- Oct 30, 2004
- 32,255
- 14
- 99,960
I recently stated that one of the reasons I preferred one card over another was the substantially lower noise level and the response was that the "another" card "isn't loud". Now I took that as a bit presumptuous as "loud" is context specific ..... put a parent and kid in a room or car with a radio and each will have widely varying views on what is considered loud. For water coolers it's a "big thing" but it spurred my curiosity as to how noise was perceived among the non custom water loop crowd.
I actually woke up a week ago when I heard my son's cat walking down a set of carpeted stairs into the den where I was napping .... before ya say "no way", the wood creaked, didn't actually hear footsteps but told my son the cat needs to go on a diet
. The 30 - 60 pound dogs generate the creak, but this was the 1st time I noticed the cat causing it.
The reason I invested $300 in GFX card water blocks and TIM was not because of anticipated performance gains but because of noise ..... since I sit there 12 - 20 hours a day, the constant drone of fan noise from twin cards is distracting and annoying. To my mind if I can tell the machine is on by my ears, it's "too loud".
Many CLC users have told me that they don't consider their 60+ dbA H100i's or 290x's loud, in one of these discussions, one of them then hit that thread a bit later posting that he never noticed how loud it was till one night when he was gaming and took off his headphones to find his GF asleep with the TV blasting .... she used the TV to drown out the fan noise. Without headphones many peeps don't hear the noise as when system gets loaded, there;s shooting, grunting, explosions and other sound effects downing it out. However, if that same box is used in a work environment, video editing, CAD, rendering, those sound effects aren't present.
Cases in point:
1. When the 780 Ti's first came out a user asked for a build and he came over and we talked about the relative strengths and weaknesses of the various components..... as a gamer, he was primarily interested in performance, but he also telecommuted 2-3 days and worked from home. So I asked if noise was a consideration and his answer was "aren't they all the same ?". His system was more audible then he liked but he believed there was nothing to be done about it.
So we went looking at Techpowerup noise results and found the following:
Reference board: 39 dbA
Company A: Board: 39 dbA
Company B: 35 dbA
Company C: 30 dbA
Being that 40 dbA is twice as loud as 30 dbA .... well as you might have guessed, noise was now on his list of considerations.
Now I'll note that several times in the past 2 years I have read TPU reviews that were later edited, the reason being that after the review was published and comparisons made to competing products, the manufacturers came back with new BIOSs which resulted in less noise. So, the issue was apparently viewed as a "significant issue" by the manufacturers. Temps went up, but obviously, noise was given priority over temps. This hasn't happened as yet with the subject 780 Ti above AFAIK.
2. With voltage limitations on newer CPUs resulting in OCs being curtailed by voltage, the advantage to be gained by liquid cooling is now very small, if any. CLC's certainly bring no advantage over air cooling from a temperature or noise standpoint. Yet, enthusiasm for water cooling has not diminished. The days if 30 fpi rads and 3000 rpm Delta fans are gone and low fpi rads and low rpm represent the great majority of products available. I'd say on average, peeps are gaining 0.1 Ghz on water, maybe 0.2 .... and at least on 7xx and 9xx cards, not seeing any performance differences at all on those cards where the manufacturer has gone beyond reference and provided direct cooling for PCB power, voltage and memory components.
So, while I pretty well know the mindset among water clockers, I wanted to pose the following questions to get an idea of how noise factors into the decision making process among a wider audience :
A. What noise level do you consider worth trying to reduce ?
B. Does noise level factor into your decision making process for:
CPU Coolers ?
GFX Cards ?
Case Fans ?
C. Do you take any "steps" (i.e adding sound dampening material) to reduce system noise ?
I actually woke up a week ago when I heard my son's cat walking down a set of carpeted stairs into the den where I was napping .... before ya say "no way", the wood creaked, didn't actually hear footsteps but told my son the cat needs to go on a diet
. The 30 - 60 pound dogs generate the creak, but this was the 1st time I noticed the cat causing it.The reason I invested $300 in GFX card water blocks and TIM was not because of anticipated performance gains but because of noise ..... since I sit there 12 - 20 hours a day, the constant drone of fan noise from twin cards is distracting and annoying. To my mind if I can tell the machine is on by my ears, it's "too loud".
Many CLC users have told me that they don't consider their 60+ dbA H100i's or 290x's loud, in one of these discussions, one of them then hit that thread a bit later posting that he never noticed how loud it was till one night when he was gaming and took off his headphones to find his GF asleep with the TV blasting .... she used the TV to drown out the fan noise. Without headphones many peeps don't hear the noise as when system gets loaded, there;s shooting, grunting, explosions and other sound effects downing it out. However, if that same box is used in a work environment, video editing, CAD, rendering, those sound effects aren't present.
Cases in point:
1. When the 780 Ti's first came out a user asked for a build and he came over and we talked about the relative strengths and weaknesses of the various components..... as a gamer, he was primarily interested in performance, but he also telecommuted 2-3 days and worked from home. So I asked if noise was a consideration and his answer was "aren't they all the same ?". His system was more audible then he liked but he believed there was nothing to be done about it.
So we went looking at Techpowerup noise results and found the following:
Reference board: 39 dbA
Company A: Board: 39 dbA
Company B: 35 dbA
Company C: 30 dbA
Being that 40 dbA is twice as loud as 30 dbA .... well as you might have guessed, noise was now on his list of considerations.
Now I'll note that several times in the past 2 years I have read TPU reviews that were later edited, the reason being that after the review was published and comparisons made to competing products, the manufacturers came back with new BIOSs which resulted in less noise. So, the issue was apparently viewed as a "significant issue" by the manufacturers. Temps went up, but obviously, noise was given priority over temps. This hasn't happened as yet with the subject 780 Ti above AFAIK.
2. With voltage limitations on newer CPUs resulting in OCs being curtailed by voltage, the advantage to be gained by liquid cooling is now very small, if any. CLC's certainly bring no advantage over air cooling from a temperature or noise standpoint. Yet, enthusiasm for water cooling has not diminished. The days if 30 fpi rads and 3000 rpm Delta fans are gone and low fpi rads and low rpm represent the great majority of products available. I'd say on average, peeps are gaining 0.1 Ghz on water, maybe 0.2 .... and at least on 7xx and 9xx cards, not seeing any performance differences at all on those cards where the manufacturer has gone beyond reference and provided direct cooling for PCB power, voltage and memory components.
So, while I pretty well know the mindset among water clockers, I wanted to pose the following questions to get an idea of how noise factors into the decision making process among a wider audience :
A. What noise level do you consider worth trying to reduce ?
B. Does noise level factor into your decision making process for:
CPU Coolers ?
GFX Cards ?
Case Fans ?
C. Do you take any "steps" (i.e adding sound dampening material) to reduce system noise ?
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