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Questions about Water and Noise

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confusedxx

Registered
Joined
Dec 12, 2004
I will probably have someone build a PC for me, simply because I am no good at it. I will be looking to Overclock it a bit and go with a 8800GTX Grafix.

My main concern is noise. I currently have a 6800GT Ultra card makes a racket when it is in 3d mode. The CPU has a very good cooler on it and that is realitvely quiet. Nevertheless, when the PC is running anything (but especially in 3d) I can hear the fans in the next room. It is so loud that I get tired of sitting there after a few hours. So I want a QUIET and SILENT PC - if Possible.

I am thinking about Water cooling the PC to give me that. The questions I have about water cooling are:

1. Is it really quieter? You needs fans to cool the radiator right?

2. Does it make sense to cool the graphic card as well as the CPU from a noise perspective? - forgetting about extra performance that can be gained?

3. What else should be water cooled besides CPU and possilbe graphic card?

4. How loud is the typical water cooled PC? I know there will still need to be fans for cooling the HDD and the case interior as well as the radiator.
 
It will be as loud as the fans you put on the rad. The bigger the better the rad the easier it is to cool > the quieter the fans can be. Adding 2 rads gives you more surface area to cool = a chance to use very low CFM fans (near silent operation).

You can water cool your NB if you find the fan on it is noizy...

And its recomended that you still run 1 or 2 case fans just to keep the heat off the NB, HD, moffsets etc etc.

So in reality its not 100% silent.
 
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confusedxx said:
1. Is it really quieter? You needs fans to cool the radiator right?

2. Does it make sense to cool the graphic card as well as the CPU from a noise perspective? - forgetting about extra performance that can be gained?

3. What else should be water cooled besides CPU and possilbe graphic card?

4. How loud is the typical water cooled PC? I know there will still need to be fans for cooling the HDD and the case interior as well as the radiator.
1. Depends on the fans, if you get a bigger radiator than it needs, you can put lower cfm fans, less noise.

2. If you want it to be really quiet, yes, cool it. But IMO, the 8800 stock fan isn't that loud.

3. Well, the NB might help, some motherboards have really small annoying and loud fans on them.

4. Again, it all depends on how cool you want it and how loud you want it. One person that doesn't mind sound levels could drop Delta's everywhere and be pulling well over 65db. While you may want to never hear the fans.
 
Thanks guys,

I figure for the NB, I would probably look to have a Motherboard that had a heatpipe and passive cooling of the NB. This is silent and works pretty well.

For the Graphic card, I am not sure how load the 8800GTX in overclocked state really is. It would be good to see some measurements, but my 6800 GT with factory settings is screaming loud under 3d loads so I would prefer to cool the Graphic card
:bang head

I now just need to figure out the size radiator that would be recommended for a Duo2 6600 CPU, 8800GTX Graphic Card and a NB cooler. How do you measure the radiators and what radiator size would you recommend as Minimum and then Optimum? I want to stick with 1 radiator but will buy the largest one I can to help keep it quiet and provide more OC potential.

One of the things I am considering is buying a premade Complete PC with watercooling like this one http://www.ultraforce.de/product_info.php/info/p268_AeonFlow-Core2-Duo-X-70-Xtreme-8800GTX.html Sorry but it is only available in German. :drool:

This PC has the 6600 CPU clocked to 3.2 Ghz (basocally a 7000 CPU rather than the 6600). Also the GPU is overclocked.

I can probably do better if I select the components so please provide any advice as to what best in class and affordable components would be.

Cheers
 
confusedxx said:
Thanks guys,

I figure for the NB, I would probably look to have a Motherboard that had a heatpipe and passive cooling of the NB. This is silent and works pretty well.

For the Graphic card, I am not sure how load the 8800GTX in overclocked state really is. It would be good to see some measurements, but my 6800 GT with factory settings is screaming loud under 3d loads so I would prefer to cool the Graphic card
:bang head

I now just need to figure out the size radiator that would be recommended for a Duo2 6600 CPU, 8800GTX Graphic Card and a NB cooler. How do you measure the radiators and what radiator size would you recommend as Minimum and then Optimum? I want to stick with 1 radiator but will buy the largest one I can to help keep it quiet and provide more OC potential.

One of the things I am considering is buying a premade Complete PC with watercooling like this one http://www.ultraforce.de/product_info.php/info/p268_AeonFlow-Core2-Duo-X-70-Xtreme-8800GTX.html Sorry but it is only available in German. :drool:

This PC has the 6600 CPU clocked to 3.2 Ghz (basocally a 7000 CPU rather than the 6600). Also the GPU is overclocked.

I can probably do better if I select the components so please provide any advice as to what best in class and affordable components would be.

Cheers

First off, DO NOT buy premade kits, you can build them much cheaper. Besides, that case is a CM Stacker.

For those components, I'd say a 120.2 minimum, 120.3 if you want more silence.

Swiftech watercooling parts are good, I use them and have no regrets about it.
 
You can get quiet with air, and you can get quiet with watercooling. It really depends on how you build it and what kind of overclock you are looking for.

For air, a Soniq Tuniq tower with a Thermalright HR-03 is a hard to beat combination as far a silence goes. They are however large and bulky, but will cool quietly.

