Upgrading fans

[xoldmanx]

Hello everyone!

I have a Corsair 500R which has at the moment 2x 120mm fans on the front (intake for the hard drives), 1x 200mm fan on the left side (intake), 2x 120mm fans on a Corsair H80 CPU cooler (intake) and 1x 120mm fan at the top for exhaust.

With this setup I have CPU idle temps around 30º, ambient temps around 18º, hard drives between 32º to 36º, except for one of them (the older one) which is at 42º for some reason. Anyway, I'm happy with this temps, I guess the CPU reaches 50º or something like that when it's rendering.

What bugs me is the noise. Mostly at night (I sleep in the same room) it seems really loud. A sound capture app on the iPhone is getting around 42dB at night (just the fans spinning), which doesn't seem that loud since a silent room should be around 35dB, but it does sound loud.

What I'm planning to do is replace the 2x 120mm hard drive fans for Noctua silent fans and replace the 1x 120mm at the top for a 1x 140mm Noctua silent fan.

Also, I'm planning on getting a Scythe front bay fan controller like the following, so I can at least quite some of them while I'm sleeping.

http://www.scythe-eu.com/en/products/pc-accessory/kaze-master-ii.html

Any of you guys have these quite fans around? Is it really that much of a difference in noise without compromising the air flow?
Thanks!

 

[neilhart]

You did not say what you have for a CPU cooler.

If this were my system I would start by disconnecting all of the chassis fans and seeing what the temps get to at idle with the covers in place.

Then add one fan at a time and see what it does for you, then disconnect it and try the next fan. Most times you will find that a certain fan or two do most of the chassis cooling and the others are just for looks. Also, I would try the in-line resistor that module that reduce the voltage that a fan see to 7 volts or 5 volts.

With today's CPUs with a decent CPU cooler it does not take much air movement through a case to keep things cool.

neil

 

[xoldmanx]

My concern is not about the CPU temps, I'm pretty happy with what the Corsair H80 can do for it (there you have it ).
That's a good place to start though, leaving on just the radiator's fans and see what I get.

I guess most of the air flow comes from the 200mm fan on the side panel that is directly pointing to the motherboard and all its components. That is also the fan that produces the smaller amount of noise/vibration.



I've been lurking a bit more and using neilhart's advice I guess I'll replace the two radiator fans for the Noctua's NF-P12 PWM and unplug the two front fans and see if it works out for me. So that would be 2x 120mm on the radiator and 1x 200mm on the side panel.

Sounds good to me.

 

[Mcfool123]

Skip the fan controller because the noctuas will be more than quiet enough and Id say to still have a front intake also. You can get something that will push a good amount of air at like 1k like the noctua NF-S12A fox and use the low noise adapter. Also good choice for the h80 fans they are very good for pressure optimized fans and should also be able to be run with the low noise adapter and your system will be probably as loud as the 200 if that makes some air noise like my old one did.