A Silent PC Solution?

An anonymous reader writes "Fed up with the monotonous whirring emanating from your PC? Well for once, someone with an actual knowledge of acoustics demonstrates what can be done AND backs it up with measurements!"

Comments

Oh just shut up you whiner

[Anonymous Coward]

Real nerd use fans to repel others:-)

Re:Oh just shut up you whiner

[marmoset]

I have a week-old G5 dualie, which replaced a convection cooled Sage iMac (around the same general era as your Grape, maybe slightly later.) What blows my mind is that the G5 is quieter than the iMac. The G5 has a much quieter hard disk, and the low-speed fans are really, really quiet.

Brilliant engineering.

Re:Oh just shut up you whiner

[condensate]

I always place a mike in front of the fan and plug it into the amp of my stereo so everybody coming into my room thinks I am running a Beowulf...

Re:Oh just shut up you whiner

[AmericanInKiev]

This Site has a way to make a computer quiet and it is immediately slashdotted - you think there isn't any valid interest in a quiet computer?

AIK

Re:Oh just shut up you whiner

[z_gringo]

I office in a big room with 30 or so Servers, and a lot more routers. The whole room resonates with this nice soothing hum.

People are always asking me "How can you work in here? Doesn't that noise drive you Nuts?" I tell them: If the noise stops is when I'd go nuts!

That said, I'm obviously not working in a recording studio.

Re:Oh just shut up you whiner

[Lumpy]

actually one of the first things you notice after working a week in a really quiet environment is how damn noisy the rest fo the world is. I spent 2 weeks in a remote rural location helping a guy build his recording studio in his vacation home. insane amounts of sound insolation and sound isolation on the studio walls, celing and floor for a studio that is located in a spot where the most noise is at most a few geese flying overhead. it's a place where I have been woke up at night because the STARS were too bright shining through the bedroom window.... and by the time I left could finally make out the bark of the dog at the nearest neighbors 5 miles away in the early morning that he mentioned to me on day one.

returning to the city, I could not sleep for weeks, and I was highly irritated by the drastic difference in background noise levels. There it was almost zero DB at 10pm outside... the kind of silence you feel and that makes you notice that you can hear the amount of noise your head makes.

now, mentioning that, I am in a server room with 4 machines right now, 6 72" tall server racks sitting there full of blade severs with a couple of the newer big servers sounding like vaccuum cleaners running. I also have 4 TV's on right now with the sound on to different levels.

but, when you get used to quiet, you crave it and curse the noise of civilization.

Headphones are an even better solution....

[Yoda2]

This is cool, but headphones provide the added benefit of canceling out the buzz & whirring of co-workers.

Re:Headphones are an even better solution....

[tuffy]

For example, what does the person who has a PC in his room, next to his bed do?

Turn it off?

I've gone to great lengths to build a quiet PC, but the hum of it is loud enough that I sleep better with it off.

Re:Headphones are an even better solution....

[Ratbert42]

...the hum of it is loud enough that I sleep better with it off.

Have kids. Then there is no way is any PC noise going to keep you awake.

SIlence is a pipe dream for me

[Mr Smidge]

I recently thought I'd give it a shot at trying to silence my desktop PC.

I have a Zalman flower on the processor, replaced my northbridge fan with a passively cooled heatsink, fitted two 'silent' YS-Tech fans for intake and outtake (with plastic vibration-reducing rings!), and each one is connected with a 12V->10V converter to reduce the speed a bit.

Heh, well I still can't sleep next to the thing when it's on. There must actually be some phantom device in there making noise.

What *affordable* things have you /.ers done about graphics card cooling, or noisy hard drives?

Re:SIlence is a pipe dream for me

[chullymonster]

have you checked the PSU? it will have a fan or two in there to cool it down, that could be the "phantom noise". i'd imagine it's possible to get hold of a quiet/silent one from somewhere or other.

Re:SIlence is a pipe dream for me

[Mr Guy]

Not trying to sounds like a know it all myself, but my understand is 10V for a "silent" fan is still considered ungodly by the purists. Consider Zalman's FANMATE-1 that adjusts down to less than 5V with 11V as a MAX.

Have you browsed, for example, a Some of the websites dedicated to silent PC's?
The one I linked has a recommended page where they give noise to performance. For hard drives, the far and ahead winner is the Seagate Barracuda IV which is apparently discontinued. Your PSU is also generally one of the largest sources of noise on your whole machine, what do you use?

Re:SIlence is a pipe dream for me

[ikeleib]

Glue carpet padding all over the inside the case. It costs about $1. It makes a big difference. It won't make your case really hot; your computer is cooled by forcing air through it, not radiation.

Re:SIlence is a pipe dream for me

[Mr Smidge]

I was thinking about doing that with a leopard-skin interior, for that ultimate pimpin' case ;-).

