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A Silent PC Solution?

Posted by michael on from the earplugs-much-cheaper dept.

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!"

19 of 485 comments (clear)

  1. SIlence is a pipe dream for me by Mr+Smidge · · Score: 5, Informative

    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?

    1. Re:SIlence is a pipe dream for me by chullymonster · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    2. Re:SIlence is a pipe dream for me by Mr+Guy · · Score: 5, Informative

      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?

      --
      Never confuse volume with power.
  2. Buy a laptop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

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

  3. Dynamic site by akjacob · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.

  4. Whoa this is /. by shawn(at)fsu · · Score: 5, Funny

    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...

    --
    500 dollar reward for tip(s) leading to the arrest of the person(s) who stole my sig.
  5. Re:Slashdotted by skaffen42 · · Score: 5, Funny

    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?

    --
    People couldn't type. We realized: Death would eventually take care of this.
  6. CD drives! by Paul+Townend · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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!

  7. Think Cheap by stecoop · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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.

  8. Cool and quiet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  9. mini-itx by sshtome · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  10. Re:Headphones are an even better solution.... by tuffy · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.

    --

    Ita erat quando hic adveni.

  11. Re:It's easy by jabuzz · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  12. Re:Get a Mac by IceFox · · Score: 5, Informative

    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

    --
    Do you changes clothes while making the "chee-chee-cha-cha-choh" transformation sound?
  13. Re:Noise reduction per dollar by MrIrwin · · Score: 5, Informative
    "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.

    --

    And if you thought that was boring you obviously havn't read my Journal ;-)

  14. A quiet PC for ~$200 (US) by Emor+dNilapasi · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  15. Put noisy harddrives to sleep. by imtheguru · · Score: 5, Informative
    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.
    --
    Yet Socrates himself is particularly missed.
    A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he's pissed.
  16. Re:Oh just shut up you whiner by condensate · · Score: 5, Funny

    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...

    --
    Black holes were created when god tried to divide by zero
  17. iMac versus "commodity" PC's by mariox19 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --

    quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.