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5 Simple Steps to a Quieter PC
~*77*~ writes "Silencing a computer can be a costly endeavor, but taking a few relatively inexpensive steps can have a drastic impact on the noise produced by the common computer system. Before starting on any sound reduction upgrades, analyzing a system to pinpoint the areas in need of the most attention will help determine the best course of action and the best way to spend any money."
step 1: turn computer off.. aww c'mon, I'm not trolling.. if it were warm outside you'd all be on the same page.
Dress up as a librarian and say "Shhhhhh" everytime it makes a noise.
how do I silence a noisy UPS. There is this humming sound, and it's especially bad when the PC is turned off. Any ideas?
Need an ISP in South Africa?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
1 component needed to make your PC quiet.
1) Sledgehammer
This information brought to you by Giggling Marlin.
You'd think he'd reference the guys who are diehard fanatics instead of the some guy who has 5 ideas. This is the place to find all the info, comparisons, and information for people who want more than just "you should think about changing out some parts in your system".
The article is just a simple summary... check out Silent PC Review for really in-depth coverage.
Some hardware review sites are dedicated to cooling equipment. One of them is Pimp My Rig.
Personally, I replaced my Intel stock fan with the Thermalright XP-90 + Panaflo 92mm L1A.
I am fed up with the noise from my comuter, so I did the following.
1. Installed the BeQuiet sound elimination kit for Chieftec
2. Got a better CPU fan
3. Installed four Zalman 12dB(A) fans in the chassi.
4. Enjoy the sound of nothing.
Get the dust out of any fans in your case. In case of hairs/pubes twisted around the fan motor consider replacement.
This "article" is just one big advert. All the links point to geeks.com, and no doubt BigBruin.com picks up a commission on all clicks/sales.
Current Seagate 7200.7 and Seagate 7200.8 are quite a bit louder than comparable models from Maxtor and Samsung.
What you say might have been true for the very old Barracudas, but it's sadly no longer the case.
If you can still hear the Metallica your computer isn't loud enough.
"It has always been this way and it won't change, god bless the fucked up USA" The Briefs
"It's the fans! The fans are doing it!"
No shit, I tought my mousepad was making the noise. How is this article nerd? Show me the nerd stuff! Show me how I can use new discoverys in quantum physics to cool my processor with just a few atoms of plutonium and a few household items.
If you're having multiple drive failures in one or two cases, I'd really recommend looking at the power supplies.
I have a case that killed a drive every few months until I twigged and replaced the PSU with an antec 350W. If the power rails are 'dirty' with fluctuating voltage, they can slowly kill a drive. This is a known problem with cheap PSU's, and it can be cheaper to spend a bit more on a quality supply than keep swapping drives.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
1. Write up a guide for easily silencing your PC /.
2. Get posted on
3. Get slashdotted
4. Comp is effectively silenced and reduced to a smoking pile of scrap metal
Man, *that* was easy!
I have to disagree here - I've got a pair of dual G5 towers, a 20" G5 iMac, a 17" G5 iMac and a dual G5 XServe - only the XServe makes a noticable hum. Now, the Sun E450 - THAT is loud :-)
Oh, I just do 'emerge -u kde gnome' and then go for a walk...
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Buy bigger fans and run them at lower speeds to quiet your PC. What an exciting tidbit of technology insight!
The next article will discuss how to increase visibility in your office environment... by adding a lamp! Who knew?
Go for a walk? More like go into cryogenic deep freeze.
The Samsung Spinpoint drives are also designed to be quiet - they call it NoiseGuard and SilentSeek, whatever that means. Basically they are really quiet. Every drive I've had starts out quiet and gets louder as the bearings wear out. My WD and Maxtors developed ear-piercing whines. And the new Seagates are not as quiet as the older models, but they are better than Maxtor or WD.
For very complete and more practical information, reviews and good advise for silencing your computer I can really recommend SilentPCReview.
Let's hope that quieting my computer doesn't make it like these guys' server.
