the sound of silence

[Testin da Cable]

just installed my zalman and gee that thing is quiet. zalman aren't kidding when they say it's next to noiseless.
the loudest thing in my poota atm is one of the drives imo, and there's three fans, the gF's coolers and the zalman in there. for the curious, it's this one. it's rated all the way up to an XP2600 so that suits me just fine. the cooler itself seems well made, the manual that comes with it is very clear. zalman don't skimp on extras: there's six screws, an extra clamp, a special tool to fix the clamp in position and a small tube of thermal paste included in the box.

it took me about 45 minutes to install and fitted perfectly to my mobo, an epox 8kha+. the arm that holds the fan couldn't fit on the first three screwholes of my case due to the fact that the gFti4600 that I have is the armor-plated one from leadtec. no problem though: I dropped one hole down and extended the fan via it's own thumbscrew. idle temp atm is ~35C, I have yet to check it under load.

as you can tell I'm rather chuffed with the cooler. it replaces a dragonORB III with a 7000odd rpm fan that sounded like a jetengine. TdC is one happy bunny

 

[Embattle]

I'm getting a couple of Zalman items myself:

http://www.zalman.co.kr/english/product/zm80-hp.htm
http://www.zalman.co.kr/english/product/nb32j.htm

 

[~YuckFou~]

This quiet thing has got me too. I'm sick of the racket, sometimes it's a relief to swith the PC off. The case I mentioned in another thread is here and there's loads of room, it's looks very nice too, and very well put together, recommended.
I'm going to put a quiet 80mm fan on my SK6 using an adaptor, that should have a similar effect to the Zalman heatsink, I hope. All the fans that go in the case will be low noise, low rpm units, but more of them, so things should stay nice and cool.


Silence is golden.

 

[Happy Go Lucky]

Originally posted by Embattle
I'm getting a couple of Zalman items myself:

http://www.zalman.co.kr/english/product/zm80-hp.htm
http://www.zalman.co.kr/english/product/nb32j.htm

I like that heat pipe for the gfx, but I know on my current gfx card, the fan pin connector is soldered on to the board. How do get that off?

Apart from that, do you have to use a razor to get the old hsf off?
does same apply for the northbridge hsf?

Or just point me to a new gfx, one that a heat pipe would be a easy addition.

Cheers Emb

 

[lecter]

Operation QUIETPC!!!!!1 FS!
I figure that the chief noisemakers in my pc are the following.

1. 10k RPM SCSI WHINEY PIECE OF SHIT HDD.
2. SHITE GENERIC PSU
3. KT7 CHIPSET FAN
4. CPU FAN

I am in the process of replacing the top three, however not the cpu fan as it is the agilent arctic cooler, rare as hell quiet and generally rocks. However I will be buying a lian li case to improve the case airflow and thus ambient temperature mebbe then i'll be able to lower the voltage to the cpu fan a bit. I have a new rule for any computer kit i buy from now on in. It must not be above 40dB in noise.

 

[Happy Go Lucky]

The loudest thing in my pc is my hdd a 5200rpm one, I've actually increased the rpm of the flower cooler to 2000, so it matches the noise the from the hdd.

 

[Embattle]

Originally posted by Happy Go Lucky


I like that heat pipe for the gfx, but I know on my current gfx card, the fan pin connector is soldered on to the board. How do get that off?

Apart from that, do you have to use a razor to get the old hsf off?
does same apply for the northbridge hsf?

Or just point me to a new gfx, one that a heat pipe would be a easy addition.

Cheers Emb

What GFX Card do you have?

Depends how it is attached, most rescent fans are attached via push plugs although some use thermal compound and thus can't be removed.

 

[Wilier]

my pc has the sound of death at the moment




ie. dead

 

[Testin da Cable]

*fluffles wilier*







at least it's quiet as a tomb

 

[Happy Go Lucky]

Originally posted by Embattle


What GFX Card do you have?

Depends how it is attached, most rescent fans are attached via push plugs although some use thermal compound and thus can't be removed.

