahh yes, noisy pcs are apain in the rear. The best thing to do is to make sure that the airflow is good through out the pc and use larger quieter fans, not noisy smaller ones. You can really cut down on the fans needed in many cases too provided that everything is cooled properly... I actually took a second one out of my psu changed the direction of the other and have the air moving through my pc in a way that now the noise of the harddrives can be heard..
 
usually the OEM fans are quietest and do the job just fine.
 
I have a nice quiet fan on side of case too (are they meant to blow in or out?)

I will see about finding out my spare PSU fans, am with you Ed, I don't see the value in spending close to £50 just to be quieter, current fan is the standard intel one that came with CPU
 
As above you can see that cheap can be quiet.. As for airflow you really need to have a look and see where the air goes. What you dont want to happen is for example the cpu and case fans both to try and suck air out of the case if there is no good way for it to enter. (this can happen a fair bit especially in diy computers where its not considered)
 
www.quietpc.co.uk/

for all your quiet pc needs. Prices sometimes a bit high but gives you a good idea of the products you should be looking at.

You could just put a new fan on your existing heat sink.
 
I have a fan by Arctic Cooling on my 775 socket Pentium D, its a little quieter than the stock one and a little cooler, but really not much difference. It cost me £15.

Save your money, the stock one is fair from what I remember, I only bought mine 'cause I didn't expect it to be arriving with one.

Just turn the music up!
 
Usually Zalman makes nice quiet coolers. Some of them aren't too expensive either.

The one I use in my computer which is very quiet is the 'Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro (link)' (well, I have the AMD version, but I don't think the intel would be that much different).
Around here one of these costs 15-16 euro's which I think is great value for money. I have no idea how much a thing like this would costs in the UK, put it on 15 pounds and you would be quite safe.
It's quite large and has an even larger fan and the fan hangs in small rubbers :D
Does the Intel support the slowing down of the fan when the cpu is cooler? Because then it would be nice and quiet when idling and the fan starts revving up when you go play a game or something. There are also programs who can do this for you btw.

In my experience when I used to work in a computer store for quite some time the stock coolers usually make loads of noise. And especially nowadays there are loads of replacement coolers specially made for noise reduction. But they can get quite expensive at times :|

And, as already pointed out. Putting a fairly large fan (e.g. 80-120 mm) in the front of the case (sucking air into the case) and one at the back of the case (blowing it out) might also be a very nice option. This will keep things more cool thus less noise.
Make sure you get rather large fans and perhaps even modify them a little bit to put them on 5v rather than the standard 12v. This will make them run slower but also a lot more quiet :D This however needs some homemade modifications and/or a 5v fan to begin with.
 
Yeh that arctic cooling one is what I have.

Theres 4 fans in mine; CPU, GFX, PSU and Exhaust fan on the back of the case. The exhaust fan is almost totally silent. None of the fans make a particularly high pitch or annoying noise, and the CPU is always 45 degrees.

I don't know how I can slow it down but it would be fun to experiment!! How can I do that?

Edit: WOA... ok I just found out how, and what a cool difference. A piece of software called "SpeedFan" (I think it should be freeware). Didn't think it would work, wacked the CPU fan down to 0% to find out and... yeh it stopped lol!!

Now my PC is whisper silent.

OK, new problem. Although this tool seems happy to control my CPU fan (which, now turned off is the quietest fan :p) but I can't get it to change the case fan, which is now the noisy one. Ideally I'd like both running slowly...

So I wonder how I can enable this one to change speed. Its probably a motherboard/driver thing.

OK, I stopped the case fan (with my finger :p) and the noisy one is actually the graphics card fan! I dont even have an RPM reading for this one so Im gonna have to do some investigating as to how to stop it.

Temperatures are still the same thankfully, at

Mobo: 28 (actually cooler than with the fan on?!?! But might be because the case is open)
CPU: 45
PSU: 37 (has risen a bit since turning off the CPU fan)
Hard Drive: 35

Dunno what the GFX temp is.

Speedfan: http://www.majorgeeks.com/download337.html

OK I have read that my graphics card doesnt have a temperature probe... So thats going in the bin. Anyone recommend a graphics card? Either that or I could buy one of those silent GFX fans...

Is my quest for the silent PC going too far? Its not a bad graphics card... hmmm.
 

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You could try and find a replacement cooler for your graphics card.
Even better, Arctic Cooling also have some nice VGA coolers which can be found not too expensive.

And I don't think you go too far at all in your quest for a more silent computer :D With my computer you almost can't hear any fans blowing (hdd rattling makes most noise now) and temperatures are very good.
The thing is with trying to getting a silent computer, there is always the next fan that makes too much noise for being 'silent'.
So you start with CPU, then e.g. the case fans, then the GPU and eventually the PSU fan(s). Once you've done that you have a silent computer :D
Standard GPU fans are notorious for their amount of noise they produce btw :D Especially with some of the latest cards (my ati x1800 made LOADS of noise)

For example I have a PSU with 2 fans, so I modified that one to have both fans run on 5v which works fine on my PSU (can depend very much on what PSU you have, e.g. how much Watt it can have, how much your system pulls from it and how good the passive cooling is within the PSU).

Also using a good thermal compound on the cpu/gpu coolers can help (arctic silver or something). But not too much, otherwise it doesn't help anymore :)
This can also be found fairly cheap now and can really save you a few degrees.
 
Thanks for that help!

My biggest worry now is this;

Speedfan was reading 45 degrees for the CPU...
I updated the bios, and bios said CPU was 33 degrees...
Then I restarted windows and Speedfan tells me it was 13 degrees!!

Now, 33 seems the most reliable figure, and im worried that speedfan is not going to tell me when im getting my CPU too hot. Might try a different Bios driver.

My motherboard doesnt support slowing down the case fan, so I might put a resistor in series with it to halve its speed. Or I might not use it at all!
 
Turtle, You could probably remove the cpu fan totally, then connect the case fan into the cpu fans place, make sure that the case fan is blowing IN, put a bit of 4 inch tube or something to encourage the air to blow over the cpu heatsink, and the PSU fan blowing out and you may find everything works better... However CARE would be needed to do this and checkes would be needed to make sure all is ok.

btw your cpu fan will be next to useless in real terms, the open sided design of those fans mean they almost dont work. Another thing you can do is some pc cases have horrid fan covers that almost block most of the fan, these can be cut out and thinner more efficient ones used. Again this will reduce noise.

Just to add I think my pc had 9 fans. I've reduced that to 8, but as i said swapped alot of it about and now its much better. I cant really do much more without serious amount of effort, although I can control most of the speed of the fans and they are no longer such a problem.
 
after building many computers from scratch with work i always use zalmans.
i have a 4 gig intel p4 running at 35degrees and it isnt overclocked or anything the fans i use are all connected to a temp controled fan controler and it gives you so much more control.
try the zalman copper fans you wont go back and they are silent!!!
 
Cool

Got it all sorted now... kept the CPU fan in but regulating its speed so its at 40% (silent) a lot of the time. The case fan I connected a resistor to which halved its speed so thats silent too but still taking the air slowly out (and more importantly, glowing blue and thus looking cool).

Just gonna buy a quieter GFX card now and then leave it alone!!
 

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