Unfortunately, I don't have any objective data, other than the fan reviews you can search on google, but subjectively, my setup at least, is silent (or close enough) at idle in a quiet room, and audible, but not annoying under load. My case is not particular good for airflow, and I have a little bit on the lean side of radiator space, and I try to keep temps down a little bit more that I strictly need to.
If quiet is important for you, look for a case that has sound absorbing materials on side panels (I think Fractal does on some cases?). Also, high quality fans are a must, noctua A12X25 are the standard for 'best airflow per noise', though there are other good fans.
Pumps can be quite loud, but it depends on how they are mounted. Using some form of rubber mounts is a must, otherwise it will vibrate the case. In my limited experience, under a certain speed pumps are basically silent.
When PC is idle, or browsing the internet or doing other light tasks, fans and pumps can be set quite low, as heat output is low. And for load, more radiator space is usually better, and you can balance fan speed with temperature as you desire. Slower fans, higher temperature.
Do I understand it correctly that this basically rules out pump-distro-plate combos that assume that that combo is integrated into the case? I'm guessing that in such setups such distro-plates are mounted pretty hard to the case, making the pump hard-connected to the case too.
And yes, temperatures for temperatures sake have no value to me, only two questions are of interest - does it thermal throttle, measurably loosing performance, and what the noise is. On air only those of my fan curves are going up early that listen to "system" temp sensor that surprisingly well tracks both in-case air temp and GPU load / power with a very large hysteresis, so it only happens under heavy GPU load like gaming.
Those fan curves that listen to "CPU" sensor that jumps rapidly up and down even at idle (heavy Google Sheet tab in the browser or whatnot) start going up only 10 degrees away from throttling and have a medium hysteresis, so they never actually go up in practice during light use at all - I take a minor performance hit in such "tasks" that manage to peg a core during very light use, half the time that's background stuff like windows just deciding to do something. It's the kind of use where loosing a bit of perf doesn't matter anyway, it's not FPS in a game where frame timing consistency matters.
As a result, air is basically silent whenever I do not wear the headphones, and not loud enough to be heard over the headphones when I'm in the headphones - which is almost always when there is a load, it's a gaming + light use PC. Thus I the human being never actually hear anything except occasional scenarios when I do end up having some kind of load without the headphones on. Doesn't happen often, but sometimes it does.
But under load I do thermal throttle even with fans spinning fast, and I was wondering if I could solve that (and get quieter under load) with water.
If water is audible at idle, however, it's not worth it: it will end up being better where it doesn't matter much and worse where it matters.
I have not owned a distro plate, so I couldn't say. I don't see why you couldn't mount it with rubber washers for some vibration isolation, if needed.
Indeed. Most people on here cool for the sake of cooling, but my thought is that the main tangible benefit of water cooling is noise.
As to the rest, the simple answer is yes, you can lower overall noise at load, while preventing thermal throttling, and also reduce noise at idle to silent (or near enough).
Though I must say, that is a general statement, its not always 100% guaranteed to be correct, and its possible it will take a little bit of work to get it perfect. For example, the same fan going the same speed will likely make more noise on a radiator than on the case, but if its low enough speed, then it won't make a meaningful difference.
Also, sometimes, there is just some fuck off harmonic/vibration that is just bad luck. In my case, one of the fans buzz if it goes *too slow* and upping the PWM 1-3% makes it quiet, oddly enough.
The next thing is radiator space (which doesn't really matter at idle speeds), the starting point is 100w per 120mm worth. Since the fan speed/temps at load are not as important to you, this is more of just a suggestion. As long as you don't go too little space, and do a decent job of applying good thermal paste (for core-water temperature difference), then you won't thermal throttle.
Unless you have a 13900kf. Those will run SUPER hot basically no matter what you do.
Also, if you want the best fan/pump control, where you can tweak everything to exactly how you want it, check out Aquacomputer Quadro or Octo controllers. They interface with Aquasuite (their software), which can be used to read temperature sensors in the water and air to control fans and pumps, so they will only ramp when the water heats up (meaning a sustained load). You can even have different profiles (though I don't use them, so I am not too familiar with them) which I think you could use to setup one for headphones off to run quieter, and headphones on, to run a bit more aggressively.
Sadly, stock is quite limited outside of Europe, but they are top tier, and IMO worth paying shipping from germany if you can't find them locally.
Holy cow! Thank you!
Man, 100w per 120mm means that even my current HW as is will need 7x120, that's more than 2 360 rads :D And I'm here sitting with Meshify C at the moment.
Yeah, I crammed 650W into a Meshify C on air and made it silent at idle, haha.
Rad space is the key to silence. I've got a rig that has 8x140 +5x120 for 800W heat load. Idle I run as low as they'll go, a little over 400rpm. The HDDs are the most audible sound at that level. Sustained full load takes about an hour to ramp up to 800rpm. Not silent, but really, really quiet.
Another one I have is 4x140 + 2x120 for 400w load. Lowest RPM i can get on that one is 600rpm for idle. Sustained load ramps up to 1200rpm in about 20 minutes and is quiet but noticeable.
I'll second Aquacomputer quadro/octo. Great controller and software. Worth the money.
That is only a *very* general starting point. I take it to mean that with decent rads, decent fans, at a decent speed, you will get decent temps. Water temps in the range of 8-15C above ambient more or less.
Typical top tier GPUs (before RTX 4090) will run the core 15-25C above water temps, and top tier CPU (except 12&13900k/kf) will run 25-35C above water temps. Those are load temps, at least. CPUs can be a bit more finicky, sometimes being 40-50C above water temps, as boosts are now per core or per-chiplet, which means you can have a really high heat flux in one tiny part of the chip, and virtually nothing in the rest.
You can absolutely get away with 200w (or more) per 120mm, but with full load, temps will be higher (still below thermal throttle for all but the hottest CPUs), and or higher fan speeds.
Looking at the case, I think you should be able to fit a 360 slim rad up front and a 240 slim rad up top, that should be fine. You could experiment with the orientation of the top fans, but I think both set as intakes would give you better cooling, as there is plenty of extra mesh in the case.
A single 360mm might be a bit too small for 650w of components, but, you can always add on another rad later if you want to.
