I see now that with the liquid cooled cpu's they still have to have fans blowing on a radiator in order to cool the liquid. As far as I know these liquid cooled units may be just as noisy as the air cooled.

Is there a simple clear answer or does it depend on this and that?

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merle - vote yes for freedom of speech

It is function of surface area.

Air cooling.
CPU are small. Their heatsink is relatively small. They use relatively fast fan. Fast means noise.

Water cooling.
-Small radiator, fast fan. Noise.
-Large radiator, slow fan. Little to no noise.
-Move the effing radiator far away (next room, out the window to outside, whatever), and who gives the eF how noisy the fan is because you aint going to hear it!

To quote Lee and Miller: "Pilot's choice."

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I am using air cooling and honestly the CPU coolers are basically silent. When my GPU isn't crunching I'll hear my hard drives spinning over the sound of the CPU cooler at full load. The stock GPU coolers are the loudest parts of any of my computers.
For any cooler with fans you will often see a rating for noise. Such as "Fan Noise Level 34.0 / 26.5 dBA". Near 30 dBA is normally considered silent. Depending on the cooling system it will probably not be running at it's maximum fan speed constantly unless it is to small, or the fan speed controls for the system are not configured correctly.

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SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
Join the [url=http://tinyurl.com/8y46zvu]BP6/VP6 User Group[

I am using air cooling and honestly the CPU coolers are basically silent.

Um... yeah, good thing Pentium 4 went the way of dinosours.

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I am using air cooling and honestly the CPU coolers are basically silent.

Um... yeah, good thing Pentium 4 went the way of dinosours.

I didn't have much noise with my P4 setup. I used a Thermalright XP-90 with a silent 92mm fan on a 3.0GHz Northwood. Then later changed the CPU to a 3.0GHz Prescott.

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SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
Join the [url=http://tinyurl.com/8y46zvu]BP6/VP6 User Group[

I see now that with the liquid cooled cpu's they still have to have fans blowing on a radiator in order to cool the liquid. As far as I know these liquid cooled units may be just as noisy as the air cooled.

Is there a simple clear answer or does it depend on this and that?

It took me a bit to find this review, but I think it is exactly the information you are after.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/h100i-elc240-seidon-240m-lq320,3380-12.html

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SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
Join the [url=http://tinyurl.com/8y46zvu]BP6/VP6 User Group[

As far as I know these liquid cooled units may be just as noisy as the air cooled.

In general: No. A 120mm fan blowing at a moderate pace through a radiator makes very little noise.

Is there a simple clear answer or does it depend on this and that?

It always depends on this and that. You could force a radiator fan to blow so hard that it will be loud, but that isn't necessary. I had to build a computer that was "more-or-less silent" for a backstage. I used a Corsair H80, let it do its own thing (no fan speed adjustment up or down), and it was quieter than anything else in the case.

Thanks everybody,
I've learned a lot but I'm not going to get in the middle of this. Obviously, there are differences of opinion.

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merle - vote yes for freedom of speech

Would suggest that you have a good look at this site:

http://www.frostytech.com/

cheers

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I am using air cooling and honestly the CPU coolers are basically silent.

Um... yeah, good thing Pentium 4 went the way of dinosours.

This isn't a P4 :-)

Best advice ever received. Also, took Zalster's advice & upgraded the 2 top fans to 140mm (thanks guys).

When I have my D-Link sharecentre off, the noise from the rig is 75% less than the board/cpu cooler it replaced.

Current temps on air...




...& crunching with all 8 cores.

Thanks everybody,
I've learned a lot but I'm not going to get in the middle of this. Obviously, there are differences of opinion.

Honestly, I haven't seen a difference of opinion. I thought you asked if water cooling was as loud as air cooling. I didn't say you couldn't get essentially silent air cooling.

Three old, old, old dual-core Athlon machines I had used really quiet cooling. They had this enormous block of aluminum with big, big widely spaced fins as a passive cooling solution. A 120mm case fan slowly turned and caused a breeze across the assembly. You couldn't tell the fan was turning unless you stuck your ear to the case.

For the record, almost all of my machines are air cooled using a $29 heatsink and 90mm fan assembly. I don't hear those over the case fans which I really don't hear because of the loud GPU fans.

My old P4 had fans. and they were quiete compared to my Antec 920 cases. But has i suffer from tinnitus I like the white noise they produce. I actually wake up when I dont hear them, such as a power outage.

If fan noise drives you crazy then make the switch.

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Old James