What's the most quiet case fan you've ever used?
What the most quiet case fan of today?
I want to get a few quiet LED case fans.
Figured I'd ask you all out there what your favorites are.
I picked up some very nice Coolermaster LED fans with the rifle bearings. nice and quiet compared to cheapo high RPM ones. There might be some that are quieter because they have lower RPM, which means less CFM, but I'm happy.
Those are pretty nice. Blue was what I was looking for too.
Their noise output is relatively low too for the Air flow: 32.11 CFM.
Here's the case I'm setting up, only mine has the extra fan in the window. It has the panel in front for 4 fan readouts and cpu temp, etc. You can set it up to read diff things. I'm setting it up to read 4 fans and cpu temp.
The fans need to have the bigger 4 pin connectors to go to the readout panel.
I have 2 of those coolermaster LED fans in my comp, and they are very quiet. However if you want almost total silence, I'd get the Zalman case fans w/ fan resistor adaptor. These are incredibly quiet. I've bought at least 6 of them to put in two comps and now I can't even hear it.
vers, I've used and have a couple of the zalmans too. I like them. They hold up well and are relatively quiet.
Gnome, I'm sure you recognize the case... I'm finally getting it set up. Inlaws are tickled with their new pc I just finished. That's what I got the ECS MB for. I'll look at some panaflows also. I know their name is very reputable.
Yea been awhile since i saw that case forgot i even gave it to you. Panaflos medium range fan is without a doubt the best Noise / CFM ive ever found. I have one 92mm Panaflow M1 on my cpu right now and i cant even here it with it full blast right next to me
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Geeky1University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
edited March 2005
Hawk; what are you going to be trying to cool with these fans, and how many of them will that case take? 7? And if that fan controller tells you the fan speed (which it probably does) then it has to take 3 pin fans, not 4 pin fans.
Geeky, It has 6 on the case-- 2 back, 2 front, 1 top, 1 in window. Then you have the cpu fan. So, that's 7. Then I have a TTGI 450W 4 fan PS also.
As far as the fan controller-- here's pics-- This is the front--
This is the wiring. As you can see the plugs are 4 pin. But on the other end of the wires they are 3 pin where they connect to the controller. It has 2-- 3 pin plugs for each fan inside the controller panel. One for power and one for speed control.
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Geeky1University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
edited March 2005
Odd. Anyhow, what exactly is going in this case (video card, cpu?)?
I'm putting in An Abit NF7-S Rev.2.0 MB, W/ AMD Athlon XP 3200+,
2- Western Digital Raptors 36.7GB 10000RPM SATA HD's,
1G OCZ High Perf. PC3200 Rev.3 Timing-2-3-3-4,
Tyan Tachyon Radeon 9700 Pro,
Lite On 52x24x52 CD-RW,
Pioneer’s DVR-105 DVD-RW,
Mitsumi USB 2.0 Flash Media 7in1 Floppy Card reader,
Quad fan TTGI 450W PS all chrome,
Logitech Cordless MX700 Duo Mouse & keyboard - Black.
Thermaltake Xaser III Case
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Geeky1University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
At any rate, you're not going to get sufficient cooling from 7 of the quietest 80mm fans on the market. If you must have blue LED fans (although most LED fans aren't going to fit in that case as well as non-LED fans), you should get 7 of these (as the case does take 7 fans- 2 on the back, 2 on the front, 1 on the top and 2 on the side, at least according to the pic I linked earlier): http://www.svc.com/80smartcasefanblueled.html
Set them up to use the thermal control feature and don't use the front panel fan controller at all.
Same fan, but they'll fit in the fan holders in the case more readily than the LED fans.