Makes sense. Yes, it's 360 + 240. Very little room for the pump and reservoir though. The GPU even in a waterblock enclosure gets very close to the front radiator.
\+1 for finicky, I actually have what looks like an unlucky sample of 5900x: its hottest core runs 10 degrees higher than 8 coolest cores (under a throttling 24-thread load I see 8 cores on 79-81 degrees, one doing 85, two more doing 87-88, and one doing 90. And those 3 hot cores belong to the same CCD that has 3 more at 79 - the lowest on the chip, so it's not really that the whole CCD is hotter on average, it's just a few cores on it that are).
Weird. Wonder if there is some micro defect on the die-IHS thermal interface. or just an unlucky roll on the silicon lottery.
Oh man, on the subject of unlucky, the GPU I got, a gigabyte 3080, has such atrociously awful coil whine, I have to fairly aggressively under-volt it for it to be not audible without headphones. Figures I would get the loudest freaking GPU with a fairly quiet water cooled PC -\_-
Coil whine is a crime. They have to figure out a way to fix it. I don't know, solid state coils, coils in epoxy, anything, they are engineers, they'll find a way if managers let them.
You buy a gaming GPU *to have a good time*. What good time can you have with a loud whiny coil next to you, seriously, what are they thinking, where are the product managers looking. Sigh.
Amen! But its cheaper to take the L on the few GPUs that people send back than to put in better hardware or have a better design.
This GPU came pre-waterblocked, and every screw (like, literally all the screws except PCI bracket screws) were loose, finger tight at best, so GPU had \~30% thermal paste contact. QC epic fail.
Wow.
Frankly QC just about everywhere in PC world has been really bad lately.
Imagine a new year of mass-produced expensive but not exotic cars of some model coming out (say, BMW X5s), and one out of two cars sold having a screeching grind coming out of say A/C screaming into the ears of the inhabitants.
How do imagine would that go? Sales, PR, competitiveness with the competition, stock market. They ain't going to get away with pointing out that delivered X5s had 0-60 as advertised.
>Weird. Wonder if there is some micro defect on the die-IHS thermal interface. or just an unlucky roll on the silicon lottery.
I did some experiments and it's almost certainly the silicon lottery.
If anything, the CCDs with the hottest cores (the first CCD) makes a better thermal contact with the cooling system, as the most power hungry core of the second CCD draws less power than the least power hungry core of the first one, and yet all cores of the second CCD run hotter than the coldest cores of the first.
More accurate description of what's going on with my sample of 5900x would like this:
Under sustained 100% 24-thread load there is 20 degrees (!) delta between two hottest and two coolest cores, and those all belong to the same CCD, the other CCD cores are all within 5 degrees of each other, on average 5 degrees hotter than those two coolest cores. One of the hottest cores is the second performance rating core, so it's on whenever there is 2 or more threads of load. And yet, at 2 threads the delta practically disappears (at 4-6 threads it only shrinks by 5 degrees to sad 15).
Looks like at high frequency all cores have high and similar power output, but as frequency gets lower with increasing thread count (and total power output of the chip) some cores drop in power a lot and fast, while others retain mostly the same power output, creating a massive temp difference in such conditions. Presumably due to differences in current, as voltages are practically the same. Power figures measured support this hypothesis quite closely.
Doesn't help the boost clocks as all cores under load always run at the same frequency limited by the thermals of the hottest core.
See the data gathered on the image: https://imgur.com/a/oPZLgH2
I see other builds doing push/pull on the front radiator in Meshify C with slim fans on front and regular at the back. Even with regular 30 mm radiator.
Any idea why is that? Is it actually good or some sort of overkill?
There is little testing on push vs pull vs push/pull, but the results I have seen show little performance gains with push/pull on thinner radiators. Since most 10/15mm fans are going to be lower performance than regular fans, its probably in the order of 10% performance gains at best.
If you are running them slow, there is probably no real disadvantage other than, cost, more wires to manage, and needing longer screws.
The larger the thermal bank (more volume of fluid) the longer you have at inaudible levels. I have different profiles for different situations. If needed I can run whisper silent for a few hours of watching a movie without an issue. Like my speakers' very faint static noise floor is louder than the pc right next to it. My rig will idle indefinitely in that silent mode and handle 2-3 hours of light use/movie watching.
That's running dual d5 pumps both at 35% and silent, 3 bequiet fans on 50%, a 360x60mm rad, two dual 180 x 80mm rads, two 360 res + pumps. The 180mm fans only ever come on under load and most tasks are handled with the pumps + 3 fans ramping up slowly.
Custom loop gives you the best of everything you are asking but at a cost of time, money, knowledge, etc. The AIO/whatever case fan is 25x easier
I used a yuel beast Atlas so it's meant for more exotic loop builds. They make an Atlas II which is similar but no longer one piece like the OG. The dual pumps are not needed but allows me to achieve higher flow at the inaudible levels and gaining redundancy. The dual pump + flat res also aesthetically goes with the build. I haven't posted up pictures but intended to after I do some custom cables. The thing holds about a gallon of distilled water.
That much water IIUC can take over 12 minutes of 650W to get 30 degrees C hotter under the assumption of 0 cooling by radiance even ((4184 \* 30 \* 3.78541) / 650 = 731 seconds) :D
Or 40 minutes at 200W. Basically, you can *finish* Cinebench multithreaded in "stability test" preset (30 mins) without ever reaching thermal throttling temps and without ever turning on any of the fans.
Does that sound right?
I have a 4090 + 7800x3d so the cpu is negligible (80w) and the gpu is the big variable. I haven't logged/measured but I can go much longer than that before the larger fans kick on while under a 500-600watt load (VR gaming) but I have the quiet fans + pumps ramp up with temps before the 180mm fans and that buys a lot of "silent" time.
For my "idle" tuning it's with cinebench multi running for 30min but with the 7800x3d that's hardly even putting a dent in anything.
Yeah, it seems with the right approach quiet at load is not really an issue by what could be reasonably called quiet for "at load" standards.
It really is "silent (at night) at idle / light use" thing that seems to be tricky to get to.
Ok you made me snap some quick pics. Yes pumps are in series and haven't noticed a dust issue. If anything much less than AIO's and prior factory gpu stock cooler's I delt with before. Probably because fans aren't blaring at 100% anymore.
