P4 quiet fan recommendation

[lorlabnew]

Hello,

I have relatively very quiet system; the exception is the stock Intel HS/F, which is spinning between 2600-3000 rpm (controlled by Asus Qfan). While not too loud, this fan is still definitely louder then the rest of the system's 7 fans and 2 HDD's (2 x PS fans, 4 x case fans, 1 x GPU fan) altogether....

Could someone recommend a quiter solution with enough sufficient cooling to accomodate for gaming? Peak temps now on the CPU are around 43-45C under full, extended time gaming load, which temps are pretty low I'd say. I don't overclock (because the possible noise & cooling issue). Room temps 20-22C. I'll use portable air-conditioning in summer.

I'm not really interested in H2O cooling, but rather more efficient air-cooling based HS which would allow for lower rpm's on the CPU fan ... I saw some Zalman solutions at the stores but have no idea whether they work well. I have a large Antec case (SX1030), and can fit bigger cooling device inside if necessary.

Another thing; could I use external 5-11V voltage regulator (Zalman FanMate 1, I have couple of them already in use) for the current fan to bring the rpm's down? The Asus board has mentioned Qfan already ... how would it work together? Would lower rmp's on stock hs/f give sufficient cooling?

thx for advice
dave

 

[Maki]

Zalmans are supposed to be very good.

I just put an artic cooling super sillent 4 tc into my system. Hard to tell it is running when the case isn't open. (Now my 9700 is the loudest fan in the system. Which sucks because it wasn't making any real noise before.) And it cools just fine. (Runs around 1000 rpms at idle. It can go to 3-3500 rpms max so there is plenty of headroom.) This is on a 2.4G P4.

Now I'm looking at putting a zalman heat pipe on my 9700 to remove the fan from it. (Tho I would probably add a case fan if I did that.)

 

[lorlabnew]

Thx Maki, just loaded the arctic-cooling.com website (never heard of them before). Also found some reviews, reading right now.

 

[Maki]

I ran the athlon version forever. The P4 version might be even quieter. Tho it does actually STOP sometimes until things get warm. Which is more than a little freaky.

SVC Compucycle is the only place I've found them. $20 shipped. FYI

 

[lorlabnew]

Originally posted by: Maki
I ran the athlon version forever. The P4 version might be even quieter. Tho it does actually STOP sometimes until things get warm. Which is more than a little freaky.

SVC Compucycle is the only place I've found them. $20 shipped. FYI

)

...Just been looking at the SVC website and wanted to post it, hehe. Excellent price too. I wonder if they have a retail outlet here too, since I'm in San Jose, would be easy for me to pick it up rather then ship it.

just called them , and I can order thru website and pick it up in person , coool.

 

[lorlabnew]

Got the fan already, didn't mount it yet, but looks OK to me; I think the fan itself is slightly bigger then the Intel's stock fan .... and "Made in Switzerland" is pretty funny to me on the PC parts - well hope will run as good & quiet as their watches do

I couldn't resist and bought the acrylic case they've got in SVC; so this will keep me busy this afternoon; I'll mount the fan after I'll swap mb into new case - I'll post how the fan is performing. ***
dave

*** OK, so I installed the Arctic-cooling SuperSilent 4TC, but seems that I'll replace it: the fan is very quiet generally (with an exception of a fairly quiet "rattle" - it may be small manufacturing defect; luckily I can't hear the rattle with closed case).

But the problem is overheating a bit: I'm reaching 51C in 3dmark2003, compared to 43C under same test with Intel stock hs/f. Also, the temperature is dropping very slowly, the fan won't spin over 1550rpm no matter what the temps. The fan tends to spin at some 1000rpm if I have the nearby (1 inch distance) case fan running at decent speed (2000rpm); that keeps the case inside cool, but CPU reports some 35-37C (compared to 31C with Intel hs/f). This is pretty odd; like if the sensor on CPU thinks that the temps are OK if case is cold.... I used thin layer of thermal paste which came with the fan.

I'm going to give a try to CoolerMaster IHC-L71 today instead; if it won't help, I'll put the Intel stock hs/f back in and will live with it