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Low noise watercooling

J

JeremyCT

Weaksauce
Joined
Mar 29, 2008
Messages
79
I'm looking for what people may have come up for low noise solutions. Many of the rigs in the sticky are great, I really like them, but I'm looking into water cooling more for the sound reduction than the overclocking possibilities. I'd appreciate any insights people might be willing to share on this front.

Jeremy
 
I have a very low noise setup. The two most important things for low noise are 1) quiet pump (duh), and 2) adjustable speed fan. The size and number of radiators can also play a factor because it can determine how many fans you need and how fast they need to run.

Pump:
I don't really know much about the pumps that are available on the market. I built my own, but it is similar to the AC pumps that sell for $30ish. Its just really quiet. Not alot of pressure, a medium amount of flow, but you can barely hear it.

Fan:
It seems a lot of people like to use low speed fans that have a set speed, such as an undervolted 120mm fan. I don't like this approach, because I find it can leave you with inadequate cooling during times of heavy loads, such as gaming. I let speedfan control my PWM 120mm radiator fan through the CPU fan header. This allows the system to be silent during idle and medium loads (99% of the time), but if I'm running all 4 cores at 100% and the temps start to rise, its nice to know that the fan speed will pick up and handle my cooling.

My radiator fan has only gone above 5% once since I started cooling this setup almost 2 months ago, and it was because I was doing video encoding on all 4 cores for over 3 hours. Since I started water cooling, the noisiest part of my system is now the power supply fan, and thats saying alot since I have a very quiet Antec Earthwatts psu.

Also note that you can still have a silent system even if it's overclocked. My system generates the same noise level at 2.4ghz as it does at 3.6ghz, although I'd imagine the fan would speed up a bit if I really dogged it at 3.6.
 
Zalman Reserator


Its fanless, with a silent pump. You have to look at the flow indicator to make sure its on =p Some people have issues about the pump not being powerful enough, but you can always replace it or add a booster. It is on the pricey side though
 
The other downside of the reserator is that it makes it so difficult to move the computer. I ran an external setup (not the reserator, a homemade tank+rad) for a while and just got sick of needing two people whenever I wanted to move my computer.
 
Well the reserator has an easy removal system where you can d/c the reserator unit from the tubing without having to drain or make a mess and it easily connects back.
 
The key is to double the heat dump capacity you need, and put on very low speed fans.

For example, if you have a Quadcore CPU loop only, add in a triple radiator, and place 3 800rpm scythe fans (at 7v) pulling through the radiator. Should run at around 22dba.
 
Per Arcygenical, the right fans and rad are a big factor.

I'm running a low restriction rad combined with quiet fans, ie Thermochill PA120.3 + Noctua fans. For pump the DDC with an after market top is next to silent mounted on a foam pad. Then a gpu block to eliminate gpu fan noise. Nice thing is it all fits in my mid tower and can still oc my opteron 170 to 3 ghz. (2 ghz stock)
 
DDCs on Petra's gel/foam=bad

They need fresh air, I've seen them melt through the gel before.
 
Does anybody sell the DDC pump with an aftermarket top already installed or without a top? Seems silly to buy the pump with top just to remove it and replace with something else. Does the aftermarket top make a huge difference in noise? Would it be the same as turning it down to, say, the 4 setting on the switchable pumps?

I was strongly considering the PA120.3 for my radiator, I think it'll be adequate for my needs. Fans are a bit of a sticking point though. I'm considering the SilenX fans just because they're rated to move so much air with no noise, but I've seen some posts where people were disappointed by them, and they are quite expensive comparatively. I understand that the moving air itself makes noise, but are these worth their premium or not? Every other even remotely quiet fan that I've looked at doesn't have anywhere near the airflow rating or is much noisier. 90cfm at 18 dB is really tough to beat.

Thanks for the tips so far.
 
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