Is water cooling quieter?

Water cooling is rather expensive. If you're not a high intensity gamer trying to overclock their system to the Nth degree, you'd be better off with swapping your case fans with quieter ones (perhaps ones that include varisters that alow you to adjust the speed to make them as quiet as you would like).

Another option is to replace your CPU and GPU heatsinks with heat-pipe variety which, depending on your need, may not require a fan at all or may require a very quiet low volume one.

As an example:

http://us.coolermaster.com/product/D.../hyper-t2.html

This has a noise rating 17-38 dba, so only when it's under heavy use does it get loud. (17dba is quite quiet).

You also want to look at your power supply, as this is often a source of noise as well.

Chuck38 said:

... I'll mark this thread solved ...

For what it is worth, I have been into this issue since Windows 98.

I have tried insulation soundproofing,
removing the computers to other rooms,
isolating the computers in soundproof rooms,
a dozen types of fans,
several water cooling systems,
and external fans blowing on the pc.

Many gamers and other cpu intensive testers go with stress testing software to benchmark their system.
If you need a high end GPU or even a typical fan cooled GPU, then silence is not really an option.

It depends on your sensitivity to noise. My level is extreme.

A laptop spinner annoys me,
even my Surface Pro 3 fan is annoying as it keeps
the CPU temps in the 50 centigrade range when CPU stress is at 98%.

It's all about the decibels. Advertised silent fans are almost always NOT silent.
Sellers often describe a fan that has a low decibel range to be silent.
In my book, it must be ZERO decibels or it is not silent.
There is a mouse called a "silent mouse" I bought and found out it is not silent.
It is muffled, the clicks remain. Some folks like fan noise, keyboard noise, and mouse clicks.

If anyone wants a silent pc, which btw is really awesome, then all fans must be removed.
This includes the power supply. A 500 watt fanless PSU is available at retail sites.
I use a micro PSU because I do not need much power.

Now, I have been using a fanless system for more than 5 years.
Passively cooled temps vary based on ambient temperature and CPU usage.

Of course, a high end quad CPU will stress less than a dual core. My fanless systems idle from 30 to 45c.
Typical 30% CPU utilization runs a temperature up to the 50c range.

All of this is pointless, of course, if a system has a noisy spinning HDD generating heat inside the case.
So, my point is to suggest removing all sources of noise and use external spinners as needed.

My preference is to not use a case at all, but a case is ok if you have any cards that need to be locked in.
This is not an option for 99% of users I am guessing.
It's just, I am obsessed with blocking and eliminating all PC noise.

http://www.endpcnoise.com/

Dude said:

Chuck, read through this thread. @Lady Fitzgerald used insulation as shown in this post.

http://www.sevenforums.com/pc-custom...ml#post2773271

Thanks for the tip of the hat. To see more of the insulation installation besides the side panels, jump ahead to post #134.

There's really no such thing as a 0 dba moving part. It's going to generate noise, if nothing else, the movement of the air alone will generate measurable noise that's > 0 dba.

Other than passive air cooling with and SSD and no Optical drive, one simply can't expect 0 noise. And passive air cooling severely limits the performance capabilities of your system.

I'm no high-end gamer, but I still do things that stress the system from time to time and I have high CPU needs (i7) and large graphics card needs (4 monitors, something you can't easily do with a low-end passively cooled display adapter).

My system is pretty quiet.. I do occasionally hear some noise, particularly when starting up, but other than that it's pretty quiet most of the time. I just choose high quality components, and the small amount of noise is good enough for me, particularly when I use varisters to lower the fan speeds or have temperature sensitive speed controls.

Chuck38 said:

I'm thinking my PSU is making the most noise. However, I can't afford to replace that right now, but it will most definitely be a future upgrade. :)

It seems you have insulated your case very well, Lady Fitz. Did you have any trouble with wires? I hide a lot of my wire in the back of my case, do you think the insulation might cause a problem, perhaps causing there not to be enough room for my wires?

Thanks, Chuck! The 650D is a tight case for cable management. It took far more "creativity" (not to mention a colorful vocabulary that leaned toward the cool end of the spectrun) to lay out my cables and still have room for the insulation.