Building Quieter Computers

So, as I suspect many of you have, I've got a home office that I probably work from for 2/3s of my working time, as I'm often working in the non-trad. office hours as well. It's nice having this space in my home, but the fans from the desktops are so loud, I feel as if I'm standing in the middle of O'Hare's runways. Anyone out there know of power supplies with quiet fans? CPU fans that are extra smooth?

Comments

Ah, an area I have experience with...

[TBadiuk]

Ok, since I spent about $200 US a year ago to fix the exact same problem I thought I'd share what I learned.

#1) You need to fix ALL noise sources inside your computer. Throwing in a new CPU fan no matter how quite will not really help much. You need to get a quieter CPU FAN (the Molex radical fin someone mentioned is what I used), a new power supply with a quieter fan, AND, MOST IMPORTANT, you need to quiet down your hard disk drive(s).

Check out www.quietpc.com - I got all 3 products I needed (CPU FAN, Power Supply, and HD noise suppressors) from them.

Lastly, if running a CPU that takes a lot of juice, you need to turn down the CPU VCore to cut back on some of the juice. My Athlon 1000MHZ runs 100% stable at 1.40V. This is important because most "quiet" PS units have variable speed fans. I can hear the difference between 1.75V and 1.40V.

Also- Be sure to try and lower the power consumption of your PC as much as possible. Example- An external modem with seperate PSU will not tax your internal PSU as much hence that variable speed fan will spin slower.

Lastly, you can take more drastic measures like cutting voltage to the fans and then underclocking your CPU (say a 1.4GHZ CPU down to 1.0GHZ) to generate less heat.

Someone on /. even mentioned a while back that they got a DEAD SILENT PC by disconnecting all fans and then just running there 1G PIII at 500MHZ or so since the CPU barely gets warm....

Ted

I built my computer into the wall :)

[abelsson]

Funnily enough i can post exactly the same comment twice in one day and still be on topic :)

See http://abelsson.com/tystdator . Comments are in swedish, but it's the pictures that are interesting in any case. Dont worry about not understanding the comments on that page, you're not missing much. I originally wrote it for a swedish friend of mine..

The basic idea was just that i wanted a quiet computer - and i had a spare room behind where i had my computer. So.. i just a few drilled holes in the wall and put the computer on the other side.

It works extremely well. Best part is that my box is *completely* quiet. It's exactly like having a fanless box. I've almost started to get annoyed by the noise my monitor makes. :)

It looks pretty cool too.

-henrik

Fans are only part of the problem

[snopes]

I recently picked up a new higher watt power supply and cpu fan from PC Power & Cooling. Higher wattage is supposed to aid in reducing fan noise and their stuff is supposed to be high-quality ball bearings that will run quieter. Well, they definetely run quieter, but not even close to silent. And I found the bulk of my noise to be coming from an old hardrive. Well, I removed it as it wasn't really needed anymore and the nice new IBM in there still makes it's share of noise just spinning.

Best suggestions I saw the last time this came up was consider what quiet really means given your ambient noise. For me, it turns out to be nearly silent as the thing is in my bedroom. Based on my experience this is pretty tough to achieve. One issue I've yet to resolve, which you may like to look into, is how to build a *nix system where you can spin down all drives. The problem is swap disk. As for as I can tell presently, you always end up with one disk spinning (or constantly up/down) due to even the smallest swap accesses. What might be feasible, but exspensive, is a solid state disk for swap.

Hemos, try searching slashdot

[snopes]

I'm a little surprised this was posted. It's not like this subject hasn't been up before with some excellent feedback:

Ultra-Quiet Linux Boxes?

Computers And The Noise They Make

I'm pretty sure there's at least one other story in the archives which I didn't find immediately.

Get a small desk fan and use that

[xtal]

If you really want quiet, and don't care about looks, get a small desk fan. I paid about $15 for a high-quality one that is whisper quiet and flows a LOT of air. I just popped the side off the case and blow the air in, my Duron 600@900Mhz runs at 45C instead of ~60C with the stock heat sink. I had 2 exhaust and one intake fan, and disconnecting those got rid of most of the noise.

When I get around to it, I'll properly connect the fan with some ducting and reconnect the side of the case up. This works great because it cools my horribly overclocked video card and hard drives / DVD / burner as well.

Think big fan, low RPM for quiet.

Other tricks to reduce noise:

• Use rubber washers to connect the fan to the case. Where the fan touches the case there will be some vibration and noise transferred. Putting the rubber washer in reduces that.
• If your case just has a pattern of holes, get out the dremel and cut a big circle. Those holes introduce turbulence which can cause noise.
• Put your fans on a switch for when you don't need mega-cooling. This works well, and my ultra-quiet desk fan has three settings. On the first one, you don't even know it's on.

Another tip: Rather than a intake in the front and an exhaust in the back, try a single, large, low RPM fan -cut in the top of the case- blowing out. Heat rises, and this works well from what a friend of mine has reported.

Big slow fans, not small fast fans.

[Tackhead]

1) Undervolt your fans. Most 12V fans can run at 7V. (Hook +5V to the GND wire on the fan, and +12V to the +12V wire on the fan).

The fan will run slower, but cooler.

2) Work on airflow near your fan blades. A fan with a great big sheet of metal with punched holes in it will be loud. The same fan with the metal grill removed will be quieter. The same fan with the metal grill and some extra space around it (because these fans typically blow air out in a cone on a 45-degree angle away from the center of the fan) will run even more quietly.

Still need finger protection? Get a real fan grill - the old-sk00l things that looked like three or four concentric circles of wire stuck together with a couple of cross-wise pieces of wire.

3) Rule of thumb - low RPM = low noise. If you don't get enough airflow (for cooling purposes) when you undervolt your 80mm case fan, carve up the case and add a big-ass 120mm fan. An undervolted 120mm fan can often move as much air as a typical 80mm fan running at +12V. If your local surplus store is well-stocked, you might even find some +24V fans that run at +12V. (But be sure to test them first ;-)

Well, there are a few ideas to start with. I'm sure others will follow up.

Radial Fin

[ekrout]

From the site: There is no other cooler on earth designed like this. The Molex Silent Systems Radial Fin(TM) design offers superb cooling performance but at the same time runs almost silently! The product employs an advanced fin design which gives a vastly superior surface area to that offered by traditional extrusion-based products. Different versions are available to suit a variety of processors, and because of their unique design, the coolers are not only incredibly efficient at removing heat but are also very easy to install.

Really Quiet Case Fan

[ekrout]

A friend of mine just got this and he's incredibly please -> quiet case fan

Is no one going to answer the question?

[2nd Post!]

It was for a quiet power supply! I think I've only seen one or two relevant posts so far; most of the rest are harping about computers, Macs, Suns, etc.

try this site, PC Power-Cooling.

My friend tells me they are really quiet (I've heard them) and swears by them, despite the slightly higher cost.

In their power supply section they have an ultra quiet section, and they even 'measure' the dB of their power supplies. The ultra quiet 275 ATX is only 34dB!

Geek dating!