Re:SIlence is a pipe dream for me

[Cthefuture]

hmmm... Yeah, you've got a lot of noise makers there.

Replace the power supply with a Zalman unit (check Newegg for "noise-free" versions). The Zalman isn't completely silent but it's a very high quality supply (heavy though!) and it adjusts the fan speed automatically. There may be more quiet units out there, I don't know. That Enermax is loud though.

You've got to get rid of your video card's fan. It will be loud when everything else is quieted down. I would seriously consider a fanless video card. This can make a huge difference even when you think it's fairly quiet.

Those hard-drives you're using are loud as hell (and you've got 2 of them!). Go with a single "quiet" drive. I use Seagate but you'll have to look around for what you need (maybe the quiet Maxtor). Last I checked, Western Digital drives are the loudest out there.

2 80mm case fans?? You might try taking one or both out and see how your system does. Improve air-flow through your case and let the power supply do most of the work. This is harder to do and takes lots of experimentation. It is a black art of sorts. You could also try a much larger fan running at low RPM (larger as in at least 160mm+).

Buy a laptop

[Anonymous Coward]

Get yourself a Pentium-M laptop and be done with noise.

It's easy

[BoomerSooner]

Just buy a laptop, run it in powersaving mode all the time, plug it into a monitor, keyboard and mouse. You'll never know the difference. I got sick of transferring files between locations (work, second office, home, laptop) so I just have gone laptop only and only fire up my home PC for video games.

Re:It's easy

[jabuzz]

Of course you can get motherboards which take Pentium M processors. It just requires you to know where to look. Try the Commell LV-671, which is
one of several mini-ITX boards which take Pentium M
processorts. Try Googling on LV-671 for the above board.

Dynamic site

[akjacob]

here is the contents.. It goes without saying that even a moderately fast CPU these days requires a fast-spinning (read noisy) fan to avoid the risk of overheating. Combine that with a PSU fan, GPU fan, chipset fan and one or more case fans and your average PC can so easily become a major distraction. And it's not just the sound from fans that can cause annoyance. A high proportion of the noise created by PCs can also emanate from the hard disk(s), particularly while 'seeking', or from any optical drives that have been installed. Just imagine then trying to follow the dialogue in your favourite DVD movie with the constant din of your computer in the background.

It doesn't even have to be a particularly loud sound to be distracting - a relatively quiet noise containing a strong tonal component such as a high frequency whine or a low frequency hum can be just as irritating to some people. Fortunately, there are now numerous noise elimination products available to purchase, either as add-on components or devices that replace the existing cooling fans in your system - these components are designed to reduce the sound of a noisy PC to barely a whisper.

Sounds too good to be true? Well, specialist component supplier QuietPC certainly doesn't think so and has provided us with a range of silencing products for testing. The effectiveness of each noise-reducing component has been assessed subjectively based on the different acoustic features in each instance, and also from noise measurements taken using a high-quality sound level meter.

So, if you fancy the idea of creating your own near-silent PC but are unsure of the best place to start, or are just keen to learn what the latest IT noise control technology has to offer, you should find this feature interesting.

Re:Dynamic site

[chegosaurus]

Just imagine then trying to follow the dialogue in your favourite DVD movie with the constant din of your computer in the background.

Most of my favourite movies don't have a lot of dialogue.

Whoa this is /.

[shawn(at)fsu]

We don't take to kindly to peoplewith an actual knowledge of acoustics AND backs it up with measurements! in these here parts. You best just move along College Boy...

Re:Slashdotted

[skaffen42]

Yeah... to paraphrase some Zen dude: If a server bursts into a flame where nobody can hear it, does it matter if it is silent or not?

Dosen't bother me...

[Jaysyn]

... that low buzz & the hum of the air cleaner helps me sleep at night.

Now if I could get it to act a little less like a space heater.....

Jaysyn

CD drives!

[Paul Townend]

Nevermind the noise from the actual PC - that's bareable! It's my CD drive that drives me insane! It's like there's some kind of acid-fuelled lawnmower-driving madman in my machine, whenever I so much as access F:!!!

A while ago, I'm sure I read a review for a "quiet" CD drive, but I haven't found it since.... Old quad-speed drives were never like that!

Think Cheap

[stecoop]

The goal of silencing a PC is thinking like the cheapest man you have ever known.

Start with the Case - Aluminum is the best but really expensive a cheapo person would make a case out of wood (im sure your going to do this one).

Next the Case Fans - yeah you can buy those fancy isolators, better yet use silicon to "glue" the fans to the outlets.

Hard Drive - Noisy little beast you can actually have it free hanging in the pc or use zip ties to isolate it from the case. Or you can sandwich it in between two thick sheets of copper or aluminum (wouldn't use wood here) and put bolts at the corners and tighten lightly.

CPU cooler - hmm can't use the fans from a hair drier, any other ideas?

