Some1 wanna suggest good cooling?

[grafixmonkey]

I have two Xeons whose stock fans sound like lawnmower engines on caffeine. They're 60mm fans, should be easily replaced by any other 60mm fan... Anyone know of some nice 60mm fans that have decent airflow and don't make a ton of noise?

My other options include earplugs, turning a vacuum cleaner on reverse and attaching hoses to the heatsinks (they're THAT loud), or concocting a device out of cardboard toilet paper tubes and duct tape to make a 120mm fan blow into the holes on the heatsinks.

BTW those fans are part of stock cooling from Supermicro, that came with one of their dual xeon boards. Anyone planning on working with a system should plan on not using those, or the stock Xeon cooling from Intel - they're even worse.

 

[jclw]

What about the intel windtunnels? Or are those what you meant by stock intel cooling?

*Dual PIII-800 @900 i440BX and Tualeron 1.2 @1.7 i815*

 

[grafixmonkey]

It's kind of interesting... I had heatsink/fan combos come with both the processors and the motherboard. Never seen a motherboard come with heatsinks before.) The fans that came with the Xeons had a strange plastic enclosure to go around the heatsink, with the option of putting the fan on one side and blowing air through horizontally, or putting it on the top and blowing it down vertically. (given that the board is flat against the table.) The Intel fans had a thermal sensor inside the airstream, and would speed up and slow down with the temperature of the air, which seemed really promising until I turned one one. It seriously sounded like a two-cylinder engine. It was also huge, and couldn't fit on the motherboard in the horizontal configuration, and the fans drew 1.5 amps each (!!) from the fan connectors. So I opted for the Supermicro ones, which make a softer "air blowing" noise but have a high pitched humming that's really annoying.

I'm not sure what the "wind tunnels" are but it could be used to describe those Intel contraptions. Those were kind of cool, it was like playing with a Transformers toy back in the good ol' 80's.

The Supermicro heatsinks have vertical fins like most heatsinks do, but the top of the heatsink has a solid aluminum plate over it, and a hole cut the right size for a 60mm fan. They look like very efficient heatsinks, they even used copper for the inner fins.

Pretty much any 60mm fan should be able to fit. So what's a nice quiet 60mm fan that still pushes at least 40cfm? If I were getting 80mm or above I'd be going straight for Antec or Panaflo, or possibly Vantec, but those tend to not move very much air if I get the quiet ones.

 

[jclw]

Yes, those are the windtunnels. People say they work well when the fans are mounted on the side - but not all boards have room for this arrangement.

*Dual PIII-800 @900 i440BX and Tualeron 1.2 @1.7 i815*

 

[grafixmonkey]

Well, they are extremely loud, but they do pump a good deal of air. The fans themselves are 1.5" thick too, which is a large part of what makes them not fit when in the "tunnel" configuration. It's also a screwless design, the fans snap into place on pegs, which means you can't easily replace the Intel fans with a quieter variety.

The one interesting thing about the wind tunnels is that the fans can be made to suck air through the tunnel instead of blowing it in, which I think would help prevent dust from covering the heatsink as quickly.

Running with two of those fans makes an absolutely unbearable noise. This isn't some exaggeration from a guy who refuses to use anything but 120mm fans in a case - I honestly would not be able to stand working next to this computer with those fans running. I don't have the best feel for dB and I don't have measuring equipment, but I would estimate them at 65dB each, with frequencies distributed in a high pitched clicking and motor whirring sound, similar to the sound a large remote-control car from Wal-Mart would make going forward.

 

[grafixmonkey]

So, does anybody have a favorite 60mm fan for cooling a high-powered but non-overclocked chip, or do I just trust the specs the companies slap on the fan boxes?

 

[o1die]

You can atatch an rpm adjuster, such as the zalman "fan mate 1" and lower the rpms by up to 50%. It's about $5-7. I only notice an increase of 2-3 degrees celcius when running the heatsink fan at the lower setting. I run my p4 at 22-2500, and the amd at 3000-3500.