The Official Cooling Thread!

All the theory in that makes perfect sense to me, so why is it that all the fans I own vibrate more, the faster they spin? There's no noticeable reduction in the vibration produced by the FM121, the SFF21F or any other of the fans I have when they reach full speed. I can think of no other logical explanation for the fact that the frame of the fan pulsates four times every time the assembly rotates.
With the 80mm Hiper fan I have at the top of my case, the actual noise of the fan is pretty much inaudible, even at its full speed of 2000rpm, but you hear considerable vibration, at constant frequencies of 4*rpm and 11*rpm (it's an 11 blade fan). This all leaves me a little confused as to the scientific reason for the vibration. I understand what you've told me, but I can't figure out where the 4*rpm frequency is being produced from...
Holy hell, we've written a lot on this!

 

Sam,
It could be caused by blade chop! The trailing blade hitting the wash from the leading one. It could be caused by a harmonic. More than likely because it's not firmly bolted down. I just hooked up the original cooler Master fan and set it on my desktop, so it's on something real solid. Pick the fan up with your fingers just a fraction of an inch and it vibrates lie a mother Frogger. Hold it down firmly by the corners and it barsly vibrates at all! Try it! Just lift it straight up by the top corners and it will buzz like a bee. then put it down on something flat and solid and it barely vibrates at all.

You know, I tried those silicone mounts instead of the screws and noticed less noise, but more vibration so I just used the screws and the vibration went away. I fully understand the theory of them but it seems in practice that the more solid the mount, the less vibration you get! Something i didn't realize till now. If where your fans mount isn't nickel plated I can see the aluminum making more noise as it's not very hard. Interesting! LOL!!

Try the desk trick and you will see what I mean!

Russ

PS I just set it on a piece of foam and it vibrates like a mother! LOL!!

 

Sam,
While i had the case open I just grabbed each Silverstone by the outside of their frames, and there's no vibration at all! The PWM fan on the Freezer 7 doesn't vibrate a bit either. If you put your fingers on the top of the case, there is an ever so slight, and I mean slight vibration. Small wonder as there's 7 fans spinning in there! LOL!! Now I'm glad I never used the silicone washers between the fan and the case!

Russ

 

I'll agree with that, the tighter I screw fans into my case the less they vibrate. Unfortunately, no matter how tightly I screw in the Hiper, it still vibrates like, lol, a mother frogger.
As for the Freezer 7 Pro, I never experienced any vibration from that whatsoever, I think it has to do with the plastic circular frame on top of it. Whatever they did, it works.

 

I was shocked when I set it on the foam pad! I never in a million years expected it to vibrate so much! As far as the Freezer pro, it illustrates what I was explaining before. Much less vibration with a PWM fan as that plastic frame isn't ridged enough to stop vibration and the rubber mounts would be a disaster with a conventional fan, at least with the Cooler master I just tried!

BTW did you get that Priceless thing?

Russ

 

Priceless?
It's interesting that you say a PWM fan has less vibration. At any speed, using the correct controller, and attaching the fan directly to a PC-powered Molex, the vibration from the FM121s I own is ridiculous...

 

Mine will dance across the desk without the controller and buzz like a nest of bees! If I put my fingers right on the fan screws you don't feel anything more than you do touching the top of the case With the cover off you can't feel that the 80mm Stone is even running!

I'll resend the e-mail. Try not to laugh too hard and hurt yourself! Disgusting but well.... Priceless! ROFLMAO!!

Russ

 

ok...its like reading a book...so can you use these fans as CPU fans?

 

GTR35,
LOL!!

I'm not too sure after the testing Sam and I were doing. We discovered some rather startling things about case fans. At this point I would only recommend this one. Just hook it to the 4 pin CPU Fan header and set the fan mode to PWM. It should work superb! Cheap enough too!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835186015

We know the Arctics don't vibrate hardly at all!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

It all depends what heatsink you have. I use the Thermalright Ultra 120, which can take 120mm case fans. The fan I have on it is alright and earns me good temps, but for a quad core environment you might need it to be above minimum speed, where it's not exactly silent.
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Scythe-Kaze-1...123675QQihZ001QQcategoryZ131491QQcmdZViewItem

 

pretty good...i'll see if i can get it...what about ZALMAN CNPS 9700 NT? its a CPU fan...

 

It's huge and also quite loud, but it'll get the job done. Not as well as the Ultra 120 though, I might add.

 

oh ok...so ZALMAN CNPS 9700 NT is a fan + heatsink in 1...and thermalright ultra 120...is just a heatsink...thats why you need another 120mm fan...i see, i see...

