...was a classic 70's scifi flick (which most of you probably haven't seen) but that's not what this thread is about
A few months ago, I decided to replace all the fans in my rigs with noctuas with the goal of reducing the noise level. 72 fans later, I am impressed with the result.
My cards are Gigabyte 1070s and 1070tis, 3 rigs, 8 per rig.
They now run so quiet to be virtually inaudible unless it's a very quiet room. In fact the main remaining noise was from the Silverstone 1500ti power supply so I went a step further and replaced that fan with a noctua NF14 industrial, connected to a motherboard header for control and monitoring. My rigs are now so quiet that I can use them in a bedroom (which is ideal during winter.) Another advantage is noctuas are rated for 150,000 hours which is like 20 years and laugh at dusty hot environments. The stock fans began to seize up after 6 months and over the years I have replaced all the original sleeve bearings with ball bearings which stopped them seizing up but didn't help with the noise.
Cooling seems to be slightly improved too as temperatures with the fans running at maximum speed are slightly less than the originals running at their maximum speed. The only downsides are losing the pretty lights (meh) and the fan calibration monitoring is completely wrong now as the bios thinks 4200rpm is 100% (original fan), so when the noctuas are running at maximum (2200 rpm) monitoring indicates 54% This makes absolutely no difference to the cooling; it's just I need to do some mental gymnastics to determine the real percent.
And finally, the noctuas use less power. Around 5 to 7 watts per card which adds up when you multiply it by 24 cards running 24/7. Around 3kw less per day. Which adds up over time.
So in summary:
PROS
Very quiet!
Way less prone to failure.
Slightly better cooling.
Slightly less power used.
CONS
Expensive x 24
Displayed fan percent incorrect.
Losing the pretty lights.
The result while costly, means that even when mining barely covers the cost of the electricity, I can happily run my rigs during during winter, using them as heaters. Each rig draws around 1100 watts which provides the same heat as an 1100 watt heater. BUT they are actually quieter than an equivalently powered heater!