Again, set them up with thermal control and don't use the front panel connector. I'd suggest also getting a Thermalright SI-97 and this fan: http://www.svc.com/92smartcasefanblueled.html
And yeah, that should be set up with thermal control too. Put the thermistors for the rear exhaust fans and the CPU fan on the base of the heatsink (not between the heatsink and the cpu tho) or attach them to the cpu next to the core. The top fan's thermistor you can just leave hanging in the middle of the case; I'd hang it so that it's in midair in front of the power supply, about halfway between the front of the PS and the back of the optical drives. The front fans' thermistors should be attached to the base of the hard drives; if you run the drives you'll notice that one particular area of the PCB on the drive gets hotter than the others- i'd attach the thermistor to that area as that's the hottest part of the drive. And you'll probably have to leave the thermistors on the side fans dangling, or it'll be a pain in the ass to remove the case's side panel. If you do choose to attach them to something, attach them to the back of the video card just above the GPU.
The Thermaltake SmartFan 2s and the LED variants in 80, 92, and 120mm sizes are the only case fans worth spending money on for 99.9% of the systems people are building today. If you want a totally silent system, there are better choices, but for a quiet system that still has enough cooling power to deal with the heat put out by today's components, they're the best choice.
Comments
Their noise output is relatively low too for the Air flow: 32.11 CFM.
Here's the case I'm setting up, only mine has the extra fan in the window. It has the panel in front for 4 fan readouts and cpu temp, etc. You can set it up to read diff things. I'm setting it up to read 4 fans and cpu temp.
The fans need to have the bigger 4 pin connectors to go to the readout panel.
Gnome, I'm sure you recognize the case... I'm finally getting it set up. Inlaws are tickled with their new pc I just finished. That's what I got the ECS MB for. I'll look at some panaflows also. I know their name is very reputable.
As far as the fan controller-- here's pics-- This is the front--
This is the wiring. As you can see the plugs are 4 pin. But on the other end of the wires they are 3 pin where they connect to the controller. It has 2-- 3 pin plugs for each fan inside the controller panel. One for power and one for speed control.
2- Western Digital Raptors 36.7GB 10000RPM SATA HD's,
1G OCZ High Perf. PC3200 Rev.3 Timing-2-3-3-4,
Tyan Tachyon Radeon 9700 Pro,
Lite On 52x24x52 CD-RW,
Pioneer’s DVR-105 DVD-RW,
Mitsumi USB 2.0 Flash Media 7in1 Floppy Card reader,
Quad fan TTGI 450W PS all chrome,
Logitech Cordless MX700 Duo Mouse & keyboard - Black.
Thermaltake Xaser III Case
At any rate, you're not going to get sufficient cooling from 7 of the quietest 80mm fans on the market. If you must have blue LED fans (although most LED fans aren't going to fit in that case as well as non-LED fans), you should get 7 of these (as the case does take 7 fans- 2 on the back, 2 on the front, 1 on the top and 2 on the side, at least according to the pic I linked earlier):
http://www.svc.com/80smartcasefanblueled.html
Set them up to use the thermal control feature and don't use the front panel fan controller at all.
If you don't NEED the LED fans, 7 of these for the case would be a better choice:
http://www.svc.com/thersmarcasf.html
Same fan, but they'll fit in the fan holders in the case more readily than the LED fans.
Again, set them up with thermal control and don't use the front panel connector. I'd suggest also getting a Thermalright SI-97 and this fan:
http://www.svc.com/92smartcasefanblueled.html
And yeah, that should be set up with thermal control too. Put the thermistors for the rear exhaust fans and the CPU fan on the base of the heatsink (not between the heatsink and the cpu tho) or attach them to the cpu next to the core. The top fan's thermistor you can just leave hanging in the middle of the case; I'd hang it so that it's in midair in front of the power supply, about halfway between the front of the PS and the back of the optical drives. The front fans' thermistors should be attached to the base of the hard drives; if you run the drives you'll notice that one particular area of the PCB on the drive gets hotter than the others- i'd attach the thermistor to that area as that's the hottest part of the drive. And you'll probably have to leave the thermistors on the side fans dangling, or it'll be a pain in the ass to remove the case's side panel. If you do choose to attach them to something, attach them to the back of the video card just above the GPU.
The Thermaltake SmartFan 2s and the LED variants in 80, 92, and 120mm sizes are the only case fans worth spending money on for 99.9% of the systems people are building today. If you want a totally silent system, there are better choices, but for a quiet system that still has enough cooling power to deal with the heat put out by today's components, they're the best choice.