A question of noise

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kneht

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Jun 8, 2004
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Ok, I have a question about noise. I'm running an air-cooled PC now that's pretty quiet but hot. Idle CPU temps are ~20 C above ambient, under load the CPU is ~20 C higher. Case temps are +10 C at idle, +20 C at load. I can turn up my fans and drop all temps 5-10 C, which I do during long gaming sessions. Total fans: 2 120 mm, 1 92 mm on Zalman HSF, 92 mm PSU, stock GPU HSF on X800 Pro.

How can I reduce temps without increasing the noise? I'd like to water-cool the CPU and GPU; together that's going to be pushing close to 200 W.

Zalman's Reserator is tempting, but I'm just not stupid enough to buy it.

Koolance's Exos is also tempting. I've had a mixed experience with Koolance in the past.

I like the idea of not dragging any more dirty air through my computer than I am now. This place is dusty, and we have two cats.

My case is an Antec Sonata, so I don't have a lot of room inside.

I could jam a radiator against the 120 mm exhaust fan in the back, put a bay res in (I have 2 bays free) and pump at the bottom. Route the tubing carefully to CPU and GPU and never add anything else. This worries me a bit that a single 120 mm radiator won't cool too much, and I added the noise of a pump.

I could mod the @$#% out of my beautiful case, put a double 120 mm radiator on top with 2 undervolted 120s pulling air out, bay res and pump as above. This would increase the airflow over the radiator (good) but increase the airflow through my computer (bad). :confused: Cooling wouldn't be a problem; I could overclock if I didn't have an Intel MB. But I probably added noise, complexity, and dirt accumulation.

Or, I could go elaborate and build my own Exos-style radiator on top of my case, put res, pump, rad, fans all in there with an intake--maybe filtered. This becomes expensive or difficult (depending on how much of it I construct myself). It also helps keep air out of my computer--right now, it has a lot going through it.

Those of you with custom water cooling, how quiet is it at night when all is quiet? What do you hear? (pump, fans, air movement) Koolance Exos owners, what do you hear?

I am really worried about making the system too loud. I've had a noisy machine in the past, and I hated it. This is why the Reserator is so tempting. That's just a lot of money for just a few degrees.

Anyway, opinions? I've not mentioned cost much. The Koolance and Zalman are both close to $300 shipped. Kits are cheaper, Ghetto-style DIY is even less.

Is there an option I'm missing?

What's a good, quiet pump?

Thanks.

kneht
 
Consider building an external radiator box.

Using some sheetmetal, some paint, and some wood to build a basic frame, you can build a very attractive unit for very little money.

Actually if you size and design it right, you could make a pedistal for your computer case, that has the rad, pump, and fill system all inside of it. Like an exos, but built the way you want it.

Plus the extrenal box would rid the issue of more airflow inside your case. At that point you could put a couple quiet fans in there or just one strategically placed fan to aid in air recirculation and call it done.


BTW my unit is practically inaudible from 4 feet. Across the room it's totally silent.
 
mustang_steve said:
BTW my unit is practically inaudible from 4 feet. Across the room it's totally silent.
Click to expand...

What pump and fans are you running? It looks like a Eheim 1248 or 1250.

I hadn't thought about making a box for underneath my system, but I like the idea. Thanks for the quick response.

kneht
 
I use a 1250. I also got some rubber vibration dampenners for the pump.

Any 300gph pump is going to vibrate like mad, so consider getting dampeners as well. I think you can get them from McMaster for a few dollars.
 
Eheim's are pretty quiet. And I'm getting ready to put watercooling in my antec sonata with the heater core under the drive bay where the hdd rack used to be. and then mounting the pump underneath the graphics card. I'm thinking about sticking my reservoir in my drive rack too, otherwise that will go in the back somehow.
 
stumpy said:
Eheim's are pretty quiet. And I'm getting ready to put watercooling in my antec sonata with the heater core under the drive bay where the hdd rack used to be. and then mounting the pump underneath the graphics card. I'm thinking about sticking my reservoir in my drive rack too, otherwise that will go in the back somehow.
Click to expand...

stumpy,

what do you think of mounting a 120 rad on the back exhaust fan? That fan's not too noisy now and would help simplify my setup. Without CPU and GPU HSFs, the ambient air temp in the case should be pretty low for the exhaust rad. Then a smaller pump, like a 1048 for the simpler system. (pump, rad, CPU, GPU, bay res)

I don't like the idea of bringing air into the case through a radiator. Too many things inside the case will still need some cooling, like vid ram.

kneht
 
1) Can pumps be surrounded by foam to absord the noise without making them overheat? (Is the water flow enough to cool them.)

