Quiet Liquid Cooler?

[Skullsniper]

Know any good quiet liquid coolers?

[Curufinwe_wins]

Quiet as in quiet once you replace stock fans?

 

Just about all the new ones (based on newer Aseteck pumps).

 

Otherwise, the EK Predator and the Prestige Lineup from Swiftech come much quieter out of the box, but cost a stupid amount.

[HKZeroFive]

If you're looking for quiet coolers, air cooling would be your best choice. Just saying.

[Skullsniper]

I'm talking about AIO I don't have the case for custom and quiet in general 

[Curufinwe_wins]

1 hour ago, HKZeroFive said:

If you're looking for quiet coolers, air cooling would be your best choice. Just saying.

Except it isn't... Unless you are running stock speed (or near stock speed)

 

1 hour ago, bambam47 said:

I'm talking about AIO I don't have the case for custom and quiet in general 

Yea. Then if you are willing to replace stock fans, I'd consider the following:

 

Corsair H115, H100i V2

NZXT X61

Swiftech H220 X2, H240 X2, H320 X2

 

If you don't want to replace fans:

Swiftech H220 Prestige, H240 Prestige, H320 Prestige

EK Predator 240, EK Predator 360.

 

With all but the EK aio's the pump might end up being the loudest part. 

 

That said I swear all of the people who bitch at them have either have never used one or straight up don't know how to properly bleed the system.

 

I think SPCR's FIASCO of STUPIDITY on their attempt at a quiet watercooling build is a good example of this common misconception.

 

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1437-page11.html

 

[Skullsniper]

Which high static pressure fans should I replace them with?

[Moonzy]

most silent AIO = one without fans, without radiator, without water, without pump and waterblock, just one big passive heatsink

 

yes im talking about passive heatsink `-`

 

but i guess if you insist on AIO, get something like a Kraken x61 and swap the fans and do push pull to achieve maximum silence

just make sure you have the clearance to do so

[HKZeroFive]

7 minutes ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

Except it isn't... Unless you are running stock speed (or near stock speed)

I'd like to see proof of that. Same can be said of the fans or pumps of an AIO.

[Curufinwe_wins]

2 minutes ago, bambam47 said:

Which high static pressure fans should I replace them with?

For 240mm variants with an emphasis on silence I would recommend BeQuiet's Silent Wings 2.

Alternatively, Noctua NF-F12, Vardar 120 FF2, Venturi HP-12 are all very capable fans though you will want to turn them down, esp the venturi's.

 

There are also some other good options I can't seem to think of (really there are a crapload of 120mm fans to choose from.)

 

For 280mm variants with silence in mind there are again BeQuiet Silent Wings 2 (although the 140mm version isn't quite as exceptional).

 

Alternatively, consider the NF-A14, Vardar 140 FF2, Venturi HP-14, Phanteks PH-F140HP.

 

The last fan is as far as I am aware notably the best on the market today for the 140mm cooling fans, but is normally very hard to find (I did see them listed on Newegg though.)

[Curufinwe_wins]

31 minutes ago, HKZeroFive said:

I'd like to see proof of that. Same can be said of the fans or pumps of an AIO.

A: Cooling my oc'd cpu under full load isn't possible by ANY air cooler on the market today.

 

(EDIT: Upon reflection, my claim A isn't quite true for my 24/7 OC, even if it was for my testing OC. A D15 would have probably just made it in the high 80s at maximum fan speed. Additionally you could always strap industrial fans on quite a few of the high end air coolers and temps would probably be "functional".)

 

See below:

 

Both are from my phone's onboard mic. It has been calibrated against an professional device (so it is ACCURATE), but I can't guarantee is it as PRECISE as one. Additionally it is still early enough in the day that traffic (and all the other stupid shit you deal with living in the middle of a small city) creates a notable noise pollution background (at least by my standards), but hey you wanted proof now.

 

Image 1 is 1 foot from the top of my PC running Intel XTU Stress test.

