Cooling silence, water cooling or fans

[si-skyline]

hay guys I was wondering if you could help me on this one, I have a computer what i use as a host for serving files, printers and backups. its normally on for most of the day and now the noise driving me up the wall.

I first thought of watercooling because it is rather silent compared to the fans but it can get expensive for a good loop. and then i thought about people some times banging on about silent fans.

I can spend about £80 - £150 maybe a bit more. the main aim of the new cooling system would be silence and of course to keep it cool.

i have done a watercooling kit for the rig but this time there is a harsher budget in place.

current system...
p4 lga775 3.2 ghz
asus p5p-800
80gb maxtor hard drive in Thermaltake HardCano 14 + 500gb WD + 160gb WD
1gb of ram
some dvd drive and power unit what are stable and able
geforce 5500fx

fans are one on the encloser. 80mm exust fan on side and one 80mm in psu and also 80mm heatsink (made by a company who i have never heard of. picked it up in pc world as a quick change over..)

also what iv just picked up any feedback on them would be lovely :)
http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/acatalog/info_2615.html
http://www.thecoolingshop.com/product_info.php/cPath/98_2_201/products_id/2375
any help or advice would be very apprecaited

[a.Bird]

About the Zalman, the website states:

Fan speed 1250 - 2800rpm
Fan noise 19.5 dBA - 35dBA
So unless you control the rpm of the fan yourself as opposed to your motherboard then it could possibly spin up to 2800rpm when the proc is hot and put out about 35dBa. That's pretty loud man. I would shoot for less than 25dBa but less than 20dBa should be hardly audible.

These are my recommendations...

cpu: Arctic-Cooling Freezer 7 Pro (http://www.thecoolingshop.com/product_info.php/cPath/98_2_20/products_id/1353) (I have experience with AC and they rock man. dead silent, I promise you.)
case: SilenX 80mm 14 dBA Fan (http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/acatalog/info_2528.html) (however, I know nothing about this company so you may want to do some research. apparently it can push 28 cfm at only 14dBa. that's pretty ridiculous for an 80mm.)
of course, check to see what fans in your computer are actually making any noise. i replaced just about all of my fans and there is still one left that seems to be making a racket... psu! grrrrr. oh and by the way, you'll be lucky to find an effective vga cooler for your 5500fx that's quieter than 25-30 dBa... unless I'm correct in thinking the fx series has nvidia's 'safe' feature that compensates for the temperature of the gpu by lowering its clock. if this is the case, and you're not a big gamer then I'd recommend finding the the quietest possible cooler. something to look for is a large fan dimension because they push more air at a lower rpm than little dinky fans that scream bloody murder just to push 30cfm.

[si-skyline]

hay bird, thank you very much for your input :)

im not conserned too much about the graphics... the card isent the best and it was just tossed into the case, because its a serving computer i rarely use it and its not really for gaming..

Im not sure what fans are making the most noise tbh.. i have been able to control the noise of the heatsink via a software based fan controler didnt work much but it did seem more quite.

if i am going for the fan option would a fan controller be reasonable to get? what ones are good?

thank you very much once agian :)
si-skyline

[DaveW]

I have Zalman fans in my computer. I'll be honest with you...when i turn the fans down, you can barely tell they're on. I still have to check the computer's working sometimes.

When on full blast, i can hear a quiet hum. But it's only just audible.

I should point out that i have hearing difficulties in the 4Khz range (talking range) so i may not be the greatest judge-but I have just as much trouble hearing Music, Games, etc. and i think the setup is great.

I'm running 11 fans in my computer; 2 Zalmans for components. 4 80mm Akasa Ambers, 2 120mm Akasa Ambers, An Akasa HDD cooler with 2 40mm fans, and a silent Hiper PSU with a 120mm fan and an 80mm fan that stays on 5 mins after shutdown to pull out the last of the heat.

I counted the HDD cooler as one fan, even though it's 2.

It should be noisy as hell but it's barely audible.

-Dave

[si-skyline]

hehe thats alot of fans what kind of fan controller do you use?
iv found some like my zelman one i bought that they only accept 7w max on a channel?

I love my hiper psu on another computer too :) i find that fan going on 5 mins after can be life saving to the psu

thank you too dave for your advice :)
si-skyline