I narrowed down the noise (at least the loudest) to the two front intake fans. These are 'loud' fans from the start, but they do push pretty good air (with noise being the compromise though).
Rin: "The noisy twins - variable speed 80mm fans installed as front intake units."
Went to the local electronics store and found a pretty nice (and cheap) silent fan solution. 14dba only, allegedly, which is pretty quiet. The current ones throw out at least 28-32db I think.
One thing to keep in mind is to make sure you face the fan in the direction you want the air blowing to (i.e., intake or exhaust). This is easy, since all case fans have directional arrows that show both rotation of the blades and direction of airflow.
Also ensure you have equal amounts of intake and exhaust fans. Last thing you want to happen is no air movement in your case (vacuum). You want hot air from the inside to be pushed out, as much as you want the cooler, ambient air to flow in your system.
The fan's rotation and air direction is clearly marked on the side of its case.
The quiet fan installed nicely on the case, and it ran as advertised. Really quiet and worth the buy indeed. I might get two more for the other two exhaust fans this time.
Rin: "One of the new 'silent' intake fans installed. For this particular one, it also doubles as a hard drive cooler!"
So there you have it, system upgrade complete.
New fans in place and running a-ok. Really, really quiet (and has blue LED lighting too).
Looking back at the finalized system up and running, the first question that came to my mind is, "Is it fast?". It is not quite super-duper fast, but fast enough to handle the multimedia applications that I have planned for it (e.g., picture and video edits/transfers, HD video and audio streaming). Plus there is more to discover on the CMOS overclock setting which I will surely tweak and adjust to squeeze out some more power in this system.
The overall build was fun. It always is - that's why I avoid getting prebuilt systems as it takes away the actual 'building' fun part. I do have a prebuilt desktop (HTPC setup) and eyeing some NetTops. But system building will alway be my priority. :)
Speaking of system building, now I also have the leftover parts from the upgrade, and it is enough to build another decent PC. I will probably put it together again, and it will be more likely an Ubuntu-based system. But that's for another time though.
For now, I'll sit back and enjoy the latest upgrade. Until the next project!
Cheers! :D
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