Noisy Dell

garthv

Hey folks,
I bought a Dell Dimension 4600 about 2 years ago,
Its my pride and joy, i keep it well kept and up to date but the one thing that is bothering me is the fan. Lately it has become really noisy, added to the fact that I had a second radiator put into my room last week which makes my room pretty hot cant be good for the machine.

Im thinking of either :

1) Water cooling
Is this possibly with the Dell motherboards and if so wheres a decent cheap kit that you would suggest?

2) Replacing the fan/ Adding another fan
Yet again, is this possible and is there any quiet fans you would suggest?

Cheers in advance

g5hn710m4xpdwy

*IF* it is possible there probably be some modifying involved ;-/ my fan has become very load alot of the time for start up or if the cpu is under usuage but then its just very quite, have u checked tehres no wires touching off it?

Nukem

Heard that the quietes fan you can get is a papst fan-hard to source think it was Wizz or Rosco or one of the other of the nutty professors that had a few.
Real quiet - just replace the fan with a decent type and call it a day i reckon,no point in spending loads

garthv

Flunked : Naa its not the noise of the fan hitting off wires, the machine is just running too hot and the fan is speeding up and creating a lot of noise

Nukem : Yeh was thinking of just replacing the fan, cheers for the advice

conzy

Take the fan out of the PC, peel off the sticker that covers the centre of the fan, pop off the clip take the fan out of the enclousure, get a small brush and some WD-40 clean it, put some WD-40 on the motor. Put it back together, and it will be as quiet if not quieter than the day it was bought;)

And watercooling is to costly, impractical...........for a DELL, unless you want to do it as a project.....

Cuddlesworth

http://www.lecodesign.co.uk/zalman/

Yeah after seeing this id go with changing the fan. Plus get rid of any dust in the heatsink.

sionnach

conzymaher wrote:

Take the fan out of the PC, peel off the sticker that covers the centre of the fan, pop off the clip take the fan out of the enclousure, get a small brush and some WD-40 clean it, put some WD-40 on the motor. Put it back together, and it will be as quiet if not quieter than the day it was bought;)

All fans have a lifespan, this diy cleaning method might keep it running a bit longer but if your fan is dying like Garth's is, it's a much better idea to replace it.

Don't just "go for the quietest fan there is". Depending on your case and system, the quietest fan (nexus fans btw) mightn't push enough air to cool your system adequately. Get a medium quiet fan like a papst or panaflo and undervolt it or use speedfan to slow it down until it's running as slow as it can while maintaining acceptable system temperatures.

conzy

Ok, If you are replacing it, get a reasonably high CFM fan and undervolt it like Sionnach said.

Have a look on ebay, I got 2*120mm and 2*80mm thermaltake fans and a 4channel controller for E30 on ebay

sionnach

don't

get

thermaltake

fans/anything

.....

ever.

There should be a sticky with that in bold as the title >_<

zuma

conzymaher wrote:

Take the fan out of the PC, peel off the sticker that covers the centre of the fan, pop off the clip take the fan out of the enclousure, get a small brush and some WD-40 clean it, put some WD-40 on the motor. Put it back together, and it will be as quiet if not quieter than the day it was bought;)

And watercooling is to costly, impractical...........for a DELL, unless you want to do it as a project.....

I suggest you DONT use WD-40...instead use the sewing machine oil...much better.
I have done some research into oiling fans with WD-40 in the past and have not heard good things about it!

conzy

fans are fans, once they are quiet and move air;)

look at the newegg reviews..........

DemonOfTheFall

I wouldn't really trust newegg reviews TBH. A lot of them are done by absolute muppets.

The only good-ish thermaltake fan seems to be the 130mm one which fits in 120mm mounts. And that's only decent when at 7V, way too loud at anything else. www.silentpcreview.com for some real information. Most other sites seem to have "interesting" definitions of silence/quiet. Any site with a large base of overclockers is likely to call anything quieter than a 100CFM Delta "near silent".

conzy

They come with a 4 channel controller so i will be able to get the best compromise of noise/CFM.

Anyway if you want to replace a 120mm fan with a silent on eget a vantec stealth, they move a reasonable amount of air and it will be as good if not better than the DELL fan;)

garthv

conzymaher : cheers man, oiled and cleaned the fan and its quiet for the moment, think a new fan is in the works soon tho:)

gline

Nukem wrote:

Heard that the quietes fan you can get is a papst fan-hard to source think it was Wizz or Rosco or one of the other of the nutty professors that had a few.
Real quiet - just replace the fan with a decent type and call it a day i reckon,no point in spending loads

papst fans here - www.marxcomputers.ie

good shop to deal with

DemonOfTheFall

Or buy some Yate Loon fans from this guy http://stores.ebay.de/silencio-777

Yate Loons are pretty much the same as twenty-something euro nexus fans, just very slightly faster. If you use a fan controller they're the same thing. About a third the price aswell...

That ebay seller is great to deal with, sound guy and good prices.

EDIT: I have 1x140mm , 5x120mm and 1x92mm Yate Loons coming from him in the next day or too, all the low speed models. I'll update with how quiet they are and how much air they push. I reckon the 140mm will be a bit of a beast :cool:

DemonOfTheFall

Well I got those Yate Loons in the post today. Have to say they are ridiculously quiet fans.

Couldn't really test them with my PC off since I wasn't arsed to go poking around with power bricks and pieces of wire, but I did stop the other fans in the PC first. Just had these trailing out of the case and sitting on top.

Theres a slight bit of motor tick off the 92mm at 12v but I think you'd be very hard pushed to hear it in a closed case. I think it might be from a knock I gave it by accident anyway. At 7v, good luck hearing it. If you put your ear right up to it all you can hear is moving air, the fan itself makes no noise. It doesn't move very much air though, theres no way I could replace the zalman 92mm on my heatsink without having to crank down my overclock a little bit.

The 120mm has no motor noise that I could hear. It was quieter and moved more air at 12v than my Antec fans do at 7v. At 7v it still pushed a tiny bit of air and was pretty much impossible to hear.

The 140mm beast is rated to push the same amount as the 120mm but at lower rpm, I'd say they were spot on. The 140 is hard to hear unless you put your ear right to it at 12v and in my opinion makes pretty much no sound at all at 7v (other than moving air of course).

All of this testing was done outside a case, so they'll all obviously make a little bit more noise when the air is being pushed through a fan grill or a heatsink.

I'd definitely recommend these for a quiet PC. Probably not for your heatsink if you have to cool a hot processor and want to overclock though.

Heres a terrible picture to show just how big the 140 is...

sadway

Hi, My dell dimension 4600 is also 2 years old and the fan has become very loud too. I have looked at the specifications of the fan at www.nidec.com. It is a Nidec Beta V TA 350 DC Model M35105-57 12V DC 1.8 A 21.6 Watts. At 5700 rpm the noise is 53.7 dBA when moving 130 CFM. This fan is very powerfull and very loud. We also have a very quiet Dell Dimension 8400 with exactly the same fan. The big difference is the amount and temperature of the air leaving the fan. For some reason the Dimension 4600 increases the speed of the fan although the air leaving the fan is not hot at all. Does anybody know why this happens? Thanks anyway.