H80i fan replacement

TorqueS · April 23, 2017

Hey guys!

So, a little bit of back story. About 2, 3 years ago I bought an H80i, to cool my FX-8350. It does a fantastic job at that. Now, back then I was living in a rathere noisy environment so the PC was barely audible over anything else, and since I didn't use to game at night noise didn't bother me. I have since moved and kinda became obsessed with silence. The only thing that is noisy in my PC now are those damned SP120L.

I have set a fan curve for them, between 900 and around 1200RPM. At 900 they're ok, although the performance is not stellar.

At 1200, oh boy, they become quite nasty and irritating. There's a distinguishable "grrrrrrrr" coming from them.

Now, I thought about replacing them and the first two things that came to my mind were Noctua's NF F12s and Corsairs SP120(non L).

All I want is to run them at about 1200-1500RPM. I have found a thread on Corsair's forum, where people have reportedly said normal SP120s are better.

What do you say? And for all intents and purposes I am open to other solutions.

Thanks in advance,

Lawrence.

docbaily · April 23, 2017

I can't recommend the NF-F12s enough if noise level is what you really care about. I currently have 4 machines in my office; two are 100% noctua fans (7 140mm fans & 5 120mm fans), one has a couple of 80mm noctua fans, and the fourth has 7 SP-120s, two of which only run when the GPU tells them (Asus Strix card). The machine with all of the Corsair fans is the loudest at idle even against the other machines that have all fans running at the same time. Don't get me wrong the SP-120s are excellent fans; they're just louder. If you're looking to make your system quieter, go for the NF-F12.

LTT introduced me to Noctua, and I'm a fan for life.

TorqueS · April 23, 2017

So, technically, I can keep the NF-F12s roughly at max speed and they'd still be quieter than the stock SP120Ls at 1200?

docbaily · April 23, 2017

My experience has been that NF-F12s are quieter at full speed than the SP-120s. What kind of temperatures are you getting with the H80i and the SP-120?