CPU fan

bill3107 · Post by **bill3107** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 1:12 am

IFor quiteness (I mean 100%) I am also very happy with my Gigabyte 8600GT (lattest model, not the 2 slots oldest model).... Perfect too ! And I have 3x120 mm additional Noctua fans (one for my Raptor

and the others for the case). Almost no noise from my racked PC !!!!

Have fun !

kaju · Post by **kaju** » Fri Apr 04, 2008 1:05 am

Yesterday I got the Scythe Andy cooler.
It seems to fit, actually two orientations are possible. Maybe the best way is to have it with pipes facing towards the back of the MoBo.
I don't think there'll be any problems getting it into its place. I'll be away for a week so the real installation job will be done after that.

Cheers,
-k

kaju · Post by **kaju** » Fri Apr 04, 2008 3:44 am

Yeah that's right, but in this case there's actually too little room for the pipes in the side plane.
As Neutron said already "the "andy" is a down pointing one". The fan is located on the top.

Cochise · Post by **Cochise** » Wed Apr 16, 2008 5:23 pm

I've found opinions and links in this thread as an interesting starting point.
The subject becoming very articulated nowadays, I can see.
I guess the 45nm technology could bring some more change in the cooler area.

Further searching the web I've found this Scythe Shuriken, and I like it since its light weight and limited dimensions.

Going by what I've read on this review, It looks being pretty silent at low temperatures
(noise measurements by this site are taken in a soundproof enclosure @ 12'', NOT @ 1m as usual. An indicative value @ 1m can be obtained using dB2=dB1-20log(d2/d1), being d2=100 and d1=30.48 )

Considering then the heat dissipation of the E8000 series CPUs, I'm wondering if the Shuriken can be a good choice looking for a very, very silent machine based on a Wolfdale Core 2 Duo E8200.

What's your opinion?

Post by **garyb** » Wed Apr 16, 2008 5:33 pm

i really dislike those big coolers.

if you're overclocking, they're surely a good idea, but for the rest of us...the main thing is that there's a lot of torque on the mounts, and the motherboard, the thing has a very small footprint and a huge, heavy head. it's very easy for one to become dislodged and the cpu and/or motherboard damaged. granted, in a computer that never gets bumped or moved, there's probably no issue there but....the stock cooler has never failed on me in more than 30 installations. the current one is quiet and more than sufficient.....

i'll STFU now....

Cochise · Post by **Cochise** » Wed Apr 16, 2008 5:56 pm

I've a Zalman CNPS 7700 Cu at now, since the stock fan of the Prescott was quite noisy. But the 7700 is large for my case, it practically gets in contact with the PSU fan grid which I had to remove.
Apart from this I wish to avoid the installation of 1Kg of copper on the new MoBo, although I never moved my machine till now.

The Shuriken is lighter than the stock cooler (355g) and just a bit larger.
It has PWM speed regulation like the stock one.

Does the stock Core 2 Duo fan really rotate at 1500 RPM? (max?) http://www.frostytech.com/articleview.c ... cleID=2132
It looks exactly alike the old version going by the pictures.
Different inclination of the blades or just different heat dissipation of the CPUs?

Cochise · Post by **Cochise** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 7:15 am

This table with data extracted from FrostyTech.com reports values for Scythe Shuriken, Zalman CNPS 7700 Cu, and Intel stock Pentium D and Core 2 Duo coolers.

In my system I have a rise of 22° - 23° C using the Zalman CNPS 7700 Cu with a Prescott 3Ghz (800 Mhz FSB) in idle state, and 44° - 45° C full load @ 20° C ambient temperature, but there's a 25 cm fan on the case side blowing toward the CPU cooler (at now it's manually speed regulated, but I'm experimenting with a circuit using a thermistor in these days)

Cochise · Post by **Cochise** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 7:38 am

garyb wrote:t.....i'll STFU now....

Why that?

I installed the stock 775 fan with its clips just 1 time in the past; and the machine had thermal lock at the first startup. This because, following the instruction in the Asus manual, I installed the cooler with the MoBo already mounted in the case.
The pressure needed to lock the cooler was bending the board in a way I considered worrying, so it ended with one of the four feet inadvertently bad locked...
Then a friend of mine came to fix it (removing the board from the case).

