It's like turning off a vacuum cleaner

S

sirgallium

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 30, 2006
Messages
336
Just installed an rx 480 today

My friend gave me this GTX480 a number of years ago when I couldn't afford an upgrade from an ancient XP 3000+ nVidia GeForce 3 Ti500 setup.

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And I loved it and appreciated it for so many years and finally today it has seen it's last use from me. Holy crap I had no idea it was so loud. He had put an aftermarket cooler on it. I tried undervolting at one point and it made it much more tolerable but then the temps crept up too high.

I just can't believe how nice it is. It's seriously like turning off a vacuum cleaner that's been sitting next to you for years.

It was almost worse than the 80mm 80cfm fan I used to have for that XP 3000+.

So quiet :eek:
 
i remmber that heatsink i had one for a 5870 it/i killed my card installing it never got to turn it on.
 
Quiet is nice. Just today in fact I lowered the speed of the 200mm fan on my antec case from medium to low and removed one of the two fans I had on my heat sink in an effort to make my PC as quiet as possible without sacrificing too much in cooling. My old first gen Corsair TX750 is now the loudest component in my box. It's smart enough to have variable fan speed but not fancy enough to complexly shut it down under low load conditions.
 
I'm still pretty much in shock. Today I woke up for the second time and went to turn on the computer, but it was already on. I just couldn't tell without the typical vacuum cleaner noise I'm so used to now. I'm so freakin happy. I really love peace and quiet, but also I sit on my computer all day. Now I can actually hear my fridge in the background, and faint cars passing by. This is amazing, I now can hear the subtle world around me it's so nice.

That watercooling loop build just lost a lot of priority... it's not going to make much difference on the noise front now. Now it will mainly be for coolness and overclocking.
 
Welsper said:
Might've been a little quieter if you cleaned the damn thing ;)
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I know it's a little embarrasing. I just cleaned all the dust out of that computer not even 2 months ago. I can't believe how fast the dust set in this time. I swear it didn't accumulate that fast before. Must have something to do with winter and the dry air.

I actually have a central heating house filter that is like 3 feet by 2 feet or whatever. I've been planning on cutting out some of the filter and using it to filter all the air going into my case but I've just been lazy. I think I'll do that today.
 
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Who brings an HVAC filter to a second hand store to sell for $3? I have no idea but I'm happy they did.

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The casing removed. Note - There is a chicken wire screen reinforcing the fabric. The edges are pointy and sharp. One of them stuck into the tip of my finger pretty far and it was surprisingly very painful. Watch out.

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Cut to size

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Fan is on, but it's rubbing. So I took it back off and un-creased out all of the creases. No more rubbing.

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I cut a piece to go over my PSU intake fan too. At some point I'll have to do the front of the case but this is a pretty good start.

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Final result. Hopefully the airflow isn't too restricted.

^_^
 
Filter over the PSU is pointless because of the gaps around the edges.
 
Welsper said:
Filter over the PSU is pointless because of the gaps around the edges.
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The filter is wide enough but the wire mesh is really hard to flatten completely and its sticking up a little bit in some places. I'm out of tape or I would have taped it down for a good seal. I think I'm probably going to end up getting some thin foam filter material at some point anyway because this hvac filter is too restrictive for my liking.
 
I believe pantyhose would work well if you want to nick a pair from your wife/girlfriend ;)
 
Welsper said:
I believe pantyhose would work well if you want to nick a pair from your wife/girlfriend ;)
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Hahaha. If only.

I fixed the gap on the PSU filter a bit. I took off the wire mesh. The filter material still wants to stay wavy but it's super soft and I tried to bend it as flat as I could I'm thinking it might flatten over time as it sits there.

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But it's actually forming a decent dust seal now because the bottom is all loose fibers that are puffy and stick out pretty far. You can see some in this pic.

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It was completely wide open with the fan before so that definitely will keep out most of the dust for now.

While I was working on that the side door slid and fell and now that filter wire screen is hitting the fan and I can't get it to bend clear again. I'm going to have to take it back off and maybe I'll take the mesh off of that one too. I put my hand over the door fan and it actually was pulling in a good amount of air through the filter so it's not too bad.

Also I'm glad I took the mesh out of the case because it's conductive and it was sitting next to the mobo.

Edit:

Some filter scraps I had from cutting fit the front intake fan perfectly. Just the air sucking in is holding them on for now, but now all of the intake fans are being filtered.

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Can you even feel the air coming through the fans? Those filters are dense and made for high powered static pressure hvac fans.
 
