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

Zzzzzzz

[suso]

If you work around computers a lot you are probably pretty tired of the noise they produce.

Are you kidding? That noise helps me go to sleep.

Re:Zzzzzzz

[DustyShadow]

Apparently it helps the article's server go to sleep as well =)

Re:Zzzzzzz

[JWeinraub]

you are so right! especially in college my room mate snored so loud my only conform was my (and his) computer making noise! of course my router flashing was so soothing too!

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.

Re:Zzzzzzz

[Anonymous Coward]

you could come round to my house and talk me to sleep - you sound very very boring :)

Re:Zzzzzzz

[Fiver-]

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.

Re:Zzzzzzz

[Calyth]

Using water cooling often permits you to use large, slower spinning fan. The larger fan allows more air to be moved, without the high pitched whine.
A 120mm Panaflo at 30dBA will move about 68CFM, while the old style 60mm Delta (not used much now because of the noise) moves 38CFM at 46.5dBA.
If I still remember my computer music stuff right, every 3 dB increase results in doubling of the sound power. You do the math.
Also, the crazier among us could attempt to put the radiator outside the window, thus reducing the noise.

Re:Zzzzzzz

[b1t r0t]

When you sleep in the same room with servers running all the time, it's when the noise stops that wakes you up.

Re:Zzzzzzz

[Anonymous Coward]

"...doubling of the sound power," while correct, is a little misleading. Human hearing isn't linear, so while 3dB represents a doubling of acoustic power, it's actually represents a small change in perceived volume. Many people wouldn't be able to hear much less of a change. A 10db increase in acoustic power (which is 10 times increase) represents what is usually perceived as a doubling of volume.

Re:Zzzzzzz

[JLF65]

Where silence is golden is a home theater PC. HTPCs need to be a quiet as possible because many (most) movies these days have a very wide dynamic range.

When playing DVDs on my PC, I have to turn the sound up so I can hear the quiet parts over the noise of the computer, but then the loud parts are too loud. It helps to turn audio compression on, but it would be nicer with a quieter computer.

The Wonderful Humming

[ballstothat]

I, for one, enjoy the sound my computer makes.

That constant 25-dB wooshing is the perfect white noise for blocking out the sounds of chatter and staplers in my office, and helping me catch some much needed sleep.

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

Re:13 pages and nothing said

[homer_ca]

Good article. I knew about it too. A good, quiet PSU doesn't have to be expensive. I bought a Seasonic SS300 which was recommended on that page for under $45. It has 18A on the 12V rail which is as much as some 400W units, 80% efficiency, and it's so quiet I can barely hear it when the computer's idle. It doesn't have dual 12V rails or a 24 pin ATX connector for PCI-express, but it's fine for anything up to a midrange video card.

Is it really the fan that bugs you?

[mary_will_grow]

To me, the white-ish noise of a fan doesn't bother me nearly as much as the clicks and clacks of my coworkers mashing their keys and mouse buttons. Forget the fans, just stop shipping mice and keyboards that INTENTIONALLY make noise every time you do anything! Why does my mouse button need to make a click that can be heard 20 feet away?

Re:Is it really the fan that bugs you?

[Whumpsnatz]

I'll second that. Ever get on a conference call with some imbecile clacking away on their keyboard, drowning out anyone trying to talk and pissing off a whole crowd of people? That's when it really gets to you. And I have to politely ask them to stop, instead of grabbing them by the throat and shrieking "MAKE IT STOP!".

As for mice, why should any mouse need to click so loudly? It's especially irritating that Apple mice are so often loud. I don't need to be told that I clicked the mouse; I'm well aware of what I did. I want something that just does its job.

Re:Is it really the fan that bugs you?

[Sark666]

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.

Re:Is it really the fan that bugs you?

[linzeal]

I actually bought a serial mouse that was silent once. I wish I remember the name of it, it came in an orange and black box with goofy 1970's marquee lettering. Damnit now you have me noticing my kb and mouse clicks.

The only answer

[luckypp]

Have your PC in the basement, and the longest monitor and keyboard cords you can find to your office.