Now, the Shuriken has clips like the stock one... I'm somehow worried for that...

Cochise · Post by **Cochise** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 8:47 am

stardust wrote:Wow I wouldnt accept any noise level beyond 20dBA and here the go 50+

Cochise wrote: (noise measurements by this site are taken in a soundproof enclosure @ 12'', NOT @ 1m as usual. An indicative value @ 1m can be obtained using dB2=dB1-20log(d2/d1), being d2=100 and d1=30.48 )

http://www.frostytech.com/testmethod_mk2.cfm

50dB @30.48 cm should be below 30dB @ 1m
Still high but...

I forgot to state the Zalman in my machine is operating at min speed (980 RPM)

The thing puzzling me is: they state 24.7° C above ambient. At ambient 20° it should be 44.7°. I've up to 65° and I'm sure I'm quite below 85W

ADDED:

Probably their 'low' ain't the minimum speed...

Cochise · Post by **Cochise** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 10:55 am

The aluminium body of the Wolfdale stock cooler looks being quite a half than the one in the previous version.

The fan run with 200 mA v/s the 420 mA of the Prescott version.

Cochise · Post by **Cochise** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 11:35 am

I could try the Zalman 7700 without fan using a Wolfdale;
or try to replace the Zalman fan with a lower speed one...
but it's heavy... still not so cantilevering like most others, but heavy...

Cochise · Post by **Cochise** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 11:55 am

No OC.
Just need an 'as silent as possible' machine.
Staying in a certain budget, of course.

If the heat is low and the MoBo can drive the Shuriken in the right way, making it turns at low speeds, it can be a very good solution, considering all the faces.

stardust wrote:... A 65W CPU should not need so noisy cooling

This tables from http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/di ... fdale.html
show a consumption lower than the official specs.

ADDED: Temperature values using a Zalman CNPS9700 LED

FrancisHarmany · Post by **FrancisHarmany** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 1:11 pm

I prefer CPU Groupies......

Cochise · Post by **Cochise** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 1:42 pm

@ FrancisHarmany
Why not supporters?

@ Stardust:
You have a quite high case, I guess.
For sure 17dB is the lower noise standard at today, but the Coolscraper is 153mm large. I could only mount it blowing hot toward the PSU fan, or, maybe in the opposite direction, but it should stay stealing the air to the PSU fan...
Moreover it's just 213 g lighter than my old Zalman 7700.

ADDED: Sorry 153 mm is the height. Maybe I could mount it.... but I've different air flows in my case; I need kind of fan parallel to the CPU plane...

Cochise · Post by **Cochise** » Fri Apr 18, 2008 1:56 am

Right, going on with jokes.
In my language when something is very hot to touch, we say it 'scotta'. Well, the Prescott couldn't have more appropriate name for us.

Neutron · Post by **Neutron** » Fri Apr 18, 2008 10:00 am

Last night after reading above they only used less than 35 watts, Ii turned the fan off on wolfdale 3110 and scythe andy. everything was fine. I would probably put it on "as slow as it can go without stopping" in the summer.

now very quiet! Still have PSU fan which is very slow and another 140mm fan blowing very slow onto scope cards and passive video card.

Cochise · Post by **Cochise** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 12:14 pm

@ Neutron
If you already didn't done, check MoBo temperature and, if you're not using other enhanced cooling system, even ICH and MCH temperatures. They can go high when running without CPU fan.

kaju · Post by **kaju** » Sun Apr 27, 2008 2:16 pm

kaju wrote:
So for me at least the choice of processor cooler is made now: Scythe Andy Samurai Master (hah what a name!).
I have also a Nexus Case Fan 120mm Ultra Silent PWM just to have something to experiment with.

Next step will be the installation. It's interesting to see if Andy feels at home with my MoBo

Now it's done.

