Thoughts on silencing an air cooled rig?

I'm looking for some thoughts on silencing my machine. I'm cooling my fx 8350 @ 4.6GHz with the absurdly large Phanteks PH-TC14PE. It's currently sat in an HAF 922 with a total of 8 fans (two acx 2.0+ on my 970 ssc, two 140mm cpu heatsink, two 200mm corsair case, one 120mm case, and the usually unused evga supernova g2 power supply fan.)

There's obviously a ton of directions to go from quieter fans to silenced cases to alternative cooling. What do you guys suggest in terms of cases, fans, and cooling? I'm looking at this as sort of a fun project more than an endeavor in optimization that would make use of the bare minimum in time money and materials.

With all the new products coming out this year prices are fluctuating and new solutions appearing so shoot me your ideas if you find this at all interesting.

I have used Noctua D14 on several builds and with some high overclocks. It has always been more than capable of near silent operation with low temps.

I would be more concerned by the GPU. Blower coolers can sound like leaf blowers. I know from first hand having run a pair of 6870's in crossfire a few years ago. Some open GPU coolers are not much better, the pair of 7970's I had were also loud. Modern GPUs tend to be a lot quieter.

The issue with open GPUs is that they dump their heat into the case. At least with blower coolers on GPUs is that the heat is dumped out of the case.

Your HAF case with all of it's open mesh is great for cooling but real bad for sound dampening. Something like the Fractal Design R5 would be much better.

Don't over do the fans, I have first hand experience of fitting too many fans. It can cause confused airflow creating pockets of hot air churning around but not leaving the case.

Keep it simple,

A fan to exhaust the warm air from the CPU at the back of the case.
A couple of fans in the front to feed the case with cool, filtered air.
If things are getting warm fit a fan to the roof of the case.
The larger the fan the slower you can run it. The slower it runs the quieter it becomes.
Keep positive air pressure in the case.
Clean your fan filters regularly.

I really don't like variable fan speeds it is often the change in fan speed that makes them more noticeable. Find a fan speed that is both quiet but effective under load. I like to run the fans right from the PSU and use inline fan speed reducers.

Noctua fans are expensive but they come with accessories like inline fan speed reducers and anti-vibration mounts.

My current build is louder than I would like and it's down to the Corsair H80i CPU cooler I'm running. I hate the blooming thing but at the time my 7970's were overwhelming the D14 CPU cooler. I'm running a sandy-e rig and the top card is very close to the CPU socket area. I now have much cooler running card with a blower. My hope is I can fit the D14 again and my rig will be much quieter. The only problem is I stripped the fans from the D14 and one other and need to buy a new cooler. I fear I may have lost the mounting hardware in a recent move. As I sit here typing I can hear the drone of the fans on that H80i and it irks me something terrible.

I've been fighting with my phanteks cooler for the longest time. It really doesn't like pwm and the included pwm adapter actually has to be modded to connect to the included fans-__- They still run above the necessary speed for my overclock even after manually setting them to a desired speed in the bios.

Thanks for pointing out that variable fan speeds can create extra noise. That could explain the most annoying sound issue with my config. There's a definite cycle from annoyingly loud to understandably loud on a regular pattern. It could be that my idle temps are just shy of a thermal threshold that's causing the fans to ramp up and down on a fairly regular interval.

The design r5 looks tantalizing compared to the steaming behemoth I liken my haf to. I'm considering trying a water loop just because I never have. And because I'm significantly annoyed with having to build around a heat sink that limits access to the entirety of any motherboard. I have no idea where I'd start with coolers but the r5 looks like a good frame for any number of possible configs.

Any advice on where to start with setting up proper positive airflow? ie suggestions on radiators, pumps, and their placement along with placement of case fans to compliment?

Positive air pressure should be simple enough more in than out... If you have negative air pressure dust and crap will be pulled into the case. All of the little openings in the case will allow dust to get in. With positive air pressure air will be going out through those small places. There is little point in having dust filters on your intake fans if half of the air is bypassing the filters.