Re:The only answer

[Fargazer]

I have a bit of hearing loss, and the noise a computer makes tends to garble any kind of conversation. I tried for years to get a relatively quiet yet powerful computer, and finally decided to physically move the bloody computer away from my ears.

I purchased a Cybex Longview from http://home.hiwaay.net/~redwood/kvm/, put my machine in a room off of my garage, and ran some STP between it and the recreation room. Unshielded is supposed to work, but the line ran past some flourescent lighting, so I became paranoid and bought Shielded Twisted Pair cabling.

That took care of the KVM (1280 x 1024 works just fine on my 22" screen). For sound, I use a Terk product that transmits audio signals over phone lines, and ran a dedicated phone cord for this. There's a bit of hiss if I crank up the volume when nothing's playing, but if a game or other program is actually feeding the system, it's fine. The Terk feeds a 2.1 Klipsch speaker set.

I stayed away from wireless solutions because my Siemens 2.4GHz phone system had / caused problems with most transmitter arrangements; this included the Terk wireless sound transmitter, as well as an older Turtle Beach sound transmitter set. After all, I am running a STP cable already, so running a dedicated phone cord isn't a big deal.

Overall, it works great; the only noise I pick up is a bit of hiss if I don't keep the speaker volume low, and that goes away when I actually play music or games.

There are a couple flaws. The biggest pain is when I need to swap CDs in the machine; Virtual CD programs can help here, but if you are making ISOs or burning disks, it's time to do a few laps about the house. The other pain is when I want to use USB; then I have to run into the other room to load / install the device. Also, you better be using a DB-15 video connection; I know of no inexpensive KVM extender that can handle DVI (I am looking, but most appear to be too near the $1000 mark for my taste).

Total pricing was about $250 for the Longview, $50 for the cabling, and about $75ish for the Terk box. Sounds expensive, but A) it's still in the high end water cooling price range, and B) it is truly silent, with no dangers of liquid leaks. I've been using this setup for over 3 years now, and feel my money's been well spent.

Re:The only answer

[Devistater]

Wow your whole post is cool about running the computer in another room.

I also like the link for that one device USB over CAT5 device. $100 for 150 feet aint bad if you really need an extension.

Another possability, I've seen a 15' extender for about $20 (you connect it to a 15' max length standard USB cable for a total of 30'), but from what you are saying you need more than that.
http://www.pccables.com/cgi-bin/orders6.cgi?action =Showitem&id=ID514292&partno=70570&search=USB

One of the advantages of a USB would be that you could hot plug a cd or dvd drive and plug in something else if you had other USB devices.

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:Airtight case

[mysticwhiskey]

Yep, did that and it worked great. Then I noticed my hard drive noise. So I quietened that by replacing it with a slower 5400-rpm hydralic-bearing model, suspended in a rubber harness to avoid vibration. Worked great!

Then I noticed my CRT humming. So I got an LCD. Monitor hum - gone.

Then I noticed the noise the floppy drive made. Got rid of that (who needs 'em?). Worked great.

Then I noticed the whistling my nostrils made as breathed whilst using my ultra quiet PC. Ear plugs in the nose - problem solved. Great!

Then I noticed the crickets chirping in the background. Booted up the wife's noisy PC. Problem solved!

Headphones: Cheap Solution

[Bad to the Ben]

If you want noise to be less of a problem, buy a nice pair of headphones and use them at your computer. You'll be able to hear sounds and music better, and they'll cut out a lot of other background noise (people talking, outside noise) which will help you concentrate. You'll also be able to listen to whatever like at whatever volume you like without disturbing anyone.

It's a cheap and easy solution, and until silent PCs are perfected it's what I'll be using.

Re:Headphones: Cheap Solution

[morie]

I got this advice earlier, but sleeping with these earphines on is just to uncomfortable.

Yes, I only have one room in my house.

Re:Headphones: Cheap Solution

[egarland]

I agree, good headphones are great when dealing with lots of machine noise. I'm actually sitting here reading slashodot with a pair of Koss R/80's on. I have no music playing either and probably don't about half the time I'm wearing them. I just like the quiet they provide.

