I feel a bit stupid

[David]

My fan on my heatsink has broken - I don't know how I did it but a fin is missing and the fan now makes a grinding noise. Is it still safe to run this fan? I haven't ran it for more than 5 or 6 seconds.

I am looking for a replacement and I have afew questions.
1) I am looking for a quiet fan, what dB rating is quite quiet.
2) Is a faster rotating fan always better? I take it they are noisier?

I have a choice of the following:

Akasa Icicle 785, 60x60x20mm fan, 5000rpm, 25.57CFM, 34.90dB(A).
Akasa Icicle 765, 60x60x15mm fan, 4300rpm, 21.83CFM, 32.56dB(A).
Zalman Socket A QuietPC cooler.

Although the Zalman cooler is likely to be expensive, would you recomend it?

Thanks,

David

 

[rivercom9]

Hmm, I dont think that its safe to use since the fan is out of balance and may wear out excessively resulting in a dead fan while the computer is on. Toss it and replace it. Better sace than sorry.

 

[David]

I've taken it out and put my older 60cm fan from my old heatsink in. Its a lot quieter than the grinding one, but is 500rpm slower. I' watching my temps carefully, the fan seems to be doing OK.

 

[Iron Hawk]

I would get a large fan 80mm or 92mm, with a high cfm (50 or so) with a low dB (30-38), and duct it to fit onto your heatsink, ducts can be purchesed or made from household material such as cardboard.

 

[David]

I would get a large fan 80mm or 92mm, with a high cfm (50 or so) with a low dB (30-38), and duct it to fit onto your heatsink, ducts can be purchesed or made from household material such as cardboard.

Thanks
I will try that. The only problem is that the system will not boot unless there is a three wire fan on the first header. I'll se if that can be disabled, as my case fans are two wires only.

 

[Nyrlath]

I have yet to see a mobo that you couldnt disable that thru the bios, fyi...

 

[RangerJoe]

heres what you do, you get a normal 3 pin adapter, and cut the red and black wires off, leaving the fan rpm wire...then put the red and black wires in a regular molex connector...this is what i do..it works great, and your mobo header wont fry

edit: oh you said your fans are 2 pin only....well..if you dont mind modding, if you look at where the red and black wires plug into..there are 3 solder points...two will be filled up with the black and red wires, but the third, is for monitoring....so solder a 16 gauge wire on there, and you will have a fan sensing fan!

 

[Robbiem01]

best thing to do is to buy a 80 cfm delta that has 53 db of sound then get a rheostat. You can turn it down to whatever sounds good and you can watch your temps while you do it. Hoot has the best rheostats (from what I've heard, I ordered 3 and they should come monday or tuesday.) Besides a 80 cfm 53 db fan tuned down to 30 cfm WILL be quieter then a fan that was designed to run at 30 cfm in the first place so you cant go wrong with the big boy.