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Building the Quiet PC

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the tommy-can-you-hear-me dept.

An anonymous reader sent us a great little article on building a silent PC. Utilizing low noise power supplies, cases with good ventilation, and noise enclosures for hard drives, you can actually here you stereo over your PC again. I've been looking at undertaking such a project myself real soon, so I'm glad this one came along.

11 of 171 comments (clear)

  1. Carefull... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5

    A monoton sound (same range of frequency) during a long time can damage your hearing even if it's not a loud sound. It's better to listen to music, birds or anything else. I don't want to get into details but it has to do with the fact that there are receptors in your ear that capture different frequencies. If you push them to hard they get damaged.

    1. Re:Carefull... by teknico · · Score: 5

      The stuff about the specialized receptors is true, but your whole statement is inaccurate.

      There are two kinds of hearing damages: physical and psychological. The second one may occur at low sound levels, but for a physical damage to occur, the sound has to cross a threshold that is situated at about 85 dB SPL. Furthermore, it takes time to damage those receptors, the time needed being inversely proportional to the SPL level.

      While it is true that the hearing habits of new generations are probably causing a partially deaf population in twenty years from now, if you have a computer emitting more than 85 dB SPL at short distance, you have other problems in addition to those hearing-related.

  2. Re:Nothing too interesting there by VAXman · · Score: 5

    Underclocking. If you don't need a tip-top performance PC, reducing the CPU clock speed cuts down on heat. If you underclock far enough you don't even need separate CPU cooling at all. Same goes for graphics cards and, to a lesser extent, motherboard chipsets.

    Don't do this! All modern microprocessors are designed with dynamic circuits which are very timing dependent. In general, processors cannot be underclocked reliably. The Pentium 4, for example, will not run reliably under about 1.2 GHz or will have problems with the L2 cache. It is safe if you run a particular processor at a lower speed bin, but definitely don't run it at a speed where it's not sold at. Additionally, typically not all bus ratios are validated. There might be bugs a different clock ratios, even lower ones than what is sold (changing the bus ratio radically changes timing conditions possible in the processor, and some bugs are only visible at certain ratios). Also, underclocking the bus is problematic also. High speed RAM is also timing sensitive and could cause corruption if underclocked.

  3. More Tips by havardi · · Score: 5

    Get a sheet of "Sound Board" from any Home Depot for about 6 bucks. This material is very easily cut.. use a hot glue gun to mount the board to every wall in your case. the sheet metal is not the best sound absorber by itself.
    Next, go to your local Radioshack.com (Fry's electronics sucked) and pick up some potentiometers. Get 5W, 50ohm. Splice these into your case fan/cput fan, only using the positive wire only. (use the middle and left OR right connection only on the pots).
    This will deaden any PC quite well.. without special equipment. I have an MC462 W/ Delta cpu fan. 80mm, and 120mm case fans. the pots let me quiet it down even more... while sacrificing a little cooling ability. (at least I can sleep at night now. . .)

  4. Taco you idiot !! by Salsaman · · Score: 5
    "I've been looking at undertaking such a project myself real soon, so I'm glad this one came along."

    Why don't you try reading Slashdot?

  5. What about the DIYers? by doorbot.com · · Score: 5

    I ran through this article (basically looked at the pictures) and everything, except the insulation installed at the end, was a commercial product. Not that I have a problem with that, but often buying a lot of commerical "silent PC" solutions can add up to a very expensive PC, money which might have otherwise been invested in a more powerful computer.

    Why this article is linked to via Slashdot, I'll never know, as I get the impression that the majority of the Slashdot crowd would rather have an extensive DIY article with links afterwords to the commercial products (for those who want to pay for the convenience of not DIY).

    ---

    I do have the Antec 1080 and it is very quiet. The case is large, though, so sound will echo if you don't add some insulation or what not. I did find the included Antec power supply was very quiet, so quiet I was surprised when I first turned the machine on. With some 80mm (the article erroneously says they fan mounts are 60mm) Panaflos you can get very good airflow with low noise. My current acoustical problems come from my old Seagate Barracuda SCSI drives, which are unavoidably loud.

