Beginning Of the End For PC Noise

An anonymous reader writes "If you work around computers a lot you are probably pretty tired of the noise they produce. The cutting down on computer noise has grown from the pet-peeve of a few people to a major segment of the hardware industry. If you are looking to cut down on noise there are a lot of ways to go, but one of the easiest and most effect is to upgrade to a silent power supply. This guide goes over and tests the four most popular ones on the market right now." A few years back, I had also written a piece about making silent machine as well. Any other hints from people?

Comments

The quest for silence...

[megla]

I built my latest AMD64 rig around the fact that it was going to be in my bedroom and on 24/7, so it is nearly inaudible from three feet away. Silence comes at a cost though - it's been rather expensive to build for it's modest specs. The basics are Athlon64 3000+, GeForce 6600GT, 1GB crucial ballistix ram and 3 160gb harddrives. I found SPCR to be a very helpful source of information and many modifications i've made to the internals of the case are based on plans and recommendations from that site. It's worth a look.

Re:The quest for silence...

[strider44]

Bad link, here's a good one: Silent PC Review

13 pages and nothing said

[venolius]

The poster makes us go through 13 ad-filled pages and then concludes that all the power supplies are great.

Check http://silentpcreview.com/; it has a lot more information about silencing a PC and less ads.

Re:13 pages and nothing said

[Mr Guy]

I always feel a little bad for Mike when a topic like this hits /., but then I figure it's his fault for being basically the best at what he does. I just hope the add revenue makes up for the server pain!

Direct Link to recommended PSU article

Airtight case

[Iriel]

One thing that most people overlook is how tight their case is. If your tower is made of metal of any kind, make sure to eliminate any room for the walls to rattle or vibrate and that will cut down on noise by great leaps and bounds. Also, I try not to have my tower on a metal surface, because the vibrations also cause more noise than most people give credit to, or at least get some kind of boots under the machine.

Re:Zzzzzzz

[R2.0]

When everything is water cooled.

Air has a very low heat capacity, and so you need to move a lot of it to get the heat transfer you need. And moving air is loud - no getting around it. There are some tricks to be played with flow straightening and sound attenuators, but until companies are willing to give up the space for larger ductwork (hence lower air velocities, there won't be any huge leaps in sound control from HVAC systems.