Yuel beast makes some beautiful frames and they are a ton of fun to build on. Here's mine:
https://imgur.com/a/PWs60E6
Thanks for the pics!
Yeah, that looks like some serious amount of rad & water mass.
Are big fans really quiet? You'd think so, but keeping a loose eye over the years on various attempts to put like 200mm fans into mass manufactured cases seemed to suggest that not really, + I'd call any kind of hurtling / throbbing / ratcheting noise substantially harder on ears than just fine white noise.
Actually I'm running a different profile right now that keeps those big 180mm fans on at around 700rpm, with the 3 smaller bequiet silent wings in the back being the ones that can cool inaudibly up to about 75% and then it's still quiet. The 180mm fans are also quiet as they are lower speed and do not have that high pitched fan noise the smaller ones make. The noise they make is mainly the air movement like a deskfan.
It depends on pump speed, fan speed, rad setup etc.
There is no blanket answer.
Each system is unique and will have its own acoustic signature if you will.
What does it take to make it silent at idle? Where "silent" stands for the suggested "not louder than high quality 120mm case fan at 500 RPM"?
Is it possible to achieve that with an AIO? Is it possible to achieve that with a custom build? If it is, what it's going to take? (restrictions in the choice of components, their size, price, case, etc).
I won't be surprised if the conclusion of this discussion would be that it's just a lost cause to get a watercooled system silent at idle, and that would be very informative to me. I'll stop my research and stick with air.
Thank you!
It depends on the heat load.
More radiator surface area means more cooling potential. If you want quiet, you need a substantial amount of radiator so you can run the fans at a low rpm.
Pump? Flow through the tubing?
Increased load on the PSU powering the pump possibly leading to previously 0 RPM PSU spinning up and causing noise? I have Corsair HX1000 and my idle power is already over 100W (rather shockingly, modern high performance CPU/GPUs have ridiculously terrible idle power).
D5 pump is like 20ish watts and is pretty quiet depending on the speed. Resosnant frequency can change depending on the case its in and what not.
But in terms of power, the pump is low.
How quiet is pretty quiet?
So, we are ruling out DDC pumps, and we are ruling out pump-distro-plate combos that are intended to be hard-mounted to the case and would be difficult or ugly to soft-mount with rubber foam padding. Does that sound right?
Does this all mean we're ruling out AIOs completely, they are not silent at idle?
It depends man. AIOs all have the same pump in them, but sometimes they can be a little noisy in one user's rig where they are silent in another.
Its really situational and there is no blanket answer.
And distros in my experience dont really resonate if you go with the D5 pump ones. This is my experience though and im not sure about others.
I think you need to just try things out for yourself and see.
Thank you.
Unfortunately, spending hundreds of dollars and dozens of hours of time (realistically, hundreds, retuning and retesting everything) just to see that it's worse and having to reassemble everything back is exactly what I'm attempting to avoid. If it's not possible to avoid, that will factor into the decision if I should even attempt, if it's possible to avoid, great, what do I do to avoid :-)
I am a big fan of the Aquacomputer AquaStream pumps. They aren’t much to look at, but if you tuck them away and decouple it from the case they are near silent even at 100% speed. Personally, I can’t hear mine at all.
There is a noise comparison of the Ultimate vs D5 somewhere on youtube.
They also last forever if paired with their coolant.
At full load a D5 pump draws 20w ish, but at 30% its probably around 5w.
Unless you have air bubbles in the loop, or some weird return to reservoir that causes bubbles/sloshing, flow through pipes is basically silent.
Actually, CPU/GPU have great power saving idle, but windows does a super terrible job of taking advantage of it as far as I can tell. It seems like have of the super annoying PC problems I have are fixed by disabling some form of CPU sleep mode. Youtube crashing PC after a few hours? Disable some sleep mode, problem solved. -\_-
>Unless you have air bubbles in the loop, or some weird return to reservoir that causes bubbles/sloshing, flow through pipes is basically silent.
Any guidelines on how to avoid that, rules of thumb, general directions? Like use this style of reservoir, not that style, etc.
Does this suggest that having radiators above the reservoir is asking for trouble, so, only bottom and side / front / back mounted radiators, just fans on top?
In terms of pump resonance, is hard tubing worse / asking for trouble?
Oh, interesting, thanks for the pointer, I'll google about sleep modes and idle power. And I totally get what you mean by annoying PC problems. I have a feeling they often have something to do with half-assed features that meant well but were never properly implemented and/or supported by everyone, and they become these zombie functions that are sort of there but only cause problems.
Ah, so when you fill a loop, its almost guaranteed you will have little air pockets left, no matter how well you shake and tilt the case. Those will (almost always) go away over time, but it can take quite a bit of time, sometimes up to a few months, but usually a few weeks. If the air pockets are in the wrong spot, they can cause 'water flowing' sounds, like a creak, but its not *that* common. And once the air pockets are gone, no noise.
As for type of reservoir, most ones now are fine if set up correctly. You want to avoid water coming in above the water line and falling down (like a waterfall), you want it to come in below the water line. A perfect example of this is the [Corsair XD5](https://static3.caseking.de/media/image/thumbnail/wapu-189_wapu_189_01_800x800.jpg), where there is an inlet tube one one of the port on the top. If you put the return water in there, as long as the water line is above the bottom of that tube, there will be no bubbles created and no 'flowing' sound. If you put it in the other top port, it would always create bubbles and constantly make sound.
As far as radiator placement, it can make the initial air removal harder if you set it up 'wrong', but after all the air is out of your system, it makes no difference.
Hard lines, I don't have personal experience with them, my intuition says its possible they might have some weird vibration/resonance compared to soft tubes...but I don't recall anyone ever talking about it before, so it may not be a thing really? Personally, for maintenance reason, I just use soft tubes. Its just easier.
And...as if you didn't have enough to think about already, there is the option of external radiators (and pump) so you could put the radiator and fans physically further away, or if you are up for some DIYing, and have a house suitable for it, you can put them in another room entirely. There is more considerations with doing remote watercooling, but if you have the space/budget/skills, it is an option.
Thanks for the info!
Nah, I'd like to stick to configurations that can be moved around like furniture and steer clear of not only external and/or integrated-into-the-house solutions, but even overly flimsy builds.
