Crystal Orb is loud :(

[mirko_3]

I've been running it for a month now, but it's the loudest thing in my watercooled computer... noise is supposed to be 26 dB, but I'm quite sure it's louder than that... anyone else has it? any mods I might conside? I was thinking of bringing the voltage to 7v, but I'm afraid it would cut the airflow too much...

 

[kaltag]

i've got the blue orb and i think they're mislabeling their coolers. the orb is the loudest thing in mine too.

 

[TSA]

What else could you expect from Thermaltake.

 

[OSUmaxx]

I had a Corb on a GF4MX400 and it was the loudest thing in the system. Its gone now

 

[flixotide]

I don't know Jack about the orbs and how much noise they generate, but I've often found that even the most silent cooler often changes sound when it comes in contact with a different material.. like metal, print, plastic.. anything really.

So perhaps, if it was possible for you guys to mount it using rubber fittings or another soft material, you might get rid of the noise..

AND.. 26 db at 200 hz is different from 26 at 2000 hz... so the fact that many fan producers label their product 26 db is BS unless they state at which frequency.. anyone can do a 10 db fan at 15khz... piece of cake... making it 10 db at 1000 hz is a different story.

Cheers

 

[Slaught]

I got one too, ended up modding it to 7v and its now a LOT quieter. seems to keep my chipset cool enough still.

 

[mirko_3]

I guess I'll try and see if It keeps my Radeon 8500 cool at 7v... but a video card is not a chipset, and I don't know whether it'll work...
anyway, I don't think I understood that thing about 200hz/2000hz... oh, if you mean RPM, it's 5500... I know it's quite high
as for the different materials thing, the noise the fan makes is the sort of whine you hear when a small fan has a high rpm... I really think that they're actually mislabeling their products... that sucks, as quite was what I wanted when buying it...

 

[Namagomi]

yeah, corb is a 7k fan. if you want a MANS GPU cooler, go with a Alpha 153

 

[bknight]

slanght

how did you mod it

 

[XyKo]

dammit and i was about to buy me a crystal orb. hey for a ti 4600 which orb is good?

 

[mirko_3]

crystal orb
it's about as loud as a standard cpu fan, I'd say... maybe a bit more... which is way too loud for me!

 

[macklin01]

As for Hz, etc., he meant at what pitch / frequency (e.g., a low tone or a high tone) 25 dB will be perceived differently by the human ear at different pitches. This is why the A - weighting is used. (dBA). It weights the decibels according to what frequency it's at in an attempt to better approximate how loud it will sound to the human ear.

Hope that helps clear it up a bit. -- Paul

 

[mirko_3]

oh so you mean a low pitch is a sort of woosh, while a high pitch is a whine...right?

 

[macklin01]

Right on! Kinda' like you may have noticed that 29 dBA is much more tolerable at one pitch than another ....

Like I've noticed that 29 dBA from a cooler master 80mm fan was more annoying than 31.5 dBA from a ThermalTake 60mm, because the ThermalTake fan was a lower pitch than the cooler master. (strange but true, perhaps just an odd case.)

These sound calculations can be funny things ....

Hope that helped! -- Paul

 

[mirko_3]

yeah... I just checked and noticed that my crystal orb is 16.4 dB (A)...