Doing water properly can be expensive. AIO water coolers are in vogue at the moment and there are plenty to choose from. I still maintain that a properly configured air cooling setup can be both quiet and provide good cooling, You have to be running a 240mm water AIO to outperform the best air cooler. However the AIO will be louder.

So for real quiet running a custom water cooling loop massively over spec~ed with slow fans. Or a well balanced air setup. Air cooling will always be less expensive. Tom (TTL) over at OC3d.net has done a lot of work on water cooling. His Orca custom build he did a couple of years ago is close to what I would call the gold standard of silent water cooled builds.

Use speed fan to set all your fans to 0% at idle. Pretty quiet.

I'm inclined to agree about air cooling generally being superior for the price. I'd be water cooling purely for the fun and challenge of learning it.

I'm familiar with the basics of pc cooling, including the concept of positive air pressure and its' benefits. I know there a lot of people on this forum who are much more experienced than myself, however. I figured I'd give it a go and see if anyone had a favorite method or in depth reasoning for specific configurations.

I'm giving Tom's Orca build a look as I type. I'll probably do a lot more research on custom water cooling before I make any attempts.

I did decide to purchase a Design R5 after a bit more independent research. It seemed to me it took the crown for most trusted and highest quality silent case on the market currently. It fits my needs almost exactly as well, so I'm very happy with that recommendation. I'll have to see how the included fractal fans work out for me.

I did specifically purchase the black edition for aesthetics so I'd like to at least give them a go, as they'll match the aesthetic and mounting options perfectly with no fuss whatsoever. If the fans themselves are sufficient I think I'll use some of the vibration reducing fan strips I already have if necessary.

Speedfan has trouble recognizing and controlling (when it does recognize) my current fan configuration. I haven't bothered to isolate and work around the problem because there are pre-existing issues with my cpu fans responding to software fan control of any kind. My motherboard reports constant annoying error messages when I hardware control them as well. Little issues like those mentioned have given me added incentive to stop bothering with patchwork and do a fun little upgrade to my system that will hopefully be more satisfactory on the whole.

Define R5 is one of the best silence case out there. The H440 or the Noctis while can achieve similar level of silence still lose out in terms of flexibility in my opinion. The removable drive bays + the amount of those drive bays + easy maintenance of R5 is worth your money.

For $90 US right now; sound dampening panels, modular bays/panels, tool-less dust filters, tool-less side panel access, and a painted interior sounds like a steal compared to my HAF steaming behemoth. It's good to hear that the teksyndicate community agrees. You can never quite trust the ravings of random internet consumers.

If you are really going down the custom water cooling route the Define S rather than the R5 would be better.

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I use the Cooler Master Hyper 412 S cooler using the adapter that comes with it which makes it run at 7 volts as opposed to the 12 volts that are normal. That is enough to cool my FX 6200 (125 W TDP) without an overclock but I do not stress it crazy much. If it goes to 100% it does not stay there for hours, maybe 60-90 minutes max. What I like about this setup is that you literally cannot hear the fan unless you go close to it and focus on it in a quiet room. The first time I turned on the PC with that cooler I actually checked whether or not it was spinning. It is that quiet. So I am very happy with it, probably as quiet as it gets. Not sure how much more than 125 W it can dissipate though at 7 volts.

There's nothing really wrong with the HAF cases. Yes, they don't have much sound insulation, but allow for enough airflow to turn the fans down a lot whilst keeping enough cooling capacity. That makes up for a lot.

To get the most out of that case, you'll need fans that can move a lot of air while generating little noise. Something along the lines of the premium Noctuas or the BeQuiet SilentWings2.
2 fans at 500RPM will make less noise than 1 at 1000 RPM whilst moving more air, but 8 fans in a single case may be overkill. Then again I use 8 of the BeQuiets in my own rig (+2 on the Dark Rock Pro 3 cooler) and I can't hear it run even though it's 3ft from my right ear.


That depends on the case and parts really. The amount of positive pressure can also play a role, as well as the speed of each individual fan. I did play around with mine a bit when I built it, and smoke tests didn't reveal any issues on my particular setup.

