Does Computer Fan Impact Sound?

[Berwhale]

Looks like a 120 mm AIO in there... is the case too small to fit a 120 mm air cooling option? Only then is it worth it at all... remember, the entire point of watercooling is being able to use a nice big radiator without having to fit it right onto the CPU.

Yes, it would have been a little cheaper (maybe £20) to buy a well performing air cooler for the CPU. However, i've been water cooling PCs since the early 00's - custom water blocks for CPU, Northbridge and GPU, Ehiem pumps, water wetter, all that stuff! - I would find it strange to go back to air.

I also don't like the thought of hanging a heavy air cooler off the motherboard - I prefer the weight attached directly to the case (yes I realise that the water block with integrated pump also weighs something ) and I don't have to worry about clearance for RAM or other motherboard components.

The case is a CoolerMaster Silencio 352 and it will happily accept a 240mm radiator in the front. But as i'm not OCing anymore, I didn't feel the need to spend any of my budget on a large radiator.

I don't recognize the board, what model is it?

Nothing too fancy: https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-AB350M-Gaming-3-rev-1x#kf

It has fairly decent fan control, but I have more fans than headers and the Noctua controller gives me a bit of additional control.

 

[ZolaIII]

The topic is a bit stretchy. Firstly there are tasks (in audio processing) that will use only integer instructions and need up to four core's (for example PCM to DSD conversion). All do ARM big A class core's are great regarding integer performance the current Pi 4 is sub optimal having only two old A72's and can get very hot.
Curent AMD offering isn't really suitable either. All do they sip much less in full throttle than Intel offering it's not really good in lo idle state's, C6 state is to agresivne, infinite fabric sips to much and in general typology is bad. Complete implementation is so bad and buggy that even considering going under 1V on desktop parts is impossible (works between 1 and 1.1V if you put a lot effort in tuning it). Intel is much worser even in light loads all do it idles better and I won't even mention AVX loads. In years neither AMD nor Intel had really worth to mention lo power SoC (up to 10 - 12W DTP) that could be effective could pasive.
The new Intel hybrid (two big with SMP and 4 little with out) i3-1215U is about to change that (with mainstream RAM support) but we need to see how good it will be (and how much power it will consume). Similar Pentium and Celeron are not worth looking at as they have one of two big core's disabled.
Regarding system cooling and fan's.
There are great and not so great Noctua fan's. Redux being a trash and IPC being great (but not so silent) but you don't want those you want regular A 25 one's which are both good and quiet. Better alternate is Artic PWM PST CO series not being as good as IPC but better and cheaper than A 25 while quite and longer lasting/working one's. Water cooling isn't way to go as you lose warranty and you get loud pump. Funles isn't way to go either cooking the rest of components. So the best way to go is traditional (tower cooler and blowers) combo that can either work on lo RPM or silent (fan stop) and you can blow the system up when you need but use just single fan type and model for all so that you have only one pitch to ignore when they work and you can hear them (ideally Artic P12 PWM PST CO and in a five pack). The GPU one's can be changed - moded as long as they operate in similar V range (not to hard but certainly not for everyone).
Same recommendation goes for changing equipment one's.

 

[Berwhale]

Redux being a trash

I don't know if this has changed, but when I bought the Redux fans 4 years ago they were exactly the same spec as the normal beige/brown versions. They were just a bit cheaper because they didn't include the rubber bumpers, anti-vibration mounts or cable adapters in the box. I didn't need the mounts or cable adapters, I preferred the grey colour and I wanted to add Chromax colour bumpers, so it made sense at the time.

Water cooling isn't way to go as you lose warranty and you get loud pump

Lose warranty on what? The my PC is built from component parts which all have individual warranty. My pump is speed controlled and runs at 40% RPM under normal load and it's inaudible. To be honest, it's barely audible at full load and would be drowned out by the GPU fan and other fans under any real world high load situation.

 

[dlaloum]

I don't know if this has changed, but when I bought the Redux fans 4 years ago they were exactly the same spec as the normal beige/brown versions. They were just a bit cheaper because they didn't include the rubber bumpers, anti-vibration mounts or cable adapters in the box. I didn't need the mounts or cable adapters, I preferred the grey colour and I wanted to add Chromax colour bumpers, so it made sense at the time.



Lose warranty on what? The my PC is built from component parts which all have individual warranty. My pump is speed controlled and runs at 40% RPM under normal load and it's inaudible. Top be honest, it's barely audible at full load and would be drowned out by the GPU fan and other fans under any real world high load situation.

For audio purposes (as opposed to gaming purposes) - a proper heatsink case, with heatpipes from both the CPU and the GPU to the case heatsink walls is the only option - every other option, including water cooled, is a discussion of how much noise is acceptable.

The ONLY noise from a fully passive cooled solution is coil whine - so as long as you pick components that are not prone to that particularly annoying trait, the PC can sit in the listening room and contribute nothing at all to the background noise level.

