Case fans

[hickninshaw]

For anyone that may be familiar to the cooler master cosmos case. I'm looking for some case fans. Currently I bought COOLER MASTER R4-C2R-20AC-GP 120mm fans to fill the 3 top fans, lower front fan and the two additional side fans for the gpu cooling. Mounted in case pulling through the filters they make horrendous noise even at low speed on the case fan controller. Would really like some experienced input with the new fans out there to find some 120mm fans that would be silent at the low speed setting and still flow respectable air through dust filters. At high setting noise is expected but still looking for under 25db. Looking for about 65+ cfm at 12v and 30 to 35 at low setting (guessing its 7v out of the controller). Have been finding that many of the fan db ratings do not accurately represent the noise that these fans make when mounted and some don't even come close with the fans in open air. Basically I do not want to hear the computer when surfing the web and some light gaming but when I need the cooling I want it to work.

 

[jamesriley94]

Most fan controllers work by rapidly turning the fans off an on, rather than reducing the voltage. CM fans hate this, and so they make the noise on most fan controllers.

You'd be better off ditching the controller and using voltage resistors/fan speed reducers like:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CM-101-BX

Then running them all at the lower speed.

I would change the fans out too tbh. Never liked CM fans.

Look at Scythe GTs, Silverstone AP121s, Bitfenix Spectre/Pro, Noctuas - just to name a few. All are good choices.

 

[hickninshaw]

I'll have to bring my meter home and check that. I do like the convenience of the fan controller. I don't have ac in my house and gaming in the summer it helps to be able to get more fan speed. Have you found any fans that do work well with this kind of controller??

 

[jamesriley94]

All the one's I've listed were fine in my experience. Maybe avoid the Bitfenix ones though as they've been known to burn out occasionally with these.

Tbh, even in summer you don't really need to adjust things much. Run fans at 5v in the winter, then maybe if you feel the need get some tweezers out, rewire the end plug of the fan speed cable, and change it up to 7v.

There are some fan controllers that do reduce voltages - some of the higher end Lamptrons and Scythe ones do, but not many beyond that I don't think.

 

[hickninshaw]

Thank you very much for the input. Going to do some more reading and research and find out what is going to work the best for me. Cost really isn't an issue if its what is going to perform the way I want it to. Don't really like doing things half way. Who knows there might just be some water cooling coming in the future when I finally upgrade the cpu mobo and ram. Had really good luck making custom water cool loops that run silent even with overclocked components.