I was trying to calm the raging furnace of a pair of 7970s in crossfire and a Sandy-E CPU overclocked to hell and back all in a define R3. A case not know for it's good air flow.

I take your point about the HAF case, you are right it can be quiet with large slow moving fans. The only issue without sound damping other noise from coil whine, hard drives and the GPU cooler would be hard to muffle. Something like the H440 from NZXT or the Define R5/S would muffle those other sounds computers make.

I'll keep that suggestion in mind going forward. I plan on eventually putting together a windows 10 build for the latest and greatest directx games while keeping my windows 7 install on my current rig. I do too much retro gaming and game modding to move over to windows 10 completely. Not to mention all the things I dislike about windows 10.

A Define S machine hooked up to a 4k monitor and a vr headset, next to a define r5 hooked up to one or more 1080 ips displays sounds absolutely epic to me. If I start water cooling in a second rig it'll be cool to compare the solutions side by side.

My issues with the haf case are unfortunately more to do with its design than its capacity for a proper silent fan configuration. The front panel optical drive covers always rattle without being jury rigged to sit quiet. Both side panels give significantl play even when screwed in as tightly as possible. The fan mount mesh in several places is either concave or convex, stressing and bending the fans.

I imagine the HAF 922 was originally designed to ride on the coattails of the HAF X for those who were looking to throw some of the hottest and biggest components into a rig and be sure there'd be enough airflow to overclock, without spending as much time and research as they should've. This is exactly what I did years ago and have since properly upgraded components and found the HAF unsatisfactory.

Well, the 922 was released in 2009, the X in 2010. So the 922 and 932 were probably just thrown together to see if there was a market, and then they built the big one.

As a former HAF X owner, I can't say I noticed any of the issues you described. I did have to replace the I/O panel's PCB after 18 months, and 2 years later the replacement died on me too. A friend's HAF X is on his second board too, and one of the USB ports of that one is going wonky now as well.
That's the main reason I moved away from HAF cases myself. Oh, and because I wanted more airflow than the HAF X would allow.

The Define R5 is a solid choice, I use one as a NAS box and it's quiet considering that I'm running 8 drives in there.
Great case to build in, nice cable management options, plenty of room for a big cooler (I run a Shadow Rock 2 and have about 25mm headroom left), the dampening and modular vents are nice, great system in terms of fan filter cleaning (everything is easily accessible without having to move the case around).

The only 2 issues I have with it are :
1 ) No cover for the front of the PSU, so if you want to use a windowed side panel those wires will be very visible
2 ) the unfiltered hole around the 5.25" bays where it can draw in loads of air. It's not a problem if you have overly positive pressure though. Or if you're handy with duct tape.

You're right. I still think the HAF cases were built with the aforementioned purpose in mind. Their marketing was geared toward the big, open, and rugged side of the market as opposed to the high end and optomized side.

I'll actually be using both optical drive bays for a card reader and dvd read/write drive. That was one of the reasons I decided the R5 was a perfect fit. I also opted for the windowless blackout edition for the increased sound dampening on that panel. I personally keep my cases on a slightly elevated platform beneath my desk so I never found viewing windows all that desirable.

I personally run the NZXT H440 with a Noctua D14 with no issues. Super quiet with only the stock case fans. I recently added a second ASUS 970 and started to get some fan noise from the GPUs with heavy gaming. I ordered a few Noctua case fans to run a top exhaust and hopefully take care of the issue. The H440 is great case to build in and super quiet. The air flow is not the greatest though, but that is a side effect of quiet. Great build quality too. I also have my 4790k OCed to 4.6Ghz

What's your experience been with top exhaust and noise? Mine hasn't been great honestly. I'm planning on adding extra front intake to see how the define r5 handles with all moduvents in place.

The new fans are supposed to arrive today, but I'm not worried about it on the H440. The top is designed almost identical to the front, so I wouldn't expect any real increase in noise in my case. I haven't decided if I want to put the Noctuas in the front and move the stock case fans to the top of just put the Noctuas on the top.