Make my PC Quiet

[wod]

if you need the fans in there, why not get a fan controller where u can turn up the fans or slow them down

also prehaps change the psu to something like a Zalman or a Tagan psu there very quiet. the fan on the cpu heatsink could be part of the problem aswell

[Inertia_]

My flower cooler came with a speed controller for the fan - even when it's at it's most aggressive, though, it still isn't annoying (due, no doubt, to its enormous size).

TBH, I don't think I set up the hard drive enclosure particularly well - the back plate that's supposed to seal the whole thing up didn't have a hole in it for the IDE cable (doh!). I'd say just get a nice quiet drive like a Samsung Spinpoint - they're very cheap nowadays.

[Rory C]

I recently purchased one of those fsp silent solution kits lately that incorparates a 350 watt psu with a 120mm fan, a 92mm case fan and a cpu heatsink and it seems to be pretty good so far, the psu has both automatic and manual temperature control which makes it almost completely silent at its lowest setting and has been running perfectly happily for about a week now. I haven't fitted the heatsink yet as I can't be arsed/am too scared to butcher my pc again but after a bit of fiddling I even managed to get my case, which only has 80mm case fan mounts, to accept the 92mm case fan. Anyway, it's reduced to noise level of my PC considerably so I think in your case it may be worth a shot.

The 350 watt psu version was 65 pounds in PC World.

[NeilMcRae]

Dumb question here, but why do you need to have your PC on all the time? Do you realise how much its costing you in leccy, Most PC's burn more power than an electric tumble dryer. Switch it off, disconnect yourself the Internet will still be here in the morning.

Neil.

[sutom]

Its because some people wanna download stuff from P2P or Bittorrent constantly.
If you want to get large files such as films, its the best time to get them as you can just let it get on with it without you using the pc at the same time.

I have to turn mine off because its like sleeping next to an airport.

[marcus]

I dont want to faff around booting up the pc which is located in an airing cupboard in another room (soon to be moved back to my room hence this thread), plus as the geezer above said, its always doing something, mostly downloading legitimate things from the net.

I might have a look at the things Inertia mentioned, the main thing for me is for someone here who actually has installed these things first hand and knows the results, and Inertias deal looks pretty good from what I can tell.

[Mud]

i've almost quietened my pc (still having trouble making myself spend ?80 on a good silent 450W PSU!), so i'll give you what i've learnt...

zalman video card heatsinks (to replace fan). ~?30 and being that it's a heatsink it's utterly silent...it's been on a 9700pro for months and no problems.

zalman case fans, ~?10 each...good and quiet although the quiet bit stems from a series resistor that drops the airflow. still, got 2 and my ambient temperature in the case is a whopping but stable 45degrees. probably the bulk of that is from the video heatsinks.

flower coolers, ~?50...but check the footprint on your motherboard. my cpu is too close to the PSU and so wouldn't have fit. i've got a kamikaze off quietpc which claims to be silent, but isn't quite. at the lowest setting it gives off a slightly odd scraping sound, i'll probably pull it apart and check the surfaces/lube it up and see if that helps. the heatsink is good though and most importantly it has the fittings to use all 6 lugs on the cpu housing. important because i had one of these ridiculously heavy copper heatsinks mounted on just the central lug on each side and at a random juncture in pc use i heard a crash from my case as it sheared off a lug and continued down through the case. not good!

so all that money spent and not so quiet yet...it's all down to that psu. you gotta go the whole hog! you can hear that all the noise is coming from the psu (single pitch whirring)...so i've got an almost silenced AMD and ATI system...not the easiest to quieten. i may go buy that psu now...

[FelixofMars]

Are you the same guy that thinks its good to switch off energy conserving lights all the time, even if it is lightly someone is going to need it soon?

The irony of people who do this.

Look if you put the PC into low power mode and turn off all the non essential stuff it uses about the same as a lightbulb. And it usally uses as much power as a 24inch TV not an electric dryer which is far more expensive, although I would only expect to use this for about 2 hours a week.