2) I was reading this article which has an interesting graph showing water flow with different pumps and hose sizes. From the chart, it appears that the least powerful pump at 1/2" tubing is exceeding the most powerful at 3/8". Is this a correct assumption?

If this is correct, I could use a 1048 with 1/2" tubing and exceed the flow from a 1250 with 3/8" easily. This would help a lot with getting a quieter system.

Seeing this data really makes me wonder about the Koolance systems. Is the Koolance able to partially compensate for poor flow with the larger radiator used. (larger than a 120 HC)

Ok, that was more than 2 questions.

kneth
 
Your not wrapping hte pump in foam, just atatching it to a foam block to absorb vibration.

That artice was NOT to determine what tubing size was right, and cannot be used as such since each tubing size was used with different hardware. there is a 33% flow difference between 1/2" and 3/4" tubing. Keep in mind htat your waterblocks will likely be far more restriction than your tubing though. If you wnat silence, 3/8 will cut it...if you wnat to OC get the 1/2....that's about as simple as anyone can put it.

Koolances were designed to work efficiently under low-flow environments. Actually the cooling per flowrate ratio is pretty impressive. I won't touch one since I have my current rig and am more than happy with it though. Flowrate might mean quite a bit under some of the current block designs, but flowrate doesn't always equal better temps. If you look at the german W/C scene, low-flow setups are the norm over there, and can't really call them wrong either with the temps they get from it. It's all about how the parts work together.
 
mustang_steve said:
That artice was NOT to determine what tubing size was right, and cannot be used as such since each tubing size was used with different hardware. there is a 33% flow difference between 1/2" and 3/4" tubing. Keep in mind htat your waterblocks will likely be far more restriction than your tubing though. If you wnat silence, 3/8 will cut it...if you wnat to OC get the 1/2....that's about as simple as anyone can put it.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I misread the article. Is there a measurement to determine restriction of a waterblock? Or is is simply, waterblock X is more restrictive than waterblock Y? It seems like the more waterblocks I see referred to as restrictive are considered to be "better."

In this situation (low noise), am I better off going less restrictive, i.e., Maze 4 and a smaller pump?

kneht
 
The best way to measure restriction is to tuse the same pump, and tubing..and jsut run the block for an hour with a flowmeter on it, taking measurements say...every 10 mins...then average it when done. Then switch out blocks and go again. If the blocks are different tubing sizes, refit the larger tubing one for the smaller tubing, since going the other way around won't fix anything.

Sadly nobody ever rates this kind of thing, instead they go for "with this gear block X outperforms block Y in teh same setup by Z percent", which again...doesnt explain much of WHY it outperforms...Without proper numbers we will keep having debates over pointless things...so having actual specs is always a good thing, so long as those specs are done to a standard.

How you want to get quiet is up to you....some go for high flow, others go the route I did and go for low flow. Both schools of thought work, you just have to pick your components differently to match with the flow rate you are using. I went with a high flow pump, but ended up low flow due to having three blocks in series in my loop, and the 90 degree fitting on my pump inlet doesnt help either...but my temps are good, and my noise level is low...so to me it's not worth messing with until I have a good reason to ;)
 
kneht said:
stumpy,

what do you think of mounting a 120 rad on the back exhaust fan? That fan's not too noisy now and would help simplify my setup. Without CPU and GPU HSFs, the ambient air temp in the case should be pretty low for the exhaust rad. Then a smaller pump, like a 1048 for the simpler system. (pump, rad, CPU, GPU, bay res)

I don't like the idea of bringing air into the case through a radiator. Too many things inside the case will still need some cooling, like vid ram.

kneht
Click to expand...