    ---

    I got my case from Directron and the Panaflos from Teamawe.

  6. 60 deg C. for the HD... by willy_me · · Score: 5
    The hard drive might run quietly but it won't last. I've worked on several "servers" made from cheap PC cases but upgraded to SCSI drives and they just don't last. The cases aren't built for it and they get too hot. I remember one server, after 8 months I did a hardware upgrade (added a wireless card) and the hard drive wouldn't spin up again. And that wasn't the only time I've had a hard drive refuse to spin up after under a year of use.

    The moral of the story - the cooler you keep your hard drive the longer it will last. That's why server cases put fans over the hard drives. The Apple G3/G4 pro cases also circulate air around the hard drives. Putting your hard drive in a "quiet" case and then removing it's one source of cooling is just plain stupid. They'll learn in time..

    Willy

  7. Watercooling really works.... by (H)elix1 · · Score: 5

    I was lucky enough to build an audio workstation for a friend of mine. The box needed to be very quiet - but due to SCSI length limits, I could not just run a KVM switch through the wall. I'd done a little watercooling of my own for the CPU, but koolance gave me some great ideas for cooling off things like HDDs & power supplies. Last I checked, koolance won't sell you a PS or HHD cooler alone, but they are not too hard to build if you have access to some simple milling equipment.

    Anyhow, I got waterblocks for anything running hot and ran waterlines to another room for cooling. As long as the water is near room temp, you really don't have cond. issues...

    Water cooling is just like building a PC for the first time. Use care... once you've done it once or twice, you wonder why everyone does not do it. Happy hacking.

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    +++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
  8. Re:If you want a quiet computer... by sideshow-voxx · · Score: 5

    Or you could get a Commodore 64. They're cheaper.

    --

    "Anybody remotely interesting is mad, in some way or another" - Doctor Who

  9. Nothing too interesting there by koreth · · Score: 5
    That article had nothing new to say, and what's more, some of their approaches aren't state-of-the-art in silent computing. Some of the technologies and approaches they didn't touch on:
    • Liquid cooling. The Koolance and CALM System cases are the obvious examples, but for higher cooling capacity other folks have built liquid-cooling solutions that require few or no fans. (Pump noise is easier to deal with since you can enclose a pump in an airtight space.)
    • External fans. Essentially, this approach is "don't eliminate fan noise, just put it somewhere else." An air duct or tube runs to the PC, and at the other end, possibly off in some entirely different room, is the fan.
    • Fanless power supply. There are (generally fairly low-wattage) power supplies that dissipate their heat by convection. Typically you'd use one in a case where it's practical to cut or drill holes above the PS. I've seen talk, though not examples, of people putting two of these into one PC to get around the limited wattage; no idea if that'd be practical.
    • High-wattage power supply. Get a 550W power supply with a temperature-regulated fan to power your low-wattage PC. The fan will tend to run at low speed since you won't be running anywhere close to capacity.
    • Voltage reduction on fans. This works equally well for case fans, CPU fans, power supply fans, etc. The typical quick-and-dirty technique, though it's not ideal, is to splice in the 5V lead in place of the ground, effectively reducing fan voltage to 7V (assuming it was a 12V fan). The fan will spin more slowly, generating less noise.
    • Underclocking. If you don't need a tip-top performance PC, reducing the CPU clock speed cuts down on heat. If you underclock far enough you don't even need separate CPU cooling at all. Same goes for graphics cards and, to a lesser extent, motherboard chipsets.

    Just to name a few. And of course you typically want a low-RPM hard disk (though the new quiet Seagate drive sounds promising), low-rotation CD-ROM drive (use a drive with Zen's TrueX multibeam technology and you'll still have fast reads), etc.

    Apple's iMac Cube is proof that it's possible to build a computer with no fans whatsoever. Hopefully it's a harbinger of things to come.

  10. If you want a quiet computer... by Tuxinatorium · · Score: 5

    Get an iMac. They are very quiet, because they don't have fans. iMacs use convective cooling.

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    Repeal the DMCA!