I've gotten into the habit of just putting them on. It makes everything quieter and helps me focus. Of course, I have 14 computers in this tiny office and an air conditioner which drowns them all out so this room is probably louder than many.

FYI, I've had R/80's and Pro3AA's from Koss and can't recommend either. They both have ridiculously fragile parts where they attach to the headband and will break in a fall from desk height. They sound great and keep noise out well but they need replacing often.

Re:Headphones: Cheap Solution

[dragonman97]

Turn the computer off? I'm afraid I don't understand...

Another...

[tomstdenis]

thirty page story full of advertisements with zero content.

Wanna lower the noise of your computer? Stop burning 450 WATTS of power to browse the web or send email.

Don't see any moving parts on your gameboy do you? Or your PDA for that matter. If desktop computers were made of APPROPRIATE parts instead of the "my computer has to be faster than yours" parts we'd have silent desktops that run in under 20 Watts of power that cost 150$ and run whatever OS you choose.

Anything short of this and you're doing to noise what we do to heat, moving the problem elsewhere. You could [for example] pump ice cold water over the heatsinks and keep the pump outside, in the basement, etc...

But that's just moving the problem elsewhere and not really solving it.

The solution is more scalable computing or appropriate choices. There is no reason, for example, why the P4 idles at 400Mhz and the AMD64 at 1Ghz other than the design can only scale so far. This matters a bit more in laptops where every mW counts.

Tom

Re:Another...

[tomstdenis]

Typical BS reply. "it's my right to have it!" then put up with the fucking noise you loser cry baby.

But know this. You like high gas prices? What do you think drives it up [hint: supply & demand].

So keep using your 450Wh computers [anther other excesses]. you'll drive power demands up higher and higher and costs higher and higher.

Or ... you can play on the winning team and not live in excess.

I mean I too use [and make good use of] a dual core AMD64. But I'd love it to be more scalable too. It idles at 2.2Ghz and roughly +9C over ambient. I have no idea what the GPU is doing have the time [though I did get a low end PCI-E card...], etc, etc.

I'd say out of a given day my computer is sitting doing absolutely nothing productive around 16 hours or so. I can't turn it on and off because I often login remotely, but during the 2/3rds of the day it's not doing anything it would be nice to have it go into a sleep state of sorts, e.g. clock the cpu down to absurdly low states, heck even halt the GPU, lower the DRAM refresh, etc...

But they focus more on getting the highest frequency, largest volume, etc instead of scalable. Granted I love the AMD64 in terms of IPC and shear ability to crunch numbers. My recent Bignum work shows that the AMD64 totally floors the P4 Prescott [which floors the Athlon-XP series btw] which is useful.

As for the others, how many computer owners you imagine actually do more than trivial tasks with their computers? I'm sure that for the vast majority of computer owners an ARM core or two is more than enough processing power, a hell of a lot more scalable and cheaper to produce.

That's another thing, in another reply [a week ago] I went through the economics of making ARM... on a 300mm wafer where you have 500 P4 Prescotts you can have TENS OF THOUSANDS of ARM922T processors. That makes an ARM processor essentially a throw-away component at that cost.

You could trivially have one ARM for your main cpu, one for your GPU, one for your SPU [sound], one for your network [scalable from DC to 500Mhz] and STILL take less power than your current desktop. Yeah sure you won't get the MIPS or FPS you get now but at reasonable performance [and this would also require developers to pay attention to what they're doing], lower costs and lower power usages it's far outweighing the negative.

Look at the PSP design for instance. IIRC it has multiple [custom] MIPS processors for the various taskings and it takes a whopping 1080mWh of power [or so] to run. Your CPU fan takes more power than that [usually 12V at 0.1A that's 1200mWh].

And the PSP gets decent 3D graphics, sound, networking, general purpose and I/O in all that [granted the current goes up during DVD reads but that's another story].

So why can you play decent 3d games on a PSP in under two Watts but can't do this on a desktop in under a couple hundred Watts?

