I'm trying to make my PC as quiet as possible. I replaced the original case fans with three Be Quiet! Pure Wings 3 120 mm fans—two intake fans at the front and one exhaust fan at the rear—but the system is still noticeable at idle and gets much louder under load.
The hardware is fairly old: an i5-10600K, GTX 1060, MSI B560M Pro-E, 32 GB of DDR4, a 1 TB NVMe SSD, and a 1 TB 7200 RPM hard drive. The case is a Cooler Master CM 590 III, which supports two 120 mm or one 140 mm fan at the front, one 120 mm rear fan, and potentially two 140 mm fans at the top.
I'm considering replacing the setup with one 140 mm Be Quiet! Silent Wings 4 at the front and one 120 mm fan at the rear. Would that be insufficient? I've heard that a 140 mm fan can be quieter, although two 120 mm intake fans might move more air at lower speeds.
The CPU uses a Cooler Master TX3i cooler. I'm not sure whether its 92 mm fan is contributing much noise, but can that fan be replaced separately if necessary? All case fans currently run from one PWM motherboard header through splitters, while the CPU cooler uses the CPU_FAN header. Both headers are configured for PWM control in the BIOS.
3 Answers
Before buying more fans, check their actual RPM and the fan curve. If the header or splitter is running them near full speed, changing from three fans to two will not solve the noise. A 10600K and GTX 1060 produce relatively little heat at idle, so the fans should be able to slow down substantially—often around 400–600 RPM, depending on the model. You can set a custom curve in the BIOS or use software such as Fan Control. Also temporarily disconnect the 7200 RPM hard drive; its motor and vibration may be what you are hearing at idle.
Fan count is less important than speed. Two 120 mm fans can move at least as much air as one 140 mm fan, and may do so at a lower RPM, so the 140 mm option is not automatically quieter. Set the fans to stop or run very slowly at idle, then increase them only when temperatures require it. Test temperatures under a sustained CPU and GPU load, aiming to keep the processor comfortably below its thermal limit—around 85 °C or lower is a reasonable target. For normal gaming, the CPU may never reach full synthetic-load temperatures.
The TX3i’s 92 mm fan is a possible noise source, especially with a 10600K. A larger tower cooler using a 120 mm fan would generally be quieter and cool better than replacing only the small fan. An inexpensive cooler such as an ID-Cooling SE-214 XT-class model could be an improvement, assuming it is compatible with your socket and case clearance. Also inspect the case specifications directly, since some listings for this model are inconsistent about supported fan positions.
The headers are definitely set to PWM. The fans were extremely loud when connected directly to the PSU, but they became much quieter after I moved them to the motherboard header. I’m mainly trying to get them as close to silent as possible.