New PC with fan problems

yunzel

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Jul 31, 2011
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Yesterday I received the custom-built PC I ordered. Putting it all in place made me pretty giddy untill the moment of the first start-up. The fans are annoyingly loud. Under no load at all it sounds like an air-conditioner.

Before going into detail, here's the setup:
CPU: i7-2600k sandy-bridge (not overclocked yet)
Heatsink: Noctua NH-D14
Mobo: ASRock Z68 Extreme
GPU: XFX HD6970 2GB
PSU: Cooler Master Silent Pro M 700W

SSD: OCZ VTX3-25SAT3-120G
HDD: Samsung HD103SJ
Case: CM690ii Advanced with 3 stock fans (front & top intake - 140mm/back outflow - 120mm)

In general the PC is a beast for gaming. Though gaming isn't that enjoyable when you can't even hear the in-game sound without being disturbed by the annoying buzzing of the fans. My primary concern was that the PC would run quiet, cfr. the Noctua heatsink. But when the system makes more noise than a 2 year old €1000 HP Pavilion Desktop, which runs pretty much silent, I think something got messed up along the way.

The motherboard utility app allows adjusting the fan speed levels and target temperatures. Even with all levels set to 1, the fans are still quite loud. Here's some stats from the motherboard ap:
AxsmS.jpg

q5J4d.jpg

I checked the fans' orientation and it's all ok. I can't really discern which of the fans are making the most noise, since they're all quite close together. Is this normal for these kind of fans? I doubt it. I also can't see any way to solve my problem anymore, since opening the case voids the warranty and even if I opened it, I wouldn't know what could help.

Another fan problem is located on my GPU. Whenver I start playing a high-spec game like The Witcher 2 or Crysis 2, the fan quickly heats up to 90+°C - My CPU never goes above 45°C in any situation. The fan can sometimes even be heard (above all the other fan noise) when I'm wearing my beefy head-phones while in-game sound is playing. I searched the internet and came to the conclusion it's a fairly common problem with this card, so I guess the solution is to buy another one?


If anyone could enlighten me as what I could do to resolve this noisy problem, it would be very much appreciated.
 

yunzel

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Jul 31, 2011
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Thanks for the info GhislainG.
I don't think my Noctua Heatsink is the main problem. It's the stock fans and the gfx card under load that really up the volume. The more I think about it, the more I think I'll need to buy some new fans and maybe even a new gfx card. Unless anyone else can see how to improve the situation as is.
 

yunzel

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Jul 31, 2011
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I pulled out the top fan, making the system less noisy while not under heavy load. While I was doing that I noticed the Noctua heatsink is wedged against one of my Corsair RAM sticks. This resulted in the RAM being angled a bit and having deformed the heatsink a few mm, could this have a noticable effect on the speed of the fan?
 

yunzel

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Jul 31, 2011
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Thanks for the reply guys. I'll be heading off to the shop then, so they can do a checkup on the gpu and heatsink and possibly give me other hardware.
 
Also, this being a custom system ... "Whenver I start playing a high-spec game like The Witcher 2 or Crysis 2, the fan quickly heats up to 90+°C" This is high -- maybe they overclocked your video card to give you better perforamnce? This would cause noise problems and high temps...
 

yunzel

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Jul 31, 2011
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Also, this being a custom system ... "Whenver I start playing a high-spec game like The Witcher 2 or Crysis 2, the fan quickly heats up to 90+°C" This is high -- maybe they overclocked your video card to give you better perforamnce? This would cause noise problems and high temps...

I doubt it, as I used the catalyst graphic overdrive program to limit power usage and lower the performance. With that done it still did pretty bad.