Answer? The architecture is not scalable or sustainable and was totally marketting driven.

I know I'm rambling a bit but I'm just sick of these people who are so utterly dependent on a vendor for no good reason.

Tom

Re:Another...

[tomstdenis]

ARM is a reduce-instruction set processor designed from the ground up to be small, powerful [in terms of instructions executed per second] and lower power [in terms of Watts].

It is a 32-bit processor with plenty of registers and a flexible instruction set that makes quite a few operations more efficient then on the x86 desktops.

The later generations have introduced SIMD instructions to handle things like video and sound. They also have quite capable debugging assist hardware and memory management units (MMU) to handle virtualization.

In short, what you are doing with your desktop processor could be done with an ARM processor at a fraction of the cost.

The biggest problem with this [in the eyes of the uneducated] is that it doesn't run x86 instructions. So you assume you can't run anything on it. When in fact Linux and *BSD have been ported to it and you can run essentially any portable souce based application on it.

The other reason is the MIPS rating [millions of instructions per second] doesn't scale as much as the P4 or Athlon64. The fastest ARM processor clocks in around 500Mhz which is about 550MIPS while the fastest AMD64 clocks in a 2.8Ghz which is about 3920MIPS [assuming IPC of 1.4].

So for the number crunchers out there, ARM is not an option.

However, look at things like a Gameboy or PSP. They use multiple low power processors to get the performance required for say 3D video games.

An AMD64 at 2.8Ghz can take upto 100Wh of power [but newer cores are like 60Wh]. A 500Mhz ARM processor consumes 0.5Wh.

Put it this way, the average desktop idles at ~130Wh and peaks ~250Wh or so... but let's assume idle. That's 3120W per day, 93Kw per month. At four cents per kilowatt that's 3.72$ per month.

Now if you're like me and have 3-4 computers in the house that's 15$ per month. Just to have computers idling.

That for 0.04$/KWh. That's relatively cheap. A quick google shows 6.91 cents/KWh for california which amounts to 25.7 dollars per month [before tax and other surcharges].

Now imagine if your computer PEAKED at 20Wh using multiple ARM cores (one for main processing, one or two for graphics, one for sound, etc). That's a whopping 480W per day, 14.4KW per month or $3.98 for four ARM based computers at 6.91 cents/KWh.

And what could you do with these ARM [or other RISC based] designs?

1. Well all your office type applications [e.g. OpenOffice]
2. Web browsing and email
3. IM chatting
4. ... other trivial desktop things
5. Video games [hint: what do you think runs the PSP]
6. Video and Music playback
etc, etc, etc.

The hysteria that you need more processing power than God to play a video game or watch a DVD is just the sort of things they want to hang you on to net sales.

Once you realize you can get away with MUCH LESS and still have quality in the end ... you'd be better off.

BTW why not just head to http://www.arm.com/ and check out there stuff. Not a lot of consumer info there but if you're curious about the company it's worth a look.

Tom

Re:Another...

[cypherz]

From parent post:
"I'd say out of a given day my computer is sitting doing absolutely nothing productive around 16 hours or so. I can't turn it on and off because I often login remotely, but during the 2/3rds of the day it's not doing anything it would be nice to have it go into a sleep state of sorts, e.g. clock the cpu down to absurdly low states, heck even halt the GPU, lower the DRAM refresh, etc..."

Why not have ACPI do a "suspend to ram" and then "wake on lan" when you SSH into it (or RDesktop or whatever)?

Re:Another...

[brunes69]

I'd say out of a given day my computer is sitting doing absolutely nothing productive around 16 hours or so. I can't turn it on and off because I often login remotely, but during the 2/3rds of the day it's not doing anything it would be nice to have it go into a sleep state of sorts, e.g. clock the cpu down to absurdly low states, heck even halt the GPU, lower the DRAM refresh, etc...

This is a wee bit of nonsense.. look into Wake On Lan (WOL), which is readibly supported in Windows, Linux, OSX, FreeBSD, you name it.

Your PC goes into a heavy sleep state where it is essentially totally off except for a few mW to the NIC... when a UDP packet is recieved, it boots up.

