Quiet Socket 775 CPU Fan

[Kobus]

I've been searching Google and reading reviews but can't really find any solid information. Does anyone know of a socket 775 heatsink/fan that is good on cooling but also doesn't sound like a jet engine? Price isn't really that big of a deal since a fan is much cheaper than buying a brand new computer.

Thank you.

[Purrrfect]

I used to have a big ASUS cooler that worked great for a while until something became loose and rattled like crazy. Recently replaced it with this and I'm pretty sure I can't hear it outside the case which has a couple low speed side fans. It's pretty quiet and works well for cheap. I haven't been able to try an overclocking or anything with it, my mobo is fairly new to me and the ASUS bios which kinda tries to take care of the overclocking is making it a little difficult as it won't post at anything over stock.

[Rementoire]

Check out the Noctua NH-U12P heatsink with its NF-P12 fan, a 120mm fan with an excellent cfm/dB rating. I've got 1 attached to the heat sink and 3 others in a CM 830.

[Olo401]

First thing to remember - a larger fan will push more air with less noise and effort. So just basic physics tells you that a 120mm cooler will be more efficient and less noisy than an 80 or 92mm one.

And the second thing.. One of the nice features of rifle design coolers (the usually plain-looking upright ones) is you can usually just swap the fans out with almost no effort. In some high-end cases, like the original TRUE and the Prolima Megahalems, fans are not included so you have to get them separately. There's a number of really good, really quiet fans you can get. Check out this website for some really thorough reviews of them all.

[Kobus]

I bought my 775 socket motherboard pretty much when the first quad cores were coming out, so got the best reviewed cooler I could find on tigerdirect. It has a 120mm fan which I thought would help keep the system cooler and quiet, but I've been less than pleased with how loud my system is. My roommates even talk about how loud it is at times. My case does have airflow holes in the side because it originally came with a mounted unit that I had to take off so the heatsink/fan would fit.

Looking at the above links has helped some. Thanks guys.

[Solefald]

what graphics card? gpu fans tend to be louder than cpu fans these days.

[Auspice]

I absolutely love my Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro. I picked one up on Newegg about a year ago when I built my current rig and it dropped my CPU temp from about 60C to 35C. It's quieter than the stock heatsink for sure.
Newegg.com - ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 7 Pro Rev.2 92mm Fluid Dynamic CPU Cooler - CPU Fans & Heatsinks

[Kobus]

XFX GeForce 8600 GT Video Card, I've recently cleaned out the motherboard of dust (for the whole half hour it stayed that way) and didn't notice a huge buildup around the video card fan.

[Olo401]

I absolutely love my Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro. I picked one up on Newegg about a year ago when I built my current rig and it dropped my CPU temp from about 60C to 35C. It's quieter than the stock heatsink for sure.
Newegg.com - ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 7 Pro Rev.2 92mm Fluid Dynamic CPU Cooler - CPU Fans & Heatsinks

That's probably the best HSF you can get for 775 short of going to a 120mm. And it's VERY inexpensive to boot.

[Kobus]

Quick update:

Checked the CPU fan, it was on high and my CPUs were running at 30-36C max, I turned the fan to low and the noise is almost completely gone!

GPU fan is now the loudest, but it's much much quieter than the CPU fan was. Going to see what the CPU temperature sits at after an hour or so of the CPU fan being on low.

One question though, got the "Speedfan" monitor to check my computer's temperatures and it says my GPU temp is sitting at 67C and that that's pretty hot. I looked around a bit and most people say high 50s-60s is a normal GPU temp with anything over 100C getting dangerous. Should I be worried?

Thanks all.

[Olo401]

Hmm.. 67C idle for a GPU is actually fine. GPUs are designed to run at higher temps, upwards of 90C under full load without a hitch. If that was your CPU idle temp I'd be worried.

[Kobus]

i briefly looked at getting a new video card, but pci express is on the way out it seems (pci express 2.0 isn't compatible with my mobo). looks like my next upgrade is going to have to be a full system upgrade after a while.

[Olo401]

Shouldn't make a difference whether your board is 1.0 or 2.0 tbh, since even the newer video cards don't take full advantage of that much bandwidth. In any case don't let that prevent you from doing a full upgrade when the time comes

[Kobus]

I'll either upgrade with current Quad Cores or wait til the next big update to processor/memory stuff. Buying components when it's the 'new thing' rather than it's been out a while (expensive at first, then 6months later it's cheaper and better) is getting old.

Can the new PCI Express cards fit in old PCI Express slots? Even if they can't take full advantage, wonder if it'd be better.