Sleeve Bearing: still the quietest

[weirdlookinguy]

I had some "main rig mayhem" of my own this past week. As some of you may know, I like my computers QUIET! and will not tolerate even the slightest fan noise.

My computer has 4 fans in it:

-Stock Intel cooler Nidec fan, PWM. Fairly quiet.
-Turbine fan in my graphics card, it is a Magic ProTechnic. Fairly quiet.
-120mm Yate Loon fan in my Delta PSU. Silent.
-120mm Cooler Master sleeve bearing fan for rear case exhaust. Silent.

Well, this last week, the cheap Cooler Master fan started making some horrid grinding-type sounds. I would wiggle the fan blades a bit and it would go away. It would only do this at power-up, and it didn't do it every time, only sometimes. Looks like the bearings are just starting to pack up their things and get ready to go out.

I figured it was time to deep-six the Cooler Master and put a new one in. So out came the Cooler Master and in went this lovely thing:


Enermax HYDRO BEARING! With BAT-WING DESIGN. DETACHABLE BLADES. SUPER SILENT. 100,000 HOURS MTBF. Holy shit batman! Someone call the cops, this sounds like an awesome fucking fan!

I put it in and hit the power button.

This thing is LOUD. Sounds like a howling wind tunnel.

I don't care how much air the damn thing moves. I let it sit in there for a few days and it drove me up the wall. I had to shut off my PC at night because I couldn't sleep with a tornado next to my bed.

Today I took the old Cooler Master, removed the sticker, removed the rubber plug, cleaned the original grease off the spindle with a q-tip and put a drop of Auto Tranny Fluid in there. I put it back together and popped it back in my PC.

Silence. A relief to my ears.

Hopefully my ATF thing will keep the Cooler Master running for a while. I know its a cheap Sleeve Bearing POS. I don't care. It moves air, and it is quiet.

The Enermax is going back to Fry's in a few hours.

[yyonline]

Re: Sleeve Bearing: still the quietest

I'm with you there on the quiet PCs. I suffer from recurrent ear infections and tinnitus, so I don't deal well with any sort of droning background noises. My current main system uses an abit board and every fan header is voltage controlled with user-defined temperatures. It's near silent most of the time, but will make some noise if I'm doing something CPU intensive, which is fine. I don't do CPU intensive things when I'm trying to sleep, so it's silent then. Currently my PC has 4x Scythe 120mm fluid dynamic bearing fans. More or less "sealed" sleeve bearings, so they're quiet, but have longer lifespans. They idle at 6V or about 800rpm. If the PC gets hot, they'll ramp up to 1600rpm which is rather noisy. I'm using a Thermalright Ultra120 Extreme CPU cooler, which was the best CPU cooler on the market when I built the thing. I'm running a 130W Core 2 QX6800, so the thing does indeed put out some heat, but it doesn't seem any hotter than other Core 2s at idle.

I'm really going to miss abit when it comes time to retire my current PC, as I haven't found another manufacturer out there with the same degree of fan control. Yeah, I know there are manual controllers out there, but having to remember to turn it up and down is a pain. Plus they're usually ugly with LEDs on them. (On a slightly related note... I strongly dislike LEDs in computers as well...I unhooked all my case LEDs and spent $50 on the only card reader I could find without an annoying power LED.)

Sleeve bearing is techincally the quietest, but I stopped using them a few PC builds ago as I got sick of changing them out every time they started making funny sounds. Since you relubed your fan, how did you get the sticker on the back to re-stick? I've never had much luck getting them to stay on after removing them. An ordinary paper sticker isn't impervious to oil... So I'm curious how you dealt with that.

[willawake]

Re: Sleeve Bearing: still the quietest

you can see its going to be loud by the shape of the blades

[ratdude747]

Re: Sleeve Bearing: still the quietest

wlg- that os a overclocker's fan, not a quiet fan. notice the lack of pwm.

i might be getting an arctic cooling hydobearing fan, but it has pwm, so it should only be loud if there is a high load.

[acstech]

Re: Sleeve Bearing: still the quietest

I am sure your atf will work fine. It is a good that you chose a thin oil rather than a thick one or a grease. Placing grease on a noisy fan will only work for a short period of time. However, I still say that Hoppe's lubricating oil is the best stuff for re-lubing sleeve bearing fans.

http://www.hoppes.com/products/lubricating_oil.html

[Krankshaft]

Re: Sleeve Bearing: still the quietest

My comp has 5 120mm low speed Yate loons that includes one I put into the power supply. They were still too noisy for me so I undervolted them to 5 volts.