A Hercules GF2mx 64Mb with no fan only a hs stuck on somehow.

Also a oem GF2mx 64Mb with a fan & it's pin connector stuck to the board.

 

[Scooba Da Bass]

Use a soldering iron you girl

 

[Happy Go Lucky]

bud I'm not planning to solder anyhing.
The pin connector will have to be yanked off, without breaking it.
I don't see how a solder iron will help in that respect!!??
I prolly just get a new gfx with a new fan assembly, easier said than done.

 

[-Ultimate]

Cos you can melt the solder with a soldering iron maybe

 

[lecter]

Phaze 1: complete
Bought an enermax psu, at full pelt it drops my case temp by 3deg, in quiet mode I cant hear it. Yay!

 

[Testin da Cable]

cool (ahem) keep posting heh. TdC's nearly sold

 

[lecter]

Phaze 2: Hard Drive Skills! This will have to wait till I get paid but here is the plan.

Remove 1 (hardly used) 36GB IBM 10k RPM SCSI HDD.
Add 1 (brand spanking new) 120 GB Seagate Barracuda V.
Oddly for most of the stuff I do the Seagate will be quicker i.e loading big fuck off threewave maps. It also has another huge advantage
***NOISE***
12dB of the cunt to be exact, also being a lower speed the noise is 7.2kHz rather than 10kHz (funny that). Anyway 12dB translates to 4 times quieter \o/. Oh and its operating temperature is 10deg lower.

 

[PR.]

For the last few days I have had all my fans off. enjoying the almost silence.

Unfortunately I have 5 HDDs on top of each other (2x 20Gb 7200rpm, 2x 80Gb 7200rpm, 1x 18Gb SCSI 15000rpm). This new MBM5 allows you to read the Temp from the SMART system on the drives I was getting a reading of 46 for the IDE's and 43 for the SCSI. So I reconnected the fans and even though there is less than 5mm gap between each drive its shaved 10-15 degrees of the temp

I'm now looking for even quieter fans. I was using Evercool 80mm Low Noise fans which have a rating of <25db. I was wondering if there was anything quiter...

Thanks

 

[~YuckFou~]

Vantec are very quiet, if you can find a UK supplier please let me know! I've emailed them twice now with no response.
Alternatively you could try Papst or Panaflo fans.

 

[lecter]

Vantec dont make any fans of their own, the 'stealth' range are just rebadged papst fans, and the 'tornado' are rebadged sunon's.

 

[Testin da Cable]

is that so? hmm. doors have opened heh. thanks lecter

 

[~YuckFou~]

Originally posted by lecter
Vantec dont make any fans of their own, the 'stealth' range are just rebadged papst fans, and the 'tornado' are rebadged sunon's.

hmm, well done sherlock

Although the decibel ratings are slightly different ?
I've noticed though that different suppliers show different specs for the same fan quite frequently.

 

[Happy Go Lucky]

the zalman fans from quietpc are unsuprisingly quiet.

 

[Xavier]

you can generally replace a pair of 80mm fans with a single nidec gamma - you can't really hear these spin either, just the air they force through

 

[Insane]

I must be a freak then, for I love being able to hear the fans in my machine

Currently my systems all use YS-TECH silent fans for intake fans, and the blowholes all use Coolermaster thermal probe fans (nice low RPM until it starts getting hot)

my data server "toaster" runs a single 90mm fan blowhole, makes a lovely hum when running

 

[Testin da Cable]

heh I used to love that too. it's a phase though. you'll grow out of it

 

[Big G]

I have:

Enermax PSU spinning silent
Zalman flower heatsink spinning silent
GF4 Ti4400 fan turned off
Hard disk mounted in a suspension, isolating it from the PC case so no vibration at all
Akasa soundproof matting fitted to whole PC

Completely silent, apart from very faint "ticking" noise from the hard disk when it's being accessed heavily. OK the PC does run hot, but TBH, fuck all this ultra fast/noisy fan cooling crap - i'd rather hot n silent than "omg my athlon runs at 2 degrees". I went down the road of that and it's just unbearable.

Gaz