Yeah I think that would work, are you talking inside or outside of the case though. And yes the Antec stock fan is incredibly quiet, especially on the 7v connector. The air filter on the front of the case should catch most of the dirt and everything, and I have a seperate 120mm that I'm going to mount on the rad. I'm leaving the 120mm on the back too. Since that's all i have right now, it should provide the same or better cooling once i get the rad in there. I'm running my 1250 right now outside of the case and it is completely silent with 3/8" tygon. I could've gotten 1/2" but since the waterblock i'm using has 3/8" barbs it wouldn't really improve my flow that much to use the larger tubing.

Here's what I am thinking about:
upload.png



Pardon the crudeness, but I'm putting the radiator and fan shroud underneath the drive bays. Then the reservoir would go into the empty space I have in the drive bay racks, so it would be the highest point in the system. I still don't know if I'm getting a GPU right away, but hopefully... so i'll just have to add a bit for that...

As far as noise goes, the only thing I should be hearing is the fan on the radiator, although I will probably get a rheostat to turn that down when I'm not using the computer. And the NB fan on my IC7 makes a little bit of noise, but with the Sonata you can't really hear it. And maybe a little noise with the water in the reservoir bubbling...

Hope this helps and PM me if you want more details.
 
stumpy said:
Yeah I think that would work, are you talking inside or outside of the case though.
Click to expand...

I was planning on inside, with the rear 120 pulling air through. Using a shroud if there's room.

Is push better than pull?

kneht
 
pull is considered to be superior to push.

BTW, you should also keep your rear fan, since you need someplace for all that hot air to go. A fan, even undervolted or bussed should do a good job on that.
 
mustang_steve said:
BTW, you should also keep your rear fan, since you need someplace for all that hot air to go. A fan, even undervolted or bussed should do a good job on that.
Click to expand...

I just have one 120mm fan at 7v right now at the back of my case, you think that will be enough after I get the heatercore + another fan in there?

Since it keeps my case temps reasonable now, i think it should do fine once i add the h20.

One more thing, do case temps matter as much once the CPU and GPU are watercooled? I'm thinking that since CPU doesn't need cooler air blowing on it anymore that it won't matter if the case temps go up a bit.
 
stumpy said:
One more thing, do case temps matter as much once the CPU and GPU are watercooled? I'm thinking that since CPU doesn't need cooler air blowing on it anymore that it won't matter if the case temps go up a bit.
Click to expand...

I would think that the case temps still matter for things like ram, vid ram, northbridge, etc.

Just a hunch though.

kneht
 
It's best to keep your case temps down. Your hard drives will love you for it...powersupplies especially...most quiet PSUs get very noisy if they detect a possible overheat situation coming up...so by keeping the case air it feeds off of nice and cool, you are ensuring that moment doesn't happen.

Few things suck as bad as sitting down to a nice album at your desk...when sudednly you hear what sounds like a 1/100th scale 747 trying to take off from behind your desk :eek:

I was just making sure about the rear fan, since I've known a few folks who chose to use their rear fan for the radiator,a nd not put a new one in...and then wondered why they were having all kinds of weird issues....stuff that normally doesnt overheat conking out, etc. Whta happened was the air basically left however it could...which meant it just kinda seeped out of panel separations, front drive bays, etc..and did not move over the cards and mobo like it should have. Air will always go where it is easiet to move to...and that usually is not towards the place you want it.
 
Yeah, well I wasn't talking about having incredibly high case temps, but I guess I should still make sure they're low enough to where my ram and such is still getting cooled. No matter where I mount my rad I'm going to have 2 120's in there... so I'm thinking that will do the trick, if not, i guess it's blowhole time ;)
 
Just don't go for a top blowhole. My PC-60 went away in part due to the noice increase the top blowhole added....namely I could hear my optical drives screaming when watching a dvd or installing a gmae.
 
Ugh, that sucks. Well maybe I will add something when I do my window mod, maybe something to get rid of the Antec punched on the side of mine...

I can hear my hdd grinding a bit occasionaly but that's probably because I have it mounted in the floppy bay rather the rack where it belongs (and where it was tottally silent)
 
I always liked that antec punch out....put some EL blue or purple stuff on teh back of it, and watch those letters glow :)
 
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