Silent Cooling

I am trying to get rig#2 in my sig to run extremely quietly without going to water cooling. I currently have a Zalman Flower heatsink plus 92 mm fan. This still makes a little more noise than I would like. Would an AX-7 with a Papst fan rated at 19.4CFM be suitable to cool my xp1600 which will not be overclocked? These are the specs of the fan :

Sintec Sleave Bearing for ultra-quiet operation
CFM = 19.4cfm
RPM = 1500
dBA = 12

edit: this rig will be folding 24/7

check this review. Includes AX7 & 3 others tested with a low speed 80mm Panaflo at 12, 7 and 5V.
http://www.silentpcreview.com/goto.php?t=s&id=47&a=1

AX-7+19.4 cfm should be more than enough to cool xp1600+, you can try to undervolt, most AGOIA's should do fine at 1.65V or less

Thanks for the link to that test mcvan, very interesting and helpful. And thanks for the undervolting tip toastedzergling I had forgotten about that. I am going to go ahead with the ax-7 and that Papst fan, it should help a bit

im using an 80mm fan that is somewhere around 13-14dba. get 41 idle and 48load with my volcano 7 and its dead quiet (see rig 1 in sig)

You're my new god Miller. Well, not really... but a 14dBA fan on your heatsink and your even overclocking a little? Jesus. Any idea on the total dBA of your system (cover on)?

im not sure in the total, but the fan on my h/s is very nearly the same volume as m maxtor 80gb hdd. also, i dont have any other system fans except the 1 fan for my psu, which is supposed to be 22dba. so, im probable up around 24-25dba altogether.

not as quiet is my c3 system, but it sure rocks for what is basically an xp2000+

as the ax-7 is better, id recommend you get that still

I am definitely going ahead with the ax7 and papst fan, I ordered them last night. I have also ordered another quiet fan to replace the one in my psu ( already put a different fan in it but not quiet enough) and one of those silentdrive things for my hdd. hopefully this will get me what I am looking for.
Thanks for the input guys, much appreciated

Oh-oh. silentdrive thing? Un-order it right now, back away from that thing. One of my pet peeves: every time I hear about someone paying money for that product, I roll my eyes & cringe.

The silent drive will eventually cook any 7200 rpm drive. This is a phenomenon described and experinced by umpteen users. While it does reduce higher pitched noise, it keeps the drive mechanically coupled to the chassis, so that low freq hum (120 Hz for 7200 rpm drives) you get with all drives still remains.

The best HD noise reduction solution is a 20 dBA single-platter Seagate Barracuda IV or V suspended in a NoVibes drive mount -- or you own rig of elastic. Makes all drive noise, including seek, disappear (virtually). Considering that a silent drive is almost half the cost of a single-platter 40G Barracuda IV, the latter is a perfectly good investment. The former is really a piece of C--P! I have 2 given to me by people to decided they not to use it after they bought it & saw what it was: "here Mike, maybe you can do something with it..."

A NoVibes review can be found on this page

Some drive silencing techniques on this page

mcvan said:

Oh-oh, back away from that thing. The silent drive will eventually cook any 7200 rpm drive.

Click to expand...

Does anyone else have any views on this?

Well now that all of the bits and bobs i needed have arrived I have my second rig running silent. The fan on my heatsink does not make a sound which I am very impressed with. The only noise I hear is a slight whisper from the psu fan which I have sorted so that it runs at 7volts. I have used an old 4.3gig fujitsu hdd in the silent drive. It does not get too hot but even if it does fry some time in the future I can handle it. the only way I could get rig#1 to run silent would be to watercool and I am going that path quite yet