Chassis fan experiment

[Colif]

Now this wasn't intentional but it seems that in the last few months, I have tried several different brands and found problems with both:
1st was Arctic 120mm RGB fans, that came attached to a 360mm AIO - they tended to cause a noise at over 900rpm so I always ran them below that.
I also had one die on me, and I had to replace it... just to find the other two on the radiator also needed to be replaced.

So next I got a 3 pack of Lian LI TL LCD Fans and put those on the AIO.
One month later the pump in the AIO died so I swapped to air cooling and put the 3 LIan LI fans on the front of the case

Start of the month I realised I could hear a noise in my PC, and after a few days investigation, I have zeroed it down to my Lian LI fans.
Research shows something I wish I had known 4 months ago, the fans have a habit of having bad bearings... its a common problem with them in fact.

It seems to be two of my three have the problem. I will return them for a refund since I don't like those odds

Its annoying as I had looked for better fans than my Arctic ones to avoid that exact problem.
Alternates I had looked at instead of the lian li:

1. I had rejected Noctua fans as they didn't allow passthrough cables for PWM so it would have been more cables (compared to lian li who only use one cable for 3 fans).
2. That was same reason I ignored Bequiet fans as well.
3. I rejected Corsair as they are expensive, not that good at cooling and most require Icue to run RGB.

Now I do have one alternative that I couldn't use on my 360mm radiator, 3 Noctua A14 140mm Chromax Black Swap fans. Had them for years, were my exhaust fans.

 

[mjs warlord]

along with 6 other types of fans my cpu cooling fan is a Noctua NH-D15S Ultra Quiet Performance CPU Cooler

Amazon.co.uk

If i did not few a few led strips on the front of my case i would not know my pc was on shhhhh !

 

[Colif]

I was just sitting here with PC off thinking, I wish it was this quiet with it on.

Mine will be better, I just need to wait on an RMA response and then I will swap the Noctuas in. I need to check if the fan hub for case is still plugged in, we may have removed it when we swapped to Lian li hub - a friend was helping, he did some of it.

this is what they sound like as quiet as I can make them
click click click
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nsmw2aHfunvkIOceUsC_QwgZafhsD9qI/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iw4GCHEGtWpIRWyTD2TIfUcL15vukAh0/view?usp=sharing

it only gets more noticeable if i speed them up.

And that is with only 6 screws holding them in place. Since they physically attach to each other, I only have top fan fully screwed in and top 2 screws of the middle fan - This was done after noise started, I only did it to see if it help. Nope. Will make it easier to remove them though. might unscrew them completely and leave them standing up inside case. I think them still being attached does make case vibrate a little.

quiet nights, I would prefer not to hear fans constantly. I want to ignore my pc, not constantly be thinking... is it this making that noise... its bad enough without PC actually making any.

Not sure I could get silence with it on as the PSU makes some noise, I think.

 

[Colif]

My next Noctua fans will be hovering above the case

rubber case spikes. No way they will vibrate.

 

[Colif]

So while I was waiting for the shop I bought lian li fans from, to reply, I still had the fans in my pc and they appeared to be working fine.
A little noisy but nothing i couldn't ignore. I had to be close to hear them.
But pc seemed warmer than normal so I wondered what speed they were running.
Upon opening the software that controls them, I found it couldn't see the fans and would show an error if I tried to link any.
Restarted pc and on startup Windows reported that a USB device wasn't responding.
Opened fan software and now only 2 tabs appear and neither are fan controls.
So the usb connection goes to the lian li hub. I can't run the fans off pwm directly so I am stuck.
Seems they decided to die on me.
Good thing shop replied today so just need to swap the new fans in on the weekend.