Antec P183 not as silent as expected?

[ricno]

I have recently bought and assembled a new system, which included the case Antec P183. One of my goals for the build was to have a quiet computer.

However the overall sound level is a bit higher than I expected, and I did suspect the CPU or GPU fans at first, but after doing some testing with stoping the fans with my fingers and listen to the changes I noticed that most of the noice seems to come from the top fan. In the chassi there is two builtin 120mm fans, one at the back and one at the top. The backend fan does not seem to produce the same amount of sound, but I am not really sure.

The PSU and CPU fans are virtual noiceless and the GPU fan is just a little higher.
If I stop four fans (cpu, gpu and both case) manualy the whole system is very very silent, but when releasing the top one the noice goes up. Both case fans are set to low speed.

However, since Antec really pushes for this case to be very quiet it seems a bit strange to me that it sounds so much.

Is there anything I can do or is there anything that could be wrongly setup by me while assembling the build?

 

[svensson78]

Thanks for the input!
I've not decided yet which fans I should go for so any input is welcome.

I've looked quickly at reviews of Scythe Gentle Typhoons fans and they seem to be positive and appears to be very good value for money.

However, has anyone tested the 1450 fan?
I'm not sure if I should go for the 1450 or 1150rpm version (or maybe 1150 as top fan and 1450 at the back of my P183 case ?).

 

[ricno]

I've not decided yet which fans I should go for so any input is welcome.

Have you looked at the Akasa Apaches mentioned above? They seems to be good and even if they are at 189 Kr it is not really not much money. (At least is that what I think after spending a lot on the whole computer...)

I am also thinking about getting one or two new fans. When I had the top one disabled I noticed a slight increase of the CPU temperature, but my CPU fan seems to be very good and no noice was added. The GPU temperature and fan did not increase, at least not when just running non-graphic intensive stuff that I tried.

The GPU seems by the way to be a little noicy unfortunaly. I hope it will be okey anyway when lowering the case sounds with new fans.

 

[WR2]

Which video card did you end up getting?
Have you thought about changing the video card fan speed? With the right software you can make a fan profile to run slower than stock setting and then run faster if the GPU starts to heat up.
Look into MSI Afterburner

 

[WR2]

OK, just noticed in HWMonitor its a 5770. Did you get one of the full shroud versions?

 

[ricno]

Which video card did you end up getting?

It is indeed a HD5770 as you noticed. I did some asking around at the GPU part of the forum and was recommended both 5750 and 5770. As I will not do much gaming on this build I was probably going to be more than okey with the 5750, but when buying I noticed a 5770 at the same price so I got that one.

Perhaps it was unwise if the 5770 is more fan intensive than the 5750. Is it reasonable that there would be a difference between those?

The GPU I bought is a XFX Radeon HD5770 XT 1GB. The product at the link looks the same, but there is a very small difference in the manufacturers ID. On the page it is HD-577X-ZNFC and mine is HD-577X-ZNEA. Do not know if that changes anything.

Have you thought about changing the video card fan speed? With the right software you can make a fan profile to run slower than stock setting and then run faster if the GPU starts to heat up.
Look into MSI Afterburner

That seems interesting. I did some checking before with the Catalyst control panel, but could not find the possability to lower the fan rate. From what I have observed it is always at 35%, what ever that means.

I will take a look at the MSI afterburner. Does it matter which graphic board brand you actually have? From a quick look at the link you supplied I belive it should work for both ATI and nVidea based cards, and hopefully to other manufacturers than MSI?

 

[WR2]

Depending on the make and model of 5750/5770 it looks like there could be as much as 5dBA idle difference between cards. It's not just a function of the 5750 or 5770 but a difference in how the MFGRs set up their hardware. I saw 5770s quieter than some 5750s.

I know we had talked about the HIS 5750 IceQ+ and it's reputation for being a quieter card. And I expected the P183 case to perform a bit better than it seems to be doing and help mute the sound of a video card. It's 20/20 hindsight now but maybe a fanless 5750 would have been a good choice for you. PowerColor HD 5750 Go! Green

If the fan speed is already as low as 35% on idle you probably won't improve things greatly by lowering it more. But it's worth testing - just keep an eye out on the GPU temps.
MSI Afterburner should work your on XFX 5770 without a problem.

 

[svensson78]

Have you looked at the Akasa Apaches mentioned above? They seems to be good and even if they are at 189 Kr it is not really not much money. (At least is that what I think after spending a lot on the whole computer...)

I've looked at it but I think I prefer a single speed fan to a PWM one.
One reason is that the ones which I'm replacing are not PWM and another is that I'm not sure how good and if my motherboard support PWM (I've got a Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3 motherboard).

Looking at the specs, the 1150 rpm Scythe Gentle Typhoons has more airflow than the original Tri-cool fan at low ( 63 compared with 39 CFM) , so I'll think I'll go for that option for both of my fans.

 

[svensson78]

My misstake!
The CFM values in my post above should say:

Looking at the specs, the 1150 rpm Scythe Gentle Typhoons has about the same airflow as the original Tri-cool fan at low ( 37 compared with 39 CFM) , so I'll think I'll go for that option for both of my fans.

 

[WR2]

Did I get these price & performance values correct?
Scythe Gentle Typhoon 140kr: 1150 rpm / 37 CFM / 16 dBA
Scythe S-FLEX SFF21D 197kr: 800 rpm / 33.5 CFM / 8.7 dBA

 

[WR2]

I found this note when I was checking some of the sound levels in video cards:
"it is generally accepted that a 10 dbA increase doubles the perceived sound level"
I think that would mean the Scythe Gentle Typhoon is about 50% quieter than the Antec Tri-Cool on it's lowest setting.

 

[ricno]

I've looked at it but I think I prefer a single speed fan to a PWM one.
One reason is that the ones which I'm replacing are not PWM and another is that I'm not sure how good and if my motherboard support PWM (I've got a Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3 motherboard).

I ordered two Akasa Apache fans yesterday. I have good hope they will work at fine.

If comparing with the Antec Tri-cool fans at lowest settings:

RPM: 1200
Air Flow: 39
Noise Level: 25

Akasa Apache at MAX:

RPM: 1300
Air Flow: 57
Noise level: 16 dBA

So the Apache at the highest RPM is still much lower noise level than the Antec (and with better cooling.) I do also think I will be allright with a much lower RPM to still get a good cooling, but with a lower sound. The lowest RPM of the Akasa is 600 at only 7 dBA.

My motherboard is a ASUS P7P55D-E LX, which has two 4pins connectors at the board for chassis fans, and there is settings in the BIOS for enabling what ASUS calls Q-fan and several fan profiles like silent or standard.

I hope I will be able to pick them up tomorrow and try them out.

 

[ricno]

I got the fans yesterday and installed them. A small surprise was that my motherboard did not have two 4-pin case fan connectors, but one 3-pin and one 4-pin. I did connect both fans anyway, putting the top one on the 4-pin and the back one on the 3-pin. The reason was both that the top fan has been making most noise and that the length of the cables did this the only possible way.

The result is very good! The new fans are almost completly soundless and the overall noise from the computer is very greatly reduced.

The fan on the 3-pin connector seems in fact very silent too and not run at a high RPM even if not motherboard controlled.

The noice that remains now is from the graphic card fan and when using the MSI Afterburner and set the fan from 35% to 25% it also goes to such low sound level that is not a problem. I must only find out a way to autostart it with Windows now. At the moment I will have to to logon and accept the Win 7 UAC warning, then the sound goes down. Hopefully that will be able to fix also.

Svensson78, have you bought any fans yet?

 

[ricno]

Best answer selected by ricno.