Do you guys consider fan noise when buying?

S

SentToSchool

Gawd
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Jul 31, 2005
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I don't know about you guys but if the X1950Pro costs the same as the 7900GS, I'd take the 7900GS 10 out of 10 times because it's very quiet unlike its competition. I'll take the couple of FPS loss and gain sanity(I am a silent freak).

Would you lose a couple of frames to have a near silent video card or a leaf blower with a few more frames?
 
Personally, I like just a little hum from my PC, its like whitenoise for drowning out the wife!

Seriously though, fans at a certain level do become distracting. So to me, unless its just plain loud, a little more noise isn't that bad IMHO.
 
no, i don´t care if the fans wake the whole neighborhood up, :D
i use headphones so...
 
Now when I have noise cancelling headphones.

Not only that, but the sound of a tornado is a nice white noise at night.
 
well the stock fan and heatsink is always replaceable and you can always turn down the fan speed in rivatuner ;) soo id just go with the faster card
 
N H O said:
well the stock fan and heatsink is always replaceable and you can always turn down the fan speed in rivatuner ;) soo id just go with the faster card
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What if buying an aftermarket cooler costs the same as upgrading to an even faster card but still silent card?

For example, if you buy an X1900XT + an after market cooler, that might put you into the 7900GTX territory, doesn't it?
 
I don't usually consider fan noise at all when I buy a video card. I go for absolute performance.

There have been some video cards that have driven me nuts when it comes to noise. First off the X700Pro is about the noisiest card I've ever had, and the X1800XT and X1900XT fans were almost unbearable as well. Otherwise no other cards have really ever bothered me.
 
does NE1 remember the GeForce 5800 Ultra, that card was noisy, the leaf blower was it´s nickname :p
 
unless you go aftermarket i havent' bought either an Nvidia or ATI card that is quiet..

after you use an HR-03 with a nice quiet fan, all stock coolers are loud..
 
I dont anymore... because my case is so thick that i dont even notice when ALL of my fans are on max speed. ahah.
 
It certainly is for me. Now I know not to dick around with anything with small fast spinning fans like my 6600GT. That was hell on earth, thank god it died lol.
 
This is pretty much the only deciding factor for me right now. I want to go fanless/passive but I don't think I'd be able to get the performance I want from a passively cooled graphics card. So I'm at least making sure the one I get throttles to 2D/3D like it's supposed to, unlike the BFG 7800GTX OC 256MB I got from RMA... apparently they decided that running the fan 100% of the time regardless of drivers or other hacks was a good idea for the 7800GTX OC 256MB.

So yeah. I'm looking at the 8600GTS 256MB right now... but I don't think it'll fit the bill for 1680x1050... I've only got a single slot to toy with as I'm in a Shuttle so I'm pretty sure I'll be getting it, DX10 is important to me too..
 
yes it is, I am disappointed though by my 7600gt which was supposed to be quiet but wasn't :(
 
Dan_D said:
Otherwise no other cards have really ever bothered me.
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You have 8800GTX sli, and that doesn't bother you?!?!

I have just one GTS right now, and its fan drives me FREAKING NUTS!

My 680i NB fan is freakin loud as well.


To answer the OP, YES noise bothers the hell out of me.. only when i;m not lestening to music. (which is about 10% of the time :) )

I watercooled my 8800GTXs while I had them.. thats how bad they were.
 
I wonder if you all try to cancel the noise your gf makes when she has sex? I bet Arcy does :eek:
Noise is a natural part of life, just like the force is.
 
I do, to that exctent that I only tried my X1900XT once then changed the stock cooler to VF900.

I think I´ll go with stock cooler with my next card, guess that will be some variant of 8800, 2600 or 65nm 2900, time will tell.
 
Nope, I do not care about the fan noise, I end up pulling it anyway as I watercool.
 
SentToSchool said:
What if buying an aftermarket cooler costs the same as upgrading to an even faster card but still silent card?

For example, if you buy an X1900XT + an after market cooler, that might put you into the 7900GTX territory, doesn't it?
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well thats where a custom modded cpu heatsink comes in ;)

Marvelous said:
I think performance comes first than power consumption, noise, heat
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i agree
 
Silence is the sound of water. :) As others have mentioned, for the hotter cards there is no real substitute to a waterblock. It is good for your card too as it tends to keep it cooler and as a bonus a card running cooler tends to draw a bit less power!
 
buffbiff21 said:
You have 8800GTX sli, and that doesn't bother you?!?!

