Melamine Ceiling Tiles and the Quiet PC

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."

Comments

Larger, slower fans

[metatruk]

Use larger, slower fans when possible. They move the same amount of air as smaller, faster fans, but without the noise.

Since he throws the terminologies around.

[Mononoke]

A 6dBa difference (decibels, A weighted) is perceived as a doubling (or halving, in this instance) of loudness. His measurements seem to average in that area.

Most of what he did was close off areas where sound could escape. However, as has already been mentioned, those same areas would have allowed fresh air to enter. I'd rather have the noise than let the smoke out.

Re:Since he throws the terminologies around.

[ChadN]

Actually, while a 6 dB change is a doubling or halving of signal power, it takes about 10 dB to hear a doubling of "loudness" (a measure of perception, ie. subjective). This is also a non-linear curve (so 10 dB change in a quiet sound will sound like more than a 10 dB change in a loud sound, if I remember correctly; wish I had my acoustics book with me.).

So, basically, while 6 dB change is significant, it is not nearly as good as a 10 dB change, in terms of perceived loudness.

Re:multimedia

[bethane]

rdesktop does not support audio redirection so mplayer and xmms are reasonable altrenatives, I tried to run mp3s off a windows share using SAMBA but it didn't work too good, so I tried webdav and that seems to be a lot more stable.
Video is not really viable but I usually burn to SVCD and watch on my DVD player.
Howevar I don't play games.
Just letting you know how I do it, this might not be a good idea for everyone despite this it's a great box for coding.

Dynamat

[Eric(b0mb)Dennis]

I've personally used Dynamat for my bedroom system, right next to my bed (Used it for music,movies) and it really made it a lot quieter and well worth the money.

The -1 hour increase in time it takes to get asleep was worth its weight in gold :)

What are you smoking?

[chriso11]

Standardized /. response:

Your post was found to:
___ Support Microsoft in some form
___ Bash OS applications
___ Support the activites of MPAA/RIAA
___ Show lack of technical knowledge
_X_ Post without RTFA
___ Accept SPAM as a valid marketing technique
___ Incorrect Anime/ST/Star Wars/Other Sci Fi reference

Comments:
The author actually DID evaluate the affect of temperature. A 2degree rise in temperature for a 75% reduction in noise is pretty good. Unless you can do better for cheaper...

Re:Safety question?

[kirkjobsluder]

Actually, one of the Melamine collectors handbooks, (believe it or not, there are people who run around trying to collect complete sets of brightly colored plastic dinnerware from the 50s) claims that the makers of Melmac had the Dod use Melamine dinnerwar. in above-ground nuclear weapons tests. Evidently the DoD was interested in the survivability of everyday materials and the producers of Melmac got free advertising on how indestrcuctable their product was.

bitumen mats

[Rxke]

not the same thing, but related: A lot of cheap computerboxes resonate, due to the spinning of the drives, fans, cd/dvd drives. An inexpensive solution is to go to your local upmarket hifi store, where they sell bitumen mats, used to deaden-stiffen the walls of speaker cabinets. These things are thin but heavy, and reduce the 'rattling' a lot by increasing the mass of the walls. Just apply a (small) patch to the insides of the case et voila Or you could try a cartuner shop, same material is used to dampen resonance soundproblems in cars

Seagate Barracudas

[jcsehak]

I second that - can't say enough good things about them. SO quiet. I replaced the one that came with my early-model mac g4 (a Maxtor (Western Digital's are equally noisy, BTW)) with a Seagate Barracuda I picked up from www.endpcnoise.com, and now the whole machine is maybe a third as loud. It's like a dream - the only sound I can hear is that of the power supply fan. I also replaced the case fan with one that was (unfortunately smaller) much quieter. So now, if I can find a quiet power supply that is guaranteed to work with my machine, I'm golden.

In my last place, I had the thing in a closet, which really quieted it down. I was nervous about the heat, but nothing bad happened at all. I had to keep it quiet so I could do recording. Now I just have the mic in a different room. Much nicer.

Re:Seagate Barracudas

[RALE007]

Power supplies are supposed to provide a certain amount of voltage for different wires, some +/- 12v, +/- 5v, etc. depending on what the specific wire is for. Voltage may vary slightly within tolerable levels, but in theory they are all supposed to supply the same amount of voltage on each wire, making a power supply fit the "ATX", "AT", or whatever the form factor (standard) the suppy is supposed to be. It's been a while since I read up on power supplies and their wiring, voltage, connectors etc. so I apologize for any mistakes in my description. As far as the currently dominate ATX form factor goes, if a a power supply is sending voltage on a wire that is out of tolerable levels (for instance the voltage is +- 9, or +- 15 on a wire that's supposed to be +-12) the ATX form factor motherboard will not draw power from the supply, and your computer will not turn on when you push the "on" button, clap your clapper, plug it in, or whatever. (Having your box hooked up to a clapper would be hell on the filesystem eh? heh). The way the ATX form factor does this (someone more certain correct me if I'm wrong), is the *first* thing an ATX board does when it attempts to run through the POST (power on self test) is check to see if all the voltages on the wires from the power supply are within tolerable levels. If not, it won't draw current from them and your computer won't start. Think of it as a computers own self preservation instict / survival mechanism. It's a stretch of my memory but I'm pretty sure it's P13 (pin 13) on an ATX connector that's for the "power good" test. Or maybe that's the power on wire... hm... I'll have to look that up to refresh my memory...

