Fans, noise, case... Help! Overclocking sucks?

[forget that]

I want to buy a fan for an AMD CPU that will allow me to over clock it, but not make tons of noise. Now I have no problem figuring out a quiet efficient fan for the processor, but here is where I get trouble? What type of case should I get, oh but wait then it's fans are makin the noise I didn't want. And hey the 15k rpm hard drive that get to hot needs cooling? How do I cool it down? With louder fans? and whats this about graphics card cooling? Add bigger fans with more noise, void your warranty, and screw with your bios to overclock your now super noisy 8 fan desktop?!?!? I'm just not getting it. Can anyone help me out here.

 

[[Oc]acaridans]

Fans are a big part of overclocking, you need them and some are loud.I believe Mr.B said it best "loud fans save cpus"

there are plenty of good performing fans out there that are quiet, but if you want big CFM out of them you will have to comprimise with noise..

to be honest you get use to it, I have 8 fans in my case 2 are deltas, i dont really notice anymore,but one thing is for sure I know that they are running

 

[Wa11y]

"Overclocking sucks"? Wrong place to post that, my friend.

I had some loud fans as well. I bought a Global Win FOP38 with a 60MM delta fan. Sounded like I had an F-14 taking off in my case, with the sides on! So I popped it off and replaced it with an 80MM Sunon. Now, except for the LEDs and my front mounted fan, I can't tell when my PC is on. I have on 80MM fan blowing in on the front bottom, two 80MM blowing out of the back, one 80MM on my heatsink, a blower fan in one of the expansion slots, the power supply fan (duh) and a 5.25" bay that has two fans that blow outward. And it's QUIET and cool. My system temp is usually about 25*C.

And if you're serious about overclocking, you're going to void your warranty. There's no way around it. If you're worried about that, buy a faster computer and have done with it. Overclocking is only for the brave or stupid. More than likely, you're going to fry something. Such is life. Most (not all, but most) computer parts are relatively cheap right now. AMD processors are cheap, memory is dirt cheap, mobos aren't bad. Mostly all you're going to burn out is your processor. And right now, AMD is cheap. VERY cheap.

As for all the fans, it depends on what you're looking for. I've seen some hard drive coolers that have both a heatsink and a fan. And they're [2]small[/2] fans. Sure, you can mod them and have bigger fans, but the small ones should work well enough, and not be too loud. Video card cooling is only a concern if you're overclocking it. Most video cards already have sufficient cooling at stock.

If you really want cooling without much noise, look into watercooling. The front page has some great articles, and links to places where you can buy watercooling equipment. Danger Den has some whole watercooling kits. All you have to do is add water. And some even have two or three waterblocks, so you can cool your processor, video card, and mobo chipset. And other than the fan on the radiator, that's it. Three chips cooled, and only one or two fans. And depending on the fans you get, they don't have to be too loud. Sunon and Antec make some good fans that are real quiet.

More fans doesn't always mean cooler case. If you have good airflow, two or three fans in the case should be plenty. If eight fans isn't cooling you enough, then you'll probably want to reevaluate your case setup and location. Or look into alternate cooling, such as a waterblock with peltiers, in an extreme case.

 

[Shadow ÒÓ]

Well said guys.......but you forgot to welcome him. =)

Welcome to the forums!

 

[6502kid]

I like noisy fans ! (~:

Welcome to OC.

I don't think the above replies mentioned fans for your harddrive.
You can get a baycooler for your harddrive that has 3 40mm
fans in it. I think it is the loudest of my 6 fans. 8 if you count
the CPU fan and the one on my video card.

Good luck.

 

[Paiynn]

I just turn up the music louder than the fans

You have to give a little to get a little.
You can always go get a nice system from Best Buy, I'm sure they'd love your business

 

[Paiynn]

I just need to add, other than the little 80mm in the front of my case, which is pretty normal the only other fan is a 120 blowing into the side of the machine on the cards. Listening to MP3's at about 25% volume, I dont even hear the fans. And my speaker setup isnt anything powerful.

 

[FRANK]

First off, Welcome to the forum.

I agree with all of the above. But to put this issue into perspective. As with other endeavors that involve taking a piece of equipment and trying to enhance the performance over stock or default, there will have to be some compromises. Be it modifying your Mustang GT to run like a Ferrari or taking a 600 MHz CPU and running it at 1G and beyond, there are some issues that you will have to contend with that the average consumer would not. If you want a computer with the least amount of user involvement then maybe you should consider staying with one of the major manufacturers off the shelf units. But if you are looking for the challenge of getting the most performance available out of a particular CPU, video card, memory etc, then expect to have to take steps to deal with the issues that the factories have chosen not to.
Removal of heat and the accompanying noise being one of the biggest issues in that regard.

My solution to the noise problem is a Sound Blaster Live! Platinum with Altec Lansing ACS45's.

This reply is not meant to flame, so please don't take it that way.

