Need some help with quiet case fans

I have some Scythe fans that are so old I don't remember when I bought them. Still running - and still no noise.
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA9ZH3T20574

I know I am going to catch hell for going against the conventional "Right Answer" but I found my be quiet! fans to be quieter than my Noctua fans. I can crank them to 100% speed and barely hear them, and at normal speed they are TOTALLY silent.
All I can hear at load is the GPU and the Corsair fans I have for lighting.

be quiet! BL066 SILENTWINGS 3 PWM 120mm 1450RPM 50.5CFM 16.4DBA Cooling Fan = $26

be quiet! BL067 SILENTWINGS 3 PWM 140mm 1000RPM 59.5CFM 15.5DBA Cooling Fan = $27



My CPU cooler is the Massive Passive Thermalright Macho rev. B but I got the one with a fan and I got the optional rubber duct to connect the passive heatsink to the rear case fan. So it's like I have a push-pull setup. My CPU fan is so slow it is barely spinning. For your use, Passive + Duct should be fine and you can always add a fan later if high temperatures need it.
$50

As darkbreeze has already stated that case already comes with 120mm intake,120mm exhaust fans.
While not the absolute best reviews show a fairly decent noise to cooling ratio so you may find you dont need to replace them at all.

Id hold off till you actually have the case up & running.

Definitely replace the stock intel cooler though, for a quiet system that should honestly be first priority.

I agree, while they are not Noctua's, they may be fine. Probably a good idea to run them first and decide for yourself if they are quiet enough for you. Costs nothing to do that and you might save a few bucks by doing so. Cooler master sells much better fans than they used to, so they might be ok, but I'd be surprised if they last more than two or three years if this unit will be running more often than not.

Worry about replacing them with better fans when that time comes. Otherwise, I'd stick to fans by Noctua, Noiseblocker, Thermalright, Phanteks, Be Quiet or Nanoxia.

Of 15 quiet fans tested by Overclockers this year, none beat Noctua in actual SPL, decibels or sound profile.

All but fan one beat their specs. Only the Antec True Quiet had a lower SPL than specified. The Noctua fans all matched or beat their CFM specs. The Noctua fans were adjusted so that their SPL profile does not match our hearing profile. In that, I judge they were successful: they have roughly the same SPL as comparable fans with similar airflow, but my observation was that the tone of the Noctua fans are more pleasing to listen to and easier on the ears and did not sound as loud as you would expect from their SPL’s.

Click to expand...

http://www.overclockers.com/15-case-fans-tested-ultimate-140-mm-roundup/

After looking around the fans that come withvthe case are some nondescript 3 pin fixed speed 1200rpm ones (you'd like to think they'd include 4 pin master fans but I suppose at a budget price you can't expect that)

That said your board & the smart fan software are 100% capable of controlling fans via voltage so you will still have variable speed on them once set up.

Well, it's nice that at least SOME motherboard manufacturers have actually started TELLING us which types of fan controls the headers on their boards support instead of having to contact them on a per board basis or pore through pages of forum threads to find out.

Based on that, I'd probably agree it's still ok to stick with those fans at first. If you decide you don't like the decibel level after adjusting the fan speed curves in the bios or via whatever software utility they offer, or the "sound profile" is just unpleasant, you can always fairly easily go ahead and swap them out at that point. It's not like you have to go back and do a lot of work to replace them, like say, a heat sink would be.

The Coffee lake i7's seem to have a tendency to run hot, even at stock configurations. In fact, there is an entire, many page long thread dedicated to that here somewhere (I'll find it and give you a link so you can read up on it) and a bunch of them at other forums too.

Unfortunately, any cooler worth using is going to be at least as large as that 212 EVO, but unlike the EVO, the ones I'd recommend actually work very well. The EVO isn't terrible at cooling either, for a budget cooler, but it's mounting system sucks and more often than not people do not get an adequate amount of mounting pressure when installing the EVO, resulting in poor cooling performance.

I suspect this was probably the case in your situation. I've actually written a tutorial outlining this exact issue with the 212 EVO.

http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-2520482/solving-temperature-issues-hyper-212-evo.html


There ARE some lower profile coolers that have better performance than the stock cooler by a pretty good margin, but unfortunately they are still rather large, using a lot of space. Unless you want to use a closed loop water cooled setup, it's an unfortunate fact that if you want good cooling you are going to have to sacrifice some real estate for the cooler. Stock coolers suck, we all know it, and there's nothing to be done about it aside from using a good aftermarket cooler.