And I know what you are thinking - "but how do I know what the IP is to send it a UDP packet from work!". Well, if your PC is as you say a dual-core 450W PSU, you are probably burning away almost 10 dollars a month in power at average power rates of $0.08 per kW/h... take 20 bucks, buy a router on ebay that will update your IP on a free dyndns service.

The power supply?

[ergo98]

but one of the easiest and most effect is to upgrade to a silent power supply

It has been years since I've used a PC where the power supply was a significant contributor to the noise, and even the bargain basement ones are pretty well behaved these days. Not only are power supplies generally pretty quiet, but the noise they do make is the gentle sound of airflow.

Instead the low hanging fruit in aggravating noise are the hard drive, especially as rotational speeds increase (bringing the pitch to more and more irritating levels), optical media drives (though only when in use), and CPU fans. A quick up-and-comer in the ranks of audio assaulters are video cards, some of which come with ridiculously loud cooling contraptions.

Re:The power supply?

[ryanov]

I have a Dell Optiplex GX270 sitting next to my monitor, inches away... I've never heard the HDD; I have to look at the light. Granted the Indy sitting next to it has very noisy disks, but... even with that off, I bet I can't hear it.

Are you kidding?

[cha0t1c]

If I walked into the server room, heard nothing, I would friggin' panic. Silence would take some getting used to. Also, that low hum or whir tends to soothe my frazzled nerves on my home PC..., Just my take.

Re:Are you kidding?

[Doctor Memory]

Heh, reminds me of a story from Ye Olden Times...

We were doing bank processing on a S/370 and had jobs than ran 24/7 (back before we even had the phrase "24/7"). We upgraded to a new 3081 (basically a pair of S/370s in a single box). However, they couldn't install the disk controller (a separate box) until the next day, so what they did was to run cables over to the still-running S/370 and use it as the disk controller for a couple of days. Well, as they were pulling the cables, they somehow managed to snag the EPO (emergency power-off) line, and the entire server room (remember, this is two mainframes and a few dozen washing-machine size disk drives and their attendant power supplies) spun down within a few seconds. I can still hear the shift manager screaming "WHAT THE F*** JUST HAPPENED!?!?" from all the way down the hall...

Re:How many times?

[Golias]

As long as we are recylcling articles, let's recycle comments too.

I'll start with the old stand-by that this rise in popularity of "silent" PC's is just one more example of the Windows world playing catch-up to the Mac.

Oh, and I'll be the rush to suggest using active phase-cancellation to reduce ambient noise in the room.

That should start us off nicely.

It's not the PSU.

[Jaruzel]

I have a silent PSU in my main machine. It also has a Zalman Flower Cooler on the CPU, which also runs damn near silently. Unfortunately the noisiest part of my PC is the ATI Radeon card, with its proprietory fan and heatsink.

I know there are kits out there that can replace the fan/heatsink combo on a graphics card, but they are not for the faint hearted - I broke my previous graphics card just trying to remove the original heatsink :(

Graphics card manufacturers really need to get on the silent PC bandwagon, instead of focusing on how many trillion polys per milli-second they can render.

-Jar.

Full article mirror

[winkydink]

here

Turn it off

[mrblurgle]

Turn it off, it's very quiet :-)

Re:Turn it off

[TrappedByMyself]

Yeah right. Not with the endless screams of "Turn me onnnnn....Tuurrnnnn meee onnnnnn.....".

Buy a Mac?

[jacobcaz]

I switched from a WinTel to a Mac a few months ago (not specifically for noise) and immediately noticed a huge difference in sound. Did the mac make noise? Yes. Did it make about 1/16th the noice of my PC? Yes!

I moved my PC out of the office and to the garage to serve duty as the house fileserver. I can once again watch TV in my office without cranking the volume three-fourths of the way to max.

As a side bonus my office got cooler. I was able to take my 450watt PSU and 19" CRT out of the room and it makes it all the more comfortable in the summertime!

Cool and quiet - it's a winning combination! DoublePlusGood; the Mac has a high W.A.F. because it's "pretty."