 

[forget that]

Thanks for all your replys. This is sure a very active forum. I made this post because after deciding on prob. one of the following for an AMD CPU fan:
1.) Millennium Copper Glaciator http://www.millennium-thermal.com/
2.) MightyMachine (a Thermalright SK6 variant) http://1coolpc.com/welcome.html
3.) the NoiseControl Silverado https://secure.webstrikesolutions.com/chillblast/docs/pd1453649548.htm

I decided to look for a case. But if I spent $70 on the quiet NoiseControl Silverado, then the case fans with have to be quiet too. also if I got the Seagate Cheetah X15-36LP hard drive, then it needs cooling just cause it gets so hot. But how do you cool a hard drive? I quickly came to the resolution there is no point in buying a quiet fan, cause one of them is sure to be loud, and if you really want to cool stuff, you should get a vapochill case. If you use water cooling, it is too risky, at least for me. Anyway, while I've given up on quiet cooling without buying the $700 vapochill, could anyone give me case recommendations? I'm all about being able to do a lot with it, easy to get to parts inside, not to loud, mid to full case, and I couldn't care less about looks if they cost extra. Thanks again for your replies.

 

[rugby]

If you want to get crazy with watercooling you could do it with only 1 120mm fan. For a while I was experimenting with a water cooling rig and the 1-120mm fan that drew air through the radiator. It kept it reasonably cool and minus the 1-120mm side fan, 1-80mm blowhole on top, and 1-60mm back fan it was a LOT quieter. Of course water-cooling done right is NOT cheap by any means. Check out dangerden.com for more info.

 

[SteenkyBastage]

i agree with the watercooling not being cheap, unless you look at it long term. once you have a good watercooling setup it should last you through several computers. i personally have found that hooking up 120mm fans and adding a radio shack rheostat to them to turn down the rpms, along with my dangerden watercooling setup, has proven to be a VERY quiet setup.

i have one 120mm fan on rheostat drawing air into the case, another 120 on the radiator (also turned all the way down on rheostat), two 80mm fans on one rheostat at front of case pushign air out (also cools 2 of the 3 hdd), the power supply fan pushing air out and one bay cooler from best buy cooling off one of the three ata-100 hdd's that are in a raid configuration. all in all, the loudest thing in my system is the hard disks and the fargen waterpump that i haven't secured to anything (it rattles around a little in my reservoir).

doing this setup, which has all 3 rheostats turned down all the way 99% of the time, i have gone from over 130 deg F processor temps down to 100 deg or less at full load. this also reflects the fact that i can overclock to 1470 mhz (1.85v) and stay at or under 100 deg, whereas before i was not overclocking (1200 mhz at 1.75v).

if i really want to punch it hard, i can give all the fans full power and drop quite a bit of heat, altho the sacrifice being a lot more noise (the fans get louder than the HDD's).

and i'm not sure about a 15k rpm hdd, but if your case allows you to do like i did, simply rig up two 80mm fans on rheostat to keep the airflow over them, it's worked wonders on my raid configuration (HD are always very close to ambient when i test them).

 

[MortalWombat]

it is possible to overclock your system without making it sound like an antonov at take-off, the 'loud fans saves cpus' line is imho bullshit.

I have 3 fans in my system, all @ 7 volts:

92 mm sunon, sucking air in through a blowhole directly over the CPU
80 mm Pabst, on a 80-60 mm adaptor on a GlobalWin WBK38 heatsink
80 mm Pabst, sucking air out through the PSU.

Running all fans @ 7 volts makes my pc quieter than most of my friends standard systems.

My Duron [email protected] is 35 dgr Celsius (95 dgr Farenheit) Idle, 41 dgr C (105 dgr F) Fullload (HotCpu, 100% load for 12 hours) Ambient temp: 23 dgr C (73 dgr F)

When I bought the WBK38, the Black Label Delta fan ran for about 20 seconds before i turned the computer back off and ran down to my loacl electronics pusher and got the pabst fan. My system runs 2 or 3 dgr hotter than with the Delta fan, but the noise doesn't even compare ...

MW

 

[MentallyNormal]

[Oc]Wa11y (Jul 28, 2001 08:48 a.m.):
"Overclocking sucks"? Wrong place to post that, my friend.

I had some loud fans as well. I bought a Global Win FOP38 with a 60MM delta fan. Sounded like I had an F-14 taking off in my case, with the sides on! So I popped it off and replaced it with an 80MM Sunon. Now, except for the LEDs and my front mounted fan, I can't tell when my PC is on. I have on 80MM fan blowing in on the front bottom, two 80MM blowing out of the back, one 80MM on my heatsink, a blower fan in one of the expansion slots, the power supply fan (duh) and a 5.25" bay that has two fans that blow outward. And it's QUIET and cool. My system temp is usually about 25*C.

.

Yeah i found out that using them bigger fans works well an they are quiet. Compared to them high pitch squealing ones that gave me a headache an made me puke. That was from the old golden orb that i stuck on my celeron.
Now i got this golden gate hsf. An man the Fan has that same high pitched squeal. So it's got to go. I'll just somehow slap this big old Panaflow fan i accquired from some old government Ibm computer some dude gave to me had to modify the connection though. Them Panaflows fans are so damn quiet compared to them high pitch squealing kind.
One screw works wonders.

 

[sgt. york]

I use all my fans (2-92's blowing out, 3-92's blowing in, delta and a slot cooler) so I know if my old lady is using my comp instead of the one I built her. Can hear that thing 3 blocks away.