Dumb question here, but why do you need to have your PC on all the time? Do you realise how much its costing you in leccy, Most PC's burn more power than an electric tumble dryer. Switch it off, disconnect yourself the Internet will still be here in the morning.

Neil.

[imzu]

How about a low-noise PC case? I have an Antec Sonata pc case which does a pretty good job of lowering the noise.

The drive bay mountings come with rubber grommits which are used to mount any CD/DVD/HDD units so they are not in contact through any metal pieces.

The PSU and system fan is monitored by a temperature sensor - the idea being the fan runs only as fast as it needs to as the PC warms up. It starts off at very quiet speed.

The case is made of thicker metal that the usual cases and is mounted on rubber feet.

http://www.antec-inc.com/pro_details_enclosure.php?ProdID=15138

[FelixofMars]

I am trying to make mine low noise by replacing smaller noiser fans with larger ones, adding dampners etc.

I bought one of those Zalman heatsinks and fans and they are deafiently better, I had one of the Coolmasters, they where good but I had to have it just under the Jetplane setting to keep it at a reasonable temp.

[charlaph]

What wod said. I wanted to quiet my PC down a while back so I bought a quiet HSF, and several quiet (21dB) case fans, but it still sounded very loud - fan noise is cumulative, so when I had all 4 running it was still very loud.

Best move I made was to buy a fan controller for ?10 off ebay.

I did a bit of experimenting using MBM5 and found that although I needed all 3 case fans on for intensive tasks (games, video editing etc...) in order to keep temps under control, for more sedate activities (surfing, etc...) I could turn off my top case fan altogether and turn my front intake fan right down to 7v. This reduced the noise MASSIVELY and the temps of the mobo, HD and CPU only rose by about 2C over what they were with all 3 fans on full blast.

I found that the rear case fan wasn't making much audible noise even at full whack(mainly due to the case being under the desk), so I leave that on all the time, but the other 2 I alter the speed of depending on what I'm doing. The front intake fan is the real killer, but unfortunately I can't turn it off altogether because the HD is right behind it and without it turning, the HD gets pretty hot. With it on even just a little bit it seems to keep the HD temp well under control.

Compared to the cost of buying my (fairly expensive) quiet case fans, it's a total bargain. The only word of warning I have is that a fan controller might not make a lot of difference if you have noisy fans, making them turn slower may just reduce the noise to 'normal' levels, whereas with mine it does literally make them just about inaudible.

[fifty?ballz]

Used to use Delta fans cos of their cooling ability, but finally got
bored of 'switching on the apache helicopter' every time I wanted
to play a PC game.

I now use a very old fashioned real full tower case (one with
6 5" bays). Everything inside is really spaced apart, each device
sits far from it's neighbour so there are no pockets where air
can pressurize and make noise. All the fans are mounted by
testing with a seperate old fashioned AT PSU their least noisy
assembly points and then I afix them with noise cancelling
rubber gromets, rubber shrouding and intake grills with
thick mesh dust filters which also remove the high pitch
'air whine' that I'd normally hear without filters.

In short: Replace *all* 60mm fans with 80mm, use spacing blocks
to cut pressurization noise such as when you jam a case fan
right against the metal of your case, when the case closes the
pressure will massively increase the noise. Could use rubber
grommets too to filter vibration and rattle noise, make no
fan touch anything hard if possible.

PSU was a QTEC & Starnet 550w and 350w, but now replaced with
an Antec SmartPower 350w which made a gigantic difference worth
every penny.

Though the PC is by no means silent, I am speaking having previously
been used to a 7000rpm 60db Delta Fan. Alhough people do comment
now on how it is admitedly quieter than their game consoles even
and I can once again hear myself think, breathe and the birds sing.

edit:
Make sure the fans blow the right way too, as I noticed my temps went
massively high recently, it turned out one of the front fans was actually
the wrong way around, blowing air out the front causing a vacuum inside,
great is I wanted to reheat a beverage inside the case, not so good for
cooling.



I'm also a fan of the Sonata case, it looks fantastic compared to todays
cheapo flimsy cases. If I was looking to get another PC I'd prob choose
that and save myself months worth of modding.

