Looking for quietest cooler

[eimantas13]

Hello, I am planning to build a new system and I am looking for the most quiet CPU cooler. The CPU I have is Ryzen 2700x and my case is Silverstone sugo sg 13. Which fan should I get? Air cooler or maybe single fan water cooler? Which one would be more quite? P. S. I am not planning to overclock my CPU. 

[Bombastinator]

My personal experience is that at low watts air is quieter than water.  As watts increases though air gets louder and requires larger and larger coolers.  A point is reached that water becomes quieter.

The 2700x comes with a small air cooler which as long as you don’t overclock your CPU or live in an area with high ambient heat should work just fine.   Your GPU will probably make more noise.  That cpu has no apu so you’re going to need some sort of graphics card.

[seklas]

33 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

The 2700x comes with a small air cooler which as long as you don’t overclock your CPU or live in an area with high ambient heat should work just fine. 

That is true, but with small builds which are kept on a desk etc. you want the quietest cooler you can get when it's idling or doing something little. Obviously when you game or do some intense work, all fans will ramp up so the GPU will end up being louder than the CPU cooler, however when it's doing little work, the GPU typically doesn't spin its fans at all, so the CPU fan being louder will be audible, which could be minimised by going with a better quieter fan/radiator setup.

 

With water coolers the loudest part usually tends to be the pump when the system is quiet, fans aren't very noticeable at all at slow speeds. But a single fan AIO will have to work harder than a double AIO, so it would produce more noise.

[Bombastinator]

25 minutes ago, seklas said:

That is true, but with small builds which are kept on a desk etc. you want the quietest cooler you can get when it's idling or doing something little. Obviously when you game or do some intense work, all fans will ramp up so the GPU will end up being louder than the CPU cooler, however when it's doing little work, the GPU typically doesn't spin its fans at all, so the CPU fan being louder will be audible, which could be minimised by going with a better quieter fan/radiator setup.

 

With water coolers the loudest part usually tends to be the pump when the system is quiet, fans aren't very noticeable at all at slow speeds. But a single fan AIO will have to work harder than a double AIO, so it would produce more noise.

With air  multiple fans only may produce more noise.  The deal with fans is if a fan is below a given rpm (which varies by fan design and size) it will be very close to silent.  What a multi fan cooler does is reduce the amount of work a fan does which sometimes drop fan speeds below that number so even if there are two fans they are quieter than if there is one fan working harder.  So multiple fans are sometimes useful for air coolers but not all the time.

 

with water there is one fan for each section of the cooler, and a pump.  the pump runs regardless so there is a minimum amount of noise from the pump, (which can be louder than a quiet fan all by itself) but the fans have to do less work so they tend to be quieter.  So for very high heat situations a water system may be quieter en total because even though they have a higher base amount of noise that noise goes up more slowly.  So higher minimum but lower maximum.

 

A non overclocked 2700x with a stock cooler will produce very very little noise on idle or light load.  Less noise than a water cooler would at idle because the pump has to be running at least a little even if the fans don’t need to spin.

 

There are passive coolers with no fans at all too.  They tend to be very very large and require some sort of case fan or a special case designed to use heat convection instead of a fan.

 

My personal suspicion is that the stock cooler will work fine for you.  If it turns out to be too loud, a small to mid sized air cooler with a larger diameter fan may work well for you.  I can’t see how an AIO water cooler could do anything except increase noise in your situation.

[SolarNova]

2 hours ago, eimantas13 said:

Hello, I am planning to build a new system and I am looking for the most quiet CPU cooler. The CPU I have is Ryzen 2700x and my case is Silverstone sugo sg 13. Which fan should I get? Air cooler or maybe single fan water cooler? Which one would be more quite? P. S. I am not planning to overclock my CPU. 

Anything from Noctua will essentially be the quietest possible.

 

The NH-U12A is a single tower with 2x NF-A12x25 fans , i run 8 of those fans myself ..at 1000 RPM they are dead silent.

For roughly the same price however, if u have the height required, u can get the NH-D15 which is a dual tower cooler with 2x NF-A15 140mm fans. They are also very quiet.

[Bombastinator]

4 minutes ago, SolarNova said:

Anything from Noctua will essentially be the quietest possible.

 

The NH-U12A is a single tower with 2x NF-A12x25 fans , i run 8 of those fans myself ..at 1000 RPM they are dead silent.

This is probably overkill.  You’re not wrong though.

[freeagent]

There is one that is slightly quieter:

 

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/thermalright-le-grand-macho/7.html

[Bombastinator]

I personally suggest setting it up with the stock cooler and trying it first.  You may find that you can’t hear the cooler anyway.  If it is still annoying, putting in an aftermarket cooler remains possible.