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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."

13 of 269 comments (clear)

  1. Morons. by lucifuge31337 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Lastly, since the front intake ports on this case are not used,

    Yeah...all those fans blowing out in the back don't need to pull air from anywhere. And they won't get louder as they have to run harder to pull air through the cracks in between the drive bays and around the insulation you just put in from on the intake.

    The really impressive thing about this article is that they guy managed to write an antire article about something as simple as chucking some industrial noise insulation material into a case.

    --
    Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.
    1. Re:Morons. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      I think this method would work well with a watercooling setup. Generally you have only a few fans in such a setup, and fanless (passive) cooling is also possible. With a good watercooling rig the insulation could effectively dampen the sound of the hard drives and cdrom drives without causing the system to overheat.

  2. It doesn't make the computer quiter... by hashish · · Score: 1, Insightful

    the tiles deaden the sound reverberation, and makes the room quiter.

  3. Re:And the really good part is.... by Enry · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It shouldn't be. That's why you have air circulation.

  4. Why not simply ... by caitsith01 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...get a quieter fan?

    --
    Read Pynchon.
  5. Re:I like loud computers by metatruk · · Score: 3, Insightful
    A silent hard drive is a dead hard drive.
    A noisy hard drive is a dying hard drive.
  6. No inflow = no outflow = excitement? by Tsu+Dho+Nimh · · Score: 4, Insightful
    "A small section was also placed between the bezel and the front of the case in an effort to seal up the front intake holes which I don't use, and prevent sound from escaping."

    He might not be using those holes, but the air flowing into them is what replaces the air leaving through that noisy power supply fan. If he's making the fans work against higher resistance than they are designed to overcome, they will overheat, his computer will overheat, and he may be able to test the fire rating of those ceiling tiles he stuffed into the case.

    I bet he's the kind of guy who would take the air filter out of his car to "improve performance".

  7. High heat + low tech = ... by Atario · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...scornful Slashdot readers.

    Now, if you want a positive repsonse, how 'bout coming up with a sound-canceling system inside the case? Then you'd have high tech and low heat.

    --
    "A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
    1. Re:High heat + low tech = ... by arth1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      A low-tech solution that works *better* in most cases (no pun intended) is to simply put some sound absorbant material on the wall behind the case. The reason is that most of the sound that escapes from a case does it through the rear, especially through the rear fans, and is reflected off the wall behind it.

      And yes, to those who wondered elsewhere in the thread whether this would increase the temperature, it will. By quite a bit. Yes, air is an insulator, but not THAT good, or else a heat sink would be pointless. The surface area of a heatsink is what makes it work, and the metal inside of your case also works as a heatsink that helps to keep the air inside the case cooler.
      By using acoustic foam inside a case, it's not uncommon for the temperature to rise 5-10C.

      Finally, a good high-tech solution would not be to cancel the noise, but to create quiet components. It's impossible to cancel all noise actively unless you know the exact listening position, so this just won't work.

      Regards,
      --
      *Art

  8. Re:Move? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    That generally isn't an option anymore with high-end PCs. The ammount of airflow required to keep the temperatures down generally precludes the use of a container space such as a cupboard. It's still possible to do so, however. One simply needs to be careful and monitor temperatures regularly.

    A few years ago my friend had his Pentium 166 in a cupboard. Even with the back of the cupboard open for cables and ventilation, the computer still became very hot, and may have crashed on more then one occasion due to overheating.

    Try that now with a 60-80W CPU, a video card, etc.

  9. Re:What are you smoking? by deviator · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Yes, and he didn't say anything about how long he ran it in that configuration. These foam tiles have an INSULATING effect--anything that insulates against noise also holds in heat. Common sense says to check the temperature of the case a few hours after it has been left on, while running a make -j. Blocking the front fan ports with insulation would not lead to a computer I can trust to not melt down, in my opinion.

  10. Re:Larger, slower fans by Mr+Z · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It also lowers the velocity of the air at any particular point, which reduces the wind noise around the non-moving components, such as fan guards, etc. I seem to recall wind resistance (and thus wind noise) goes up non-linearly, and so a linear reduction in air velocity with constant CFM (implying a corresponding linear increase in surface area) still ends up reducing noise. A big component of noise comes from turbulence as well, which is why moving fan guards away from fans helps, and why reducing RPMs is so important.

    The only way to retain CFM while reducing air velocity is to use more or larger fans at lower RPMs. In the end, you've gotta increase surface area.

    --Joe
    --
    Program Intellivision!
  11. Oh for cripes sake! by nzyank · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You guys who disagree are wrong. If I feel heat on the case of the computer that means heat is being dissipated by the case. The fan is blowing the hot air around, mostly out the holes, but in the process some air contacts the metal walls of the case which is transferring the heat from the inside to the outside. Is that so hard to understand? Hey here's a thought! Why don't you remove all the insulation from your house walls and let the resultant air do its job of insulating. Put a bunch of fucking fans in your house in the winter time and that'll keep you warm, right? Sometimes I wish I was dumb so that life would seem simpler and yet more mysterious like it must to you guys; the ones who make stupid statements as if they were true and especially the ones who mod those stupid statements up as if they were insightful and actually not stupid.