Quietest CPU cooling - AIO / all in one water?

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timmmay

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#280490 18-Dec-2020 06:35

I changed my Ryzen 5600X stock cooler out for the Noctua NH-U12S. At idle it's fairly quiet, but once the fans start spinning even a moderate speed they're quite buzzy and loud. At moderate speeds they also warble a bit, changing frequency a little but quickly like something isn't quite balanced right, which is distracting. The Noctua NH-C14 I had on my old computer for almost a decade was very quiet - sure when it got busy there was the sound of air movement, but I never heard a buzz or fans. I've emailed Noctua to see if it's faulty or not fitted right, hopefully it's that but if not I would like to find a quieter solution. The Noctua A14 case fans I got at same time are whisper quiet, you can hear the air movement, but not the fans.

To mitigate I'm using manual fan speed control, and may also turn off the CPU turbo function, which basically locks the max frequency to 3.6GHz instead of letting it burst up to 4.6GHz creating extra heat.

I was looking at reviews for AIO (all in one) water cooling. It looks to me like basically a heat collector / pump sits on the CPU, pipes go to where you put the radiator / fans, and you have one, two or three 140mm fans cooling the radiator. I figured that a AIO with two 140mm fans spinning slowly would probably be quite a bit quieter than a CPU cooler with one 120mm fan. In the Fractal R5 I think I'd mount it at the front of the case so the fans pushed the warmer air into the case over the hard drives to be expelled out the back, as I need the top of the case to remain solid given how I have my office set up.

Does anyone have practical experience with water cooling? Is it quieter than air cooling? Any recommended brands / models? I don't need RGB in my closed case.

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#2623561 18-Dec-2020 07:44

lol why am i not surprised to see this thread

anything with a fan is going to annoy you when it spins up. even an AIO. have you been into the software for your motherboard and changed the fan profiles to silent? or changed the ramp speed of the fan so its not going up and down all the time?

the only thing an AIO is going to do for you is give you more heat capacity in the system so it will need a more sustained load to generate more heat before fans need to spin up.

It still has to dissipate the same amount of heat.

I would put the radiator on the top as there is not much space on the front of the case for intake air,

if the highest point of the AIO system is the pump it will eventually get noisy with air being trapped in it.

timmmay

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#2623564 18-Dec-2020 07:59

I thought the Noctua would be fine, since I had a Noctua for 10 years with no issues. That was a larger heatsink / fan though. It's either the smaller fan is noisy, it's faulty, or I fitted it wrong. I suspect my tinnitus reacts to that frequency / type of noise, which is maybe why it bugs me so much.

Yep in the BIOS I've tried the silent profile, the fans spin up a bit later, but when it gets going it gets noisy. Air and fan noise is fine, it's just much more than the old one and sounds a bit like it's constantly changing frequency even when the fan speed stays the same. I'm also trying a fairly flat fan profile so it stays low until it gets to about 70C, then goes straight to 100%.

I know water has to dissipate the same amount of heat, but I figure two larger fans spinning at lower speed will make less noise. I know putting it up top makes sense for cooling, but I sit my laptop up there as I don't have anywhere else to put it. I can put it in the front of the R5 case easily enough, I'll just move the drive cage to another position - it's a fairly flexible case.

I've had to put rubber between the case and drive case because it was rattling like a mad thing. The air filters and front door of the case also rattle. Not really a great quality case given it's meant to be fairly quiet.

Jase2985

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#2623615 18-Dec-2020 08:24

smaller fans run faster to flow the same amount of air, faster = nosier. an NH14 would be quieter

you can put the radiator in the front but you are also putting the fans closer to you, and its not idea for the AIO, and you likely will end up with pump noise/water flowing at some point. a 120/140mm AIO is likely to be no better than what you have now, you would need a 240/280mm one to make much of a difference.

To be honest that case is pretty average and its likely the it is playing some part in the noise you are hearing.