The stock Intel coolers are noisy when the speed kicks up I used an Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro. PWM controlled and even at full speed whisper quiet. Mainly because it uses a huge heat pipe based heat sink with a larger surface area which allows a quieter fan rated at a lower CFM instead of a smaller ingot of aluminum and using a noiser fan at a higher CFM.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835186134

Arctic cooling makes some quiet standalone fans too but they're a bit pricey around 14 bucks a fan too rich for my blood.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who finds the whooshing sound of a wind tunnel in a comp from noisy fans maddening.

[ratdude747]

Re: Sleeve Bearing: still the quietest

Arctic cooling makes some quiet standalone fans too but they're a bit pricey around 14 bucks a fan too rich for my blood.

I am considering a $10 pwm arctic cooling 92mm fan with a fluid dynamic bearing for my main rig... if what you are saying is true, then it might be a good buy (since my fan needs pwm to stay quiet without weird speed fluctuations).

[delaware74b]

Re: Sleeve Bearing: still the quietest

Today I took the old Cooler Master, removed the sticker, removed the rubber plug, cleaned the original grease off the spindle with a q-tip and put a drop of Auto Tranny Fluid in there. I put it back together and popped it back in my PC.

I have a small bottle of 3-in-1 oil for small motors that I use to relube fans. In a pinch, I use Wahl's clipper blade oil.

[kc8adu]

Re: Sleeve Bearing: still the quietest

http://www.iqproducts.com/pf_primis/primis_lubegel.htm
best fan lube there is.
i suspect that a fresh drop of any good oil once a year in these fans will make them run forever.i do this and have 10 year old case fans that run 24/7/365 and no signs of wear.

[momaka]

Re: Sleeve Bearing: still the quietest

i suspect that a fresh drop of any good oil once a year in these fans will make them run forever.

And if you take them apart (remove c-clip/locking washer and take rotor off), clean thoroughly, lube, then put back together, they'll last even longer and won't need to be re-lubed every year.

For fans that have gone completely seized, I even resurface the sleeve bearing. It's quite simple, actually - just take a small screw driver and scratch the sleeve parallel to the shaft. Clean thoroughly afterwards. The tiny scratches will remove any grinding noise and make the sleeve retain oil for much longer.

[Krankshaft]

Re: Sleeve Bearing: still the quietest

I am considering a $10 pwm arctic cooling 92mm fan with a fluid dynamic bearing for my main rig... if what you are saying is true, then it might be a good buy (since my fan needs pwm to stay quiet without weird speed fluctuations).

I've used their graphics card and CPU coolers which had their fans mounted to them because I got sick of the stock ones throttling up when gaming.

They also use rubber isolation bushings on the motor cage to isolate it from the fan housing which dampers vibration.

[TheLaw]

Re: Sleeve Bearing: still the quietest

I am considering a $10 pwm arctic cooling 92mm fan with a fluid dynamic bearing for my main rig... if what you are saying is true, then it might be a good buy (since my fan needs pwm to stay quiet without weird speed fluctuations).

I use Scythe S-Flex fans for intake (800RPM), exhaust (800RPM), and CPU (1600RPM). Yate in the PSU. Passive video card heatsink.

Excellent combo. Cost more than I would have wanted but it's a perfect balance of airflow to noise. And the fluid bearings will last just about forever unless you get something in the liquid part...which is pretty difficult.

And all of them are running at max speeds. I hate when fans suddenly speed up and slow down. More annoying than constant noise imho.

[weirdlookinguy]

Re: Sleeve Bearing: still the quietest

The Cooler Master had a foil sticker and a rubber plug behind the sticker, so I had no problems with it leaking. The fan has been running for 48 hours now and is still smooth and quiet, so it looks like the ATF took well.

The packaging for the 12v Tornado - erm, sorry, ENERMAX ADVANCED HYDRO-BEARING with DETACHABLE BLADES! said the fan produced 18dB max.

*flips off Enermax*

[Wizard]

Re: Sleeve Bearing: still the quietest

Sleeve bearing fans are quiet when new like ball bearing fans does but for long term ball bearing are good especially if using quality brand of fans instead of what you get with the generic stuff. With some exceptions: like Intel retail cpu with heatsink have premium fan.

Cheers, Wizard

[nnname]

Re: Sleeve Bearing: still the quietest

I own three Enermax' Cluster fans that mostly run at 580—650 RPM. Although they are older than one year with spinning at least 10 hours a day, their bearings do not seem to tear at all. Normal sleeve bearnings do clatter after a certain period of time.

[Colt45ws]

Re: Sleeve Bearing: still the quietest

I had one of those exact enermax twister fans. Locked up tight after 2 months of use. Didnt flow any air at all either. Its too bad I cant find the ceramic bearing ones I already have again. They seem to last forever, quiet and move air decently.