 

The point being that the fan included with the 9700 is very noisy at full speed, and will only cool as well as an Ultra 120 at less than half fan speed (nice and quiet), my example using a Scythe S-Flex 1600rpm fan, 31dB @ 1600rpm. The 9700 is around 39dB @ 2200rpm.

 

ok...it getting clear now...

actually i want silent fan that cools very well...it seems Scythe S-Flex fits...what does it look like?...sammorris could you post a photo of your rig?

 

Sure thing, what sort of photo? What angle, what parts am I illustrating?
I'll basically say, I can run my PC pretty much silently using Scythe fans. With the silverstones I had to turn them down so far to get them silent that it was difficult to keep my system cool.
Is this the sort of thing you're looking for?

hehe, I know the cables are a bit of a mess. Some of my power cables are a bit on the short side, so I'm not yet able to tie them up.
You'll also notice the bottom fan slot is currently empty. Cold air is naturally drawn in through there currently.

Note the fanless graphics card, and the position of the side fan. This effectively acts as my GPU's exhaust. It being 120mm (and a Nexus Realsilent) means that undervolted to 7V, it manages a sound level of 18dB at 600rpm and 25CFM. The White fan on the CPU is a Scythe Kaze White (White LEDs, but the flash doesn't show them up!) which is the same as the Black S-Flex SFF21F to the rear. Both run at 6V, 800rpm and 35CFM and produce around 20dB of noise. There is another S-Flex hidden in the front of case running at the same speed, my intake fan. There are two 80mm fan slots on my case, one at the top, and one at the bottom. Although there is a Hiper 80mm fan currently configured as exhaust at the top, I've found air naturally flows IN through that port, so I may reverse the fan. it is currently off, but when running is at 4V, 650rpm, 12CFM.
The only other fan in my PC is that in the Toughpower PSU, a 140mm Yate Loon D14S-M12, which is always running at minimum speed, a somewhat high and noisy 1050rpm, producing 25dB and 50CFM. I'd ideally change this for a Corsair (22dB @ 700rpm) but I simply can't justify the cost for that change at present.

Total airflow throughput: 110CFM.
Temperatures:
Idle:
CPU 36C (heatsink temperature c. 30C)
Motherboard 26C (heatsink temperature 42C)
GPU 45C (heatsink temperature c. 45C), GPU VRM 60C
Load:
CPU 42C (heatsink temperature c. 40C)
Motherboard 32C (heatsink temperature 50C)
GPU 75C (heatsink temperature c. 72C) GPU VRM 90C

The Blue box in the top right is a Nexus drive-a-way used to silence my hard drive. There is an additional black one higher up.

 

HOLY 5h!t!...i never knew your CPU cooler was that huge!...white fan...awesome...
lol...messy cable...will it affect the air circulation?

oh i was reading the review for ANTEC 900...they say the cooling is not as good as imagined...and sammorris is your NZXT series case good?

 

I personally think the NZXT Lexa's a brilliant case. The only thing that ticks me off about it is the PCI backplate 'tool-less' install, which is a bit naff, but then imo so is the method by which you install hard drives in the 900. This comes from personal experience as I own both cases. I'd recommend either, but from a silent gaming PC perspective, the NZXT wins. If you want brute-force extreme cooling, go for the 900.



Camera flash really shows up the dust! :O They need a clean!

I've always been a fan of cases that are more stylistic than 'robotic' in their design. Granted, somebody told me the Lexa fell into that category, but well, I suppose that rather depends on taste.

If I were to build my PC again today, I'd still go with the Lexa. However, I've always loved these:
http://www.ocia.net/aboutus/playasetup.jpg

 

lol...brute-force...i want silent and cool case...and spacious for good air circulation...

i have some case in mind...

-NZXT Lexa
-Antec 900

-thermaltake armor
-thermaltake kandalf

the first two are inexpensive mid-tower and the other are expensive full tower...which one of these fits my expectations?

oh does the controller come with 900?

 

I updated the post above.

As for the Full tower cases, they give you more room to work with, but they are heavy, and don't often offer any benefits with regard to airflow. The Thermaltake cases offer a vast 25cm fan on them, but in all honesty, it's even less effective than the 20cm on the 900. All size and no purpose. You can cool a PC perfectly well with 120mm fans, as the NZXT Lexa shows.
I'd still say the cooling on the 900 is good, but not exceptional, certainly not without the fans on high anyway, and that makes a huge racket.
As for the cabling, yes keeping them neat improves airflow and temps, but I still do fine with my cables as seen above!