Can I use these quiet fans? Will fan control work?

[tog]

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I value quiet, and find the stock Intel fan on my i5 CPU too loud. I've asked for recommendations for alternative CPU coolers in this post in this thread on this quiet computing forum. I got a couple of recommendations, the most tempting-sounding ones being the Scythe Mugen 3 and, as a fanless option, this HR01X heatsink attached to my motherboard with this backplate.

I'd prefer the fanless option if it were appropriate for me, and have asked in that thread (giving my recorded CPU temperatures). Any answers on that are welcome, but I also asked a hackintosh-specific question and am confused by the answers. Here it is:

Will my motherboard be able to control the fan speed on these CPU coolers, making it as low as possible to prevent overheating? Is that controlled by 'software' built into the mobo itself, or does it happen at OS level? If the latter, is the fact that my computer's running OS X as a hackintosh an issue?

I got an encouraging reply from 'lodestar':

The motherboard fan control is built into the hardware on the board itself, with a degree of user control through the BIOS. So the operation of the CPU fan is independent of whatever operating system you are running. But the motherboard does need a PWM fan on the cooler to control and monitor the CPU fan speed. This control and monitoring is thermal, that is at low system temperatures (and load) the fan will automatically run slower, and at higher temperatures it will run slower. ... The Gigabyte Z68MA-D2H-B3 will allow you some direct control over CPU fan speeds, with a choice of three modes Silent, Normal and Manual.

But I then had this confusing exchange - can someone clarify it for me?

quest_for_silence: the only concern is whether or not EasyTune 6 (or SpeedFan) can drive it properly (I don't know how much those modern GB BIOSes are effective)

Me: This is over my head, but I believe SpeedFan is Windows software - are you implying I'd need something like this to make the fan as quiet as possible, which may not be possible for me running Mac OS X?

lodestar: SpeedFan is Windows only software, no version has ever been released for any other OS to my knowledge. Similarly, GigaByte's fan control software is also solely for Windows. So only the BIOS fan control will be available to you.

quest_for_silence: This is the first time you talk about running an Hackintosh: sorry, I can't help, maybe google could do it. (Note from me: not that I can see, after searching it and tonymacx86, but maybe I'm googling the wrong thing.) But generally speaking you always need a tool to control any fan speed, which can be alternatively a piece of hardware (usually a rheobus), a software (like a fully fledged program with a gui, or a script like fancontrol on Linux), or a BIOS control, and usually a piece of software is the more flexible solution among them.

Any help much appreciated as this noise is getting quite annoying!

 

[s3v]

That whole exchange confused me. Anyways, regarding fan speed... It is controlled by your motherboard. 'lodestar' said it right. If your CPU isn't running hot, the fans will run slower, but when you start doing something CPU intensive, it will heat up and in turn the fans will spin faster creating more noise. Fan speed is able to be manually adjusted using software if you want, like smcFanControl for OSX, but generally people don't bother with that.

PS: If you are in the market for a quiet heatsink I recommend the Noctua NH-D14. I must warn you though, it's quite large.

 

[tog]

Fan speed is able to be manually adjusted using software if you want, like smcFanControl for OSX, but generally people don't bother with that.

How about people obsessed with silence?

 

[taylorwatson18]

these fans are suppose to be extremely quiet even when booting.

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.as ... 6835118067

 

[tog]

these fans are suppose to be extremely quiet even when booting.

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.as ... 6835118067

That's a case rather than CPU fan, but tx.

 

[Gordo74]

these fans are suppose to be extremely quiet even when booting.

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.as ... 6835118067

That's a case rather than CPU fan, but tx.

If you have a 120mm fan on your CPU, you can put it on instead of the fan that comes with it.

Personally I use Gelid 120mm fans (the $8 ones), on a Hyper 212+, and it works fine, even as a 3pin fan plugged into a 4 pin header.

 

[SMHI]

I have in my system a Scythe 120mm Gentle Typhoon at 500rpm. I am very picky about noise and this is the most silent fan I have ever heard, or not heard. I have two vibration damped 5400rpm disks in my system and their idle spinning noise is much more then then the fan. It is hard for me to hear the fan when only it is connected connected to a fanless power supply.

http://www.scythe-eu.com/en/products/fa ... 20-mm.html

I used this fan to cool my system, fanless PSU and graphics card, but the system got a little too hot. I had to open the case. I planned to cool air came in the front, cooled the hard drives and then sucked through the CPU cooler and then out the back. When I had a 900rpm in the system before the system was cooler but I did hear the fan.

A small system with pico PSU, using the integrated graphics card, big CPU cooler and a little cooler CPU (Not hot as i7 870 but 60-70W:ish CPU) and good planning on air flow in case this fan can probably cool a system. It will maybe be a little hot on the case but not to hot for the hard drives. Just plan so cool air first goes over the hard drives.

This fan on CPU, one for out take and maybe one intake to cool hard drives and good planning can probably cool a fast system. But if you plan this I would call it an experiment and you have to have a eye on the systems temperature.

 

[tog]

Some Gigabyte boards weren't that good in doing that.

I have the Gigabyte Z68MA-D2H-B3 - does that affect my choice of CPU cooler?

My mainboard works really good. Scythe Mugen 3 with two scythe 120 fans are temp controlled by bios, in idle I have set them to 875upm 40°C (which is done by settings in bios like silent) and they will spin up to 1200 under load Temps are 68°C for all six cores then. This works fine under OSX, no special software needed. If your CPU is not over clocked and has a low power consumption, which means that it can be cooled easier, you need only one fan and no speedup at all....

I was actually thinking of getting the Mugen 3 which was recommended in my Silent PC Review thread (where someone said it "comes with Scythe Slipstream PWM fan (300-1600rpm), that you should be able to control via bios/software if your mobo suports PWM fan control"). I'm pretty sure I fit your criteria for just having that one fan - I use an standardly clocked i5 2500k and, as described in said SPCR thread, "in normal use the CPU cores never go above 50 degrees C (more typically running at 35C-40C), while the most demanding games I play (which are not very 'hardcore' - Portal 2 with graphics turned up moderately high) occasionally push the hottest core up to 60C at the absolute max (with most cores only going up to 55C) ."

(I wasn't planning on getting cooler advice in this thread, but any is very welcome! I'd like to save money but also get a decently quiet cooler I'm happy with in the long term.)

 

[tog]

A few more helpful comments from the Silent PC board:

That Gigabyte board has a somewhat limited form of fan control, based on three not very flexible presets in its BIOS: if it's enough smart to keep the things quiet for you, well, you will discover when you will run your Hackintosh.

You can use the easy tune Gigabyte software to fine tune the curve of the fan speed. It remembers this in bios.

Granted it would be better to have more control in bios, but the default isn't bad either. The Asrock boards I've used for builds have a 1-9 rating that works pretty well too. With good/quiet fans this is really a non issue for most.

I guess he can't use Windows software, the OS is MacOS.

If it remembers the settings in BIOS, I should be able to boot in Windows once and run the easy tune Gigabyte software once, and these settings should then persist into future boots into Mac OS X.

If the above is correct, it sounds like I don't need to worry about fan control and can buy any CPU cooler.

 

[tog]

PS: If you are in the market for a quiet heatsink I recommend the Noctua NH-D14. I must warn you though, it's quite large.

A belated reply to this - that seems more expensive than I need given my temperatures with the stock cooler reach 60C at a very rare maximum, peaking at 55C after heavy use far more often.