Silent or quiet cooling for desktop

[ZrByte]

Me again, Basically just wondering what you all think is the best quiet or silent cooling solution for an AM3 system? Budget isn't really an issue though the noise doesn't bother me enough to start throwing more than the system is worth into cooling.
Current components with fans are CPU, GPU, Mobo and PSU. Main culprits of noise seem to be GPU and PSU though the CPU could also do with a little bit of silencing.
Happy to look into water cooling or happy to stick with air cooling but I'm not too handy so if it involves drilling or heavy modding of components its probably not for me.

Thanks in advance all.

[bopdude]

I know nothing other than that that I've seen, and not heard, water / coolant cooling is silent......................but, there is a lot involved, and I for one will take the 'noise' over the possible problems, having said that, I've seen pc's shipped hundreds of miles for LAN's with no adverse effects.

[DocDutch]

Zr, I would personally stick to air cooling on your case....okay water cooling is more quiet and the devices in the pc will run cooler its just the gamble with the tubes that I never liked myself.

Also dont take any advice from Bopdude as he has been known to put tile grout on his CPU :-p

[bopdude]

Originally Posted by DocDutch

Zr, I would personally stick to air cooling on your case....okay water cooling is more quiet and the devices in the pc will run cooler its just the gamble with the tubes that I never liked myself.

Also dont take any advice from Bopdude as he has been known to put tile grout on his CPU :-p

It worked, for a while at least, now play nice

Water / coolant cooling is quiet, the risks are plain to see, a burst pipe or radiator, either one could take out a whole pc, but like I said, I've seen pc's transported for LANs and back, and back. So it's down to own choice and risk/ s

And Dutchie

[Waldo Pepper]

I can recommend a SSD. I have a Cosair device in my laptop and it's dead silent unless I try to do something abitious and thats when the fan kicks in.

[Dai]

Some useful info on quiet components here:

http://www.quietpc.com/gb-en-gbp/home

[damien c]

The risk's of water cooling are simple:

1: Burst Pipe's
2: Cost to replace the coolant and pipe's.
3: Fitting water blocks to the GPU.

That is it mainly if a pipe does burst (highly unlikely) the coolant that will be leaked everywhere is non conductive so your pc should not go "BANG", however it will shut down with overheating.

As for fitting a water block to a graphics card it is very risky I know, I have water cooled 2 GTX 280's after 2 month's of buying them at £300 or so and then £80 for each water block, then I gave my dad my 2 8800 GTS's and he water cooled them but the water blocks fried the card's as they didn't quite fit properly even though they were made for the card.

Yes it is a good way to get a silent pc, however when you start to overclock because you see your temp's go right down then the fan's have to run faster to pull the air out of the radiator meaning it is not so quiet anymore.

In my pc I have my cpu water cooled which is a core I7 920 running at 4.1ghz, and it is cooled by a triple radiator on it's own with 3 fan's running at 2500rpm and they are noisy but, I don't mind the noise because of the speed that my cpu runs at.
Then I have a Gigabyte EX58 Extreme motherboard water cooled again with a triple radiator for itself with another 3 fan's running at 2500rpm, which does help with cooling the mobo which means the overclock can run higher than it currently is.

If you want a complete silent pc and you want to go down the route of water cooling, then I would recommend doing the following but and here's the but it will cost abit but I am going to be doing the same in the near future.

1: Buy a Hailea Water chiller about £300
2: Buy the adaptor's so it will work with a pc water cooling loop about £50
3: Buy some long pipe's for the water cooling loop and enough to cool what you want to cool with it about £50
4: Buy proper water blocks not the cheapest but Danger Den if your graphics card is a Nvidia or a XZPC for ATI card's about £50-100
5: Buy a swiftech or equivalent for a AM3 system cpu water block about £50
6: Buy a pump and reservoir I would go for the Swiftech mcp65 pump and a xspc 5.5" bay reservoir about £120
7: Buy all the connector's for it all as in the barb's etc about £50
Total about £730

It may seem allot and it might be more than the pc is worth but look at it this way, yes your electric bill will go up abit but these are the reason's why I am going for what I say above:

1: All component's can be cooled of a single loop and can be overclocked like crazy because the water chiller can cool water down to about 3c, but most pc's will leave the coolant at around 18c.