Tinkerisk

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#2623619 18-Dec-2020 08:40

I have an overclocked Raspberry 4B in an "all in one water" cooling. There is total silence, not any moving part and the Pi is completely soaked in a beaker made of glass filled with an electrically neutral coolant named 'Galden'. For a PC the effort would be higher due to it's size. But I fear this is not you are looking for :-)

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langi27

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#2623620 18-Dec-2020 08:40

I wrote a quick review on PB tech for this one, its pretty quite and have been happy with it. Maybe if you have more serious hardware you'd go for the dual radiator/fan option.

https://www.pbtech.co.nz/product/WTRCLM5122/Cooler-Master-MasterLiquid-Lite-ML120L-All-in-One

Brought this to replace the stock AMD Wrath Spire cooler on my Ryzen 5 3600. The stock cooler was struggling and hitting peaks of 90degrees, the Cooler Master ML120L has brought the peak temps down to 65 degrees and usually sits around 50 degrees. Was pretty easy to install and it came with its own thermal paste but did need to clean off the old paste. Only managed to get 2 of the 4 screws to hold the radiator on to my case, the supplied screws are very short so if your case isn't flat you'll need to find longer screws. The noise form the fans is much less than the stock cooler as well.

darthkram

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#2623627 18-Dec-2020 08:51

I've got that same cooler with a 3600x. I noticed the exact same issue when I had the stock cooler installed. The Noctua was much quieter but still constantly changed speeds which was frustrating.

What finally fixed it for me was modifying the fan curve. I found the default fan curve had the speed changing at roughly where the temp would sit while under low load which caused the speed to constantly fluctuate.

I basically pushed changed the curve to sit at 40% fan up to like 70c, then 70% from 70-80c, then 100% for above that (values aren't correct, this is just from memory). I prefer the sound to be a constant level even if it's slightly louder rather than changing all the time.

timmmay

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#2623639 18-Dec-2020 08:55

Jase2985:

smaller fans run faster to flow the same amount of air, faster = nosier. an NH14 would be quieter

you can put the radiator in the front but you are also putting the fans closer to you, and its not idea for the AIO, and you likely will end up with pump noise/water flowing at some point. a 120/140mm AIO is likely to be no better than what you have now, you would need a 240/280mm one to make much of a difference.

To be honest that case is pretty average and its likely the it is playing some part in the noise you are hearing.

Yeah I know 140mm has less noise for the same airflow, but I didn't think it would fit over the RAM. Also the reviews say the 120mm is only a touch louder than the 140mm. I don't think it would make much practical difference, I suspect I'm hearing either a dud fan or some kind of noise the wind makes interacting with the heat sink. I did wonder if an AIO pump would be noisy, which is why I didn't bother before, plus my old Noctu was really quiet, just a low hum.

When you say 280mm, you mean an AIO with two 140mm fans? That's what I was thinking too - large fan moves more air, have two of them. If I didn't need to keep the top of the case clear I could use a triple one 420mm but that's a bit much.

Tinkerisk:

I have an overclocked Raspberry 4B in an "all in one water" cooling. There is total silence, not any moving part and the Pi is completely soaked in a beaker made of glass filled with an electrically neutral coolant named 'Galden'. For a PC the effort would be higher due to it's size. But I fear this is not you are looking for :-)

Interesting, but I don't think I want to put my PC in a tank!

timmmay

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#2623641 18-Dec-2020 09:11

langi27:

I wrote a quick review on PB tech for this one, its pretty quite and have been happy with it. Maybe if you have more serious hardware you'd go for the dual radiator/fan option.

https://www.pbtech.co.nz/product/WTRCLM5122/Cooler-Master-MasterLiquid-Lite-ML120L-All-in-One

Brought this to replace the stock AMD Wrath Spire cooler on my Ryzen 5 3600. The stock cooler was struggling and hitting peaks of 90degrees, the Cooler Master ML120L has brought the peak temps down to 65 degrees and usually sits around 50 degrees. Was pretty easy to install and it came with its own thermal paste but did need to clean off the old paste. Only managed to get 2 of the 4 screws to hold the radiator on to my case, the supplied screws are very short so if your case isn't flat you'll need to find longer screws. The noise form the fans is much less than the stock cooler as well.

