Slashdot Mirror
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?
You need to defeat two major factors: fan noise and hard drive noise.
Fan noise:
-Buy good silent CPU fan (Zalman, etc)
-Buy silent case & mainboard fans.
-Have motherboard that can regulate fan speeds depending on temperature.
-Power supply noise: it's the easiest part - buy better power supply that has no noise ($30 here make a world of diffrence).
Harddrive noise:
-Harddrive itself may be noisy, depending on speed/model, etc. Nothing you can do about it (except buy another).
-Harddrive noise resonated in case: Solution is hard drives monuts on rubber pads- reduce noise, but not as much as advertised.
Case is very important. Cases starting from $100 are more silent then average cases.
Case can be temperature efficient and noise efficient.
- Case temperature design: more expensive cases have better design/materials to keep system cooler. Means less FAN noise.
- Noise efficient design: this comes to fan&hard drive mounts, air flow and overal case quality.
Well, the history goes back to the typewriter. Supposedly, the mainusers of typewriters did not like not have an audible click when typing as the were used to the audio confirmation of a typewriter. So even though the first keyboards were silent, it became 'standard' to make keyboards have the clicks. The mouse just followed suit.
This bugs me and looked into it a little a while back. I found a couple of silent keyboards but they seemed rare. I couldn't find one silent mouse. I looked for some hacks for mice but it sounded like you'd usually end up making the mouse non-functional.
I miss our server rack. It used to be in an alcove near our workstations and the white noise was wonderful. I couldn't hear other people's phone conversations and they couldn't hear mine. Everything was blocked out except for the blissful hum. Now I'm on a different floor and can hear every word spoken around me. It's distracting as hell.
I need a fan to sleep too, for both the noise and the air circulation. My whole family is that way, and now I've passed the addiction along to my girlfriend. Sleeping in a still, silent room now is horrible.