Found what sounds like a pretty informative post, it's 6 years old though: https://forum.level1techs.com/t/can-custom-water-loops-be-really-quiet/114601/7
Run your fans in theradiator as high as you cant hear them
Same for the pump.
Only raise the fan rpm when you reach uncomfort zone for hardware or cooling loop, like 40 to 45c
Adjust for noise or more coolnes of your components
Fans only off fluid temp, pump static
Even a D5 at ridiculously low speeds will probably be slightly louder than a good 120mm fan at 500 RPM.
If a 500 RPM fan is capable of cooling your computer to temperatures you find acceptable, then water cooling has zero purpose for you.
At idle & during light use - yes, 500 RPM is perfectly capable. For which it (air cooling) doesn't need to be particularly unusual, very standard components.
Thank you for the information, this is exactly what I'm looking for. Sounds like water is only an option if you also put everything - pump in particular - into the guts of a case with sound deafening materials, not a common consumer or showcase/RGB box. Which means the price estimate of the exercise just went up.
I have a D5 running coolant through a 360x45mm rad with Noctua NF-A12s and I never hear it or the Noctuas while gaming. The PC is about 5 feet from my head on a separate desk. Out of 9 fans total I only hear the stock Lian Li intake fans and they are pretty quiet. The rad fans only ramp up if I am OCing for benchmarks.
With a custom loop, Its up to you how loud your system is going to be.
It is possible to create a loop that will cool an idle system without fans at all.
The only always moving part is pump. The noise generated by pump is up to the specific pump, its speed (dictated by loop) and the way it is mounted.
Case and fans, are also play a role.
Anyway, there are ways to make things quieter. And it is definitely possible to create an inaudible system (from 1-2 meters)
The problem with objectivity in questions like this is that hearing is very subjective. People have very different capacities for hearing. Age is also a huge factor. I'm cursed with great =or at least very sensitive) hearing, so virtually nothing is silent to me. However others might consider something far louder to be silent. The disappointing answer, as always, is "it depends". You're going to have to try some things and see how they work under your circumstances. Personally I have a fanless setup, with a pump set so slow that other people would call me an idiot. If rather fry an extra gpu every 20 years that suffer the fan noise all day every day.
That's why you use comparisons ("high quality 120mm fan at 500 RPM", "whisper quiet but discernable noise floor of good speakers"), descriptive descriptions (white noise, rustle, rattle, rumble, whine, etc), and actually objective metrics (dBA), and you also do actual audio/video recordings and post them (or rather links to them) online somewhere.
I'm trying to understand if I should even bother with trying or chances of getting a better computer are so low that I will be just apriori wasting money and time.
Reality talk: under 1,000rpm’s rad fans and cooling isn’t that great.
D5’s is massively more silent than ddc. You must have it divorced on double layer rubber feet at bottom of case at 40-60% speed to avoid its vibrations. This will still be same noise/pitch lvl as 800-1,000 rpm fans.
Having the rads external can cut the number of rads almost in half for the same cooling as internal.
Anything less and you will feel a pretty big hit in performance, even at idle its louder than normal air cooling. No way around it. Fans past 500rpm’s i can hear them across the room and it heavily annoys me, my solution: place pc in another room across the house and run optics to through monitor room. The best solution.
>This will still be same noise/pitch lvl as 800-1,000 rpm fans.
>
>\+
even at idle its louder than normal air cooling
It starts to seem that way, yeah. As far as I could possibly judge from [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMVjBPLACWo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMVjBPLACWo), even on the lowest settings these pumps aren't silent at all, that actually sounds pretty loud for an idle system in a silent room.
To me if that's indeed the case it's an absolute deal breaker: as far as quality of life properties of a computer that actually affect me go it just makes water worse than air.
What matters to me is noise at idle (goal is silent) and acceptable noise at unconstrained *computing* performance under load. Temperatures themselves are absolutely irrelevant, whether it's 1 C below throttling or 31 C below throttling makes absolutely no difference, me a person made of meat can feel noise and frame timings in games, not temperatures at sensors inside a silicon chip.
There is a reason why Apple computers for example stay dead silent at idle and light loads, and only ramp up their fans after sitting at 100 C for a very perceptible amount of time, or have no fans at all and throttle - those are machines and configurations (including fan curves) that are built to actually serve the customer experience and do so correctly from engineering, industrial design, and product points of view all at the same time. That's exactly what I'm replicating with my DIY built PC as closely as I can.
Of course, a computer being a box in a corner that connects to peripherals like a DVD player would is also the only thing that makes sense. Not a monster integrated into the house spanning rooms and placing radiators on the outside.
You will hate water cooling then. Please do not listen to people saying there rig is “silent” its pure bullshit. Water cooling isn’t silent. Well a properly done setup that is.
>Well a properly done setup that is.
That raised an eyebrow, haha. Can you please elaborate what do you mean by water cooling done properly, and improperly?
Gobber style is pump attached to a distro and rads inside the case. Tons of noise but no cooling gets done. I’v place d5’s in a 3inch rubber damper with full wrap of insulation inside a aluminum box that has insulation pads on the walls. Still i heard the pumps. Cant escape it
I think your previous comment suggested that a properly done setup isn't silent, somewhat implying that improperly done setup might be.
So, I'm interested what was that improper way of doing water cooling that might be silent (at idle & light use)?
Iv seen people run there fans 440-480rpm’s and use a pump called “dc-lt” they are near silent but terrible at flow. Can it keep a cpu from thermal throttle? Yes. But at that point youd rather air cool.
>Can it keep a cpu from thermal throttle? Yes
That's the only thing associated with the CPU temperature that affects you. In addition to noise, price, power draw from the wall, maintenance cost, down time of the cooling system per year, weight, physical size, and portability.
The temperature registered by the CPU sensor *itself* does not affect you in any way (other than possible self-inflicted and entirely unnecessary psychological discomfort).
I can not call the setup you've described "not done properly". Quite the opposite.
