People talk about noisy heatsink fans and what they did about them. — Ed
Do You Like The Noise From Delta 38s?
Generally, no. If the Delta 38 were a politician, it would only have an approval rate of about 25%. Most people who bought one got rid of it.
Well, What Did You Do About It?
As a general rule, the more it bothered you, the more extreme the solution, and the more you spent on the solution.
About a third of you kept the heatsink and got yourself a quieter fan that pushed out a bit less air and a lot less noise.
Pabst, Sunon and YS Tech fans were very popular replacement fans. What is noteworthy is that a bit less air didn’t seem to make more than a 1-2 C difference in CPU temperatures and not too much overclocking difference.
The next most popular option was getting a new fan and heatsink (about 20%), followed by water cooling (about 15%). Other options reported by some included reducing fan speed by reducing the voltage on it and improving overall case cooling.
Which Coolers Did You Like The Best?
The Thermalright SK6, the Swiftech coolers, and the Alpha 8045 were the most liked heatsinks. However, they often weren’t liked until a quieter fan got attached to them.
For those troubled enough by noise to buy a new heatsink, the Glaciator series did pretty well.
Intel stock fans often sometimes discarded in the search of performance, but their low noise levels were quite appreciated, and people who found higher performance coolers too much for them were more likely to go back to the Intel stock than they were to the AMD stock coolers.
Which Coolers Did You Like The Least
The Coolermaster fans (which includes those which come in the AMD retail package) generally did poorly. What was surprising were the number of responses which said that not only was it a poor performer, but it was a noisy poor performer. This, however, was not an unanimous opinion.
The GlobalWin and Taisol coolers tended to be looked upon negatively as being loud and ineffectual. The GlobalWin WBK38 was particularly “noteworthy” in this regard.
Conclusions
Unless you grew up next door to a munitions or at least a vacuum cleaner testing ground, odds are you’re not going to like anything with a Delta 38 attached to it.
Maybe the best way to test your susceptibility to the noise is to run a small vacuum cleaner (muffle it somewhat) and see how you react to it while working/playing for an hour or two. If your reaction is “what noise,” nothing will bother you.
If you can tolerate it, a quieter fan will likely do the trick. If it makes your flesh crawl, you need to make noise level a priority. If water is out of the question, maybe even a priority over overclocking.
After all, what is the point of overclocking the CPU in your machine an extra 10% if the noise makes the CPU in your head perform 50% worse?
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