Questions on fan speeds

[crsgardner]

Do fan speeds actually matter? With the stock Athlon 64 fan (hovers around 5000 rpm) my CPU was staying around 50 degrees Celsius max. With a new Zalman heatsink and fan (runs around 2000 rpms) my CPU was at 60. I thought fan speed was just one factor of many.

Is it possible to get a high-speed fan that is quiet? Or, does noise just naturally increase with fan speed (and there's nothing you can do about it)? I bought the Zalman because it's quiet, but the temperature is way too high.

 

[HardWarrior]

Thers's a trade-off between low fan speed (quiet) and high fan speed (better performance). It's always been that way. Larger fans tend to generate good air flow without as much noise as smaller ones though. If your HS mounts an 80mm fan you might try a 92mm fan with an adapter for increased performance with a BIT less noise. Also, don't forget how important ambient temps are. Even the best forced air solution won't be at it's best in a 90 degree room. Oh, and don't forget how important focused intakes are.

 

[MichaelD]

As a rule, noise increases as fan speed increases.

This is why many people are running 92mm fans on their CPU heatsinks. A bigger fan rotating slower can move the same amount of air as a smaller fan rotating faster, due to the bigger blades.

Notice lately that case manufacturers are moving to a single 120mm fan in the front and one in the rear instead of four 80mm fans? Same deal. If I could fit 120mm fans in my case, I'd have done it a long time ago.

The stock AMD hs is actually pretty good. What I will suggest is getting some Arctic Silver (abbreviated "AS" on most geek forums). Removing the stock pink pad that came on the stock HS and putting some AS on there. This can lower your temps by 3-5C; it does for most folks.

 

[crsgardner]

Can anyone recommend a different fan that would fit the stock AMD heatsink, be quieter, but still keep the temp down?

 

[hifisoftware]

I use Silent Booster from Socket A. I think they have a model for Athlon 64. It works farily nice and seem to be quiet to me (but this is so subjective).
It hard to put numbers down (because they dpend on so much), but my house is usually at about 72F. I am using my old case for now (just uprgaded my system from P3 800 last week). My old case does not have anyfans so I keep one side open. I overclocked AMD 2500+ to 2300 and it keeps temps under 50C (around 47C). I got to about 58C once with high voltage (1.85v) and high speed (2450+) under very heavy load. Unfortunately I do not remember right now what my case temps are at (maybe 32C+, just a guess). Initially I though that I might want to get a faster fan for it, but then I realized that I really would not want it to be so loud just to gain 50Mhz.

 

[hifisoftware]

Ohh wait you asked about fan. Ohh well never mind then.