I had planned to fit a GPU to my current passive HTPC, but this generation of GPU's totally ridiculous pricing, has kept me on the onboard APU graphics (which has been ample for my purposes....) - at some point when prices come back to reasonable, I will seek out a GPU that can be configured for a 95W TDP or less (typically something rated at 120W or 130W can be undervolted and underclocked slightly to achieve the goal). And that will move the graphic performance of my HTPC on more demanding material, into the current generation.... I am in no hurry.

 

[Berwhale]

For audio purposes (as opposed to gaming purposes) - a proper heatsink case, with heatpipes from both the CPU and the GPU to the case heatsink walls is the only option - every other option, including water cooled, is a discussion of how much noise is acceptable.

The ONLY noise from a fully passive cooled solution is coil whine - so as long as you pick components that are not prone to that particularly annoying trait, the PC can sit in the listening room and contribute nothing at all to the background noise level.

I had planned to fit a GPU to my current passive HTPC, but this generation of GPU's totally ridiculous pricing, has kept me on the onboard APU graphics (which has been ample for my purposes....) - at some point when prices come back to reasonable, I will seek out a GPU that can be configured for a 95W TDP or less (typically something rated at 120W or 130W can be undervolted and underclocked slightly to achieve the goal). And that will move the graphic performance of my HTPC on more demanding material, into the current generation.... I am in no hurry.

But why even build an Audio/HTPC? My TV, Satellite box, Nvidia Shield and Xbox all have Plex/Netflix/Amazon/Spotify/etc. clients.

 

[dlaloum]

But why even build an Audio/HTPC? My TV, Satellite box, Nvidia Shield and Xbox all have Plex/Netflix/Amazon/Spotify/etc. clients.

My primary Audio library manager is MediaMonkey - I spent a heap of time years ago, ripping my collection which is stored on NAS.

My Movie collection is similarly stored - but my player of preference is VLC

Streaming happens from Netflix, Amazon and Stan - all of which can be streamed directly from my TV's AndroidTV OS... But I prefer to run things from a HTPC with a real keyboard and mouse, and the ability to quickly and easily bring up the browser, look up IMDB, check email, read the news, etc....

In a perfect world, I would not need an AVR, and would do all the processing in my PC, with audio outputs straight to my amps - but we are in an imperfect DRM driven world....

 

[Berwhale]

For me, the demise of HTPCs coincided with the rise of smartphones and tablets. I'd rather lookup the news, IMDB, etc. with something in my hand than on a screen 10' away.

 

[pablolie]

I would never buy audio gear that has a fan. Only passive cooling.

I also build my home workstation (which is also my music server, of course) myself and make them super-silent. The CPU fan is always chosen as one of the most silent ones in the market. The CPU is always the one that combines the biggest performance with the lowest power, so that it stays cool (typically 35-65W). I am very sensitive to noise.

 

[Waxx]

I use an Win10 Intel NUC with an i5-8259U CPU and 16MB ram and an SSD. But my data (the music) is stored on a NAS hidden in a cupboard in the corridor and connected over LAN (so i can use it also from other devices in the house). The NUC is somewhere on the back of my audio rack, and does not make any noise (even if it has a fan) that i can hear. The only time it made noise was when it was broken (but i fixed it). Music player is JRiver, and for video mostly VLC or streaming from a website. The computer is tuned for audio altough, so a lot of windows services are disabled what makes that the computer is hardly pushing the CPU or getting out of memory.

 

[Saponetto]

I use an Win10 Intel NUC with an i5-8259U CPU and 16MB ram and an SSD. But my data (the music) is stored on a NAS hidden in a cupboard in the corridor and connected over LAN (so i can use it also from other devices in the house). The NUC is somewhere on the back of my audio rack, and does not make any noise (even if it has a fan) that i can hear. The only time it made noise was when it was broken (but i fixed it). Music player is JRiver, and for video mostly VLC or streaming from a website. The computer is tuned for audio altough, so a lot of windows services are disabled what makes that the computer is hardly pushing the CPU or getting out of memory.

Very similar to my current setup...

 

[Andysu]

i think it changes drastically on the subs and bass of all speakers in the room with negative anti waves and really messes up those high end avp receivers speaker low end. well that's what i read, heard.

 

[Andysu]

This one will:
View attachment 188081

Eminent Technology: home

what is the music in the video over dubbed and the background music it sounds like hypnotic music relaxing and i end up playing the video on loop for 24 hrs. what is that music? and no actual demo in the video. must be snake oil and no i wouldn't have a noisy fan and couldn't care less if it did 0.1Hz at 200dB. no noisy fans that is going to react slow to the LFE.1 track and still no practical video demo with 'return of the jedi' rancor scene.

 

[Saponetto]

I am keeping myself on the doubtful side....