Part 3: Upgrading CPU heatsink with an 80mm fan
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Well, after a good year of driving me steadily crazy, I finally snapped. A
house move and new room meant the PC had to move up from the floor and onto the
desk beside me; the extra noise from the proximity pushed me over the edge.
This PC is was just too loud! Read on to find out how I sorted
it out...
You might like to read Part 1 and Part 2 of this series of articles, which covers the beginnings of my quest to shut my PC up.
| Fitting an 80mm fan onto a CPU heat sink |
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There's a simple rule of thumb for fan noise. For a given amount of airflow,
a bigger fan can spin slower than a smaller one. And slower spinning means less
noise, and bigger fans means less annoying noise, as they emit more of a drone
and less of a whine. So to quiet my noisy CPU fan down, I decided to fit an
80mm fan to it in place of the existing 60mm.
This is what I started with. A low noise/low volume Panaflo 80mm fan, a 60mm-80mm fan adaptor shroud, and my existing Globalwin FOP32 cooler. Now, obviously, you can't just bolt a 80mm fan onto a 60mm heatsink; it just won't fit. That's why we use the adaptor, which not only allows the fan to be physically mounted, but also ducts the air onto the heatsink. There was a small problem though. The FOP32 uses a quite fine series of fins, so the old fan wasn't attached with screws down into the heatsink as usual; rather, it had clips which slotted into the screw holes in the fan and clipped over a small lip on either edge of the heatsink. Now, as you can see, the shroud fitting kit comes with two lengths of
screws. I pondered this for a while, then decided the time had come for
extreme agriculturality, and just screwed it down in anyway. It bent some of
the fins a little bit, and one of the screws wasn't held in all that good, but
once I'd done all four a bit of gentle rocking proved it wasn't going anywhere.
All of which goes to show yet again that I just can't be trusted waving any
sort of tool near any sort of computer.
With that all done, it's simplicity itself to bolt the fan to the top of the
shroud and fire it up:
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| Testing the new fan |
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Now, as I selected a low volume/low noise fan, I was prepared to take a small hit on the performance aspect. The chip is a Duron 850@1009Mhz and 1.9V, so it puts out a fair amount of heat, and I was braced for having to bring the overclocking back down. With baited breath, I booted the machine. The first thing I noticed was the noise level had gone down enormously; between this and getting rid of my Blorb my PC is almost bearable now. Reassured that I hadn't just bought this stuff for nothing, it was time to stress test the system. With the previous fan, the most I had ever seen out of the CPU was 55degC; after an hour of 3dMark 2001 and Prime95 stress-testing, the new fan caused it to max out at 58degC. Which, all things considered, is pretty reasonable, I think. |
| Verdict |
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Changing for an 80mm fan is a good way to quiet noisy CPU fans down without compromising performance too much. It was a doddle to fit and very effective, and the shroud and the fan together cost less than a new heatsink-fan assembly would have set me back. One word of caution, however: it's very tall, which might mean it has
problems fitting in your case. It might be worth double checking the dimensions
of any adaptor and fan you buy against your case, just to make sure it fits. 1U
rackmount owners need not apply.
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