Big Fans

[Apreche]

I've had a lot of cases and computers in my day. And the best thing for getting a quieter computer is bigger fans. Bigger fans have to spin at less rpms to push the same amount of air as a smaller fan. Less rpms means less noise.

The real key here is not to go crazy with the cooling/overclocking. Giant heat sinks with crazy fast fans are loud as all hell. And often the default fan that comes with the CPU is sufficient.

If you want more cooling than you need for overclocking the only real way to stay quiet is water cooling.

But my recommendation is always to just run hardware at speed, default cpu fan, big intake and big exhaust fan running at lowest speed. You wont even know it's there.

Re:Big Fans

[shaka999]

Last time I checked my heat sinks weren't making any noise :).

A giant hit sink with a big fan is the best way to go. A big heat sink will pull more energy away from the CPU. Put a big slow fan on it and you'll really reduce the noise.

Whenever I want to silence my computer

[Geshem]

I just go to Start menu -> .. err just a minute, it's stuck.
Wait, I'll try the tray icon..
What?? It crashed.
No worries, I'll just resta.. WHAT?!?
*** UNPLUGS COMPUTER ***

There, silent.

completely silent*

[tverbeek]

Any other hints from people?

Buy a Mac Plus. It's completely silent.*

*Except for the floppy drive, of course.

Loads of suggestions.

[burnttoy]

If you're not a total performance junky but like me just want to get on with computing (audio/music/image editing/perl/html/asm etc) then buy a thin and light or ultraportable laptop like sony T or S series. Many laptops are very quiet and the "centrino" based systems even more so (yeah, Intel's done a good job on those CPUs)

here's more info on the T series
http://vaio.sony-europe.com/view/ShowProductCatego ry.action?site=ite_en_GB&category=VN+T+Series

I can barely hear it. Failing that you will just have to spend a small fortune on low noise fans etc all of which cost more, usually due to the enormous size of the things. TBH I can't the stand drone PC's make it sends me to sleep, so does the whirr of air cons. I can't stand working in offices. Hence, I work at home! Those places literally knock me out. My old tower system has low noise components (PSU/cpu fan/fanless video card) but it is still very audible to me.

failing that this computer is deadly silent...

http://www.nvg.ntnu.no/sinclair/computers/zx81/zx8 1.htm ;-)

http://www.burnttoys.co.uk/

Re:Easier way to silence your fans

[trevdak]

Currently, with all my fans on lowest power (and have been oevernight, and stay that way if I'm not gaming) my CPU temperature is 36 celsius. My RT2 is 30 celsius. My room is 25 celsius. When I crank up my fans, my CPU cools to 34 celsius, my RT2 stays the same.

Actually, I don't mind noise.

[Zweideutig]

I have my Prescott P4 overclocked, and I have replaced the stock fan with a 1 hp vacuum cleaner. I don't mind the noise, as long as I have speakers capable of blasting Metallica louder than the vacuum cleaner.

From experience

[dostick]

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.

Re:From experience

[springbox]

Huh? Hard drive noise is sooo 20th century. Every modern hard drive I've seen so far is really very quiet. They make a *little* noise usually when they're in use, but that's easily taken care of by putting it inside of a case. If it wasn't for an older IBM hard drive whirring, one of my older computers would be making (virtually) no noise. (Passive heat sink, mini ATX - the PSU is very silent.)

Re:How many times?

[ArmorFiend]

That's the spirit. I'll trot out my time-tested technique of taping squares of old tee-shirt to the inside of the case. Someone will probably complain that'll cause the computer to die of lint poisoning, and I'll just come back with "if you're worried about dirt in your computer that's the least of your problems".

Another benchmark game

[edremy]

I recently built a computer for home (AMD64), and was disappointed in the noise level. It was still better than the noisy monster before it, but I've been working on getting it quieter.

• Antec Sonata case with very quiet PSU, full fan control and vibration reduction for the drives
• Zalman flower CPU fan
• Zalman northbridge heatsink.