Scythe Andy Samurai did fit its place but space between it and Antec's power supply is less than 1mm, maybe 0,8 mm. I just managed to get the fan mounting clip into its place when I did it very carefully.
The CPU cooler fan is now the Nexus 120mm Ultra Silent Case Fan. I tried it in place of the original Scythe fan and Nexus felt a bit more silent.

There are now in the Titan case three fans working very close together; this CPU fan, power supply fan and Antec's own case fan.
I can add one more fan to the removable side panel and two more fans into the front of the case, but I don't think they'll be needed.

BIOS shows ok temperatures, around 40 C. But I haven't yet installed programs so I can't tell what happens under heavy loads.
Anyway the machine - even with it's three hds - is very silent.

But for this combo - DP965LT mobo in Antec Titan 650 case - I recommend choosing a little smaller CPU cooler/fan.
Everything is working ok here, no problems. But installing it was a bit awkward.

emphazer · Post by **emphazer** » Mon Apr 28, 2008 11:36 am

i use atm a combination of a case cooler and
Asus Silent Knight II

my cpu is
Intel Core2Duo 6850
overclocked from 3ghz per core to 3,6ghz.

result:
stable system
cpu temperature 36°c

Cochise · Post by **Cochise** » Tue Apr 29, 2008 11:23 am

I've got the Scythe Shuriken here now, together with an Intel DP35DP motherboard, a Core 2 Duo E8200 and an Enermax Pro 82+ PSU.

The Shuriken 10 cm fan isn't audible till 1200 RPM even at 60 cm, running it alone; at faster speed, only air whoosh from it, no mechanical noise.

At the first startup I was in the BIOS for a look at temperatures and fans speed and I was dazed by the 62° C displayed in the CPU field. Something wrong with the thermal compound? Badly plugged clips?
Having a better look at the temperature fields I noticed that the one reporting 62° was labeled 'CPU thermal margin'....

The thing I had to work on was: the Shuriken fan, PWM controlled, driven by the DP35DP with the E8200 (updated BIOS) rotates around 380 RPM.
I was not able to find any BIOS setting in order to actually change this.
The whole BIOS itself is quite essential, indeed.
Surfing the documentation I found out that CPU fan speed increases only when VERY close to the thermal margin.
Running some load test I noticed that the temperature of the components beside the CPU (voltage regulators, S&N bridges) does rise faster than the processor, having the fan running at that slow speed....
(Of course I made a quick test with fan stopped, having very similar results).
These temperatures were quite high even working with not too heavy load.

To cut a long story short I had to build some regulators.
I used a MJE350 PNP transistor, a 22KOhm potentiometer( not easy to find a miniaturized one here), 1200 Ohm resistor and a capacitor.
Of course I didn't use the PWM wire.
I even built a regulator for the 25 cm case fan, using a NTC thermistor, a couple of transistors, resistors and capacitors, and mounted both them in a PCI slot cover ( the kind partially sticking out of the case, not the flat one...I'll post some pics...).

Now the Shuriken fan is adjusted around 760 RPM, it's unaudible, and the temperatures are low even running continued periods of heavy load.
The 25cm fan runs at minimum speeds till the temperature inside the case is below 30° C and rises close to the maximum speed at 38° C.

( I tested it outside; inside the case I never was over 27° till now, graphic card only)

I also installed a Noctua NF-S12 12 cm fan extracting air at the front of the case for the HDDs.
It comes with rubber bearings (no screws mounting) and an 'adapter cable' with limitator. This included limitator, however, make it turns too slow for my environment, so I replaced its resistor with a lower one.
No way to connect it directly to the front fan socket of the MoBo: it (and any other fan of course) is driven to accelerate and slow down at short regular intervals and I can't find any setting to adjust this behaviour.
I suppose I have to try to contact the support service, now...

I'm curious about the Nexus fans...

About the Enermax 82+ series, I can confirm: Its' VERY quiet.

ADDED:
When I removed the old parts from the Enermax Chakra case, I noticed the Zalman heatsink was VERY clogged with dust. So I had to build a filter for the 25 cm fan, since the case comes with dust filters for the slots at the front of the case, but without filter for the big fan (!). I also installed dust filters at the back.

ADDED PICS: