How To Get Your Gaming PC Running Quietly?

Thanks to Penny Arcade for its 'Hook Up' column discussing ways to build your gaming PC to run as quietly as possible. The author indicates: "I was able to reduce my Tiny God's noise level by over 30dB (!) measured with my RadioShack SPL meter", and goes on to list ways to silence components such as power supplies ("...the power hungry components that an elite gamer uses... can be extremely noisy") and fans of various kinds ("it's often a toss-up between your CPU fan and your PSU cooler in regards to which one is the loudest"), before pointing out: "You might have 1,000 watts of power driving your speakers, but sometimes nothing beats the sound of silence."

Comments

easy way

[schapman]

its easy to get a near silent pc: case: antec sonanta (quit psu, drives on rubber grommets, fans use rubber dealies so they dont vibrate case, and their are 2 fan only connectors to control fan speed for the 2 120mm fans you can put in.) fans: 2x vantec stealth... quiet, good airflow cpu: zalman flower gpu zalman crazy big but silent heatpipe cooler. and if you are really board... you can seal the "antec" holes that they use for psu air inflow, and widen the front intake a bit. and maybe some dynamat for the case covers. The only noise I hear out of mine now, is the hard drive click, and the cdroms when they spin up.

Re:easy way

[Rob Parkhill]

I have the Sonata case, and the 12cm case fan it comes with is too noisy. Had to drop some cash on a quieter case fan.

The PSU fan is variable speed, and at top speed is also rather noisy. Adding a second case fan at the front helps keep the PSU fan spinning a bit slower.

And the rubber mounts for the drives were a bit dissapointing. I don't notice any difference between the rubber mounds and plain old solid mounts.

But the case sure is shiny, and I appreciate that.

I think for the same price, you could get a Zalman PSU, a couple of nice case fans, and a decent tower case that would be quieter than the Sonata out of the box. But it wouldn't shine as much.

Re:easy way

[malejko]

You did plug the rear case fan into the 'fan only' power plug, right? If not, yes - the rear fan is loud. If you did, then the rear fan is pretty quiet.

The rubber mounts only do some good for hard drives and such that really vibrate. Most newer ones don't seem to have that problem anymore.

Shiny Shiny!

I am still pretty happy with my sonata - the other computers near it have needed quietening just to try and compete now.

Mini HOW-TO

[ll1234]

Swapping out HDs makes a big difference and is one of the less invasive upgrades towards a quieter PC. I replaced a Western Digital 60 GB drive with a Samsung (who knew they made HDs?) and the noise/whine difference is substantial. I could hear the WD spin up at startup from the next room (wwwwwwhhhhhhhEEEEEEEEE!) and it continually produced a high-pitch whine while idle. The Samsung produces imperceptible levels of noise at startup or idle and its seek chatter is very low.

Thermalright makes heatsinks. Or more accurately, "massive machined chunks of copper". There's a reason many of their models require bolts to install, they'd pull the socket right out of the motherboard without the additional support. The heatsinks are great besides the heft because they don't include an integrated fan, you can buy a quiet 92mm Panaflo or Pabst fan and quietly cool even top-end CPUs.

Installing a fan controller helps squeeze the last few decibels out of the case, but you might run into the problem of the controller producing a rapid clicking noise at low voltages (the Vantec NXP-201 suffers from this problem, but is dirt cheap). SpeedFan is a software fan controller, but I've never quite figured out its usage.

A PC with a low noise floor makes listening to music more enjoyable as the dynamic range comes through without having to crank of the volume to drown out the fans.

To hangout with the hardcore "suspending harddrives with elastic / undervolting motherboards / 0 db computer" crowd visit Silent PC Review.

Best site around

[evil-osm]

These guys here have great products and ship all over.

silenpcreview.com

[KozmoStevnNaut]

You might want to take a look at silentpcreview.com.

Be warned, though... They are quite obsessed, and some of them have gone to extremes in their quest for silence. But their reviews are very well-written, and the forum is a great source of help and advice.