Thanks for that. Mixed review on that one, quiet at high load. NZXT Kraken X53 reviews well on Amazon. Reviews seem to say AIO isn't really any quieter than the Noctua U12S though - both about 36db at max. I would imagine though that having two fans means slower fan speeds which would sound quieter.

rb99

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#2623655 18-Dec-2020 09:29

Safety alert - have you tried counting your fingers and gently touching the offending article(s), the sink, the fan frame, whatever to see if it makes a difference. Obviously if you nuke yourself I shall deny any and all responsibility. Maybe use a pencil.

rb99

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#2623656 18-Dec-2020 09:32

btw, can you put your old Noctua fans on your new heatsink, mounted a bit higher up or something ?

rb99

timmmay

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#2623658 18-Dec-2020 09:34

rb99:

Safety alert - have you tried counting your fingers and gently touching the offending article(s), the sink, the fan frame, whatever to see if it makes a difference. Obviously if you nuke yourself I shall deny any and all responsibility. Maybe use a pencil.

btw, can you put your old Noctua fans on your new heatsink, mounted a bit higher up or something ?

Yeah I've tried using my hand to dampen vibrations, but I'll give it another shot. It does seem to be localised to the CPU fan / cooler though.

The old cooler is very old. I could ask if they have a mounting kit, but the fan would probably need to be replaced anyway it's that old. Not sure what I'll do with the old one, probably give it away so good if it keeps working.

ratsun81

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#2623661 18-Dec-2020 09:41

I run a full custom loop water cooled Ryzen system on a Gigabyte X570 board.

Some key points with water cooling

In general it is quieter than straight air cooling, up to a point
Water cooling works very well in good airflow cases
Setting up your motherboards PWM properly will affect how your system sounds and performs. Water systems can be very loud as well.
Some fans are terrible when you plonk then in front of/behind a radiator, they can have poor harmonics and frequencies.

With the above in mind and as has been covered in your build thread, your case is going to your biggest limiting factor. It has bad airflow.

My advice to you is to do the following:

Keep it as is for now,

Install the gigabyte SIV software, create some custom fan profiles that you are happy with. At least with the SIV software you can set fixed RPM mode and then set the noisy annoying culprit down to something tolerable.

Save some profiles, some for when you want the system quiet and some for when you are doing heavy processing loads.

rb99

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#2623662 18-Dec-2020 09:42

Cooler comes with one fan ? Wondering if it came with two you could try disconnecting alternate fans, but presume it comes with one.

Also you mentioned the fan curve, might it be worth trying subtle differences, like maybe running at 95% instead of 100% or something.

rb99

timmmay

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#2623723 18-Dec-2020 10:11

Thanks @ratsun81 . Case isn't the best for airflow, but temps in the case are fine - it's just the CPU that gets warm when busy. The Gigabyte software I tried in Windows didn't do fans, I'm using the controls in the BIOS. I did set it last night to keep the fans at a moderate speed until it gets really hot, which is fine for these CPUs. Like I said I might also turn off CPU turbo.

@rb99 yes cooler comes with one fan, my reading suggested that two fans makes little difference to temperatures. I could get another fan to test if it's a faulty fan, I'll see what Noctua say first. The fan is fine up to about 40%, after that the noise doesn't just get louder, it gets some weird harmonics and vibrations going on. Maybe a bad fan, maybe just how the airflow interacts with the cooler.

Maybe I just need to turn the music on more often ;)

rb99

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#2623761 18-Dec-2020 11:21

Don't know if this might help to compare how your fan sound to this, as in any significant difference in tone -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1M4SwRjwDE

rb99

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