Proper Orientation for Case Fans, Want to blow the heat out, the right way Options

[Achillesjg]

I've recently been playing Diablo 3, and my GTX570's fan has been spinning audibly, to the annoyance of my wife who sits right next to my system. I've been concerned that my case fans haven't been oriented correctly, and was hoping for someone with a bit more experience to let me know if they're set up correctly, before I take a plunge and buy a newer GTX670 or GTX680 (as I hear they run more quietly)

I have a full tower case, with 2 fans in front of the hard drive bays at the front of the case, near the bottom. I have these sucking air into the case (they are 1500rpm, fyi). The bottom one is blowing air over the top of the hard drives.
I have a fan at the back of the case, near the top, blowing air out of the case.
Additionally, I have a Noctua Heatsink/Fans set up, and I have it pointed at another fan at the back of the case, which is also blowing air out.
Lastly, I have the power supply mounted in the bottom ot the case, with it's fan pointed at the floor, blowing air out.

My cable management is reasonably good, and there are no real obstructions, nor is there any significant dust build up on any of the components.

Any advice would be appreciated.

[Xen]

I've recently been playing Diablo 3, and my GTX570's fan has been spinning audibly, to the annoyance of my wife who sits right next to my system. I've been concerned that my case fans haven't been oriented correctly, and was hoping for someone with a bit more experience to let me know if they're set up correctly, before I take a plunge and buy a newer GTX670 or GTX680 (as I hear they run more quietly)

I have a full tower case, with 2 fans in front of the hard drive bays at the front of the case, near the bottom. I have these sucking air into the case (they are 1500rpm, fyi). The bottom one is blowing air over the top of the hard drives.
I have a fan at the back of the case, near the top, blowing air out of the case.
Additionally, I have a Noctua Heatsink/Fans set up, and I have it pointed at another fan at the back of the case, which is also blowing air out.
Lastly, I have the power supply mounted in the bottom ot the case, with it's fan pointed at the floor, blowing air out.

My cable management is reasonably good, and there are no real obstructions, nor is there any significant dust build up on any of the components.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Sounds about right, pull in the bottom, blow out the top.

The Annoying sound is either the interferance you find with some fan's, (i've found the scythe typhoon fans don't have this as much.)

Or it's just the wind rushing over something, anything... it could be the most tiny thing and it will make noise, usually with this ill go nuts with my dremel
and clean up all possible sources of where the air may be hitting.

The fan's on GFX cards are little whiney things that seem to gain an annoying pitch after a short while, when this happens i usually pull the card apart whack on some arctic silver on the core whilst its open and WD-40 the fan bearing.

If your fine with cutting and pulling stuff apart have a look at those options.

[Achillesjg]

Thanks for the reply, Xen. I really appreciate you taking the time.

Just to clarify, though, the only time the fan becomes audible on the video card are when I run any one of three programs.

1: Diablo 3 - Probably because I run at 2550x1440 resolution, while running two monitors;
2: (Of all things) Age of Empires Online - for the same reason as above (Noise disappeared after I tweaked a few setting down);
and 3: Power DVD to watch Blu Rays on one screen, and always when playing World of Warcraft on the other.

In saying all of the above, I don't think it's an issue with airflow, just the card fan ramping up speed to dissipate heat caused by running it closer to its full throttle. What I'm trying to do is make sure I've done all I can to make the video card as cool as possible, short of sticking it into the refrigerator, or sending it to Greenland.

[Xen]

Thanks for the reply, Xen. I really appreciate you taking the time.

Just to clarify, though, the only time the fan becomes audible on the video card are when I run any one of three programs.

1: Diablo 3 - Probably because I run at 2550x1440 resolution, while running two monitors;
2: (Of all things) Age of Empires Online - for the same reason as above (Noise disappeared after I tweaked a few setting down);
and 3: Power DVD to watch Blu Rays on one screen, and always when playing World of Warcraft on the other.

In saying all of the above, I don't think it's an issue with airflow, just the card fan ramping up speed to dissipate heat caused by running it closer to its full throttle. What I'm trying to do is make sure I've done all I can to make the video card as cool as possible, short of sticking it into the refrigerator, or sending it to Greenland.

Ahh ok, not really much you can do in that case.

Add more fan's to cool the card and you just offset the sound with some more sound.

You could always replace the cooler with some huge ass near passive cooler, but if you are replacing it soon it will be better and cheaper to just replace it possibly upgrading the card cooling at the same time.

Another option is to buy noise cancelling headphones... it helps with the noise from the fans and the noise from the wife too.

[Achillesjg]

Hehehe, a good call, but she's the one that's annoyed by the noise, not me. And if I buy her a set of Noise Cancelling Headphones, she'll have another reason to ignore me!


Now, having said all of the above, does anyone know if the GTX670 is actually more quiet than the GTX570?

This post has been edited by Achillesjg: Jun 13 2012, 02:27 PM

[Harmonic Cacopho...]

You could get a fan/temp management program like EVGA Precision and change your GPU fan to not ramp so quickly. I find my 570 will get loud before it gets particularly hot. So changing it to run hotter and quieter is an easy solution.

I wanted the fan to go less than 30% speed though which it wouldn't let me do. Need to use a custom BIOS or whatever to do that and I couldn't be bothered.

[A Hitman]

my GTX570's fan has been spinning audibly, to the annoyance of my wife

Sounds like the only solution is water cooling!

[aliali]

my GTX570's fan has been spinning audibly, to the annoyance of my wife

Sounds like the only solution is water cooling!

Or fit a decent cooler to the GFX card.
If yours has a cooler like

then it is going to be noisy as the card heats up.
I use the older version of http://www.arctic.ac/en/p/cooling/vga/375/...-ii.html?c=2182
on my HD 5870 and it seems to nicely reduce the fan noise levels.

[Achillesjg]

Thanks again for all the advice guys!

I'll move my query on the GTX570 vs the GTX670 to the GPU forum.

[Modz]

my GTX570's fan has been spinning audibly, to the annoyance of my wife

Sounds like the only solution is water cooling!

i had the same issue in my old antec auper lanboy case, as it wasnt designed for current high end cards or sli setups i had to mod in 2 side fans that push air directly onto the cards. this solution worked and now they run 15-20 degrees cooler underload. which was the difference between annoying and barely audible.

[GhostFaceKilla]

my old antec auper lanboy case

I had one of them. Great case. One of the best Ive ever owned. Really kicking myself I chucked it out but it was few years old and had a few dings. And as you note, couldnt fit todays massive cards. But yeah great case. from Antec - one of the best. If they did an updated version (still aluminum) that was simialr in style (the new 'lanboy' is ridiculous) I would buy in a flash. The first lanboy case was good as well.


Just a note to the OP - when talking about a topic such as yours it would be great if you could tell us the actual make/model of the case :-) All cases are different with different configurable and moddable options :-) Most of us the forums here have intimate knowledge of most of the decent cases on the market. Kinda moot now as it is your graphics card.

This post has been edited by GhostFaceKilla: Jun 17 2012, 01:59 PM