The Actual Fans - ball bearing last longer and are a little more expensive, better go with the sleeve bearings because they are quieter. Also if the fan gets noisy peel the off sticker (half way so you can re-stick it) on back and drop some 3n1 oil in the hole.

Placement - get the computer off of the desktop and put it into a ventilated box. I have been thinking about building a small box with a regular household box fan on the back having a solenoid start the fan when the computer is on.

Cool and quiet

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Only use Seagate drives
2. Only use Pabst fans (replace all of them)
3. (optional) Thermaltake Hardcano12

I run a rack-mount digital audio rig with 4 hard drives and 2 processors, and the loudest thing on the system is when the mirrored audio drives start crunching.

Noise reduction per dollar

[hankwang]

The article shows how the noise level goes down by taking more and more measures, with the biggest noise reduction at the last step. However, this is deceptive since the noise is on a dB (i.e., logaritmic) scale. If his test computer produced 100 units of noise to start with, then the reductions were:

73 units (low-noise case fans, 40 pounds)
5.5 units (low-noise power supply, 90 pounds)
9.6 units (CPU/GPU cooling, 75 pounds)
5.2 units (acoustic materials and HD enclosure, 128 pounds)
5.8 units (resistors on case fans, 0 pounds)
1.3 units (remaining)

So, by far the most bang for the bucks is in the case fans (with resistors), accounting for 79% of the noise. The worst deal is the acoustic materials and HD enclosure, which cost a whopping 128 pounds for only 5% of the total noise.

Re:Noise reduction per dollar

[MrIrwin]

"However, this is deceptive since the noise is on a dB scale"

It's not deceptive as noise is also perceived on a logarithmic scale by humans.

Re:Noise reduction per dollar

[Anonymous Custard]

73 units (low-noise case fans, 40 pounds)
5.5 units (low-noise power supply, 90 pounds)
9.6 units (CPU/GPU cooling, 75 pounds)
5.2 units (acoustic materials and HD enclosure, 128 pounds)

Were any other Americans, like myself, sitting there thinking "damn, that's one heavy computer!"

Re:Noise reduction per dollar

[hankwang]

It's not deceptive as noise is also perceived on a logarithmic scale by humans.

Certainly the human ear works like that, but if you want to make a decision how to spend your money, it's hard to compare numbers in dB. In the original test, you might have read something like:

case fans: 5 dB
PSU:1 dB
GPU/CPU: 2.5 dB
Materials/enclosure: 2 dB
low-voltage resistor:7.5 dB.

This may lead you to believing that replacing the fans AND adding the resistor together will give you 12.5 dB noise reduction, while the rest gives you only 5.5 dB extra for . It is not meaningful to use dB in this situation, where you take out one noise source after the other. It would be meaningful to use dB if one were discussing an isolating enclosure for the whole computer.

mini-itx

[sshtome]

I didn't read the article cos it was already trodden on by the time I got there.

but I built a fanless PC for less than $300 using a Mini-itx mother board, it's quite good.

I installed the 17cmx17cm mainboard in the cardboard box it came in. It's small and quiet... I should've bought a quieter hard drive though.

Useful links:
linitx.com /linitx.org
mini-itx.com
via.com.tw

I think I must've missed why this is news.

Pick two

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

out of the following:

Cool running, Fast, Silent

Here's a Totally Silent PC.

[gregarican]

Get a VIA EPIA system (see here for details). They have a fanless CPU and power supply. Plus the boards are small enough that you can build a PC that's the size of a Gamecube (or smaller). Their mainboards run as small as 12cm x 12 cm!

Re:Get a Mac

[IceFox]

The parent may be flamebate, but sense bringing my Apple laptop to meeting I have noticed how just much noise everyone's else's wintel laptop makes while the Apple doesn't. No small external fans in the back and what is even more surprising/pleasent is the lack of hd seeking back and forth which occurs all the times in windows. Taking this to your main computer box, if you have to get fans, buy large slow fans and not fast small fans. They are a lot quieter. And spending $20 more on a good quite hd might surprise you. :)

-Benjamin Meyer

-Benjamin Meyer

Water cooling is not just for overclockers

[(H)elix1]

I've built a couple audio work stations where I was stuck constructing a machine where the PC and disk were in the recording booth. Bloody propriety card/connectors would not let me move the machines out of the room.

Anyhow.. I watercooled the disk, CPU, chipset, and power supply. No fans and the SCSI drives were enclosed well enough the 'audiophile' found the ambient noise acceptable. (I did not hear anything) Since I was not using any of the overclocking peltier kits, the coolant ran just above room temperature so I did not have any condensation issues a lot of people have. The copper tubing piped to another room where it dumped the heat. Worked great, though you did not move it around.

