Few fans or many slow fans for silence?

[AshesAndWool]

I am building in a fractal design define r6 case because I am making a computer for audio production where silent operation is very important. This case has room for my 280mm AIO water cooler in the front as an intake, but it also has room for 2x 140 mm fans in the bottom as intake, 2x 140mm fans in top as exhaust and 1x 140mm fan in the back as an exhaust. Now originally I just wanted to do my radiator with two 140 fans in the front and one 140 fan in the exhaust to keep a balanced air pressure slightly leaning towards positive to avoid sucking dust through cracks. (The radiator adds resistance to the two fans in the front to balance them a tiny bit). Now what I realized was that I could achieve the same air pressure although slightly more balanced by filling out every fan slot in the case which I think in theory would allow me to run them slower with less noise. I have seen people like Jayztwocents building his pc with like 12+ fans just to run them slowly and appearently getting very quiet results.

So my question is: does the noise reduction of running fans slower counteract the increase in noise from adding more fans to the point where more slow fans = more silent system?

[HanZie82]

Want quiet operation make sure you have high quality pumps, cus you WILL hear those. And every fan adds to the noise.
You're looking for efficiency. I would advise a big aircooler with 1 slow fan. And then 1 intake and maybe an outtake fan. Thats it.

Also i think its more the fan itself then the amount that would contribute to noise or not. If you have good fans with minimum of noise you can add a lot before you hear it. Just like pumps, you want high quality.

Personally ive found AIO not be silent as a good aircooler can be. Since with AIO you're just putting something in front of the fan to make it work harder and add a noisy pump.

This is my 2cents. Sorry if its useless. But i tried.

 

 

(Ps, im using a Scythe Ninja 5 and even on 70% fan speeds its so silent that you have to put your ear against it to hear it.)

[Juular]

You can also add\move two fans to the AIO in push-pull config. I have Phanteks P400A with R7 3700X mining 24\7 (~100W package power) under 280mm AIO (1000RPM on the pump) in push-pull, all other fan slots are occupied too and all fans set to minimal RPMs possible (300-500), i don't hear anything except HDD head darting around, ~50° C dT on CPU. Fans are NB eLoop on AIO and be quiet! SW3 everywhere else.

[Juular]

Keep in mind that you don't necessarily need an AIO because a pump contributes to noise too neither you necessarily need to occupy all fan slots because the more of them the more vibration they introduce to the case frame and there may be interference making them louder than they are. You just need to find a setup that will work for you. If it's solely audio production rig then all you need are some quiet but powerful cooler like Scythe Fuma 2 and a couple of case fans on intake set to ~500 RPM to have some positive airflow.

[ravenshrike]

Two sources of sound of the same noise level causes less than a 2 dB increase. The scale is logarithmic, not linear.

[WoodenMarker]

Specs? How much cooling is required determines what fan count / rpm options are feasible.