I want silence! Watercooling? (1 Viewer)

[JeromeF]

Hi,

I have now finished my HTPC and am very happy with it except it makes a bit too much noise.

I have a Thermaltake Orb cooler which is supposed to be 17db but it is more around 30db.

What other ways can i make my HTPC silence? Would it be a good idea to watercool the system, providing i could find a set up that would fit inside my case?

 

[geov]

I also have been looking into Water-Cooling as a solution... The WaterChill products from Asetek get quite good ratings, but because of price I have not taken the step to get one.

Cheers
GeoV

 

[knutinh]

Did you have a look at my guide? (The sticky of hardware selection help)
https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/guide_hardware_selection-t4014.html

There are some suggestions for silencing your system in there.

regards
Knut

 

[gxtracker]

sometimes a big misconception people have with water cooling is that its silent. It's not necessarily silent. all liquidcooling is doing is moving the heat away from the component - usually fans attached to a radiator are in charge of disapating the heat, and like we all know: fans generate noise.

The biggest difference I've found to silencing a HTPC is to:

1) reduce the voltage going to your fans. most fans, by default run on 12 volts. I've modded mine to run from the 5v rail instead, they move less air which means hotter components, but they are silent, and are much better than having no fans at all.

2) stop vibration. Hard drives are a huge source of vibration - just put your finger on your hard drive when its idle. You should be able to feel the vibration and that vibration will resonate anything it is screwed into. The best solution to isolate the vibration is to mount your hard drives on a piece of foam or other soft, non conductive materal. it will dampen the vibration and prevent it from resonating your case.

 

[JeromeF]

Hi,

I understand that watercooling does still require the use of fans, i have watercooled several of my gaming rigs. But one or two quiet 120mm fans on the radiator is alot less noise that most heatsink and fans, given that i have minimal space inside the case, i can't house something like a Scythe Infinity.

I am acctually considering going for something like the mCubed, just the cost of it is putting me off somewhat, in the region of £500 for the case and heat pipe set up.

Is there any other heatpipe style cases i could use, or maybe i could modify the borg and make one myself to use with my exsisiting case?

 

[Teebor]

A good place to go is www.coolercases.co.uk where the owner has built a PC into a zalman HTPC case and then modded it to include watercooling WITH a custom made grille to pimp his rig

The forums are down right now otherwise I would post a link as I was about to take a look at it again myself

 

[trevor]

I used a combination of SpeedFAN on controlling CPU and the mCubed Balancer (http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/acatalog/info_3726.html) controlling the 3 system fans. All setup to run at the lowest speeds possible and every things stays nicely below 50C and is virutally silient.

SpeedFan used to control the lot till the on-board system fan controller gave up the ghost, best not try to run 3x80mm fans from a single socket on the MB!

 

[Teebor]

Found the link

http://coolercasesuk.co.uk/showthread.php?t=2006&highlight=htpc

 

[M4TH]

I too needed a more silent HTPC.. bought a Corsair Nautilus 500 (external water cooling kit)
Now my HTPC is silent, but the pump in the Natilus 500 generate a lots of noise...It just moved the problem... go with a 120mm fan cpu cooler at 5v or 7v

 

[infinite.loop]

I have a Thermaltake Orb cooler which is supposed to be 17db but it is more around 30db.

most ppl make one big misstake.

they mount multiple huge supersilent fans, which blow much air into the case..... and they do not think about how that air gets out again.

which means, if the max m³/minute of your fans is larger then what you can get out of your case, then you have a problem.
the airpressure inside your case increases, which means that the fan (which blows the air into the case) starts to get loud(er).


at the end my 100% noiseless solution was to place the htpc(s) in the basement or in an storage room.