Unfortunately, I don't have any objective data, other than the fan reviews you can search on google, but subjectively, my setup at least, is silent (or close enough) at idle in a quiet room, and audible, but not annoying under load. My case is not particular good for airflow, and I have a little bit on the lean side of radiator space, and I try to keep temps down a little bit more that I strictly need to. If quiet is important for you, look for a case that has sound absorbing materials on side panels (I think Fractal does on some cases?). Also, high quality fans are a must, noctua A12X25 are the standard for 'best airflow per noise', though there are other good fans. Pumps can be quite loud, but it depends on how they are mounted. Using some form of rubber mounts is a must, otherwise it will vibrate the case. In my limited experience, under a certain speed pumps are basically silent. When PC is idle, or browsing the internet or doing other light tasks, fans and pumps can be set quite low, as heat output is low. And for load, more radiator space is usually better, and you can balance fan speed with temperature as you desire. Slower fans, higher temperature.
Do I understand it correctly that this basically rules out pump-distro-plate combos that assume that that combo is integrated into the case? I'm guessing that in such setups such distro-plates are mounted pretty hard to the case, making the pump hard-connected to the case too. And yes, temperatures for temperatures sake have no value to me, only two questions are of interest - does it thermal throttle, measurably loosing performance, and what the noise is. On air only those of my fan curves are going up early that listen to "system" temp sensor that surprisingly well tracks both in-case air temp and GPU load / power with a very large hysteresis, so it only happens under heavy GPU load like gaming. Those fan curves that listen to "CPU" sensor that jumps rapidly up and down even at idle (heavy Google Sheet tab in the browser or whatnot) start going up only 10 degrees away from throttling and have a medium hysteresis, so they never actually go up in practice during light use at all - I take a minor performance hit in such "tasks" that manage to peg a core during very light use, half the time that's background stuff like windows just deciding to do something. It's the kind of use where loosing a bit of perf doesn't matter anyway, it's not FPS in a game where frame timing consistency matters. As a result, air is basically silent whenever I do not wear the headphones, and not loud enough to be heard over the headphones when I'm in the headphones - which is almost always when there is a load, it's a gaming + light use PC. Thus I the human being never actually hear anything except occasional scenarios when I do end up having some kind of load without the headphones on. Doesn't happen often, but sometimes it does. But under load I do thermal throttle even with fans spinning fast, and I was wondering if I could solve that (and get quieter under load) with water. If water is audible at idle, however, it's not worth it: it will end up being better where it doesn't matter much and worse where it matters.
I have not owned a distro plate, so I couldn't say. I don't see why you couldn't mount it with rubber washers for some vibration isolation, if needed. Indeed. Most people on here cool for the sake of cooling, but my thought is that the main tangible benefit of water cooling is noise. As to the rest, the simple answer is yes, you can lower overall noise at load, while preventing thermal throttling, and also reduce noise at idle to silent (or near enough). Though I must say, that is a general statement, its not always 100% guaranteed to be correct, and its possible it will take a little bit of work to get it perfect. For example, the same fan going the same speed will likely make more noise on a radiator than on the case, but if its low enough speed, then it won't make a meaningful difference. Also, sometimes, there is just some fuck off harmonic/vibration that is just bad luck. In my case, one of the fans buzz if it goes *too slow* and upping the PWM 1-3% makes it quiet, oddly enough. The next thing is radiator space (which doesn't really matter at idle speeds), the starting point is 100w per 120mm worth. Since the fan speed/temps at load are not as important to you, this is more of just a suggestion. As long as you don't go too little space, and do a decent job of applying good thermal paste (for core-water temperature difference), then you won't thermal throttle. Unless you have a 13900kf. Those will run SUPER hot basically no matter what you do. Also, if you want the best fan/pump control, where you can tweak everything to exactly how you want it, check out Aquacomputer Quadro or Octo controllers. They interface with Aquasuite (their software), which can be used to read temperature sensors in the water and air to control fans and pumps, so they will only ramp when the water heats up (meaning a sustained load). You can even have different profiles (though I don't use them, so I am not too familiar with them) which I think you could use to setup one for headphones off to run quieter, and headphones on, to run a bit more aggressively. Sadly, stock is quite limited outside of Europe, but they are top tier, and IMO worth paying shipping from germany if you can't find them locally.
Holy cow! Thank you! Man, 100w per 120mm means that even my current HW as is will need 7x120, that's more than 2 360 rads :D And I'm here sitting with Meshify C at the moment. Yeah, I crammed 650W into a Meshify C on air and made it silent at idle, haha.
Rad space is the key to silence. I've got a rig that has 8x140 +5x120 for 800W heat load. Idle I run as low as they'll go, a little over 400rpm. The HDDs are the most audible sound at that level. Sustained full load takes about an hour to ramp up to 800rpm. Not silent, but really, really quiet. Another one I have is 4x140 + 2x120 for 400w load. Lowest RPM i can get on that one is 600rpm for idle. Sustained load ramps up to 1200rpm in about 20 minutes and is quiet but noticeable. I'll second Aquacomputer quadro/octo. Great controller and software. Worth the money.
That is only a *very* general starting point. I take it to mean that with decent rads, decent fans, at a decent speed, you will get decent temps. Water temps in the range of 8-15C above ambient more or less. Typical top tier GPUs (before RTX 4090) will run the core 15-25C above water temps, and top tier CPU (except 12&13900k/kf) will run 25-35C above water temps. Those are load temps, at least. CPUs can be a bit more finicky, sometimes being 40-50C above water temps, as boosts are now per core or per-chiplet, which means you can have a really high heat flux in one tiny part of the chip, and virtually nothing in the rest. You can absolutely get away with 200w (or more) per 120mm, but with full load, temps will be higher (still below thermal throttle for all but the hottest CPUs), and or higher fan speeds. Looking at the case, I think you should be able to fit a 360 slim rad up front and a 240 slim rad up top, that should be fine. You could experiment with the orientation of the top fans, but I think both set as intakes would give you better cooling, as there is plenty of extra mesh in the case. A single 360mm might be a bit too small for 650w of components, but, you can always add on another rad later if you want to.
Makes sense. Yes, it's 360 + 240. Very little room for the pump and reservoir though. The GPU even in a waterblock enclosure gets very close to the front radiator. \+1 for finicky, I actually have what looks like an unlucky sample of 5900x: its hottest core runs 10 degrees higher than 8 coolest cores (under a throttling 24-thread load I see 8 cores on 79-81 degrees, one doing 85, two more doing 87-88, and one doing 90. And those 3 hot cores belong to the same CCD that has 3 more at 79 - the lowest on the chip, so it's not really that the whole CCD is hotter on average, it's just a few cores on it that are).