[Inertia_]

Just to update, I've just upgraded my PC to my current ideal specs and made every effort to keep the noise level down - here's the findings.

Specs:

AthlonXP 3200+ Barton Core
Radeon 9800 Pro 128mb
ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe Mobo
1 gig Kingmax Turbo 3200 RAM running in Dual Channel mode
120gb Maxtor SATA 7200rpm (for storage/games/OS)
38gb WD Raptor drive 10000rpm (for swapfile/caches)
Pioneer 107 DVD-RW
SB Live! 5.1 Player
(none of the above is overclocked)

The first thing I did when rebuilding the box was change the PSU to a stock 420W one, replacing the silent 300W PSU I'd previously bought from QuietPC. Basically, the noise from the new PSU was horribly loud and quickly got right on my nerves. After much head-scratching, I decided to attempt the seemingly impossible and reinstall the 300W PSU. I stripped out all the unnecessary components (the mobo has two integrated LAN adapters, so out went my network cards - the floppy and a CDRW also went). To my delight, the system runs like a champ on a mere 300W! Far Cry, for instance, flies along on Very High settings without breaking a sweat. My comp is also left on 24/7, and in two weeks I haven't had a single stability problem.

The box is slightly louder than before because of a few things:

- the Zalman Flower Cooler fan has to run at a generally faster speed due to slightly increased core temps
- I wouldn't even dream of installing one of those winged heatsinks on the 9800pro for fear of white specks and general overheating problems, even long term damage. That said, the fan on the card is surprisingly quiet for a stock GPU fan - they're usually quite aggressive little ****ers.

Also, I'm now forced to run my PC with the side off. I always used to do this anyway but I always had the option of popping it on if I felt like it. I tried it with the new setup and the core and ambient temps went through the roof.

If I'm watching a movie I'll turn the Zalman fan down to quiet mode and everything's fine (the max temp it'll hit on a boiling hot day like today is 60 degrees - just within the safe limits for a Barton core). Otherwise, the fan going at full pelt is nothing to get worked up over.

Were I particularly fussy I could make the box quieter. I might upgrade to the new Super Flower Cooler just to ensure consistently low core temps. I doubt I'll go for the rather large heatsink/fan arrangement they've come up with for the newer GFX cards - the noise really isn't that bad.

In short - it is quite possible to assemble a top bollocks PC and keep it nice and quiet. In fact, with CPU technology pushing itself to the outermost limits of its current design, the extreme heat being given off is causing the manufacturers of cooling systems to increasingly look into PC noise issues. What with heat pipes and water radiators being all the rage, the possibilities for effective, quiet cooling are very promising.

Just remember, it's the PSU that can ultimately break an otherwise quiet system. Look long and hard into just how much power you need for a stable setup and spend the extra pennies - the good ones really are inaudible.

Hope this helps.

[marcus]

Inertia before you do spend out on that cooler, speak to me as I may be selling my brand new one, along with my PSU unless I can get that refunded by QuietPC. After buying these items, and changing my HDs to SATAs and anti vibration mounts, disabling all fans, it still makes a loud enough noise to keep me awake at night. Apart from changing the case, I can see little other option than to find a new home for the pc entirely, or go back to the old 'sling a duvet over the case' method.

[fifty?ballz]

Sounds familiar, recently my 550W PSU stopped working properly, it had
always made a mad screaming noise like it was struggling to power my
PC. In the interim whilst waiting for my new PSU
I had an old 230W PSU in it and it was much less noisy, PC ran cooler
and everything worked seemingly faster and smoother than when the
550W was in it (games that had skipping suddenly didn't).

Don't know about having the side off, it's not uncommon though bud,
every single gamer I've ever known does it. Though all PC's I build I
make sure I don't need it off.

Having it off, just indicates not enough air is getting in the case, just
a matter of cutting more holes and attaching more intake fans. Cos of
the summer heat recently I've had to add in an additional 2 x 80mm
intake fans at the front aswell as the 3 x 92mm left panel intakes and
2 x 80mm exhausts + dual fan PSU.

All I achieved though is to not have it off. If you don't mind having it
off, then it's up to you, alot of people I know don't seem to mind.