I have just one GTS right now, and its fan drives me FREAKING NUTS!

My 680i NB fan is freakin loud as well.


To answer the OP, YES noise bothers the hell out of me.. only when i;m not lestening to music. (which is about 10% of the time :) )

I watercooled my 8800GTXs while I had them.. thats how bad they were.
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Nope doesn't bother me a bit. Especially not when I think about the performance it gives me. The noise of two isn't really a problem either as they operate at the same rotational speed and should almost always be running about the same. I can't hear one over the other. Additionally for years I've had case fans loud enough to drown out the noise of all that. Though my machine has gotten pretty quiet inside a P182 case. I can't hear a whole lot besides the movement of the air now. The whole machine was pretty loud inside the Stacker 830, but it didn't bother me that much.

I care much less about noise than I do absolute performance. I've used Vantec Tornado fans and the infamous black label Delta fan back in the Athlon T-bird days. But then again I usually sit in a server room at work. Sometimes I work in data centers that have a 1,000 Servers in them. (That's loud.) So I guess it's all relative.

Pretty soon I am going to watercool my 8800GTX's anyway. Mostly to reduce heat and gain better overclocking headroom, so it won't matter much longer. My machine should become nearly silent in the next few weeks. Though the noise might go up some with me switching to the Antec P190.
 
I have tinnitus, and the sound of droning case fans at night is perfect for me. Though I don't have any leaf blowers in my computer.

I can't stand complete silence.
 
I never consider the noise of the stock fan because I have never found a stock fan that is going to be quiet enough for me. Which means I'm always going to rip off whatever stock fan I get and replace it with something more quiet.
 
I definitely consider the sound of a card - in fact, that's largely why I stuck with the Asus X1600 XT (silent) for so long, despite mediocre performance. It made no sound! There is a lot to be said for that.
 
dderidex said:
I definitely consider the sound of a card - in fact, that's largely why I stuck with the Asus X1600 XT (silent) for so long, despite mediocre performance. It made no sound! There is a lot to be said for that.
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No, not really.

Then again I have no options outside of water cooling. I'd never be happy with a mid range or low end card.
 
Arcygenical said:
Hell yes :eek:!
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Arcy here is a little whimp then it comes to noise. :p
I have 3 Silverstone F121's running in my system.

That adds up to 47 dbA.
Plus a Raptor, and my Swiftech MCP655 pump on it's highest setting.

Noise is a big deal. With Yate Loons in my PC, I can hear people perfectly downstairs.
With my Silverstones, I can not hear a word.
But, with my Icemat Siberia's on, the noise doesn't bother me.

It is all personal preference.
 
Well theres two kinds of noise, wind noise and bearing noise, (a8n deluxe and SLI-D nb fans come to bind here). I like the sound of the air rapidly exiting my case. I do not however like the sound of my northbridge fan, on my last nf4 sli-d the fan made a high pitched noise like it was dying, and only spinning at 3k rpms max, This was the death noise if there ever way any.

One day I noticed i didn't hear it anymore, found out it kicked off, I was so happy. The sad part is that there was only 2c temp delta between no fan and max speed.

I think some of you guys, and how far you are willing to go for an ultra quiet pc to be pussys. A computer is supposed to have a fan noise, that lets you know that its on, and the hard drive making noise is a sign that its working. I miss my old gateway p2 450 box, made the best hd / fan noise ever.
 
Dan_D said:
Pretty soon I am going to watercool my 8800GTX's anyway. Mostly to reduce heat and gain better overclocking headroom, so it won't matter much longer..
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TBH, watercooling will not give you more OC headroom. They are voltage limited, not temperature limited. I noticed zero difference in overclock potential when I moved to water.

Though, yes, they get hot :eek: Under load with h2o, they never broke 50C. But right when I swapped the blocks out for the HSF, they Idled at 55C

If you want some EK blocks, hit me up. :D I'm sellin em.
 
Noise is a very big consideration with the hardware I purchase. Generally speaking I'd rather be moderately quiet with a midrange card, than loud with a high-end card.

Gaming probably only occupies ~5% of my total computer usage, so I tend to build it with comfort in mind.
 
My x1800xt doesn't bother me, so I guess you could say no, not at all for me. It is quiet in 2d apps and louder in games, but then again my volume is LOUD.
 
Noise is a total non-factor in my PC buying calculus. I just don't see how the sound of spinning fans can be a problem.
 
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