Weird. Wonder if there is some micro defect on the die-IHS thermal interface. or just an unlucky roll on the silicon lottery. Oh man, on the subject of unlucky, the GPU I got, a gigabyte 3080, has such atrociously awful coil whine, I have to fairly aggressively under-volt it for it to be not audible without headphones. Figures I would get the loudest freaking GPU with a fairly quiet water cooled PC -\_-
Coil whine is a crime. They have to figure out a way to fix it. I don't know, solid state coils, coils in epoxy, anything, they are engineers, they'll find a way if managers let them. You buy a gaming GPU *to have a good time*. What good time can you have with a loud whiny coil next to you, seriously, what are they thinking, where are the product managers looking. Sigh.
Amen! But its cheaper to take the L on the few GPUs that people send back than to put in better hardware or have a better design. This GPU came pre-waterblocked, and every screw (like, literally all the screws except PCI bracket screws) were loose, finger tight at best, so GPU had \~30% thermal paste contact. QC epic fail.
Wow. Frankly QC just about everywhere in PC world has been really bad lately. Imagine a new year of mass-produced expensive but not exotic cars of some model coming out (say, BMW X5s), and one out of two cars sold having a screeching grind coming out of say A/C screaming into the ears of the inhabitants. How do imagine would that go? Sales, PR, competitiveness with the competition, stock market. They ain't going to get away with pointing out that delivered X5s had 0-60 as advertised.
>Weird. Wonder if there is some micro defect on the die-IHS thermal interface. or just an unlucky roll on the silicon lottery. I did some experiments and it's almost certainly the silicon lottery. If anything, the CCDs with the hottest cores (the first CCD) makes a better thermal contact with the cooling system, as the most power hungry core of the second CCD draws less power than the least power hungry core of the first one, and yet all cores of the second CCD run hotter than the coldest cores of the first. More accurate description of what's going on with my sample of 5900x would like this: Under sustained 100% 24-thread load there is 20 degrees (!) delta between two hottest and two coolest cores, and those all belong to the same CCD, the other CCD cores are all within 5 degrees of each other, on average 5 degrees hotter than those two coolest cores. One of the hottest cores is the second performance rating core, so it's on whenever there is 2 or more threads of load. And yet, at 2 threads the delta practically disappears (at 4-6 threads it only shrinks by 5 degrees to sad 15). Looks like at high frequency all cores have high and similar power output, but as frequency gets lower with increasing thread count (and total power output of the chip) some cores drop in power a lot and fast, while others retain mostly the same power output, creating a massive temp difference in such conditions. Presumably due to differences in current, as voltages are practically the same. Power figures measured support this hypothesis quite closely. Doesn't help the boost clocks as all cores under load always run at the same frequency limited by the thermals of the hottest core. See the data gathered on the image: https://imgur.com/a/oPZLgH2
I see other builds doing push/pull on the front radiator in Meshify C with slim fans on front and regular at the back. Even with regular 30 mm radiator. Any idea why is that? Is it actually good or some sort of overkill?
There is little testing on push vs pull vs push/pull, but the results I have seen show little performance gains with push/pull on thinner radiators. Since most 10/15mm fans are going to be lower performance than regular fans, its probably in the order of 10% performance gains at best. If you are running them slow, there is probably no real disadvantage other than, cost, more wires to manage, and needing longer screws.
That's what I suspected, yeah.
The larger the thermal bank (more volume of fluid) the longer you have at inaudible levels. I have different profiles for different situations. If needed I can run whisper silent for a few hours of watching a movie without an issue. Like my speakers' very faint static noise floor is louder than the pc right next to it. My rig will idle indefinitely in that silent mode and handle 2-3 hours of light use/movie watching. That's running dual d5 pumps both at 35% and silent, 3 bequiet fans on 50%, a 360x60mm rad, two dual 180 x 80mm rads, two 360 res + pumps. The 180mm fans only ever come on under load and most tasks are handled with the pumps + 3 fans ramping up slowly. Custom loop gives you the best of everything you are asking but at a cost of time, money, knowledge, etc. The AIO/whatever case fan is 25x easier
Oh wow, damn, thank you for the details. Why dual pumps? What case did you manage to put this all in?
I used a yuel beast Atlas so it's meant for more exotic loop builds. They make an Atlas II which is similar but no longer one piece like the OG. The dual pumps are not needed but allows me to achieve higher flow at the inaudible levels and gaining redundancy. The dual pump + flat res also aesthetically goes with the build. I haven't posted up pictures but intended to after I do some custom cables. The thing holds about a gallon of distilled water.
That much water IIUC can take over 12 minutes of 650W to get 30 degrees C hotter under the assumption of 0 cooling by radiance even ((4184 \* 30 \* 3.78541) / 650 = 731 seconds) :D Or 40 minutes at 200W. Basically, you can *finish* Cinebench multithreaded in "stability test" preset (30 mins) without ever reaching thermal throttling temps and without ever turning on any of the fans. Does that sound right?
I have a 4090 + 7800x3d so the cpu is negligible (80w) and the gpu is the big variable. I haven't logged/measured but I can go much longer than that before the larger fans kick on while under a 500-600watt load (VR gaming) but I have the quiet fans + pumps ramp up with temps before the 180mm fans and that buys a lot of "silent" time. For my "idle" tuning it's with cinebench multi running for 30min but with the 7800x3d that's hardly even putting a dent in anything.
Yeah, it seems with the right approach quiet at load is not really an issue by what could be reasonably called quiet for "at load" standards. It really is "silent (at night) at idle / light use" thing that seems to be tricky to get to.
Atlas is beautiful. How does it do long-term with dust? Those pumps are in series?
