Sice most things I’ve been already said and are more than sensible I’m going to point you towards this video, in case you didn’t watch it already:
I think it underlines very well the importance of optimization compared to “brute force”, which has been brought up multiple times in other answers.
What really changes the noise profile drastically is the shape of the fan grills on your case.
That is a fantastic video. As someone who works in the tool and die/manufacturing industry I really appreciate what he did there. It also reminds me of my need to get my own 3d printer.
I actually also noticed after ordering the new fans that our own @wendell had the same problem 5 years ago and also tried out the same fans I have ordered.
30dB sounds heavenly. Going to follow this thread with interest as a fellow “i NEED the room silent” person. I’ve managed to get a 30U full of servers to essentially silent with the exception of my gaming rig. Ever since rack mounting the gaming rig the 3080ti just screams under load, pushing the room to 50-55dB. Bit of a shame really, somehow it was much quieter in a tiny little 14L case.
For what little my opinion is worth on this matter, I’ve never found noctua to have the quietest fans. They have consistently good fans across their range, but my Scythe S-Flex fans moved more air with less noise and were very cheap budget fans at the time. Similarly, I have some Arctic case fans that aren’t any louder than equivalent 12cm noctuas.
Not saying Noctua is a bad brand, but you pay a lot for nice packaging, a sleeved cable, probably good warranty/customer support, and a low noise adapter. 12CM fan market is highly competitive.
Of course, that changes completely when you’re looking at smaller or larger fans, as suddenly Noctua is the only one really making fans like that for the consumer market. 40mm and 60mm fans that don’t suck are really hard to find, outside the known good noctua.
Also, for low-noise, undervolting can be a powerful ally, especially for some of the GPUs out there. My 6700xt is undervolted to draw a little over half it’s factory target power.
For me it was sort of a copy cat thing originally when I first built my pc. I pay attention a lot to what Puget Systems in Seattle are doing. Their whole policy is quiet computing. They universally use Noctua cooling and they don’t appear based on how they present themselves to be a company who uses anything unless it is absolutely needed. My logic is if they use them there is obviously a reason. They have publicly said that they will buy who ever makes the quietist fans. They go crazy into optimizing fan location and rpm and use thermal cameras to see where to cool. That is overkill for most. But I really appreciate the “science” they put into what they do.
For me locally being in New Zealand with what is available here Noctua’s are no more expensive than any other name brand.
what cpu are you running? If it’s a high power intel 12th/13th gen or the amd 7000 series. they will just keep on using more power under load until they reach max temp and air coolers can’t tame it.
But if you power limit you get 90% of the performance with more reasonable power. Or you can change your fan curves to only ramp up at 90C.
In my initial post I mention my CPU being an AMD 5900x. My CPU has never ever exceeded 75-78°C under load. CPU temps have always been extremely good. Temperatures have always been under control on my PC. Noise is the goal of the project.
oh i’m sorry. i missed it in your post. A 5900 is very managable even under load.
I have a 5800x3d and that is a little harder to cool because of the Vcache, but works well with a NH D15 and all casefans set low, my gpu makes more noise under the most demanding games.
What cpu cooler do you have?
Noctua NH-U12S
However I am highly considering going to a Noctua NH-U12A.
Ok someone needs to build a Formula 1 or Ferrari themed PC with those fans.
The industrial PPC fans from Noctua can get pretty loud also. I had a few of those in a home server for a while, and there was no need for some kind of fancy automated monitoring system, because at full speed you could hear them anywhere in the house.
This.
Get a case with great airflow and your fans work less hard to pull in air. Additionally things run cooler which puts less stress on your fans as well. Also pay attention to where air is flowing and avoid drawing air INTO your case through the radIator; you’ll just be dumping a bunch of heat into the case to make any air cooled parts inside hotter. Use the radiator as an exhaust.
The noisiest thing in my build at the moment is coil whine from my 6900xt when under load. Before that it was the hard drives which are now all replaced with SSDs.
I’m using a fractal define r6 with a 5900x on a Corsair h115i and a red devil 6900xt.
And yes, no expensive fans here. My last build had a bunch of noctua nff12. This is using stock fractal fans that came with the case and the h115i.
It’s quieter due to better airflow, 140mm fans instead of 120s and more intelligent airflow routing (radiator as a top mount exhaust).
I’ve also run this exact same build with radiator as front intake and it was much much louder due to the radiator heat soaking everything else inside.
As above not saying noctua are bad or anything. But the case and how you route airflow makes so much more difference. Making the fans work less hard and being smart with where your heat is blown makes so much more difference.
Get that right and then consider better fans if required after that. You probably won’t need them. Unless the supplied case fans are shit tier. But fractal aren’t.
This is a physics problem, full stop.
Ideally you would want the largest fans possible with the least amount of restriction possible spinning as slowly as possible while still moving some amount of air.
Generally the natural convection of air is irrelevant when you are mechanically moving said air, but if the flow is low enough you can still use the chimney effect to your advantage, and you can accomplish this by using bottom intake fans. There are now cases that can accommodate 180 or 200mm fans. 230mm is best but they’re dinosaurs now.
A passively cooled heatsink like the Noctua P1 could work with the right silicon and tune, but even though Zen 3 as a whole is fairly efficient, your 5900x is literally the least efficient one in it’s generation.
The GPU is the bigger issue depending on how much gaming or rendering you do. Also the CPU & GPU are not the only components that need cooling; SSDs, VRM, RAM, chipset, etc. all require some amount of cooling to prevent heat soak.
I basically have the same case. Mine is the Define S2 which is their silent cases. I have air cooled everything so no radiators. I have intake in the front and exhaust out the back. Pretty standard. The loudest it gets is still quieter then a casual conversation.
We really need to eliminate the mindset that noctuas are expensive though. There are more more expensive fans at my supplier than there are less expensive ones.
By the time I finish you will be able to whisper by this thing under load.
The science is what makes it fun. I would apply science to everything if I could.
Just don’t get hung up on the numbers on paper if you don’t fully understand how they apply to specific real world situations. I see a lot of people talking about what components and settings they use, but few include power consumption numbers. That seems to be slowly changing, for the better IMO.
Honestly for this experiment the only thing I need to pay attention to is maintaining current already low temperatures but make the sound less noticeable and more pleasant to the ears.
Noctua are fucking expensive when you’re using them to replace decent fans already installed in your case.
They’re fine if you’re adding fans but if you’re ripping out perfectly good fans from fractal you may as well set money on fire.
Put another way: if the fractal design fans are loud it isn’t a fan quality problem. It’s an airflow routing problem or fan quantity problem most likely.
Put yet another way: I bought 4x noctua nff12 to try get better airflow in my old case (antec 1100). That was half the cost of the define r6 case which got far better results with the included fans.
There are “better” fans than Noctua when you factor in the price. Thermalright has some great fans if you can get them in your area. The older model PH-F120MPs and PH-F140MPs from Phanteks are also great fans. Scythe also has good fans that are more sane in price.