What's the quietest fan?

[Diamond4D]

What's the quietest fan? (80mm)

 

[Teq]

I've done a lot of "qieting things down" stuff lately and from what I can tell the quietest fans are the plain old sleeve bearing 2300 rpm fans that were standard equipment in 386 and 486 power supplies. (Made by Panasonic, I believe.)

Any fan that actually works is going to make some noise.

The ones with the curved, pointed blades are going to be the loudest... You can quiet them considerably by filing the sharp point of each blade creating a very small radius (about 2mm).

One of the best ways to quiet a fan down is to slow it down. There are many ways of doing this, but it's done at the expense of airflow. On the simple end, putting a 10 ohm 2 watt resistor in series with the power lead will knock about 5 or 10% off the speed of most fans, quieting them considerably. On the absolute far end you can get microprocessor control units that fit in a drive bay to individually control all the fans. "Smart" fans are a good idea. Some vary speed according to temperature, some switch on and off... but they all reduce noise.


<b>(</b>It ain't better if it don't work.<b>)</b>

 

[speeduk]

The quietest 80mm fan ive seen is a papst one that produces only 12db and 20CFM airflow.

 

[Teq]

Got a link to their homepage?
I'd like to check that out.


<b>(</b>It ain't better if it don't work.<b>)</b>

 

[NE_Corridor]

Althought the Paspt is a quiet fan, I have read that that 12db rating is highly suspect.

Call me Caine.

 

[Teq]

Which is why I wanted to test one or two...

I've begun actively looking for quiet parts... fans that don't whistle, hard disks that don't sound like popcorn or make whining sounds, CD drives that don't sound like vaccuum cleaners, etc.

Take your own PC, imagine being in an otherwise quiet, open concept office with 50 of them, expected to turn out a decent day's work...

My PC is a very basic computer... XP1800, Gigabyte mobo, Spire cooler, CD, CDRW, ZIPDisk, Floppy, Maxtor 20gb, in a Micro-ATX case... lined with sound deadening vinyl, equipped with modified fans and hard disk mounted on rubber grommets... It sits in my dining room and, even with so many accoustic countermeasures, I can still hear the #$%&$ thing all the way at the other end of my apartment!

The noise these things make is getting ridiculous.




<b>(</b>It ain't better if it don't work.<b>)</b>

 

[svol]

I can't tell you which one is the quietest... but both Panaflo and Pabst produce very quiet fans.

My dual-PSU PC is so powerfull that the neighbourhood dims when I turn it on

 

[jankphil]

you might try a Volcano 9 and just turn the smartfan down to it's lowest RPM's, (around 1800) it's dead quiet then.

"What kind of idiot are you?"
"I don't know, what kinds are there?"

 

[Codinerx]

Get a rheostat and attatch it to the fan, that way you can control the speed and noise level yourself. You could also buy/build a fanbus, but that would cost a bit.