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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."
Look for the power plug. Pull it out of the wall. Your gaming PC is now rather silent. Still trying to think of games that can be played on it once you enable "perfect silence mode" this way.
Just use very long cables and keep the box as far away as possible from your precious ears.
Good article. He points out that Dynamat isn't very good for sound absorbtion since it isn't designed for higher frequencies (white noise from fans). It also insulates heat too well, and would make your PC case dangerously hot. It's interesting that Dynamat has repackaged their product to make a "Computer Dynamat Pack" or whatever. What a bunch of corporate whores. His previous column on iPods was intriguing as well. Anyone read that?
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.
Wouldnt you like to be a pepper too?
If anything, I should probably install more fans in my CPU case, and not because it needs the extra cooling.
You need
1 x USB extension coord
1 x VGA-cable extension coord
1 x sound extension coord
1 x PS/2 keyboard extension coord
1 x nearby room with a door
Basically, I just moved the PC in behind a nearby door. Making the PC make it's noise in another room. You can of course also use a closet or similar.
PRO
This makes the PC go almost 100% quiet, and you do not have to invest into an expensive fan or similar stuff.
CON
I seem not to use the cd-rom any more, but some of you that DO use cd-rom (or other hardware devices) may be prepared to walk some steps each time one has to change the cd or similar (i use nocd-cracks or daemon tools anyways).
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.
It might be a good idea to use them especially for LAN parties. You forget how loud all those systems are until you make a Subway run for dinner. When you come back, the noise seems unbearable until you get back into the thick of the game.
For those of you that were going to respond: "fan noise at a LAN party? I can't hear my fan over my speakers!", we ban speakers from our LAN parties due to conflicting noises from people who get separated makes for a confusing experience. Bring headphones and keep the volume down if you have to have sound.
You can lose something that is loose, so tighten the loose item so you don't lose it.
These guys here have great products and ship all over.
E.
Never rub another man's rhubarb - The Joker
The article is focused on gaming machines, and so it doesn't mention two good ways to reduce hard drive noise that might be important for machines in other settings (such as for a PVR).
One is a mounting bracket made by Zalman that includes rubber bumpers that fit between the bracket and the case. This prevents the transmission of noise from the drive to the case, which is much more likely to have some surface that resonates at the frequencies produced by hard drive seeks. The downside is that your case is actually a pretty good heatsink for your hard drives, and unless you get a good quiet low-flow fan to blow over the copper bars on this bracket, you can expect HD temps a few degrees celsius higher than normal.
Another way to reduce HD noise during seeks is to activate the "noise reduction" feature that a lot of modern hard drives have. This feature increases seek time in order to reduce seek noise. If you're running Linux, hdparm has a switch to adjust the NR setting for your hard drives.
It seems to me that it would be trivial to rig a small microphone and speaker to the CPU and play a phase-inverted version of the sound.
For those who may not have run across the concept before, the basic concept is this: For any soundwave, there is an inverse soundwave. This inverse sounds identical by itself, but when played at the same time as the original, the result is silence.
At any rate, there's probably a terribly good reason I've not heard about this concept being applied to PC-muffling, and if so, I'd love to hear it.
Happiness is relative, Based upon the way we live.
At my work, we have on one of our machines a Nakamichi 5 cd changer. That thing is horrifically loud. And it's really nice when you do something in Windows (like open My Computer) that pulls up all the drives. Click Click 5-6 times as it goes thru every freaking disc in the changer. I hate that drive. It's like a 2-3 minute process everytime I make and accidental drive check. Even if you go to the shutdown screen and cancel.
i foronce have some insight on this matter! i recently went from a case with a couple 5700 rpm 80x80x38 mm fans that sounded like a jet turbine to a watercooling system.... i also have adjustable fan nobs on just about everything in the system... i can go from insane cooling to just crazy cooling and its SOOO quiet. its a bit expensive and a tad bit umm "intresting" to install but once its in and running right its VERY quiet (i even put a bigger pump in so it could be even quieter than it currently is) well i hope that was helpful!
A quiet PC is pretty simple.
The CPU:
I run an OCed Barton 2600+ (OCed to 3000+ @ 200 FSB) with an SLK947-U and a quiet fan on the heatsink. Running the fan throttled to around 65 i get decent temps AND it overclocks flawlessly.
The Disks:
2 7200 RPM hard disks sitting on the bottom of my case on top of some foam. This keeps them from vibrating the case, which amplifies the noise considerably. The samsung SP80N ( i think) really is a quiet disc AND has a 3 yr warranty!
The Graphics Card:
Just a stock powercolor radeon 9700pro, I don't really have any sound problems with it.
The Case:
I just put some old T-Shirts on the sides of the inside of my case. I have good ventillation with 2 throttled fans, one intake (filtered) one outtake. They have a somewhat audible air moving noise, but the fan motors are pretty much silent (good quality fans). Wooshing air doesn't bother me, but I could easily get rid of that were I to have my computer in a room that doesn't seem to be hotter than the temperature outside.
Photos.
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.
Eat the rich.