Seriously, though, system noise can be reduced pretty easily.
1) Get a heavy case. I was always surprised at the fact that my ex-girlfriend's Aluminum case was much noisier than my steel case, given that I have many more things in my case. Thicker materials (obviously) cut down on noise levels.
2) Get a good PSU. Besides the stability and reliability increase, it pretty much stands to reason that Random-Taiwan-Tech isn't going to be terribly concerned with the sound levels on a $35 PSU if it adds to the cost at all. Antec produces some cool thermal-sensing PSUs that will throttle PSU fan speed based on thermal levles. They also have special fan-only molexes that allow them to do the same thing to any other fans in the case.
3) Switch to the biggest fans you can. It takes fewer RPMs on an 80mm or 120mm fan for it to move the same amount of air as a 60mm fan. This goes for case fans AND CPU fans. Zalman makes some intriguing CPU cooling solutions that separate the fan from the heatsink, and thus use huge, slow, quiet fans. If you want to get fancy, rewire the fans so they operate on 7V or 5V input.
4) Never ever buy a mainboard with a fan on the northbridge. I absolutely hate this design concept. For one, the fans are very small and thus usually noisy. But most importantly, these things are the cheapest designs available, as the mobo manufacturers aren't looking to add major costs to their product. Consequently, they fail much more quickly than many other things. If you're lucky, they'll just up and stop spinning. If you're unlucky, they'll continue spinning, but with a strange squeek or hum as they march toward death. The counterpart to this is your videocard. If you're not planning on gaming, look at one of the lower-end videocards that use a heatsink only.
5) Cut down on vibration. Hard drives are kind of noisy, yes. In my experience, though, it's really the vibrations that contribute to the noise levels. Try to wedge some thin rubber washers between the HDD and the case when you're screwing it in. Some newer case designs actually use a system like this by default, and the noise level reduction is quite impressive.
Outside of these five is when you start getting into specialty areas: Putting noise-absorbing material in the case, using large heat-pipe coolers in place of fans on your video card, moving the computer to a closet and running long cables, etc. Honestly, though, if you follow the above recommendations, you should get something quiet enough that you don't need to worry.
I would, only I have yet to find an ape suit that fits me. But imagine the fringe benefits, such as being able to scratch one self in public...
My 2x2.0 G5 tower is next to silent (except with the 10.3.8 update and I had to switch proc performance from "automatic" to "highest" to keep them from become overly excited executing even the simplest of tasks).
I finally received my XServe (2x2.3) and set it up Friday. It is dead quiet. So quiet, in fact, that I had to temporarily shut down the Dell PowerEdge 4600 just to hear it. Still not satisfied, I slid off the top panel for visible proof the fans were running. I spotted only three fans, but the software reports 8 up and running within normal ranges.
For now, I'll trust the blowers tab on Apple's Server Monitor software.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet
My Dell 400SC has a single 120mm fan in the back. Most of the time, I can't even tell the machine is powered on. It get a little louder when it's doing something CPU intensive. It's the quietest PC I've ever owned.
BTW, you didn't even have to RTFA, you just had to RTF summary. I can't get to the article, but the summary says the steps are inexpensive, which leads me to believe that you don't have to spend loads of money.
One more thing: I am not a Dell fanboy, but Macs are expensive.
It could be the start of a resonance cascade. I recommend you stash an HEV suit and a crowbar nearby, just in case.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Ok smart guy, then the question becomes;
"how do I quieten down all those cars and busses and trucks?"
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
"My Dell 400SC has a single 120mm fan in the back. Most of the time, I can't even tell the machine is powered on. It get a little louder when it's doing something CPU intensive. It's the quietest PC I've ever owned."
We have various racks of Dell desktop machines at work. When you turn the whole lot on at the power supply, it creates a gale that blows papers in adjacent rooms, as all 16 computers startup with their fans set to maximum.
At another building, we have 16 server-style (big, lockable, etc.) dell machines. It's only marginally below the legal limits for noise that people are allowed to work in.