 

Image 2 is with my pc off, and represents background noise.

 

Both measurements were taken over an minute. Given the nature of this device, I certainly can't tell you my exact margin of error results, but I would not call 1 dB enough to distinguish from background.

 

It can probably be however assumed that we are at least 21 dB while running. (I don't know if I have anything saved, but when I was configuring the system I believe I got down to 23 dB load.)

[HKZeroFive]

5 minutes ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

A: Cooling my cpu under full load isn't possible by ANY air cooler on the market today.

 

See below:

 

Both are from my phone's onboard mic. It has been calibrated against an professional device (so it is ACCURATE), but I can't guarantee is it as PRECISE as one. Additionally it is still early enough in the day that traffic (and all the other stupid shit you deal with living in the middle of a small city) creates a notable noise pollution background (at least by my standards), but hey you wanted proof now.

 

Image 1 is 1 foot from the top of my PC running Intel XTU Stress test.

 

Image 2 is with my pc off, and represents background noise.

 

Both measurements were taken over an minute. Given the nature of this device, I certainly can't tell you my exact margin of error results, but I would not call 1 dB enough to distinguish from background.

 

It can probably be however assumed that we are at least 21 dB while running. (I don't know if I have anything saved, but when I was configuring the system I believe I got down to 23 dB load.)

While I'll give you full props for your 'full custom loop' system being extremely quiet, I wouldn't think the same could be said of a prebuilt AIO as OP requested? To do so, you'd need set a custom fan and perhaps pump curve to rival that of an air cooler.

[Curufinwe_wins]

14 minutes ago, HKZeroFive said:

While I'll give you full props for your 'full custom loop' system being extremely quiet, I wouldn't think the same could be said of a prebuilt AIO as OP requested? To do so, you'd need set a custom fan and perhaps pump curve to rival that of an air cooler.

My x61 is sitting in a closet right now and I have no spare decent fans (I don't want to get started on how AWFUL the stock fans are at any speed) to haphazardly throw it on a pc, or I'd do that as well.

 

It certainly wasn't as quiet, but the pump noise (at the time) was below my pc noise threshold (which I think was ~30 dB, but it was months ago so don't quote me on it.)

 

I actually ran the pump at 100% speed all the time because I found (when I arbitrarily was playing around passive idling modes) it was effectively the same noise level (as close as I could tell), but had a smoother sound profile running faster than slower (perhaps due to some small air pockets I didn't get out enough.)

 

Either way, watercooling pumps have come a very long way in the last few years (both for AIOs and custom systems), and unless you have a very low auditory target, they are unlikely to be notable (assuming you are able to bleed them correctly) over the fans.

 

AIO noise is kinda a funny thing. It definitely is louder at low thermal yields (assuming you don't run passively) but at a certain threshold it simply begins to obliterate the lower heat capacity of air coolers. Where that threshold is many will disagree, but I tend to hold it at around the 150W thermal load (say a moderately overclocked Z-series chip or any X-series pc.

 

 

If you really wanted to avoid ANY concerns about pump noise (fans reduce to the same thing on high end air coolers vs aios assuming proper noise isolation on both), I did include recommendations for EK and Swiftech AIO's. 

 

The EK predator uses a noise isolated DDC pump (the louder of the two pumps custom watercoolers generally use), which SCPR has some pretty comprehensive data on:

 

EK-SBAY DDC 3.2 PWM
PWM %	RPM	SPL*
100	4500	24
50	4200	22
45	3700	20
40	3250	18
35	2700	17
30	2200	16.4
25	1700	15.8
20	1280	14.7
* dBA@1m

 

And running at 3000 rpm is totally sufficient to get the job done (at a certain point running the thing faster actually makes things worse.) So unless your goal is sub 18 dBA at 1m that AIO pump won't concern you.

 

The swiftech AIO variants use a MCP30 pump which is I'll admit rather more questionable than both the newest Asetek pumps and the DDC/D5's generally used for custom systems, but when they don't fail they are well known for quiet operation.