My biggest problems now are the CD-ROM and the hard drives- I was kind of surprised to find the video card fan (ASUS GeForce 6600) is literally slient even under heavy load. I'm debating if the hard drive silencing enclosures are worth it- you can still tell the thing is on if you're within 5 feet, but unless the CD-ROM spins up you tune out the noise in a few seconds.

I'd love to see a benchmark of "Quietest PC for a given performance level".

Article summary:

[Anne_Nonymous]

Article summary:

Ad, ad, ad, cookie, cookie, ad, cookie, ad, cookie, ad, cookie, cookie, cookie, ad, ad, ad, silent power supplies are quieter than normal ones.

Re:Article summary:

[borawjm]

Ad, ad, ad, cookie, cookie, ad, cookie, ad, cookie, ad, cookie, cookie, cookie, ad, ad, ad, silent power supplies are quieter than normal ones.

This makes me picture the cookie monster with an accounting job. I guess he decided to leave Sesame Street once he found out they weren't going to let him eat sweets anymore.

It's not terribly tough...

[raygundan]

I had the fan die on my video card a few weeks back, and went with the $20 thermaltake fanless kit instead of a replacement fan to prevent the failure from happening again.

It wasn't any harder than installing a heatsink on a CPU. Removing the old one was just a matter of squeezing the little plastic bits that held it on with pliers, and pulling them through the holes. Installing the new one was just a matter of putting all the pieces on in order, with heatsink goo in between.

Re:Or...

[oever]

I have to disagree. Almost all laptops are noisy. Read your average review. Is there a good list of laptops without fan? I only know of the Dell X1, but maybe there are more.

My solution

[Ruprecht the Monkeyb]

I had this problem. Loud PC, small apartment. Made it hard to leave on all the time downloading, um, updates...yeah, downloading updates.

Anyway, before I decided to plunk down some serious $$$ on quiet power supply, case fans, new case etc., I figured I'd give quieting the thing down one more shot with just what I had on hand. Turns out, I could disable both of the loud as hell case fans. The overall case temp. went up several degrees, but the CPU and MB sensors only went up a couple. PC has been running 24/7 for almost 2 months that way now, during the hottest part of the year.

Re:How many times?

[ArmorFiend]

So far so good. ;)

the PS is only part of it,

[pair-a-noyd]

One of my biggest pet peeves is HD whine.
I usually have 4+ (up to 9 sometimes) pc's running here and among the fan noise, the HD whine is far louder and far more annoying. I am in the process of building a sound proof area in my office for the pc's.

I moved all the pc's into a double wide closet and brought out my connections through a 16 port KVM to my desk. Next step is to install sliding glass patio doors on the closet so I can see inside and get inside to access them. I installed a QUIET bathroom type vent in the ceiling of the closet to exhaust the heat up into the attic. When done my noise AND heat problem will be almost nil.. I know it will work because I tested it by closing the original wooden doors. I just want the glass doors so I can see status lights and the like..

Pretty cheap to do when compared to replacing all the PSU's and fans with water cooling stuff. The price of one set of sliding glass doors is about the same as one water cooled PSU.. When you are talking about quite a few of them like I am, it's an easy choice to make.

better, buy a silent system...

[da5idnetlimit.com]

Nowadays the question is one of appropriate hardware choices for specific tasks...

The power supply is just a first step. A silent system is more like a long compromise on many fronts.

For instance I run a web/mail server using an old P2-400 and a maxtor 20gig from the scrap closet. I'm serving 150K pages a month and getting like 5000 mails/month.

True, a silent power supply would reduce the noise of this single machine, but buying a modern crusoe system with totally passive cooling with a "lowest" cpu would still give me more power than the P2-400 (890 Bogomips) and scratch a large enclosure beige box from my field of view...
it's just a question of cost, I don't really need a low power machine, but I need the money it would cost me.

Another problem I have is the file server next to this machine:
3 fans, 5 hdd and a 450W power supply.

I need enough power to start and run 5 disks, and enough cooling to keep them disks "cold" (lukewarm, to tell the true).