Any cooler that doesn't take up much space is going to have performance on par with, or slightly better than, the stock cooler. That makes it a waste of time. Also, the stock cooler is usually louder than an aftermarket cooler, most of the time. Whereas a big 120 or 140mm fan can keep the CPU plenty cool at low to mid load conditions without really needing to increase speed much, the stock cooler has to spin extremely fast almost all the time just to keep the CPU marginally within thermal limits because it uses a small fan and a very small heat sink.

There are fanless heatsinks, but I don't recommend them on any cpu with four or more cores, especially not a gaming or professional work system.

There are a couple of options, many in fact, but a few that I think fit the bill, but you're going to have to accept the fact that if you want decent cooling you're just going to have to live with the idea that you can't use a small cooler.

Using an all-in-one water cooled setup might actually be good for somebody like you because you could mount it in the front, which would eliminate the need to add any fans there, it would keep the motherboard clutter free with no big heatsink to piss you off and make getting to things on the board a PITA, AND you would get very good cooling capability. You might even actually save money going this route because two really good front fans plus a 50 dollar CPU cooler would come to about 100 bucks after taxes.

You can get the ID cooling Frostflow 240L cooler for USD $78.61 on ebay (No worries because ID cooling has US based offices in the event of warranty issues, I know, I checked with our cooling guy Crashman on this previously) with free shipping.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/ID-COOLING-240l-AIO-Water-Cooler-Unique-Comet-tail-LED-Lighting-240mm-Radiator/122356708544?epid=2255308921&hash=item1c7d0734c0:g:1JUAAOSwIRxZerrz

Crashman had this to say about this cooler when he reviewed it last year:

ID-Cooling's Frostflow 240L offers the best full-speed temperature ever achieved on this test system, the best low-speed acoustic efficiency of any closed-loop cooler tested on this system, and the lowest price of any 2x 120mm cooler ever tested on our system. However, while some users prefer integrated fan and pump control, the Frostflow 240L uses motherboard-based controls.

ID-Cooling pushes the value envelope by selling its product directly to customers at the lowest-possible price, undercutting competitors by an average of 22 percent. Fan blades designed to operate efficiently at a fairly low RPM are paired with a medium RPM fan motor, so users are best to leave fan control up to their motherboard. Better performance at a better price make the Frostflow 240L this editor's choice among 2x 120mm closed-loop CPU coolers.

Click to expand...

Now, all that being said, I personally am not a big fan of liquid cooling for my own systems. I've installed enough of them for customers though that I'm ok with saying they are terrific in the right circumstances, and definitely LOOK much better than a big old air cooler, but for my personal stuff I'm still using air, at least so far. I think in your circumstance though it might be an option to consider.

If you want to stick with air there are a few recommendations I'd make, and any of these are pretty good, some obviously better than others, and of course these are just recommendations for units within the budget you outlined. There are much better coolers available in the 60-80 dollar range.


PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU Cooler: Phanteks - PH-TC12DX_BK 68.5 CFM CPU Cooler ($49.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $49.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-11-06 23:21 EST-0500



PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU Cooler: CRYORIG - H5 Universal 65.0 CFM CPU Cooler ($46.89 @ OutletPC)
Total: $46.89
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-11-06 23:29 EST-0500



PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU Cooler: CRYORIG - H5 Universal 65.0 CFM CPU Cooler ($46.89 @ OutletPC)
Total: $46.89
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-11-06 23:29 EST-0500



This cooler has almost as good of performance and has lower sound levels than the much larger, much more expensive Noctua NH-D15, and has a smaller footprint than most tower coolers with good enough performance to make them worth using.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU Cooler: Thermalright - TRUE Spirit 140 Direct 73.6 CFM CPU Cooler ($44.90 @ Amazon)
Total: $44.90
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-11-06 23:31 EST-0500


For under 40 bucks, this is a great cooler. Cryorig makes excellent quality products as well. All these coolers I've listed are terrific quality though. This is a bit smaller than some of these, with only a 120mm fan though, rather than a 140mm fan, so it also has a slightly smaller overall footprint and is considerably shorter than some of these others.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU Cooler: CRYORIG - H7 49.0 CFM CPU Cooler ($34.89 @ OutletPC)
Total: $34.89
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-11-06 23:37 EST-0500


And this is the lowest priced cooler I EVER recommend, but it still has great performance, especially for a 25 dollar cooler, and it outperforms a LOT of more expensive coolers. It is NOT however, one of the quieter units. With a good, quiet fan installed thoug instead of the one that comes with it, it could be a very good option for about 45 bucks including the cost of the cooler plus a better fan like the Noctua NF-F12 PWM chromax.black.swap

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU Cooler: Deepcool - GAMMAXX 400 74.3 CFM CPU Cooler ($18.89 @ OutletPC)
Total: $18.89
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-11-07 00:08 EST-0500

^ tower coolers are , by design, more efficient at displacing CPU heat .