Perhaps it's been said before but one shouldn't confuse voltage, amps, ohms, and watts for meaning the same thing. A explanation of what each means and how they are related is described at http://www.howstuffworks.com/question501.htm

If your interested I would highly recommend reading up on the ATX form factor. You may want to google for "ATX" "POST" "Power Good" "Pin Out" etc.

So to answer your question; No, power supplies of a specific form factor do not run different voltages (unless they are faulty and at which point the motherboard would refuse power from the offending supply).

Now, different power supplies do have varying amounts of Watts produced. Perhaps this what you were initially asking. To answer in a general manner (stretching my memory again), the higher the watts a power supply can produce, the more devices within the computer it can power. If you have a 400W power supply, and all your devices used 280W, your power supply would provide 280W of power. Think of the watts of a power supply as a maximum capability. A good analogy would be "A Ferrari *can* travel at 200 mph, but that does not mean it is *always* traveling at 200 mph". Same thing with power supplies (for the sake of simplicity and my own limited "expertise").

Hope that helps. When in doubt www.google.com

Re:Seagate Barracudas

[RALE007]

And of course to reply to my own post, a much better article than my half assed attempt at explaining/remembering:

http://computer.howstuffworks.com//power-supply.ht m

It explains how a power supply works much better than I did. This is the result of my own research since my memories were foggy when I attempted to describe it to you. You may also want to refer to this website for additional questions you may ever want answered. It has a plethora of information on just about anything. Be cautious visiting, once you enter it may be hard to pull yourself back out.

Enjoy!

Re:Why not active noise cancellation?

[plone]

An often asked question is if active noise cancellation can be used for to minimize PC acoustic noise emissions. The answer is no. Active noise cancellation relies on ones position in relation to the noise source, and hence will an implemention of it for PCs have to force one to sit in the same position all the time for to benefit of it.

missing details

[shird]

He fails to mention what the speeds of all the fans in his case are. With the increased temperature, most 'smart' fans will increase in speed, and therefore noise. So adding all that insulation can even increase the noise in some cases (not this one it seems). ie, on my case, it actually runs quieter with the sides off, than on, because the temperature drops and the fans all drop in speed. Plus it means I can disconnect some fans as they are no longer needed.

I can run a nvidia G4 & P4 2.5ghz with harldly any noise at all - seems crazy to me that some people require such extreme cooling/insulation methods. I just use fans which adjust based on load.

Are these fiber pannels?

[thogard]

One problem is fibers break off and tend to collect in things like fans. If the fiber size is small (like asbestos), it can even find its way inside hard drives.

I used some tar lined sheets. They are about 2mm thick and have metal foil on one side. They weren't cheap but the inside of my case isn't that big.

Re:And the really good part is....

[Laur]

Unless the heat producing parts of your computer are in direct contact with the metal, there's no difference, because the air acts as a nice insulator.

False. While you are correct that air has a low thermal conductivity, if you have a signifigant air gap (say >.5") you will get convection. This is what the fans are doing, providing forced convection inside the case, transfering heat from the hot componets to the sides of the computer as well as expelling the hot air. Air is only a good insulator if you can keep it from circulating. Incidentely, this is why foams are good insulators, they are mostly little pockets of air which can't circulate. This is why if you are using foam to insulate something you do NOT want to compress it.

Another place where tiles can help

[edhall]

is on the wall behind the computer. One of the biggest noise-emitters is often the power supply fan and noise from other sources tends to leak out through other access points on the computer's back. If the computer's back faces the wall, putting a block of good sound-absorbing material can lower the amount of noise radiated into the room quite noticeably.

You don't even need a screwdriver.

-Ed

Hard Drives

[Bilange]

I have a one year old Maxtor hard drive (40gb@7200 rpm) here and its making as much noise as my 4-5 year old fujitsu 8gb@7200 rpm. So I guess that hard drives is another major noise source.

If you have the ressources to do it, heres an ingenious way to silent an hard drive.

Re:And the really good part is....

[ponos]

> Did you know you can fertilize your lawn with used motor oil?

OK, this is totally off topic, but you should
NOT fertilize your lawn with motor oil. It
contains several mutagenic/carcinogenic
substances and you don't want them going
underground to pollute water/plants etc.

Used motor oil should be properly disposed
of in places that later sell it/use it where
appropriate (ships can burn it, it has other CLEAN uses).

P.

Re:High heat + low tech = ...

[Jucius Maximus]

"Finally, a good high-tech solution would not be to cancel the noise, but to create quiet components."

Exactly. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

I have implemented this by tossing away the AMD athlon factory heatsink with is relatively noisy and replacing it with an Alpha PAL 8045 which is one of the best heatsinks out there. (The Thermalright SLK-800 comes to mind as well.) Use Artic Silver 3 or Ceramique thermal compound and then put a big ol' 80 mm silent fan on top (Panaflo Low or Vantec Stealth 80 mm) and presto! Much of the case noise is gone and still with decent CPU temps.

Don't replace your PSU's fan with a low noise one though because PSUs were specifically designed to work with the fans they came with. Instead, you could get a silent PSU. I am seriously looking a Nexus NX-3000 silent PSU as well as one of the Zalman ones. (FYI: Zalman is a Korean company that specialises in low-noise components. You can get silent GeForce4 coolers from them.)

For hard drives, look into Seagate's Barracuda IV (IDE) and V (ASTA) series - they are the quietest 'modern high-end consumer' drives on the market right now.

With this setup, you can actually avoid generating the noise in the first place. That way, noise dampening material will not be necessary.

Anyway, if you're in Canada and you're looking to get some of this gear, check out QuietPC (which also has US, British, Kiwi and Irish dealers) as well as Bigfoot Computers. I am a satsified customer of both of these dealers.