Silent fan. Do such thing really exist?
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Well, my "silent" fan sounds like a Formula 1 and wife want to throw me and my raspberry through the window.
I did some research and the one I find some recommendations was 40mm (Noctus).
Oh, I use a SuperPi case with 30mm fan.
Overall, people around the web says that for the fan size there's no such thing as "silent".
Any ideas for fans or in the last resource, some parachutes? -
Hi,
I use the Noctua NF-A4x10 5V (40x40x10mm), it doesn't make a noise and it cools well. -
The fan of my Smraza case is next to inaudible, unless I put my ear right next to it.
But I don't overclock my Pi (yet) and I'm using the fan only because it came with the case. Do you really need a fan? To my knowlege, the Rapsberry Pi models should be well tempered if you do not overclock them.
And if heat is really an issue and you're using heat sinks on the chips, make sure that they are glued on with proper thermal pads, as many cheap sets only have normal sticky pads that will rather insulade the chips than cool them. The best fan can't do much if the pads keep the heat in the chips.
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Easiest way to get a silent fan is to run a 12 volt on 5 volts.
In one of my retropies I have a 5cm(I think) 12v fan connected to 5 volts and its running half speed but really silent. (And enough for cooling the overclocked RP3) Some 12v fans might not work on 5v so its trial and error. -
@Clyde said in Silent fan. Do such thing really exist?:
But I don't overclock my Pi (yet) and I'm using the fan only because it came with the case. Do you really need a fan? To my knowlege, the Rapsberry Pi models should be well tempered if you do not overclock them.
Exactly. When I started with the Raspberry Pi project, the included fan was loud like a jet. Then I purchased a case, that was itself a giant heatsink. Since then I run Raspberry Pi 3B (the old one) highly overclocked without any fan. I am a fan of fanless cases now. The problem is, this way I can't use such great looking cases like the SuperPi, which the thread operater is using.
I am very sensitive and don't believe that any small sized silent fan exist, that have any effect on the temp. If it is spinning too slow, it will not do its job. So unless you really care about the look of the case, my go to is a fanless case that works as a giant heatsink.
The newer 3B+ version works better without fan than the old original 3B version (which I have). And the new RP 4 seems to get hot very fast.
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@Clyde said in Silent fan. Do such thing really exist?:
The fan of my Smraza case is next to inaudible, unless I put my ear right next to it.
I bought the same bundle, never heard it either, and my rpi3b+'s max temp at 1500Mhz was 55° when i did some stress-test.
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I bought a kit on Amazon of case, heatsinks and fan, nothing fancy but the fan is pretty much inaudible when running. And I'm pretty certain it's not an epic brand name fan. If a tiny fan is making that much noise I'd say it was defective.
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@thestarglider said in Silent fan. Do such thing really exist?:
If a tiny fan is making that much noise I'd say it was defective.
The smaller a fan is, the faster it has to spin to move the same amount of air than a bigger fan. Thus, the golden rule is that bigger fans are more silent than smaller ones on average. I would expect a tiny fan to be audible, and be surprised if it isn't (like yours and mine).
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@Clyde said in Silent fan. Do such thing really exist?:
I would expect a tiny fan to be audible, and be surprised if it isn't (like yours and mine).
Me too and I am curious how much of an impact they have, if they are not very audible.
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@Clyde said in Silent fan. Do such thing really exist?:
@thestarglider said in Silent fan. Do such thing really exist?:
If a tiny fan is making that much noise I'd say it was defective.
The smaller a fan is, the faster it has to spin to move the same amount of air than a bigger fan. Thus, the golden rule is that bigger fans are more silent than smaller ones on average. I would expect a tiny fan to be audible, and be surprised if it isn't (like yours and mine).
A smaller fan would indeed be a lot more audible if it was designed to move the same amount of air as a larger one.
But many don't, because they aren't designed to do that. Otherwise you might as well get a larger fan in the first place. The important thing is that it's moving air away from the heatsinks. Because of the small form factor of the Pi the fan doesn't need to be thst big in the first place. As long as the heat is being moved away then there is a cooling improvement.
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And just as a sidenote/anecdote to this:
The Fan I got with my Superpi Case J (Not via retroflags store and the now old style, without the cardridge, casing) was supersilent to my ears whence I tried it outside of the casing, once within the casing there was an ultrahigh pitched tone that was getting on my nerves... somewhat below Flittermice, still not hearable to some people I've asked/confronted with it, but noticeable to others... As (mostly) the younger ones where hearing it, I could say it wasn't my imagination... so even if a fan is quiet, the introduced airflow within a casing may produce more or less hearable noise - and I am not sure if other fans would make any difference here....
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@Ashpool said in Silent fan. Do such thing really exist?:
And just as a sidenote/anecdote to this:
The Fan I got with my Superpi Case J (Not via retroflags store and the now old style, without the cardridge, casing) was supersilent to my ears whence I tried it outside of the casing, once within the casing there was an ultrahigh pitched tone that was getting on my nerves... somewhat below Flittermice, still not hearable to some people I've asked/confronted with it, but noticeable to others... As (mostly) the younger ones where hearing it, I could say it wasn't my imagination... so even if a fan is quiet, the introduced airflow within a casing may produce more or less hearable noise - and I am not sure if other fans would make any difference here....
Some of us hear more then others and the whine of tiny fans drives me insane hence why my pi (overclocked) is fanless right now.
There was some stupid noise test my wife fiddled with the other day which was weird. I'm sitting on the couch and hear this high pitched extremely annoying sound and after a few I said what the **** are you doing!? That's extremely annoying...
at this point she forgot she even started it because she did not hear it at all.The point is that it's not your imagination, it's just not all ears are built equal!
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I use a set of these. They're real quiet and run off USB.
That's the Canadian price, so probably cheaper elsewhere.
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