Yep I put my hand over them and felt air coming through. I was just playing NS2 for a couple hours on max settings and my GPU was sitting around 75 C and I read online that anything under 80 C the rx480 will slow down its fans so that must not be too hot. The CPU was much cooler I forget what it was exactly.

Yeah like I said they aren't ideal. I want to get some filter foam that has higher flow rate. But as long as the temps stay good this is better than nothing for now to keep the dust out, it was building up super fast. And once a solid layer of dust is over all the grills its way less flow than even these bad filters.

The top and the bottom of the case are still pretty wide open and have no fans in them so air is free to flow through there as well as the side slits. It is quite a large case with large fans so even with restricted flow it's still quite a bit of air going through. It's just nice to have the filter on the fans pulling in because that's where all the dust settles.

I do have 3 140mm fans sitting around I could put on the outside of the door for a push / pull arrangement. I think I'll try that later. I also have the large fan that came in the top of the case that I took out for noise reduction but it turns out that fan is pretty silent and it was my GPU that was so loud so I can get that back in too as an exhaust pulling fan up top.
 
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Have respiratory issues? If your system got that dirty in 2 months I would be more concerned with cleaning out the central air ducts and installing a better air filter. Preferably MERV 9 or higher. Order them online.

But yeah. Going quiet is nice. Remembering the 60mm hairdryer fan my first AthlonXP came with.
 
Ok ok I'll admit it. The last time I cleaned out the dust I was too lazy to remove the GPU and just tried to half ass blow it off while it was still in the case. Obviously this didn't work!

I don't have air ducts I live in a single room with baseboard heating. The dust definitely got worse in the winter. I actually bought that filter because I saw a pic in a thread once about how somebody put that HVAC style filter over a box fan of theirs and let it run on low in their house and it was incredible how much crap it picked up after a month or tow. So I had originally planned on doing the same thing. Now I guess my computer case is sort of taking that role.

I found a lot of air being pulled in unfiltered on the bottom. I'm going to try to add the push/pull setup to the door today with my 3 extra 140mms and maybe put a filter on the bottom where air is coming in still.

Edit:

Ok I could only fit 1 fan on the push side because of how the mounting holes are covered by the fan on the inside. Still though I put my hand inside after plugging it in and I have to say the airflow feels like it almost doubled. I'm going to run NS2 today for a few hours and see if it sits any colder than the 75 degree GPU the other day.

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Edit2: Don't judge my glorious floor puter setup.... it fixes my back. Yes I need to clean. I've had to clean way more than normal since I started posting these pics just out of embarrassment.

Edit3: I'm seeing a 2 to 3 degree drop on the GPU with this new fan installed. It's staying closer to 70 degrees than 75 now.
 
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Man I remember I had a tornado fan/heatsink for my amd 1800+ back in the day, it turned at like 5k rpm I think it was if not higher, fuck that thing was loud. You could hear it walking through the front door of the house sometimes, freaking stupid. Quieter is so much better though, kudos to you.
 
Welsper said:
I believe pantyhose would work well if you want to nick a pair from your wife/girlfriend ;)
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sirgallium said:
Hahaha. If only.
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You do know that you can obtain pantyhose through other means, right?

Homer: Aw, twenty dollars? I wanted a peanut!
Homer's Brain: Twenty dollars can buy many peanuts.
Homer: Explain how!
Homer's Brain: Money can be exchanged for goods and services.

Also, http://www.silentpcreview.com/ (the main page is practically dead but you can still find good advice and the forums still have some action).
 
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sirgallium said:
I don't have air ducts I live in a single room with baseboard heating. The dust definitely got worse in the winter.
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Dust gets worse in the winter because you don't drink enough water and you start molting. Believe it or not, you get more dehydrated in the winter time than you do the summer. All that dust you're seeing, that's your skin! :eek:

Drink more water and slather yourself in lotion.:p
 
RamonGTP said:
Quiet is nice. Just today in fact I lowered the speed of the 200mm fan on my antec case from medium to low and removed one of the two fans I had on my heat sink in an effort to make my PC as quiet as possible without sacrificing too much in cooling. My old first gen Corsair TX750 is now the loudest component in my box. It's smart enough to have variable fan speed but not fancy enough to complexly shut it down under low load conditions.
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after listening to the fans on my computer for 8 years 24/7 i tried replacing all my fans with quieter ones, i thought i was going to go insane with it being so quiet so i had to put the old fans back in. it's surprising how use to the white noise you get that without it everything feels awkward, lol.
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
after listening to the fans on my computer for 8 years 24/7 i tried replacing all my fans with quieter ones, i thought i was going to go insane with it being so quiet so i had to put the old fans back in. it's surprising how use to the white noise you get that without it everything feels awkward, lol.
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To use an audiophile term, your ears were conditioned, or "burned-in", to the fan noise. (y)
When I had a 4850x2, even with the racket that video card made (loudest video card I have ever heard or owned), I got used to it after a while.
Going from that to the 4870x2, I found myself wondering how peaceful and quiet that card was; almost too quiet, if anything (and the 4870x2 was not a quiet card by any means)!
 
