Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room

Building a Quiet PC

(1/6) > >>

mouser:
nice article on building a quiet pc:

We've all seen plenty of reviews of those big CPU coolers that promise to keep your processor chilly while reducing noise. Big, slow-moving fans are good at that. There are other parts of your system that can make a lot of noise, though. That graphics card can get loud when it spins up. The hard drive and optical drive vibrate the case during heavy use. If there's a fan on your motherboard chipset, it can sometimes be the worst offender: That small fan often spins at a really high speed, emitting a loud high-pitch sound. Of course, your case fans matter, too. An often overlooked part of the noise equation in a high-end PC is the power supply.
Rather than looking at all the ways one can build a super-quiet PC, we decided to focus on the case and power supply. We'll take a fairly typical high-end system and put it into a good-quality enthusiast case, and then see if some case modifications can drop the decibel levels a bit. The idea is not to replace all the cooling with new equipment, but to see if sound dampening material, rubber grommets, and quieter power supplies really make a difference.

--- End quote ---


http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2064987,00.asp





Also see this related older article: http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1938568,00.asp

f0dder:
A bit sad that they didn't get bitter end results than they did...

I think the noisiest part of my case are the two 120mm casefans - but that's a steady, low-pitch hum, so it doesn't annoy me. The harddrive-rotation-induced resonance is the most annoying part, since it's a "cyclic" sound.

I have a passively cooled chipset by the way, and yesterday I swapped my trusty old GeForce6600 for a passively cooled gigabyte GeForce7600-GT - so none of those annoying small high-pitch fans :)

brotherS:
I don't have time right now to read the complete article, but it surely is amazing what you can do to silence your PC! I now virtually have to stop breathing to hear mine and I can only recommend to invest in silence than always in the fastest, newest PC.

I think the noisiest part of my case are the two 120mm casefans - but that's a steady, low-pitch hum, so it doesn't annoy me
-f0dder (November 30, 2006, 03:31 AM)
--- End quote ---
Here's what you can do:
- there's a small piece of hardware available that reduces the fanspeed based on the temperature of the passing airflow
- there are special silent fans available where you only hear the airflow, not the actual fan
 :-*

The harddrive-rotation-induced resonance is the most annoying part, since it's a "cyclic" sound.
-f0dder (November 30, 2006, 03:31 AM)
--- End quote ---
I highly suggest some decoupling device (and of course the quiet Samsung HDs), I rarely hear my HDs anymore.
 :-*

f0dder:
there's a small piece of hardware available that reduces the fanspeed based on the temperature of the passing airflow

--- End quote ---
not a good idea, since I've got a passively cooled GPU - I need the airflow :)

brotherS:
there's a small piece of hardware available that reduces the fanspeed based on the temperature of the passing airflow

--- End quote ---
not a good idea, since I've got a passively cooled GPU - I need the airflow :)
-f0dder (November 30, 2006, 04:45 AM)
--- End quote ---
My GPU and GFX-card are passively cooled too - no problem :)

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page