Recent purchase of Alienware aurora R8 gaming desktop. System works well per the gamer but the fan noise during play and downloads is quite annoying and incessant. Dell support ran remote stress test/diagnostics and said temps, etc are within range. He stated that "liquid cooling" something or other may help reduce fan noise.

Anyone else experience or any ideas on this?

Gus said:

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Recent purchase of Alienware aurora R8 gaming desktop. System works well per the gamer but the fan noise during play and downloads is quite annoying and incessant. Dell support ran remote stress test/diagnostics and said temps, etc are within range. He stated that "liquid cooling" something or other may help reduce fan noise.

Anyone else experience or any ideas on this?

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Can you isolate which fan is noisy? I don't know much about Alienware builds, but you've got exhaust fans on the case and power supply, one on the CPU, and possibly one on the GPU or even the hard drives. If you can track that down we might be able to recommend a quieter alternative.

Edit to add: take a look at this thread. There are others who seem to have isolated the noisy fans, and some specific recommendations for replacement fans that seem to be much quieter.

https://www.dell.com/community/Alienware-Desktops/Aurora-R8-please-fix-fans/td-p/7275417

Thanks

Yeah, it's probably a combination of cheap, ****ty fans (a big place where prebuilt PC companies tend to cut corners) and an overly aggressive fan curve.

Noctua makes really good fans that are quiet, but they're probably the most expensive on the market ($12-25 or so a piece). Its been too long since I built a computer, so I don't know what the good brands that might be cheaper are.

Smaller fans tend to spin faster so they make a higher pitched sound that is much more annoying. You can play with the fan curves and see if you can figure out which ones are the biggest offenders.

TMoney2007 said:

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Noctua makes really good fans that are quiet, but they're probably the most expensive on the market ($12-25 or so a piece). Its been too long since I built a computer, so I don't know what the good brands that might be cheaper are.

Smaller fans tend to spin faster so they make a higher pitched sound that is much more annoying. You can play with the fan curves and see if you can figure out which ones are the biggest offenders.

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Yeah, I went with all Noctua NF-A12x25 PWM fans in my current build as they are far and away the best fans available in terms of performance to noise. They are spendy though at over $30/each and are only available in Noctua brown.

Arctic makes some really solid budget fans (like the F12, usually around $12/each) if you don't want to spend a ton on absolute top tier performance or RGB lighting.

https://www.amazon.com/ARCTIC-F12-PWM-PST-Technology/dp/B00H3T1KBE/ref=as_li_ss_tl?keywords=arctic+f12&qid=1580549646&s=electronics&sr=1-2&th=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=rlncg40d-20&linkId=dfdaa426cee0f47cf559eb548422e4a9&language=en_US

With a prebuilt system like something from Dell/Alienware, you definitely want to check what's compatible before buying.

I got the value 5 pack of the Arctic P12 pwm fans for $30 and have been very happy with them.