2: The water chiller with long enough pipe's can be moved to another room or another part of the same room so you cannot hear the compressor when it is running.

3: The water chiller can be used for any system in the future just by changing the water block on the cpu and gpu, meaning that the only time you need to change the cooler is when it dies.

That above is one option your other option is allot cheaper for water cooling, and that is to buy a kit ready made you just need to fit, it in to your case and away you go and if you are not overclocking your cpu and gpu then both could be cooled on the same loop at a cost of around £350 and that would, include the cost's roughly of the water block for the graphics card.

The 3rd option you have is to replace the cpu and gpu cooler's with 3rd party cooler's and that are quieter than, the stock cooler's and are generally offer better cooling power to the component's as well.

I WILL PUT THIS IN BIG LETTER'S BECAUSE IF YOU DECIDE TO DO ANY OF THE OPTION'S ABOVE AND YOUR GRAPHICS CARD IS STILL UNDER WARRANTY, THEN YOU WILL VOID THE WARRANTY BY CHANGING THE COOLER ON IT AND ALSO RISK BREAKING THE CARD ASWELL AND IT IS YOUR CHOICE, TO DO SO.

People may see option 1 as overkill but if you do overclock and want to get the fastest speed's out of the component's it's the way to go, however it is really expensive and not to be done quickly it will take time to set up.

Option 2 is a good all rounder option because yes again it will take time to set up and there are risk's with option's 1 & 2, but the benefit's are very good for either option of a fast and quiet pc.

Option 3 will increase the noise in the pc if you overclock and have the fan's running faster but, if you don't overclock it will give better cooling probably than what you have now and could be very quiet if you are still on stock cooler's.

Ok so 3 option's with the risk's and benefit's but it's your choice personally for me it will be the water chiller, because I overclock my component's and not only that but I also change stuff left right and centre so, having a cooler like that means I don't have to worry about buying a cooler for a while at least.

Again your choice and all option's are viable but they do have there risk's and expense but it depends on how, much you want to spend and what you really want to do with the system or whether you just decide to leave it as is it is up to you.

The option's I have given you are there for a guide and you do not have to go with any of them but, they are there if you want to use either of them all will result in a nearly silent pc and all will give you better cooling than the stock cooler's, and all will allow you to overclock the component's if you wanted to.

Again people they are just option's not recommendation's as to they must be done, I am not trying to force any option on anybody but the option's above may help other's than just the OP.

[Tarantella]

If you only need midrange capabilities fanless/passive/semi passive components are an option.




http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1063-page2.html

[Taf]

2 options are available: huge chunks of aluminium or copper, ot Peltier effect devices http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_cooling

I think the only reason cooling went from solid heatsinks to fans was the rising price of metals.

[ZrByte]

Thanks all, some interesting posts and links there, will make for quite a good read later today. I'm sensing that water cooling is the favourite but prices like what Damien C Quoted are way too high for me (useful post none the less).
I feel I have left a lot of info about what I have now so I will add that just to clarify.
Currently using an AM3 AMD Athlon II X4 630 CPU on a stock cooler at stock speeds.

Just realised my Mobo is passively cooled so thats no longer an issue.

A Radeon 5750 from xfx, pretty big fan on this one but since system noise increases the most when gaming I'm assuming most of the noise is coming from this or possibly the CPU (Play RTS mainly, Starcraft 2, Supreme Commander etc)

PSU is pretty bog standard Arctic power from ebuyer, The noise from this is just a little bit higher than I would like. but acceptable as its only really when my system is under load that the noise gets too annoying.

Hard drives are perfectly quiet for me though I may look into an SSD further down the line for other reasons

The whole system cost around £400 so £730 is daft for the cooling, especially as I don't overclock.

Would also like to ask if anybody has any shop links for any of the components they use, I use ebuyer myself but don't mind using others

[damien c]

I mainly use scan but for watercooling bundles then overclockers are very good.

The price for a watercooling setup will be about £150 but then if you wanted to watercool you gpu then you add the cost of the block and additional radiator if required.