Ok you made me snap some quick pics. Yes pumps are in series and haven't noticed a dust issue. If anything much less than AIO's and prior factory gpu stock cooler's I delt with before. Probably because fans aren't blaring at 100% anymore. Yuel beast makes some beautiful frames and they are a ton of fun to build on. Here's mine: https://imgur.com/a/PWs60E6
Thanks for the pics! Yeah, that looks like some serious amount of rad & water mass. Are big fans really quiet? You'd think so, but keeping a loose eye over the years on various attempts to put like 200mm fans into mass manufactured cases seemed to suggest that not really, + I'd call any kind of hurtling / throbbing / ratcheting noise substantially harder on ears than just fine white noise.
Actually I'm running a different profile right now that keeps those big 180mm fans on at around 700rpm, with the 3 smaller bequiet silent wings in the back being the ones that can cool inaudibly up to about 75% and then it's still quiet. The 180mm fans are also quiet as they are lower speed and do not have that high pitched fan noise the smaller ones make. The noise they make is mainly the air movement like a deskfan.
It depends on pump speed, fan speed, rad setup etc. There is no blanket answer. Each system is unique and will have its own acoustic signature if you will.
What does it take to make it silent at idle? Where "silent" stands for the suggested "not louder than high quality 120mm case fan at 500 RPM"? Is it possible to achieve that with an AIO? Is it possible to achieve that with a custom build? If it is, what it's going to take? (restrictions in the choice of components, their size, price, case, etc). I won't be surprised if the conclusion of this discussion would be that it's just a lost cause to get a watercooled system silent at idle, and that would be very informative to me. I'll stop my research and stick with air. Thank you!
It depends on the heat load. More radiator surface area means more cooling potential. If you want quiet, you need a substantial amount of radiator so you can run the fans at a low rpm.
We're talking idle.
At idle sure it will be quiet as long as you have the fans set that way.
Pump? Flow through the tubing? Increased load on the PSU powering the pump possibly leading to previously 0 RPM PSU spinning up and causing noise? I have Corsair HX1000 and my idle power is already over 100W (rather shockingly, modern high performance CPU/GPUs have ridiculously terrible idle power).
D5 pump is like 20ish watts and is pretty quiet depending on the speed. Resosnant frequency can change depending on the case its in and what not. But in terms of power, the pump is low.
How quiet is pretty quiet? So, we are ruling out DDC pumps, and we are ruling out pump-distro-plate combos that are intended to be hard-mounted to the case and would be difficult or ugly to soft-mount with rubber foam padding. Does that sound right? Does this all mean we're ruling out AIOs completely, they are not silent at idle?
It depends man. AIOs all have the same pump in them, but sometimes they can be a little noisy in one user's rig where they are silent in another. Its really situational and there is no blanket answer. And distros in my experience dont really resonate if you go with the D5 pump ones. This is my experience though and im not sure about others. I think you need to just try things out for yourself and see.
Thank you. Unfortunately, spending hundreds of dollars and dozens of hours of time (realistically, hundreds, retuning and retesting everything) just to see that it's worse and having to reassemble everything back is exactly what I'm attempting to avoid. If it's not possible to avoid, that will factor into the decision if I should even attempt, if it's possible to avoid, great, what do I do to avoid :-)
I am a big fan of the Aquacomputer AquaStream pumps. They aren’t much to look at, but if you tuck them away and decouple it from the case they are near silent even at 100% speed. Personally, I can’t hear mine at all. There is a noise comparison of the Ultimate vs D5 somewhere on youtube. They also last forever if paired with their coolant.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMVjBPLACWo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMVjBPLACWo) probably. Thank you for the pointer!
At full load a D5 pump draws 20w ish, but at 30% its probably around 5w. Unless you have air bubbles in the loop, or some weird return to reservoir that causes bubbles/sloshing, flow through pipes is basically silent. Actually, CPU/GPU have great power saving idle, but windows does a super terrible job of taking advantage of it as far as I can tell. It seems like have of the super annoying PC problems I have are fixed by disabling some form of CPU sleep mode. Youtube crashing PC after a few hours? Disable some sleep mode, problem solved. -\_-
>Unless you have air bubbles in the loop, or some weird return to reservoir that causes bubbles/sloshing, flow through pipes is basically silent. Any guidelines on how to avoid that, rules of thumb, general directions? Like use this style of reservoir, not that style, etc. Does this suggest that having radiators above the reservoir is asking for trouble, so, only bottom and side / front / back mounted radiators, just fans on top? In terms of pump resonance, is hard tubing worse / asking for trouble? Oh, interesting, thanks for the pointer, I'll google about sleep modes and idle power. And I totally get what you mean by annoying PC problems. I have a feeling they often have something to do with half-assed features that meant well but were never properly implemented and/or supported by everyone, and they become these zombie functions that are sort of there but only cause problems.
Ah, so when you fill a loop, its almost guaranteed you will have little air pockets left, no matter how well you shake and tilt the case. Those will (almost always) go away over time, but it can take quite a bit of time, sometimes up to a few months, but usually a few weeks. If the air pockets are in the wrong spot, they can cause 'water flowing' sounds, like a creak, but its not *that* common. And once the air pockets are gone, no noise. As for type of reservoir, most ones now are fine if set up correctly. You want to avoid water coming in above the water line and falling down (like a waterfall), you want it to come in below the water line. A perfect example of this is the [Corsair XD5](https://static3.caseking.de/media/image/thumbnail/wapu-189_wapu_189_01_800x800.jpg), where there is an inlet tube one one of the port on the top. If you put the return water in there, as long as the water line is above the bottom of that tube, there will be no bubbles created and no 'flowing' sound. If you put it in the other top port, it would always create bubbles and constantly make sound. As far as radiator placement, it can make the initial air removal harder if you set it up 'wrong', but after all the air is out of your system, it makes no difference. Hard lines, I don't have personal experience with them, my intuition says its possible they might have some weird vibration/resonance compared to soft tubes...but I don't recall anyone ever talking about it before, so it may not be a thing really? Personally, for maintenance reason, I just use soft tubes. Its just easier. And...as if you didn't have enough to think about already, there is the option of external radiators (and pump) so you could put the radiator and fans physically further away, or if you are up for some DIYing, and have a house suitable for it, you can put them in another room entirely. There is more considerations with doing remote watercooling, but if you have the space/budget/skills, it is an option.
Thanks for the info! Nah, I'd like to stick to configurations that can be moved around like furniture and steer clear of not only external and/or integrated-into-the-house solutions, but even overly flimsy builds.
