What dBa is too loud?

[istolyergf]

Ok so Im shopping around for a good fan for my new HS, and Im trying to get a fan that pushes a decent amount of CFM, but is also as quiet as possible. I notice fans have a dBa rating, which is nice but I dont really know what to compare them to. This fan is going to be in a small bedroom, and will probably be on 24 hrs a day. What dBa would be highest I should go? Thanks for any help

 

[enduro]

40 dB is pretty good. It makes a nice whirring sound. If you don't like noise, go with a 30-35 dB. And if you like the sound of a vacuum, get a Tornado, running at 56 dB.
WELCOME TO THE FORUMS

 

[Cyberwiz01]

well that's entirely subjective, I'm sure there's some guys here that can sleep with tornados on at full blast. The thing to keep in mind is that every increase of 3dB is twice the amount of sound. For something that most would consider quiet, I would try to shoot for 30dB or less. That's my opinion.

 

[Radical]

20dBA is too loud in my opinion. It really depends on how sensitive you are to noise.

 

[jlin453]

I'd suggest using as large of a fan as you can since those push more air with less sound compared to smaller fans. I'd also suggest a medium output fan on a fan controller; that way you can turn it down at night when you sleep.

For me, I have 3 36dba, 108cfm, 120mm fans at 12V during the day and 7V at night. For me, it's tolerable if you want the airflow.

 

[enduro]

120's are very low pressure though, so it really depends on what you're going to be doing with it. For case ventilation, they will work, but when forcing air through a duct, they will fail horribly. I like 92's because their size tends to be more convenient in a case, where as a 120 only fits in a couple of places. I have 3 80mm, 1 92mm, 2 120mm Deltas, and two 40mm fans on my vidcard and nb.

 

[CircuitBreaker8]

anything above 40dba is pretty loud. My SF2 is 48 dba at full blast and its a killer..

 

[DigitalMonk]

I'll throw in my two cents and recommend the Thermaltake Silent Boost. I was running CPU temps in the 145F range when gaming and picked it up and now the CPU maxes right around 120F. Not bad for a fan that generates 21 db.

 

[Bar81]

20dBA is too loud in my opinion. It really depends on how sensitive you are to noise.

Exactly. Not only that but it depends on your ambient noise floor. If you live in a nice house away from traffic like I do then you may find even 12 dba to be too loud at night when it gets quiet. Alternatively if you live in a noisy area you may not be able to even hear 24dba. It also depends on how loud your other fans are in your case like the video card fan. If that thing's humming along at 40dba as they are want to do, you're not gonna have any quiet no matter what. I would suggest you either get a fanless video card or an arctic cooling silencer and for the other fans pick up Papst fans from www.siliconacoustics.com They're the only fans balanced at the factory and they are quiet. If they're still too loud you can either 7v mod them or use a Zalman fanmate.

 

[kiyoshilionz]

Fan controllers work wonders if you wanna keep your PC quiet. If things are too loud, then lower the CPU speed and Vcore and turn down the fans.

 

[Electron Chaser]

well that's entirely subjective, I'm sure there's some guys here that can sleep with tornados on at full blast. The thing to keep in mind is that every increase of 3dB is twice the amount of sound. For something that most would consider quiet, I would try to shoot for 30dB or less. That's my opinion.

Actaully an increase of 3 dBA is barely noticeable a 10 dBA increase will sound twice as loud.

Me personally I'm all about performance. I have fan controllers on everything but I like prefer performance over everything else.So when I'm running it, all my fans are generally turned up to max.

So yeah my system is loud.

<<<<< 56 dBA of pure performance.

and is gonna get louder in the near future.

Got my new 190 CFM 59dBA Delta just waiting on the XP-120 now.

 

[Cyberwiz01]

Actaully an increase of 3 dBA is barely noticeable a 10 dBA increase will sound twice as loud.

Oh my bad, for some reason I was under the impression that it was three. The point is it's not a linear scale so don't assume that 45 db is only 50% louder than 30 dB.

 

[ZachM]

40 Dba is about the max I can tolerate unless I'm benching or at a LAN. I can't think with a tornado or SF2 running full blast in the same room as me.

 

[ElvishArcher]

I don't even hear the 3 35dBa fans in my case, and the sides open.

 

[Korndog]

20dBA is too loud in my opinion. It really depends on how sensitive you are to noise.

wow.. how do u sleep at night?

i'd say 30dba is a pretty good quiet system.
30-40 is about your normal system (like a stock name brand pc)
50-60 are for the crazy guys that would sacrifice their ears for preformance
60-80 pure insanity
80+ uh.. bleeding from the ears?

 

[Bar81]

I don't even hear the 3 35dBa fans in my case, and the sides open.

You're either deaf, close to it, or you have a *lot* of ambient noise.

 

[InvisGreenMan]

I'm pretty sure the 3dB sounds twice as loud is correct. I feel that I need to keep the noise below 30dB to be comfortable. I am currently re-casing my whole setup with the Lian Li PC-V1100B, water cooling it, and adding another layer of eggshell foam to the case for super silence among other noise tweaks. All of this because I like screaming silence.

 

[Korndog]

I'm pretty sure the 3dB sounds twice as loud is correct. I feel that I need to keep the noise below 30dB to be comfortable. I am currently re-casing my whole setup with the Lian Li PC-V1100B, water cooling it, and adding another layer of eggshell foam to the case for super silence among other noise tweaks. All of this because I like screaming silence.

no, 3dba is barly noticible. 6 dba is more noticible and 10dba is clearly noticible...
well something like that.

 

[Korndog]

I don't even hear the 3 35dBa fans in my case, and the sides open.

3 35dba fans is approx 39.8dba. it should be quiet noticible since an average house (away from high traffic roads and without the AC on and all that other stuff) is about 20dba or less. at night around 15dba (why u hear the crickets ). With something 20dba higher then normal ambient sounds, it should be very noticible, unless you need hearing aids to hear it. My dad (doctor w/ masters in human acoustics ) says that if you're exposed to long conditions of noises beyond 50dba (we're talking about years here) you're very likly to hurt your brain as well as your hearing.

i would really recommend everything below 40dba to spare your hearing as well as your sanity, if you want to figure out your total dba you can use this program...
http://www.overclockers.com/tips1129/

 

[Nightingale]

Well I can sleep through thunderstorms, with the tv on(decently loud), or my hepa filter fan running on high. Right now in my case I have 4 SF2's running at full blast. I don't always mind the noise,but it can be a pain so you can buy whatever fan you want and just get a fan controller so if you decide its to noisy you can turn it down. Another thing is I have headphones on most of the time so they are pretty good at noise cancelling(always wear the big can ones if I can so it seals out room sounds).