Noctua NH-D15 + Ryzen 5800x - normal temps, but incredible noise

[Battlesheep]

Hi folks,

 

First of all - my first post here, so it's nice to finally join the community! But let me get to the point

 

My setup:

Case: Corsair 275r

Cable Management: Quite tidy! Will try to provide the photo soon.

Fans: 

- Front: 2x BeQuiet Silent Wings 3 120mm (top+mid) + 1x 120mm Zalman fan (bottom). All pulling from front.

- Back: 1x Zalman Fan (140mm). Pulling air from CPU and blowing it through the back of the case.

- Cooler: The Fans that came with the Noctua cooler (2x, pulling the air from the front and blowing in the back - 1 fan in center, 1 fan in front above RAM).

- Top: No fans (just a dust mesh-cover-thing)

 

CPU: Ryzen 5800x (NO OC), bought together with the mobo last week

Thermal Paste: Thermal Grizzly Hypernaut

Mobo: Gigabyte X570 Aorus Pro (rev 1.0)

Ram: Corsair Vengeance LPX 3200 Mhz DDR4

 

I use HWMonitor and CPUId for monitoring and benchmarking.

 

CPU Tempeartures

Idle: 34-45'C

While playing: 60-68'C

While benchmarking with CPUid: 74'C

 

The problem

Whenever the Noctua fans spin up, especially to the max speed of 1500 RPM (which happens almost all the time while playing pretty much anything), the whole thing sounds like a microwave. This was super counterintuitive to me, as all the reviews praised Noctua for its silence and performance. I've recently switched from Ryzen 1600 with its stock cooler and the difference is incredible, with my girlfriend immediately noticing the noise after I changed the PC parts. Sadly, I don't have any accurate way to capture the noise apart from maybe recording a video on my phone.

 

The fans are almost inaudible at low RPM when the computer is absolutely idle, it's the high RPM that produces the whiny, almost vacuum-cleaner like noise.

 

What I've tried

- Replacing the thermal paste (previously I've used the one dot method, this time I've used a bit more of the paste with the 5-dot method. Surprisingly, the 1 dot method actually covered all of the CPU, to my surprise, even though I used only a small blob the radius of a nearby transistor)

- Reseating the fans (several times)

 

So, is this just normal in the Zen 3 world and I should get used to it or is something actually wrong here?

 

[shortfuse]

Have you tried changing the fan curve in bios? Default curves tend to run fan rpms quite high.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

43 minutes ago, Battlesheep said:

Hi folks,

 

First of all - my first post here, so it's nice to finally join the community! But let me get to the point

 

My setup:

Case: Corsair 275r

Cable Management: Quite tidy! Will try to provide the photo soon.

Fans: 

- Front: 2x BeQuiet Silent Wings 3 120mm (top+mid) + 1x 120mm Zalman fan (bottom). All pulling from front.

- Back: 1x Zalman Fan (140mm). Pulling air from CPU and blowing it through the back of the case.

- Cooler: The Fans that came with the Noctua cooler (2x, pulling the air from the front and blowing in the back - 1 fan in center, 1 fan in front above RAM).

- Top: No fans (just a dust mesh-cover-thing)

 

CPU: Ryzen 5800x (NO OC), bought together with the mobo last week

Thermal Paste: Thermal Grizzly Hypernaut

Mobo: Gigabyte X570 Aorus Pro (rev 1.0)

Ram: Corsair Vengeance LPX 3200 Mhz DDR4

 

I use HWMonitor and CPUId for monitoring and benchmarking.

 

CPU Tempeartures:

While playing: 60-68'C

While benchmarking with CPUid: 74'C

 

The problem

Whenever the Noctua fans spin up, especially to the max speed of 1500 RPM (which happens almost all the time while playing pretty much anything), the whole thing sounds like a microwave. This was super counterintuitive to me, as all the reviews praised Noctua for its silence and performance. I've recently switched from Ryzen 1600 with its stock cooler and the difference is incredible, with my girlfriend immediately noticing the noise after I changed the PC parts. Sadly, I don't have any accurate way to capture the noise apart from maybe recording a video on my phone.