On the watercooling end, I am running an MCP350 pump, with 6 yate loons fans (3 for case, 3 for the rad) at 4 volts on a thermochill PA120.3, and my system is quieter than my fridge two rooms over, and is just barely audible while sitting right next to it. I can also throw anything at it heatwise, and it takes it without even breaking a sweat. This thing is so quiet that anyone who has seen my case marvels at how quiet it is. I also am using a PSU that has only 1-120mm fan.

You don't get this kind of quiet in most kits. And I personally wouldn't recommend the German stuff. Their watercooling is really geared more towards looks than performance.

If you go with water, then you do want a 120.3 rad so that you can use undervolted fans. I personally chose the Thermochill PA120.3 because it is the best performing rad on the market with low cfm fans. It doesn't need much airflow to perform over and above all other rads. But is isn't cheap. The best second alternative is probably the Swiftech MCR320 rad.

As for fans, use Yate loons ( http://nexfan.com/yate-loon-all-orange-d12sl-12.html ) as they undervolt very well and don't suffer from the mechanical noise that a lot of fans do when undervolted, and they don't cost much at all.

It makes a lot of sense to watercool the GPU and CPU. The GPUs are often the noisiest when it comes to stock air coolers.
 
thideras said:
First off, DO NOT buy premade kits, you can build them much cheaper. Besides, that case is a CM Stacker.

For those components, I'd say a 120.2 minimum, 120.3 if you want more silence.

Swiftech watercooling parts are good, I use them and have no regrets about it.

Why do you hate on the stacker case?
 
voigts said:
The GPUs are often the noisiest when it comes to stock air coolers.
It also depends how you look at it. 8800gtx with stock cooler at idle is very quiet. True at load is loud but will user notice that while playing game.


My last watercooling setup gave pc noise level below of 3 yateloons at 10v. It didn't limit my oc, gfx and cpu ran quiet cool.
 
Personally I would recommend going water on the video card if you are going to bother going through the effort of going water on your CPU. I have yet to own a video card (or motherboard for that matter) where the dinky little fan didn't get noisy after owning it long enough.

As for not caring if the fan is loud while gaming, well that is personal preference. I don't see the point of spending alot of money on a quality audio card and good speakers etc like alot of people do, and then muddy up the sound with a loud rig :(
 
IAmMoen said:
Why do you hate on the stacker case?

I don't...I was just pointing out what kind of case it was...it was in another language.
 
1. Depending on the fans you choose, W/Cing is in general just as quiet or more quiet than highend air cooling.

2. Depending on the GPU, W/Cing will almost always be quieter (especially at load)

3. NB, SB, PSU, Mosfets, PSU, Ram, HDs (Not that you'd want to do all those, but you COULD W/C everything. You asked :beer: )

4. It depends on how you plan your airflow. I have my P180B w/c'ed with internal rads. My front rad intake fans also cool off the HDs. The loudest components in my PC are 1: PSU Fan, 2: Raptor HDs, 3: Radiator fans.

Case selection doesn't matter, with a bit of effort any case can be watercooled internally. How easy it will be is a question of effort. :beer:
 
Waterooling the GPU makes sense. The NB could be cooled with either water or high-end passive air.

confusedxx said:
1. Is it really quieter? You needs fans to cool the radiator right?

If you combine 8 equal noise sources, the result will be perceived as roughly twice as loud as just one of those sources alone. Hence, Voigts system is very quiet even though it has 7 120mm fans. The silencing power of watercooling is the ability to move the heat to where it can be got rid of with two or more very quiet, low pressure fans instead of one screamingly loud fan forcing air through densely packed fins. Though at first it seems counterintuitive, the easiest path to less noise is more fans.

BTW, if it doesn't make sense to you to for a very quiet fan to be a very loud color, the Yate Loon D12SL-12 is also available in black.
http://www.jab-tech.com/YATE-LOON-120mm-Case-Fan-D12SL-12-pr-3009.html

There are fanless options like passive air towers and geo loops, but to get enough performance for overclocking, these need to be huge
(really HUGE :eek: ), and unless your PC builder makes house calls, that means you'd have to do it yourself. Also, the fans in a well designed system will make less noise than the hard drives, so until you figure out how you're going to completely silence the drives, there's no point in getting rid of the fans.

I would not say that having someone else build the system for you rules out watercooling, though. Just make sure that person knows what he's doing and will be available if you need help later on.

How loud is the typical water cooled PC? I know there will still need to be fans for cooling the HDD and the case interior as well as the radiator.
The typical water cooled computer makes less noise than a typical air cooled computer. But if your main concern is noise, you don't want a typical system. If you design for low noise, you can make your computer so quiet you might not even be able to tell it's on until you get close. Recording studio silence takes some doing, but stop-annoying-me quiet is easily attainable if that's what you design for. OTOH, if you buy a standard kit or choose components popular with people who care less about noise, you'll probably be disappointed.
 
Ive seen people use so much water they dont need a rad or fans.... But it was a massive massive containter of water.
 
I think he could probably get away with zalman cooler

A passive NB cooler

Buy passively cooled GPU

And an antec phantom PSU

I would find it difficult to trust an outsider building my PC with water.

It would probably be much cheaper than water and just as quiet.
 
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