5yr old pc. Looking to replacing some fans :)

Kaizer

Gawd
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Jul 9, 2001
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I never thought I would find myself doing any upgrades to a 5 year old pc.. but then again I didnt think I would ever have a kid or be married :)

Despite it being 5 years old, I did upgrade it to a SSD, and have a video card thats about 3 years old now AMD 6870.

It still meets my gaming needs, Im really only playing Diablo 3 at the moment. But what doesn't is the noise.

The video card can be heard down the hall. Im using the stock cooler on it as well as the CPU.

It appears a $100 Amazon card has made it to my pocket. So.. its burning. Its burning a hole in my pocket. What would you get to make it quieter? A few bucks over the 100 is fine, but not too far.

So far I was looking at Accelero L2 PLUS for the video card perhaps.

Water cooling may be ok, but I suppose im a little paranoid of pump failures and longetivity. Who knows how much longer I will be using this one.
 
I love the coolers from Arctic Cooling. High quality, awesome cooling and very silent. I've used a cheap CPU cooler from AC which was extremely silent and I bought a triple fan cooler for my, now retired, GTX 275.

The machine went from a jet engine to a comfy silent PC. Even when gaming, it was difficult to hear if it was the AC fans or the fractal design case fans making a sound. I'm very sensitive to noise. Very!

Perhaps the triple fan model was overkill, but I wanted the best and it looked cool hehe.

I'm already thinking of changing the fan on my Gigabyte 980 ti to a triple fan from AC. The triple fan from Gigabyte is nowhere near as silent as the AC triple fan.
To be fair, I just build the PC and haven't even installed windows yet. Haven't tested silent mode yet though, so it's too early to jump to conclusions.

If you want a silent gpu cooler, you can't go wrong with AC.
 
Just a thought. What case are you currently using? Sometimes the same card in a different case can be loads better.
 
Just a thought. What case are you currently using? Sometimes the same card in a different case can be loads better.

I have a Cooler Master case. I don't recall the. Model number but it was pretty popular 4 years ago.
 
Since the video card fan is making all the racket, why not just replace the video card HSF? There are plenty of options out there. Here is what I would recommend:

Arctic Cooling Accelero Twin Turbo II

Technical Specifications

No need to spend any more money than you have to. And, you'll have enough left over to get yourself a processor HSF as well.
 
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After looking at some photos I think I have the Cooler Master 690

It has 120mm fans all around. I have a fan controller to keep the noise down on the case fans.

I'm not certain it's the case that's the issue. It used to be quieter than it is now. I assumed the fans were just getting old. This runs 24/7.
 
Since the video card fan is making all the racket, why not just replace the video card HSF? There are plenty of options out there. Here is what I would recommend:

Arctic Cooling Accelero Twin Turbo II

Technical Specifications

No need to spend any more money than you have to. And, you'll have enough left over to get yourself a processor HSF as well.

Yea that's my plan is to just replace the HSF. I'll have to check I'd that one is compatible with my old card.

Any suggestions for the CPU?
 
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Coolermaster Hyper 212+ or Evo are very good bang/buck options.
 
As Tsumi stated either the 212 Plus or EVO are great bang for buck choices.

Yea that's my plan is to just replace the HSF. I'll have to check I'd that one is compatible with my old card.

Any suggestions for the CPU?

Good point though if the noise is as loud as Kaizer has said it is then I would guess the fan is failing anyways. Still, every computer should get cleaned-out every once in awhile. I clean mine every month.

have you blown the dust bunnies out of the GPU?

Not recently :)
 
As Tsumi stated either the 212 Plus or EVO are great bang for buck choices.



Good point though if the noise is as loud as Kaizer has said it is then I would guess the fan is failing anyways. Still, every computer should get cleaned-out every once in awhile. I clean mine every month.

It's the plan for today. Im guessing it's been at least two years since I cleaned it out. Dang kid! Copied his movies to a flash drive so I can clean it out well while he chills :)

I'm guessing I may have some forum worthy pictures of dust soon.
 
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And now it seems it has dropped a few decibels in noise just from blowing it out. The high pitched whine has gone away. The CPU and GPU fans were caked in dust bunnies. Not to mention the powersupply, it was spitting demons for a few minutes while it got blown out. Im fairly sure I expelled colonies of some random micro organism. I may have heard screams. I guess I traded my old "baby" for the new, and its been neglected :)

Still thinking im going to replace the CPU fan since its stock.
 
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