 

The fans are almost inaudible at low RPM when the computer is absolutely idle, it's the high RPM that produces the whiny, almost vacuum-cleaner like noise.

 

What I've tried

- Replacing the thermal paste (previously I've used the one dot method, this time I've used a bit more of the paste with the 5-dot method. Surprisingly, the 1 dot method actually covered all of the CPU, to my surprise, even though I used only a small blob the radius of a nearby transistor)

- Reseating the fans (several times)

 

So, is this just normal in the Zen 3 world and I should get used to it or is something actually wrong here?

 

Just lock the fan to the highest rpm where it doesnt produce an annoying noise throughout the entire curve instead of trying to make the fan not spin when temps are low, this will pretty much act as cushioning so when a load is put on the cpu itll take longer to reach a high temp like 80c when you lock the highest speed (that isnt annoying) throughout the entire fan curve (ramp to 100% if cpu temp is higher than 85)

[Battlesheep]

6 minutes ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

Just lock the fan to the highest rpm where it doesnt produce an annoying noise throughout the entire curve instead of trying to make the fan not spin when temps are low, this will pretty much act as cushioning so when a load is put on the cpu itll take longer to reach a high temp like 80c when you lock the highest speed (that isnt annoying) throughout the entire fan curve (ramp to 100% if cpu temp is higher than 85)

The fans are never not spinning. I will try that, although seeing that the fans are always at 1500 RPM (Max speed) when I'm gaming it doesn't seem this will make any difference at all, apart from giving me a minute of silence more.

 

But I will try that today and report my findings, maybe I'm just wrong! Thanks for the tip

[GuiltySpark_]

Your only solution is playing with your fan curve. As a 5800x owner you may also want to look into the curve optimizer a bit to do a little undervolting. 

[Battlesheep]

Okay guys. This will be a bit weird.

 

I've plugged in the LNA (Low-Noise Adaptors) included with the cooler. This, based on the LTT review, limits the fans from 1500 to 1200 RPM.

 

- My temperatures increased by no more than 1.5'C during stress (and about 3-4'C when idle)

- My CPUId score INCREASED by about 100 during bench

- My Boost clocks during benching are +/- the same (minus 25 Mhz at most)

 

This was after a 3 minute CPUid test, which I'll repeat over a longer time later on. But this is bizarre to me how a lower fan RPM can yield better results. 

 

The noise is still audible and annoying, but less than before. HWMonitor also reports max speed of 1188 RPM.

 

Maybe Gigabyte's algorithm for boosting the CPU is also based on the fan RPM, allowing for more power the lower it is at certain temps?

[Montana One-Six]

5 hours ago, Battlesheep said:

Whenever the Noctua fans spin up, especially to the max speed of 1500 RPM (which happens almost all the time while playing pretty much anything), the whole thing sounds like a microwave.

Are you sure it's the Noctua Fans?

I have two PCs each with NH-D15s and those fans are very quiet even at full speed (no low-noise adapter). PCs are standing on the Desk and maybe a little more than an arm-length away from where I sit.

[Battlesheep]

2 hours ago, Montana16 said:

Are you sure it's the Noctua Fans?

I have two PCs each with NH-D15s and those fans are very quiet even at full speed (no low-noise adapter). PCs are standing on the Desk and maybe a little more than an arm-length away from where I sit.

A 100%. I tested this by specifically going to BIOS and switching between normal fan curve and full-speed - just for the Noctua fans. They were the only one making the noise.

 

I see you've got an i9-10850k - maybe the infamous Zen3 spikes are more difficult to handle for the Noctuas than Intel's CPUs?

 

Anyway, the whole thing is much more bearable after using the low-noise adapters (with slightly lower boost speeds, but better score in CPUid stress tests). I guess it's a must for Ryzens.