A quiet PC for ~$200 (US)

[Emor dNilapasi]

1) Antec Sonata case with Antec Tru-Power 330W power supply and low-noise 92mm case fan. Essentially silent. $90 at provantage.com

2) CoolerMaster DP5-7JD1B CPU cooler. Barely audible. $10 at directron.com

3) Any Maxtor hard drive with an FDB (fluid dynamic bearing) motor. Essentially silent. ~$100 at your favorite cheapo online store.

I built this with an XP2600+ CPU, and it's quieter than the fan in my TFT display (don't ask). It makes just enough noise that I can tell that it's running, and I can still hear the quiet ticking of the clock behind me.

ultimate silence

[WormholeFiend]

I put my pc case in another room using extension cables. Door closed. I dont hear a thing!

Put noisy harddrives to sleep.

[imtheguru]

I havent had the need to apply any spin down times to my primary drive (Quantum Fireball) as it is very silent even during heavy data transfers. Here is a snippet from my personal HowTo on keeping harddisks quiet.

Windows solution: Use Multiple Power Profiles

- Control Panel > Display > Screensaver > Power. Turn off hard disks after x mins. [I have x set to 21 mins]
- Save As "SLEEP Mode".
- Set x to "Never", Save As "AWAKE Mode".
- Under Advanced, check "Always show icon on taskbar".

Icon appears in System Tray. When awake, use AWAKE Mode power profile and before sleeping, set to SLEEP Mode power profile.

Linux solution: Use hdparm

> /path/to/hdparm -y /dev/hdb

From the hdparm man page: -y
Force an IDE drive to immediately enter the low power consumption standby mode, usually causing it to spin down.

Write a little script to include the command for all secondary harddrives.

Sometimes the secondary drives are woken up for housekeeping jobs and refuse to spin down again... so it might be necessary to include some spindown times in script.

> /path/to/hdparm -S255 /dev/hdb

From the hdparm man page: -Svalue
Set the standby (spindown) timeout for the drive. This value is used by the drive to determine how long to wait (with no disk activity) before turning off the spindle motor to save power. Under such circumstances, the drive may take as long as 30 seconds to respond to a subsequent disk access, though most drives are much quicker. The encoding of the timeout value is somewhat peculiar.

- Value 0 (zero) means no spindown will occour.
- Values from 1 to 240 specify multiples of 5 seconds, for timeouts from 5 seconds to 20 minutes.
- Values from 241 to 251 specify from 1 to 11 units of 30 minutes, for timeouts from 30 minutes to 5.5 hours.
- Value of 252 signifies a timeout of 21 minutes.
- Value of 253 sets a vendor-defined timeout.
- Value of 255 is interpreted as 21 minutes plus 15 seconds.

NOTE: Spinning down drives may cause it not to spin again, so backup data often. NOTE: Defragment windows partition often. Boosts speed and keeps drive relatively quiet.

Dells

[dokebi]

I've tried a lot of things and spent a lot of money to quiet my older computers. But when I bought a Dell, (Poweredge 400SC), boy, were they *quiet*! The fans are low-speed, the drives are mounted on rubber mounts, and the power supplies are quiet. All for $250 including tax and shipping. That's a complete system for a price of a barebone. Even their cheapest (2400) models are very quiet. (I've got one). So I don't notice my computers anymore, even sleeping in the same room.

It goes to show, a little thought in case design can pay off handsomely, and without costing a lot of money.

Quieter cases

[walt-sjc]

When I built my latest desktop box, I went for a Antec Sonata which is MUCH quieter than my old system. In fact, even with it sitting on my desk next to my monitors, I hardly hear it - just a little drive whine.

Unfortunately my house is in the middle of major renovation, so my office is temporarily located in the basement. Now I have all the noise from the water heater (power vent) and boiler. My new office design has the systems in a back-open cubbie under the desk with a smoked-glass door (kinda like a stereo cabinet.) That should all but eliminate the remaining noise. It's too bad most periphereals have such short cables.

My noisy servers are in another basement room - one with 4' thick granite walls so it stays nice and cool year round (and a higher humidity level for less static.) I don't hear them at all :-)

iMac versus "commodity" PC's

[mariox19]

For all the snide comments the original iMac got when it came out ("gumdrop," "Volkswagen Beetle") there is no denying the thought that went behind its design when it came to cooling. It worked entirely on convection, and, having no fan, was silent (but for the occassional whir of the hard drive).

The top of the case (where the heat vented) was hot as hell, but if you felt down on the bottom by the motherboard, it was cool to the touch.

No doubt this wasn't possible with the G4 (the iMac was a G3 chip), as it runs much hotter. If Apple gets some cooler running chips from IBM, we may see fanless Macs again.

My new iMac (G4) runs very quiet. The fan does not run constantly, nor at one speed only.

I think there's plenty to be done to reduce noise; but the manufacturers who ship out PC "commodity boxes" couldn't be bothered.