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Melamine Ceiling Tiles and the Quiet PC

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the stretching-the-dollar dept.

Delta Screemer writes "What good are ceiling tiles when it comes to making a computer quieter? Well, Max Page of FrostyTech has found a use for 'Melamine Foam Sound Absorbing Ceiling Tiles' as a cheap way of lowering the noise a computer produces. By lining the insides of a computer with these $3 24"x24" industrial office panels he was able to quiet a computer by several dBA. That may not sound like much (pun intended), but when you compare the price of these melamine foam panel to products like Dynamat the price difference is substantial."

9 of 269 comments (clear)

  1. quiet PCs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    make for loud masterbation

  2. And the really good part is.... by nzyank · · Score: 5, Funny

    ... it helps keep your PC nice and warm and toasty inside. Metal conducts heat. The side of my computer is warm. Ergo it is probably helping transfer heat outside of the computer where it belongs.

  3. Is that like the Rhode Island size standard? by PhysicsGenius · · Score: 4, Funny
    "quiet a computer by several dBA."

    I've known some loud DBAs, but I didn't realize they had been organized into a loudness-measuring system.

  4. Ahh, but you see... by AndroidCat · · Score: 5, Funny
    After the computer has been rendered silent, the sound card will play all those classic movie computer sounds to let you know it's alright: clattering relays, doot-doot-deep telemetery, chugga-chugga card punches, a little R2, etc...

    A computer that sounds like is supposed to! And what right-thinking geek could resist that? :^P

    --
    One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
    1. Re:Ahh, but you see... by Mr+Z · · Score: 5, Funny

      Ah yess... I remember when "Microsoft Plus" came out for Windows 95 (and people around where I was still called it the "Plus Pack"). My roommate installed one of the "high tech" themes (SciFi or Robots or whatever it was called).

      I've never really truly recovered. It's amazing how you largely don't notice the sound effects when you trigger them yourself. It's similarly amazing how maddening they can be when the guy next to you keeps triggering "Beep... snap... gloop... clink! Tronggggg... gloop.... shshshshshshshsh... Bleep!" (Adding about 2000mg daily intake of caffeine doesn't help either.)

      To get "back at" him, I wired up a cron job on one of the Linux machines there in the basement to play every .MOD file I had handy at a time I knew I'd be in class and he'd be computing. :-) He tore out and hid the speaker from that computer, at which point I found an old Kraco car stereo speaker and magnetically mounted it within my case and connected it electrically with two unused jumpers and some ghetto engineering.

      I miss college.

      Makes me want to electrify my door knob again like I did in my dorm room freshman year...

      --Joe
      --
      Program Intellivision!
  5. Why waste $3.00.. by Enraged_jawa · · Score: 5, Funny

    When you can get a can of Expanding Foam for $2.79 at Home Depot. Just stick the nozzle into the fan grille opening and fill 'er up till foam comes out the floppy drive slot and all 8 corners. It will get real quiet and work much better than the tiles.

  6. Re:Why not active noise cancellation? by mikeophile · · Score: 4, Funny
    an implemention of it for PCs have to force one to sit in the same position all the time

    You mean like sitting in front of the screen?

  7. Raccoon Cubs ... by Mooncaller · · Score: 4, Funny
    ... sound like failing fans. Two weeks ago, while doing an all night coding session, I heard a failing fan. I at first thought it was my window fan. I turned it off; the sound continued. "Oh no my system is dying." I had just replaced my CPU fan, which I would not have done if I had'nt heard it failing. In a panic (I'm unemployed and don't have the resources to replace my old PPro system) I shut everything down. Fortunatly the sound continued. It was coming from outside. I finally located the source even though it was highly intermitend, fading in and out just like a failing fan. What I found was a days old orphaned raccoon cub right outside my window. It was yelling for its mom. Right now the cub and a sibling are with a Wildlife Rescue raccoon specialist.

    BTW, a stupid artical like this one desireves OT posts :P

  8. Re:I like loud computers by Xzzy · · Score: 4, Funny

    > A noisy hard drive is a dying hard drive.

    Or a seagate. :D

    Course they're fine these days, but several years back it was like setting off a chainsaw inside your machine.