You always want front to rear case airflow (in all but the most obscure custom designed cases)

The fact a tower cooler pushes from front to back aids this.

Natural convection (hot air rises) will take GPU air up towards the rear fan anyway.


Many people (myself included) would generally install 2 intake fans in the front , one of them lower down directing cold airflow towards the GPU.

I do however always give stock fan layouts a tryout before reaching or adding fans to them.

If your planned GPU were something with a higher tdp like a 1080 or amd 580/Vega card I'd probably add another front intake from the off.

Its not though , its a 75w 1050 which is not particularly hard to keep at reasonable temps.

Because all the downdraft, top down, whatever you want to call them, coolers pretty much suck except the Scythe Susanoo (LOL), and that's not around anymore. Give me any specific downdraft CPU cooler model and I'll show you where it doesn't even cool as well as a 25 dollar tower cooler. There is only one reason to use a top down cooler and that's if you have a small form factor or ITX case that won't allow you to use anything else.

They USUALLY are better than the stock Intel and AMD coolers, but just barely, and in some cases, I mean JUST barely, by like one or two degrees.

Plus, as Matt mentioned, they are not complementary to the design of a front to rear standardized airflow arrangement. They actually screw up airflow in a tower case by creating unwanted turbulence. In a very small case that's usually not a problem because a couple of 120 or 140mm case fans is enough to create a massive pressure exchange that takes place at a level of pressure, due to the small area, that nearly eradicates the turbulence or at least makes it irrelevant.

They are also usually a $hit ton louder because they need way more RPMs to compensate, or try to compensate, for the lack of surface area on the heatsink.


If you look at the Frostytech test results on that Noctua, and don't get me wrong, it's probably one of the much better top down coolers out there and I imagine it would be an improvement over the stock cooler, you will see that it really only scores better than other top down coolers. It can't even beat the lowly Cooler master TX2 which is a 10 dollar stock replacement on ebay.

For a cooler that costs 40 dollars, that's not a very good cost to performance ratio.


http://www.frostytech.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=2730&page=4

Yes, it very nearly would. I guess you can see why that doesn't fit in to the whole "top down coolers suck" mantra?

So you are going to replace the fan on the Gammaxx with a Noctua fan? And which fan model are you looking at? You actually WANT the brown style fans?

Take the L.N.A and throw it in the trash. Seriously. It caps the voltage at 7v and the cooler will never manage to reach it's potential when there are heavy loads.

Do you want a cooler that's as quiet as possible at ALL times, even if that means sacrificing some performance, or do you want one that is really quiet most the time, as is still relatively quiet under full load compared to any other fan with a similar CFM, but can be definitely obvious at full speed?

The reason I ask is because the Noctua NF-F12 pwm Industrial PPC fans, which are black like the Chromax fans, are about 7db louder than the NF-F12pwm, which is really not that much with a max db of 29.7 they are still quieter than the majority of 120mm fans, but they also put out 71.6 CFM instead of 54.9.

Either way, you can't go wrong.


I actually used to know a guy with a Scythe Susanoo and I constantly tried to buy it from him but he would never sell. Never been able to find a used one anywhere either. Wish I could actually.

I wouldn't use it for case fans either. You can easily tailor fan speed profiles to suit your purposes or preferences using most motherboard bios or desktop utilities so there's no need to do it that way. You always want the ability for fans to reach maximum airflow IF it's necessary, due to an unforeseen thermal condition or problem or even if you just happen to be running something that's particularly more demanding than normal.

If you happen to find that they work perfectly well without the need to reach top speeds, you can simply reduce the fan curve to a level where they never see the upper percentile of RPMs.

I don't know, I guess I've never heard of a stock cooler not letting its CPU live up to its full potential unless you're overlocking or have bad airflow problems.

Click to expand...