Another similar installation (PCs, not Dells) was found to be "okay if you stood at least 4 meters away" in terms of harmful volume of noise.
My home PC (zalman flower-CPU, new PSU, etc.) ranges from "annoying" (most of the time) to "people think you've left the hoover on" when it detects that it's too hot.
So yeah, if Macs are better than that, I might get one. Dell sure as hell isn't the answer.
Why do you say "Macs are expensive" when they supply not only the cheapest decent computer around, but the iMac which (after all the initial PC puffery) was found to be cheaper than building a similarly-specc'd PC, and the G4 which is so much cheaper than equivalent PCs that they built a cluster supercomputer out of them. And this is comparing them to the price of Dells, of all computers?!?
Just a quick fact check:
4070.00 - Alien dual 64bit 2.4gig w/ 1gig ram
3369.00 - Apple dual 64bit 2.5gig w/ 1gig ram
4989.00 - Alien dual 64bit 2.4gig w/ 4gig ram
4269.00 - Apple dual 64bit 2.5gig w/ 4gig ram
-rd
RANTS:
1. "Silent PC" Is Not a Fetish.
There are practical reasons why some of us demand silence from a computer. The one that drives me is the fact that I use my computer(s) to record audio. Short of building a separate room to house the computer (which causes insane problems with ventilation, video/kb/mouse cables, etc.), you simply have to get it silent for a professional-quality recording. Another reason is home theater, which I believe was mentioned in the article. I really don't understand why people who couldn't care less how much noise their computer emits (like people who run server rooms) continually post in these threads. We silent freaks are aware there are lots of people who have no reason to care about dBs. That's why it's so hard to find parts to build a truly silent PC. I don't give a flip about overclocking - do I go around posting "you overclockers are kooky" in every thread on overclocking on Ars or Tom's or Anand's? Jeez.
2. Fans Equal Noise. Period.
There is no way around this. If you have fans anywhere in your computer, your computer will not be silent. It may be marginally quieter with some fans than others, but fans move air around and turn on a shaft, and both of those things are impossible to silence. Quieten, yes. Silence, no. And I have tried a number of supposedly "quiet PC" fans, including CPU fans. Rheostats are commonly put forward as a solution to the noise problem. They're not, at least for me, because turning fans down with a rheostat is only feasible when the computer is not working hard. But even single-channel audio recording is processor-intensive, and when you add effects processing or additional channels, booyah! Turn down the fans to the point where they are quiet enough for audio recording and you will lock up due to heat, and I am speaking from experience here. Moreover, turned-down fans are still not silent, and quiet enough is still not professional-quality. The same would be true for a home theater installation - encoding/decoding makes heat. The same is true for mobo-automated fan turndown. It turns straight up right when the computer needs to be quiet, for the same reason. (One post mentioned that the Mac iServe has three virtually-silent fans. If this is true, I would love to get ahold of such fans without paying $4K for an iServe. But every other product I've heard described as "virtually silent" -- e.g., power supplies -- always made noise. Fan noise. Because fans equal noise. So I'm skeptical. The Mac Mini was mentioned also, but is insufficient in processing power/ram to run my studio.) Also, contrary to the article, more fans at a slower speed are not quieter. Theoretically, perhaps, but not to the real human ear.
3. "Quiet Cases" Are Useless.
This applies both to cases made of heavy material specifically designed to be quiet, and insulation foam that you paste inside the case. Tried em, dumped em. I should have recognized in advance that heavier and/or insulated cases substantially decrease heat dissipation through the case, which means -- that's right -- more and faster FANS, and fans equal noise. Anything you gain by putting your computer guts in an insulated fortress, you will lose by the whining RPMs tacked onto your CPU and vidcard fans, and incidentally, your kewl mobo-controlled or power-supply controlled fans will crank up to high RPMs as well. It's worse than a wash - it's actually noisier. Learned it the hard way.
4. Most Water-cooling Is Probably Useless.
I say "probably" because I h
No, no, no. This is not a sig.