Noctua D15 vs Dark Rock Pro 3 idle noise

[Lapsio]

Hello. I'll be splitting my primary machine into 2 because I ran out of "everything". My plan is to outsource some of i/o and storage to second machine and connect them using 10g network. I'm more concerned about "storage half" because it's supposed to be semi-standalone and run 24/7. As most of my current hardware will go to this part it's probably gonna use:

 

10x Seagate NAS 2tb + OS/swap ssd + RAID cache SSD

Asus Sabertooth P67

i7-2600K, 4x4gb Kingston HyperX

1000W XFX Black edition PSU (I'm using additional power SATA cables to support up to 16 HDDs so this PSU is rather necessary)

Fractal Define R5 with two factory fans and Noctua Redux 1200 attached to factory rpm adjuster and Noctua Redux 1500 to motherboard

2x2 SATA controllers

gt7300? probably because I have one laying around... maybe I'll get Quadro NVS 300 or something pcie x1 based just to get monitor for troubleshooting.

Xonar D2 soundcard

RS232 bracket

 

System will be running minimal Arch Linux, no gui, nothing, only NFS server and pulseaudio server for audio. The thing is I'm currently using some cheap crappy cooling like Coolermaster Vortex. I'll definitely need to upgrade cooling to make it silent so I can't choose between Dark Rock 3 and Noctua D15. It's gonna mostly run on idle but I sleep in the same room PCs work in so for I wake up with headache every moarning when I need to leave PC working over night to perform some RAID maintenance. It's software btrfs RAID with LVM dm-cache SSD caching.

[TVwazhere]

So, whats the question?

 

Either will be fine. Theyre like 1-2db of eachother 

[onlybuilt4cubanxlinx]

I have the Noctua d15 and I can not hear a thing. It's a amazing cooler. I upgraded from a h55. It's gigantic. The reason I got it is mainly the db level. 

[Kommanche]

I also have the Noctua NH-D15 and can vouch to both it's silence and excellent cooling capacity.

[Brooksie359]

12 minutes ago, TVwazhere said:

So, whats the question?

 

Either will be fine. Theyre like 1-2db of eachother 

Yeah at that point the difference is within the margin of error. I'd say they are both equally silent and OP should pick which one they like better.

[LogicalDrm]

Why are you going for huge cooler if you aren't going to put any stress on systems? You can get same performance on much smaller coolers. Like U12S, or U14S.

[Lapsio]

53 minutes ago, LoGiCalDrm said:

Why are you going for huge cooler if you aren't going to put any stress on systems? You can get same performance on much smaller coolers. Like U12S, or U14S.

Because when I sleep my head is around 2m from PC chassis and this machine needs to run 24/7 as I said. So it needs to be quiet enough for me to sleep next to it when it's idling without getting serious headache. I prefer overkill than hairdryer again. I already tried to make it super quiet on previous upgrade by putting it in R5 and getting Noctua fans for chassis but it didn't help much as now I guess CPU cooler and GPU are so damn loud it's almost impossible to sleep (I have 580 twin frozr and Quadro 4000 GPUs). So the only way I see is to move GPUs to different machine and take something almost passive for CPU.

 

Plus this is my definition of "idle" during RAID scrub which takes around 38h with current RAID and can't be interrupted (btrfs improperly resumes RAID scrubbing after reboot):

 

Thanks everyone for answer

[LogicalDrm]

2 minutes ago, Lapsio said:

Because when I sleep my head is around 2m from PC chassis and this machine needs to run 24/7 as I said. So it needs to be quiet enough for me to sleep next to it when it's idling without getting serious headache. I prefer overkill than hairdryer again. I already tried to make it super quiet on previous upgrade by putting it in R5 and getting Noctua fans for chassis but it didn't help much as now I guess CPU cooler and GPU are so damn loud it's almost impossible to sleep (I have 580 twin frozr and Quadro 4000 GPUs). So the only way I see is to move GPUs to different machine and take something almost passive for CPU.

 

Plus this is my definition of "idle" during RAID scrub which takes around 38h with current RAID and can't be interrupted (btrfs improperly resumes RAID scrubbing after reboot):

You didn't get my point. Only reason to go with huge cooler for just idle or close to idle, would be running it passive. You don't gain anything in idle temps by having bigger air cooler. Thats not how thermodynamics work. So my point was that you could get smaller cooler, lets say U14S which uses same fan with D15, but only 1 fan and its single tower cooler. I have been running one since 2013 and compared it with every idle/low-load temp others have posted. Mine at 40C right now with CPU usage at 7%. And since you can set it to run at 0rpm until it hits like 50C after which 400rpm...

[Lapsio]

59 minutes ago, LoGiCalDrm said:

You didn't get my point. Only reason to go with huge cooler for just idle or close to idle, would be running it passive. You don't gain anything in idle temps by having bigger air cooler. 

But I never said I care about temperatures. What you described in first sentence is more or less what I'm trying to achieve - almost passive or passive cpu cooling. I even considered those full passive basket shaped coolers, but I'm afraid that this CPU would throttle/damage when it'd occasionally hit 100% load as they're advertised more for i5 than i7, especially K series. I don't care about temperatures. Currently on Idle this CPU runs at 65 deg and fan has 800 - 2800 RPM range. I can hear when I'm opening tabs in browser because fan speeds up and it's loud asf... Maybe I'll be running D15 with only 1, inner fan. I don't know yet. But I'm skeptical about silence.