Seriously noisy system, need advice on making it quiet.
Is it definitely one of the fans?
If you take the covers off, is anything else vibrating?
No nothing vibrating in there, just a lot of generic fan noise. I've always had noisy systems until the current single core machine and i learnt to live with it (they were also single core machines) however when its a machine with 8 of them (inc the power supply and maths co processor - or thats what i think it is) then its a bit much! My old single core machines literally had a cpu fan, power supply fan and maybe a graphics card fan but this rig is full of them - take a look:
I listened to them all with the mechanics stethoscope a few minutes ago and these were my findings:
1) Power supply - not too bad but could only touch the metal near the fan
2) Rear case fan - touched on plastic grille, not too bad
3) Ram fan - quite loud when probe touched on label
4) Same as 2
5) Loud - a real whizzer! Think this is maths co processor or something?
6) Graphics - very loud - another whizzer but like 5, doesn't sound like it passes enough air to be making all that air flow noise
7) CPU - Moderately loud, pretty sure this is the air flow sound.
8 ) CPU - Moderately loud, also heard some knocking / rough sounds coming from it. Again i'm pretty sure this is an air flow sound generator.
Graphics shouldn't be loud unless you are playing a seriously intense game.
Similarly, the CPU should be very quiet if its just ticking over.
Do you have software to reveal fan speeds & cpu/graphics/motherboard temperatures?
@maulz wrote:
i think you have confused some of your fan labeling pretty sure 3 is your cpu and 7and 8 are your ram.
I think you need to stop being so over confident in yourself. You mention in your text about your experience.. but you've not managed to lookup the manual for the device and check it out for yourself before trying to make me look daft?.
Note that number 15 is the memory fan - right where i said it was - MOUNTED ON TOP OF 8 x 2GB ram modules.
No doubt you'll still insist i'm an idiot so heres a pic of the motherboard too - you're an expert so you should recognise where the two CPUs are.:
@maulz wrote:
the path of the airflow through a case is often ignored with fans just blasting at individual components and fighting each other. sometimes 1 fan will provide enough flow for several passive cooling solutions near it. having all the case fans at the back puling air out and the psu fan also doing that means they are fighting for the same air. better to have a fan blowing in at the bottom front directing that air to graphics and on to cpu fan , the chipset having a passive heat exchanger in that airflow. and the air then going on to exit through the power supply after moving past the ram. some of those seconadary fans dont need a high speed at all if they are working together. sometimes a speed drop of just 20% is enough to totally quieten a fan in my experience.
some fan/heatsinks are directional and turning them around will improve the airflow to other components nearby.
None of which addresses the noise problem 
Why did you bother posting?
An extreme fix would be to run it as a headless PC.
Place the ethernet and PC at least 20 feet away and the keyboard, screen, mouse (with long cables) close by.
There should be hardly any noise. 
@VileReynard wrote:
An extreme fix would be to run it as a headless PC.
Place the ethernet and PC at least 20 feet away and the keyboard, screen, mouse (with long cables) close by.
There should be hardly any noise.
I have been mulling that over actually.. only snag is the only really suitable places for it are not going to get positive attention from SWMBO as she hates ethernet cables and to put it there will mean cables all over the hallway lol.