Really? Because thermal throttling on both stock and overclocked systems can and has been a problem on a variety of platforms, especially for gamers who really push their hardware for extended periods of time or for professionals that consistently run demanding applications or do a lot of intensive rendering or modeling. There's a slew of reasons why it could happen, and it may NEVER happen, but it certainly CAN and often does, else there would not be a market for aftermarket products. Certainly the market for aftermarket coolers didn't evolve simply because EVERYBODY is overclocking or because they are ALL building custom systems that require a big, fat cooler just to look at. Although, it's nice to have that option too.

I don't think there's actually a NEED to go bigger than the standard stock fans, but then again I don't know how you use your system or how demanding you are going to be on the hardware. I just threw that out there as an option in the even you wanted to get maximum potential capabilility out of your cooler since you were going to replace the fan anyhow.

And further, if you want a fan that really give the Noctua a run for it's money, and I found to be slightly quieter than the Noctua NF-F12pwm at equal RPMs, this might be a really good option for the cooler as well. Blacknoise has a very good reputation among those who are familiar with it, but it's not a brand that's as well known in the US as it should be. They also have good performance when it comes to static pressure, beating out the EK Vardar just slightly when tested on a identical radiators and was too close to call based strictly on paper specs when compared to the non-industrial Noctua fans.

https://www.amazon.com/Noiseblocker-NB-eLoop-B12-PS-120mmx25mm-Silent/dp/B008RO65UU

Another thing you have to consider when choosing a CPU cooler fan is static pressure. It's all well and good if a fan is quiet or has a very high CFM output in free air environments, but a lot of those characteristics change quickly when you throw the resistance of a radiator or heatsink, or the internal case pressure resistance that affects intake fans, into the mix.

High static pressure fans are able to maintain a high level of throughput despite a higher level of resistance to the airflow they are trying to deploy.

Even very high quality, reputable fan models don't always have this characteristic so that's why some fans are better for use only as exhaust fans or in equal pressure configurations and others shine in situations where high static pressure is necessary like on radiators and heatsinks, or in equal or positive pressure case airflow configurations. You always want to give some consideration to noise (db), airflow (CFM or m3h) and static pressure (mm H₂O).

A very high static pressure fan can provide far better cooling potential than a lower static pressure fan that has has a higher CFM and noise level. They usually generate less loise too because there is often additonal fan blade turbulence and harmonics involved when a low static pressure fan has to spin at a higher RPM to try and compensate for what a high static pressure fan can do at a lower or equal RPM.

I'd go with a pair of 4 pin redux pwm's for front intakes mate .

You can run them lower speed & 2 fans running 800rpm or so make less noise than a single fan running 1000-1200rpm.

You'll get a better generalised inflow with 2 fans fitted as mentioned earlier.

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/8r9KHx/noctua-case-fan-nfp14sredux1500pwm

A pair of these works out only $5 more than that single chroma fan you listed.

Drop the CPU cooler fan down to another of the Noctua NF-F12 fans and you will be good to go for a long time with a very quiet machine. Just make sure to setup your fan profiles after you get into the bios. You can probably tailor them further using whatever windows utility software the motherboard comes with but personally I prefer to just set the profile up in the bios and forget it.

I don't like the redux fans. I have six of them and have installed a handful more and to me, they are not nearly as good as the standard F model fans. The sound profile they have is annoying to me compared to the F and A series fans and I pulled them all back out of the machine I had installed them in and they are sitting on my work bench as we speak, where they have been for the last 1.5 years since I took them back out.

Just my opinion, but like I said, I buy and test a lot of fans and I've not found anything that has a lower or more pleasant sound profile than the NF-F and NF-A series fans. Just my opinion, you can of course do what you wish. And, to somebody else they may not be bothered by particular sound profiles and harmonics like I am.

To some degree that is right, but it really doesn't work that way and certainly not to that degree. It's actually a pretty complex algorithm and even then it can't provide an accurate picture as numbers simply cannot demonstrate specific sound profiles, and some sound much different than others, or factor in things like obstructions, being fully inside a case. Being partially inside a case, etc.

Decibel level figures for fans as listed on their specifications are generally free air, open space measurements. A 20db fan for example is not going to sound like 20db when it's closed up inside your case and mounted on your CPU cooler which itself lends a hand in muffling it further. I assure you, for what you are doing, and the fans you've selected, it's practially impossible for their to be any other solution that is both adequate AND quieter, for the hardware you are using. You will be happy with it I'm quite sure.


This might interest you as well.

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2482161/h440-enthoo-luxe.html