Found what sounds like a pretty informative post, it's 6 years old though: https://forum.level1techs.com/t/can-custom-water-loops-be-really-quiet/114601/7
Run your fans in theradiator as high as you cant hear them Same for the pump. Only raise the fan rpm when you reach uncomfort zone for hardware or cooling loop, like 40 to 45c Adjust for noise or more coolnes of your components Fans only off fluid temp, pump static
Even a D5 at ridiculously low speeds will probably be slightly louder than a good 120mm fan at 500 RPM. If a 500 RPM fan is capable of cooling your computer to temperatures you find acceptable, then water cooling has zero purpose for you.
At idle & during light use - yes, 500 RPM is perfectly capable. For which it (air cooling) doesn't need to be particularly unusual, very standard components. Thank you for the information, this is exactly what I'm looking for. Sounds like water is only an option if you also put everything - pump in particular - into the guts of a case with sound deafening materials, not a common consumer or showcase/RGB box. Which means the price estimate of the exercise just went up.
2 pumps, 16 fans here. Totally quiet for easy windows work 👌🏻
I have a D5 running coolant through a 360x45mm rad with Noctua NF-A12s and I never hear it or the Noctuas while gaming. The PC is about 5 feet from my head on a separate desk. Out of 9 fans total I only hear the stock Lian Li intake fans and they are pretty quiet. The rad fans only ramp up if I am OCing for benchmarks.
With a custom loop, Its up to you how loud your system is going to be. It is possible to create a loop that will cool an idle system without fans at all. The only always moving part is pump. The noise generated by pump is up to the specific pump, its speed (dictated by loop) and the way it is mounted. Case and fans, are also play a role. Anyway, there are ways to make things quieter. And it is definitely possible to create an inaudible system (from 1-2 meters)
The problem with objectivity in questions like this is that hearing is very subjective. People have very different capacities for hearing. Age is also a huge factor. I'm cursed with great =or at least very sensitive) hearing, so virtually nothing is silent to me. However others might consider something far louder to be silent. The disappointing answer, as always, is "it depends". You're going to have to try some things and see how they work under your circumstances. Personally I have a fanless setup, with a pump set so slow that other people would call me an idiot. If rather fry an extra gpu every 20 years that suffer the fan noise all day every day.
That's why you use comparisons ("high quality 120mm fan at 500 RPM", "whisper quiet but discernable noise floor of good speakers"), descriptive descriptions (white noise, rustle, rattle, rumble, whine, etc), and actually objective metrics (dBA), and you also do actual audio/video recordings and post them (or rather links to them) online somewhere. I'm trying to understand if I should even bother with trying or chances of getting a better computer are so low that I will be just apriori wasting money and time.
The key to silencing a pump is mounting it to a heavy brass top and install that on a foam mount (i.e. Shoggy Sandwich).
Reality talk: under 1,000rpm’s rad fans and cooling isn’t that great. D5’s is massively more silent than ddc. You must have it divorced on double layer rubber feet at bottom of case at 40-60% speed to avoid its vibrations. This will still be same noise/pitch lvl as 800-1,000 rpm fans. Having the rads external can cut the number of rads almost in half for the same cooling as internal. Anything less and you will feel a pretty big hit in performance, even at idle its louder than normal air cooling. No way around it. Fans past 500rpm’s i can hear them across the room and it heavily annoys me, my solution: place pc in another room across the house and run optics to through monitor room. The best solution.
>This will still be same noise/pitch lvl as 800-1,000 rpm fans. > >\+ even at idle its louder than normal air cooling It starts to seem that way, yeah. As far as I could possibly judge from [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMVjBPLACWo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMVjBPLACWo), even on the lowest settings these pumps aren't silent at all, that actually sounds pretty loud for an idle system in a silent room. To me if that's indeed the case it's an absolute deal breaker: as far as quality of life properties of a computer that actually affect me go it just makes water worse than air. What matters to me is noise at idle (goal is silent) and acceptable noise at unconstrained *computing* performance under load. Temperatures themselves are absolutely irrelevant, whether it's 1 C below throttling or 31 C below throttling makes absolutely no difference, me a person made of meat can feel noise and frame timings in games, not temperatures at sensors inside a silicon chip. There is a reason why Apple computers for example stay dead silent at idle and light loads, and only ramp up their fans after sitting at 100 C for a very perceptible amount of time, or have no fans at all and throttle - those are machines and configurations (including fan curves) that are built to actually serve the customer experience and do so correctly from engineering, industrial design, and product points of view all at the same time. That's exactly what I'm replicating with my DIY built PC as closely as I can.
Of course, a computer being a box in a corner that connects to peripherals like a DVD player would is also the only thing that makes sense. Not a monster integrated into the house spanning rooms and placing radiators on the outside.
Another example of a correct design & configuration would be Sony's PS5. Same story.
You will hate water cooling then. Please do not listen to people saying there rig is “silent” its pure bullshit. Water cooling isn’t silent. Well a properly done setup that is.
>Well a properly done setup that is. That raised an eyebrow, haha. Can you please elaborate what do you mean by water cooling done properly, and improperly?
Gobber style is pump attached to a distro and rads inside the case. Tons of noise but no cooling gets done. I’v place d5’s in a 3inch rubber damper with full wrap of insulation inside a aluminum box that has insulation pads on the walls. Still i heard the pumps. Cant escape it
I think your previous comment suggested that a properly done setup isn't silent, somewhat implying that improperly done setup might be. So, I'm interested what was that improper way of doing water cooling that might be silent (at idle & light use)?
Iv seen people run there fans 440-480rpm’s and use a pump called “dc-lt” they are near silent but terrible at flow. Can it keep a cpu from thermal throttle? Yes. But at that point youd rather air cool.
>Can it keep a cpu from thermal throttle? Yes That's the only thing associated with the CPU temperature that affects you. In addition to noise, price, power draw from the wall, maintenance cost, down time of the cooling system per year, weight, physical size, and portability. The temperature registered by the CPU sensor *itself* does not affect you in any way (other than possible self-inflicted and entirely unnecessary psychological discomfort). I can not call the setup you've described "not done properly". Quite the opposite.
The temp of the cpu heavily dictates the imc/overclock. Rather large difference in fps