Quietest cpu coolers?

[elfergos]

Looking to make an extremely quiet build. Which are quieter, liquid coolers or air coolers for a gen 4 i7?

 

[antishill]

Any cooler can be quiet if you get rid of the fans. The biggest source of noise is the fans, it doesn't matter if it is air or water. The water cooling has the water pump noise too, but the fans blowing thru the radiators will be much louder in comparison.

 

[dudmont]

Are you running a K series chip? If you are, are you going to be overclocking? What are you running for a case? Is that case running the stock fans or have you swapped the fans for others?
In general, liquid or air is only sort of relevant. Size/make of the fans that you're running matters, as does load/task, and how much air flow your case is developing. How you set up your fans matters as well. Putting together a quiet build is a holistic endeavor.

 

[antishill]

To get quiet cooling, you want quiet fans. I have been using the cougar fans:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008N323U6/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://cougargaming.com/us/products/fans/vortex_pwm_fan/

Those fans will do 70 CFM at less than 20 db which is really good. Anyone know a better fan, I am always interested, please advise.

When the system is idle, or if I am just web browsing, working on documents, coding etc. they are basically silent. The fan noise I do hear at load is the GPU fans when I am gaming. The fans that gets packaged with coolers I find are usually lacking in one or the other or both (performance/air flow or quiet).

 

[jr9]

I've done a few "quiet" builds using the Be Quiet CPU air coolers and they have great performance and run silent. Noctua also makes great quiet coolers.

- Be Quiet Dark Rock Pro 3
- Be Quiet Pure Rock (150W) (smaller) (I use this cooler myself)
- Noctua NH-D15
- Noctua NH-D14

The bigger the cooler, the slower and quieter the fans are. These can handle overclocking as well. Big air coolers outlast AIO liquid coolers and offer performance just as good.