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A Practical Approach To Shushing Your PC
An anonymous reader points to this wacky but effective-looking home-brewed answer to computer noise, consisting of a wooden case stuffed with ventilation shafts which follow a number of 180-degree turns, and implementing several ideas found at 12ghosts.de (in German). From the description on the site: "By traveling through the shafts, the noise is weakened gradually on its way through the sections. On the front the case has a door for accessing drives, the cables come out of a kind of "mouse hole" at the rear panel. A fan inside pulls an air flow through the wooden box."
...simple as that. Go get a decent Watercooling setup and a , and you've got an (almost) silent PC.
I have over 70 freaks, do you?
There is no need for you to work next to
your computer box, the cables/RF connecting your
screen keyboard and mouse to your computer
can run a great distance. I have a computer set up
in my bedroom with the box in a diffrent room.
with a Screen a keyboard a mouse and a USB CDRW
drive conviniently available.
No nutty modifications, just USB extention cords.
Me.
At work I hardly noticed the ventilation noise. Then one day it stopped (for a few minutes) .. It was like *heaven* .. we all just realized how noisy our environment was, and it felt like a huge weight was removed from us. We basically felt just a lot better and more relaxed.
I'm thus postulating that even if you are not noticing the noise, it doesn't mean it doesn't have any effect on you. (Regarding stress)
. . . . . . .
may u!sh 2 sm!le at dz!z bad nn.!m!tat!ion
Well, actually, the secret here is that the wall behind my monitor is very thin wood paneling (3 or 4 mm) separating the main basement from the workroom, which isn't used much. Cables thus run from the desk in the basement through a 2" x 3" hole in the paneling under the desk and into the computer. By closing the door that separates the two rooms, I simply cannot hear the computer, even during hard drive activity and full fans blasting.
There is, of course, one unfortunate aspect to this: I have to take about five steps to access the CD drive; this problem could be solved by buying an external drive, but I don't use the CD drive often enough for this to be a problem. The benefits, however, are twofold: no computer sounds, as previously mentioned, and also, because of the colder air in the other room and the full-power fans, I can run a 2.4 GHz P4 overclocked to 3.0 GHz at 27 degrees Celcius idle, maxing out at 35 degrees C under full load.
Oh, yes: the hole I mentioned earlier... I named it Glory
I just worked a bit on making my pc silent, mostly for the fun of it but it was a nice bonus if I could get less noisy PC :)
First I got the MSI FX5900 with the dual fans. Makes less noise than my GF3 TI500 and a lot less heat.(no more warm cabinet
Then I swapped the standard Intel P4 cooler with a Zalman CNPS7000A-CU.
I also installed a Thermaltake PSU that I already had, which lowered the noise compared to the noname PSU I had before.
I exchanged the Western Digital harddrive with a Seagate Barracuda which has no rotation noise, unlike the WD harddrive. I have a 5" mounting frame for the HD that suspends the HD screws in some rubber thingys that I hope will lower the head movent noise that the Seagate does have.
Finally my cabinet has room for a big fan in the front which I have installed and adjusted so it runs slowly with little noise.
So what now makes the most noise in my PC are the fans on the Thermaltake PSU. Regarding the cooler. The CPU temp went to 35c when idle(and fan runnin 200rpm) and 50c under full load with fan running at 70%(before staring to make noise). With the original cooler the idle temp was 43c and it hit 55c(full fan speed and a lot of noise) under full load where the motherboard kicked in at fired up the fan to full speed. I don't have much expirence in this and I am a bit unsure if I have applied the correct amount of thermal paste, but I have a lot left for experimentation, so I will try different configurations. I was expecting poor air flow inside the cabinet to be the cause of the high operating temperature but I tried opening the cabinet and placed an office fan above it to make sure the air in the cabinet was room temp. and the CPU temp. readings was pretty much the same. They only got 2-3c higher when the cabinet are closed.
Also if anyone has any suggestions for a silent harddrive, I would like to know. Of course I would like it to be fast but noise levels are the top priority.
It has been fun playing with this, tryng to make the optimal air flow and getting the most out of as little cooling as possible. And it is now clear to me that noise reduction and a silent PC is often one of the things you don't get in a DIY PC unless you put some effort into it.
I received a pair of these the other day. They are incredibly effective at blocking computer noise and also provide an effective method of silencing your boss/wife/gf without encasing them in a wooden box.
Karma police, I've given all I can, it's not enough, I've given all I can, but we're still on the payroll.
I live in an old apartment built in the 1950s, and it has a cool cabient in the kitchen which is cooled by outdoor air. I put my computer there. Of course it's only useful in the winters, but then it provides enough cool air so that I can close the cabinet door without fearing overheating. The monitor, mouse and keyboard cables are about 5m each and run neatly inside cable ducting. With the door closed the computer is much quieter than my fridge, which is not that noisy either.
In my house we keep the fan (only the fan) running on the hvac unit 24/7/365. It does three things for us:
1) Evens out temperatures so the hot and cold spots in the house are less pronounced.
2) Filters out some of the ambient cat hair and dust (yes I change my filters often) and
3) Provides white noise to cover the otherwise distracting sounds of being married to someone who keeps a differant schedule than you do.
And let me tell you, it was CRUCIAL when we still lived in apartments to block the noise though our neighboirs walls. Do I really want to block all the noise of my computer to improve my perception of (a few years ago) my neighbour listening to "Who let the dogs out?" On repeat? There are worse things in the world than white noise.
Hey!!! the parentheses are good for something
I was suffering from severe tinnitus for years.
It was intolerable. To me, it seemed like a steam whistle going off 24 hours a day in my head. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't think, I couldn't go any place on earth to escape it.
I found that other noises would distract me from it and the only way I could get to sleep was to leave the TV on by my bed. I would listen to the TV and fall asleep. If the TV was off and the room was quiet it was like the chinese water torture, all I could hear was the whistling in my ears. It was so severe that it was painful..
Well, turns out it was the asprin I was taking.
I was taking 15-20 asprin a day due to chronic back pain (broken back). Once I quit taking the asprin the tinnitus was just about gone away.
However, 8 years of that did extreme damage to my hearing, now I can barely hear mid-range, like human voices but I can hear low and high frequency sounds fairly well..
My screaming hard drives make me insane and I'm on a quest to quiet them down. I don't mind the fan noise but the high freq. of the drives is more than I can take.
Anyway, if you are suffering tinnitus, it may be what you are ingesting!