Krenum said:
Dust gets worse in the winter because you don't drink enough water and you start molting. Believe it or not, you get more dehydrated in the winter time than you do the summer. All that dust you're seeing, that's your skin! :eek:

Drink more water and slather yourself in lotion.:p
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And run the actual vacuum cleaner now and then.
 
sirgallium said:
Who brings an HVAC filter to a second hand store to sell for $3? I have no idea but I'm happy they did.
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Eww, I hope you washed and bleached it before using it. Else, you're getting someone else's ick everywhere.

sirgallium said:
The casing removed. Note - There is a chicken wire screen reinforcing the fabric. The edges are pointy and sharp. One of them stuck into the tip of my finger pretty far and it was surprisingly very painful. Watch out.
Click to expand...

I remember back several years ago, my brother in law's daughter was working with chicken wire and she carelessly let it go, at which point it whipped up and stabbed her in the eyeball. I never heard such a shriek before or since. Thankfully she didn't lose her eye or vision. Chicken wire is scary stuff, I don't mess with it without thick leather gloves and full goggle eye protection.

Anyway, I did something similar to one of my cases because it had too many damn holes to suck up dust from:

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The shiny bits is metal tape used for HVAC ducting. I flipped the PSU upside down and now the only air intake is from a large opening in front of the drive bays. I then put two of these side by side with a slight overlap to cover the opening:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008PET8JC

They work surprisingly well in addition to the mesh screen in front of them to trap the larger stuff.
 
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This thread got me thinking of this 40mm chipset fan. 9,200-rpm of high pitched Jet whine goodness.
Could not re-install the original fast enough.
.
.
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I remember back in the T-bird days I had a typhoon fan on the heatsink. A 120mm fan that ran across what 7 or 8000rpm? Holy shit it was so loud but damn did it keep that T-bird cool. I ended up getting a fan controller for it caus it was too much when just browsing the web.
 
vegeta535 said:
I remember back in the T-bird days I had a typhoon fan on the heatsink. A 120mm fan that ran across what 7 or 8000rpm? Holy shit it was so loud but damn did it keep that T-bird cool. I ended up getting a fan controller for it caus it was too much when just browsing the web.
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I had one of those in my Thunderbird system as well. After about 20 minutes of the computer being on my ex-wife said 'If you don't take that out and return it I'm going to shoot either you or the computer or both'. But it kept the system nice and cool for those 20 minutes!
 
Haha. I was like 15 and my mom told me to gtfo with that computer. It was in the basement and could hear it upstairs.
 
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Had one of these on my Barton 2500+. Use to take my Lanboy that it was in over to my cousins house for sum BF2 fragging.
When I would switch it to 'Ludicrous Speed' @ 7000RPM, that bastard would wail louder than his 5800 Ultra! Good times.
 
I had a volcano on my Barton for a while. Then I went to a thermaltake water cooling setup which came with a paltry 2500 rpm fan. I swapped that for a 4800 rpm. Then my main exhaust became a Tornado 7200 or 7800 RPM fan. I had 4 or 5 other fans on the case but they were all 2500 rpm suckers. When the fan controller caught the temps and ramped up it was stupid loud lol. I remember at Quake Con one year the guy sitting behind my computer had a big WTF moment when things ramped up lol.

At night when it got cooler in the room he was less than thrilled with the leaf blower effect.

I still have the Tornado around here somewhere...
 
Uh... I get angry if my computer isn't quieter than ambient at idle (and not too much louder at load).

Though that is a video card that's never seen a vacuum cleaner.
 
gsilver said:
Uh... I get angry if my computer isn't quieter than ambient at idle (and not too much louder at load).

Though that is a video card that's never seen a vacuum cleaner.
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It wasn't so bad when it was in an enclosed case, but in this HAF "case" it's more exposed to air than actually enclosed and with the powerful aftermarket fans it seriously was as loud as a small vacuum cleaner.
 
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