sliencing my proc fan

[jspsh]

what ways are there to make the proc fan's rpm go lower?
everytime i boot up into a non-XP system, the fan screams at full rpms

 

[MDE]

What motherboard? There may be a BIOS option to lower fan speed. Also you could get a Zalman FanMate to manually adjust the fan.

 

[stevennoland]

Don't plug the cpu fan into the mobo. Get a seperate fan controller. That way you can controll the fan's RPM.

 

[akira34]

Without knowing what processor and mobo you have it's difficult to give you a good answer. The Athlon64's have the "Cool 'n Quiet" aspect, provided your mobo supports it in the bios. MSI boards do. I just enabled it on mine, and it does as the name says, keeps it cool and quiet (even more so than the new Lian-Li case does). You'd also be amazed at what a quality case will do for the sound level coming from your computer. With this case, I'll be using ones just like it in any situation where the computer won't be far away from people. Any MCE systems I build will be with either this case, or one that has identical features from the same maker. Hell, it's putting out less noise than my xbox does.

 

[Engineer]

Cool 'n' quiet will do nothing if your fan doesn't support thermal slowdown (thermal sensor attached) or you're using a motherboard with features like Q-fan from Asus (slows down fan to nearly stop until needed based on CPU temparature).

Using Cool'n'Quiet along with Q-fan (Asus only), my system CPU cooler actually goes off for up to 10 minutes at a time (not while heavy CPU use though). When the temperature goes up to 50C, it kicks the fan on (80mm Panaflow) and cools down to around 30C or so and then back off (slows down while going down).

A thermal controlled fan may be your solution. They can be found cheap enough (SVC, etc) and only ramp up when needed.

 

[akira34]

The cool 'n quiet from MSI's boards works well with the retail processor's HSF...

I trust MSI boards more than I would ever trust one from Asus (had major issues with a supposedly great Asus board that was crap, even after 3 RMA's).

I've been using MSI boards for about a year now in system builds without any problems from the boards. Plus, 3 year warranties are a wonderful thing... The cost of the boards is also very reasonable for what you get. Even if I have to wait on a MSI board, I'll get that long before any other brand... I also recommend others get them too...