Completely silent loop possible? (especially the pump)

[Maverik5124]

Currently my setup is completely silent. I have replaced all spinning HDDs with SSDs a long time ago and all fans are Noctua NF-A12x25 spinning at 400 rpm. Other fans sometimes had a little bit of clicking from the motor when running at slow speeds.

 

This is to give you a reference as to the noise level (or lack thereof) I want to achieve.

 

From your personal experience, is it possible to get a D5 or a DDC down to inaudible levels with PWM control? Or will there always be some amount of noise coming from them? I have had an AIO for a short amount of time and even when turning that pump down to the bare minimum that it would start at, it was still audible.

 

Flow and cooling are not a concern. I am fine with a bit of noise once I actually put some load on my PC while gaming. So I will regulate the pump and fans with a curve. I want it to be completely silent while browsing though.

[Zando_]

So long as there's no bubbles in the loop (usually work their way out in a few days), a D5 with the anti-vibration mounts is really quiet, and I run mine at max RPM. I'd assume you could get one nigh inaudible even without fan noise to cover it up. Speaking of which, HardwareLabs makes a bunch of their rads specifically built for sub-800rpm fans, so you probably wouldn't need to ramp the fans even under load.

You will have to hope you lucked out and got a GPU with no coil whine/buzz though. Both my Radeon VII and now 2060 Super audibly buzz/buzzed on waterblocks, since there's no fan noise to cover it up. That's only under higher GPU load though, heavier compute stuff or full gaming load though. 

[Nathanpete]

You can make an AIO quieter by having the tubes downwards or having the rad top-mounted. I know this is reciting the famous GN video, but I have been a serious fan of them and actually watched and understood the video in its entirety. Having tubes mounted on top can cause some pump whine or gurgle noises, but can be eliminated by making sure air is out of the pump by having the AIO's tubes on the bottom. 

[Rybo]

In my experience (2 custom loops in the past year), there will always be some noise.  The main benefit noise-wise of custom water cooling loops is that baseline noise you hear is pretty much it.  The fans never have to ramp up because the system is so efficient.  So you'll always hear that low level hum, but you'll pretty much never hear anything more than that.  

PS: One of my water cooled systems is sitting about 8 feet from me.  I can't hear it.  If you want to eliminate noise completely, that might be an option (though I recognize that it'd be a difficult and weird option to exercise)

[LIGISTX]

D5 with rubber isolator is extremely quiet. I can’t hear my pump at all with the side panel on. I run my pump at 1500 rpm at idle, and my fans at 600, also noctua, 140 mm. It’s dead quiet at idle as I turn all fans off except my top rad fans when at idle which means d5 at 1500 rpm, 3 140 fans at 600rpm. As the GPU warms up and hits 45c, pump ramps up, fans ramp up, front rad fans start to spin 2x120 as intake), rear (intake) and bottom (intake) start to spin as well and they all ramp up with GPU temp.

 

I control all by the GPU because I have no use case that will dump more heat into the system then just the top 420 rad with 600rpm can handle, especially given the water volume to act as a buffer, larger water volume = more stable temps and much slower temp rise of the liquid. My loop has a bit more than 1/3 gallon of water in it. The only thing I do that can get water temps to start rising in any meaningful way is gaming for 30 minutes +. With both CPU and GPU dumping heat into the system, the top fans at 600 are not enough. So all of them spinning at ~900 is the sweet spot for low (almost inaudible) noise, and maintain GPU under 50c and CPU under 60ish.

 

TLDR; yes. It’s possible. Not cheap, but possible. If you want dead silent, they make cases with integrated heat pipes that run to very large heat sinks built into the case, no fans needed. But this would only be for a relatively low power build; a buddy had a Ryzen quad core in such a case, works great! And used an external power supply that also has no fan.

[Maverik5124]

18 minutes ago, Rybo said:

In my experience (2 custom loops in the past year), there will always be some noise.  The main benefit noise-wise of custom water cooling loops is that baseline noise you hear is pretty much it.  The fans never have to ramp up because the system is so efficient.  So you'll always hear that low level hum, but you'll pretty much never hear anything more than that.  

PS: One of my water cooled systems is sitting about 8 feet from me.  I can't hear it.  If you want to eliminate noise completely, that might be an option (though I recognize that it'd be a difficult and weird option to exercise)

That's what I was thinking. Under load water cooling will be quieter than air cooling. But when idleing the pump still needs to run.

 

6 minutes ago, LIGISTX said:

TLDR; yes. It’s possible. Not cheap, but possible. If you want dead silent, they make cases with integrated heat pipes that run to very large heat sinks built into the case, no fans needed. But this would only be for a relatively low power build; a buddy had a Ryzen quad core in such a case, works great! And used an external power supply that also has no fan.

No need for passive cooling. My NF-A12x25 at 400rpm-600rpm are fine for idle and also fine to ramp up a bit under load. It's the pump at idle that I am concerned about.

 

The AIO I had and ran at minimum spin up speed of the pump had this barely noticeable humm from the motor (not bubbles). It was most obvious when turning off the computer or unplugging the pump for a second and it's suddenly gone.

[LIGISTX]

11 minutes ago, Maverik5124 said:

That's what I was thinking. Under load water cooling will be quieter than air cooling. But when idleing the pump still needs to run.

 

No need for passive cooling. My NF-A12x25 at 400rpm-600rpm are fine for idle and also fine to ramp up a bit under load. It's the pump at idle that I am concerned about.

 

The AIO I had and ran at minimum spin up speed of the pump had this barely noticeable humm from the motor (not bubbles). It was most obvious when turning off the computer or unplugging the pump for a second and it's suddenly gone.

D5 with rubber isolator is pretty damn quiet. 

[AnonymousGuy]

Yeah you can get a 12V D5 pump down to inaudible levels without that much difficultly or insulation required.  Especially with vario/PWM you can dial it back to be inaudible unless your head is 3 inches from it.   Foam pad underneath it, set it to 2/5...good to go.

 

I just went through making a 24V D5S pump inaudible.  It took a shitload of insulation and having it fully suspended (except for the inlet / outlet tubing).

[MaratM]

One of my builds is dead sielent at idle or usual office work, it has i5 9400f and vega 56, I is cooled with a monoblock and a vega nano full cover waterblock. It has a ekwb xe240 (the fat one) with 2 nf-a12x25 for the pump - some chinese ddc style pump only 10watts so it runs of the motherboard header.
However under gaming load it is the coil whine that makes most noise.

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