i currently run the Noctua NH-9UDO A3 at full speed...
i upgraded one of the fans on the Noctuas to the newer higher speed A9 PWM fans that run at 2000 rpm... for a tad better cooling as well.
these: http://noctua.at/en/products/fan/nf-a9-pwm.html
the 3 fans behind the drive cage and the 3 fans at the rear are run at low speeds with the fan controller. Some run faster than others (i found that running some faster actually hurt cooling instead of helping). There is an additional SuperMicro GPU style fan at the rear that i added as well.
Replacing the passive coolers with the Noctuas will really help reduce the noise... as you can run the internal and external fans slower. The Noctuas are very quiet... however they are not capable of keeping this rig under 60C when i overclock past 3 Ghz (these days i run 16 of the cores at 3.4GHz and the rest at 1.7 Ghz, and set thread affinity to the faster cores for my commonly run apps).
Of course as with all things in life YMMV.
hope this helps.
PS: if you want to know how it sounds like watch this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppvOUAVrHfQ
At the beginning where i am talking... that is what it normally sounds like. The sensivity on the camera mic starts to adjust as i stop talking and the benchmark commences... and it makes the fans seem loud... but they sound like what they sound like at the beginning of the video.
i upgraded one of the fans on the Noctuas to the newer higher speed A9 PWM fans that run at 2000 rpm... for a tad better cooling as well.
these: http://noctua.at/en/products/fan/nf-a9-pwm.html
the 3 fans behind the drive cage and the 3 fans at the rear are run at low speeds with the fan controller. Some run faster than others (i found that running some faster actually hurt cooling instead of helping). There is an additional SuperMicro GPU style fan at the rear that i added as well.
Replacing the passive coolers with the Noctuas will really help reduce the noise... as you can run the internal and external fans slower. The Noctuas are very quiet... however they are not capable of keeping this rig under 60C when i overclock past 3 Ghz (these days i run 16 of the cores at 3.4GHz and the rest at 1.7 Ghz, and set thread affinity to the faster cores for my commonly run apps).
Of course as with all things in life YMMV.
hope this helps.
PS: if you want to know how it sounds like watch this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppvOUAVrHfQ
At the beginning where i am talking... that is what it normally sounds like. The sensivity on the camera mic starts to adjust as i stop talking and the benchmark commences... and it makes the fans seem loud... but they sound like what they sound like at the beginning of the video.
I have scored (at 800$, more of a steal, i think) myself one of those as well:
- Supermicro H8QG6-F
- 4x 6274 with passive coolers
- Supermicro SC748 chassis w/2 redudant 1400W powersupplies
- 16 dimms x 8 Gb each
and I must say: the loudness overrides the nice points. Boinc is chugging along nicely, running 16 MCM1 tasks @ about 5 hours 30 minutes each. That is the same time as a dual X5650 Xeon system. It won't download more tasks at the moment, both CEP2 and UGM1 complain about 'transient HTTP errors'.
Do I read correctly that better CPU coolers (Noctua NH-9UD0) and a fan-controller on the existing fans are enough to bring the noiselevel down? Did you do anything with the fans behind the drivecage inside? This system will move to my office, so it needn't be absolutlely silent, but right now even the bios option Balanced gives a lot of noise.
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