So I can choose between water cooling the disks, and the CPU/GPU as long as I am at it, or find cooler and silenter disks (lol - seagate 5400r/s if they still make them) and/or put a controller to regulate the venting...plus a silent power supply... and a regulator for the cpu...everything comes quite expensive.

I can also get the long cable(s) and a KVM, ethernet KVM if there is such a thing...

Or better, a silent desktop machine and all the servers in a closet somewhere... and a solution to reboot the machines remotely...and a basic knowledge of remote desktops and ssh. altogether quite cheaper than the other solutions.

If I had the vented closet, I would get a crusoe something "dumb" terminal and a citrix-like Linux solution (forgot the name). Your puny computer is just accessing a much more powerfull one, and running everything on it.

You have a silent environment with high cpu power access, you can add unexpensive desktops wherever you want, wifi possible as you use a real computer as a terminal...
Your server(s) has a nice, cool closet all to itself and can be happy churning watts without disturbing you. Cluster for redundancy, dual raid 10 array, or JBOD and a backup disk somewhere else and you have a corporate-like environment.

Still the problem of rebooting the remote server without moving, but a solution can be found in many flavors even from an X10 controlable power outlet and a mobo supporting wake-on-lan.

See how-much a silent power supply costs, see how much a low power "semi-dumb" would cost, and start emptying that closet.

(see here for some example of Linux thin clients : http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT4923746399. html - I'm sure there is something comparable for Windows (citrix) but it sure will be expensive...)

Re:How many times?

[jasonmicron]

this rise in popularity of "silent" PC's is just one more example of the Windows world playing catch-up to the Mac

I didn't know that Microsoft made power supplies and processor fans. Usually when Windows is making too much noise on my machine I just turn the speakers down. :)

noise reductor: make a hole in the wall!!

[uioreanu]

The easiest way, and also maybe the healthiest way to avoid this first generation long-time exposure to PC radiations is to make a hole in the wall and place the PC in another room. All cables to pass through this hole, one gains much more working space and all becomes surprisingly quiet! Might be that a good percent of work related stress is subconsciously caused by computer noise.

User Noise

[spaztech]

I find that the noise generated by the PC users to be far more annoying than the PCs themselves.

I'd rather hear fan noise (think air conditioned server room) than the white noise of a thousand users grumbling.

Efficiency

[MarkByers]

Defeating fan noise:

Get a processor that runs efficiently, then you don't need a fan.

Harddrive noise:

Buy more memory and then you will find that your computer doesn't need to use swap space too much. You can then even turn your harddrives off when not in use, saving even more power and produing less heat.

Laptops run very quietly and consume very little power. Why can't they start putting some of this technology back into desktops?

Sadly, some Macs are loud

[frankie]

Most of the PowerMac G4 desktop models (including my 2001 "digital audio") are actually quite loud. On the bright side, the fans are standard size and easily replaced.

Re:Easier way to silence your fans

[Lumpy]

screw that.

I cut v notches in the trailing tips of the blade to increase the noise created by the fans 3 fold.

my PC at home sounds like someone is running 6 vaccuum cleaners in the box.

at lan parties, I usually get a "holy crap! how many fans you got in that?!"

Re:Easier way to silence your fans

[ppz003]

The best way I've found to make my box quieter is larger fans running at lower rpms. For instance, I have 3 120mm fans in my case, one on the front, one on the back, and one on the power supply. 120's are considerably quieter running at lower rpms than 90 or 80 mm case fans of the past while moving the same amount or even more air. Also, my A64 stock fan is 80 mm instead of the 60mm cpu fans of old.

The end result is the cpu fan running the loudest around 2500 - 3500 rpms, while the case and ps fans are almost inaudible at ~1800 and ~1000 rpms. I've also found that cheap off brand fans tend to be much louder than a better quality name brand fan.

My temps are all 32C, hard drives, cpu, and mb.

Just a PSU won't help

[AmiMoJo]

The secret to reducing computer noise is to start by targetting the loudest component in the system. Quite often, that isn't the PSU, but the CPU fan. CPU fans tend to be smaller, but run at high speed so make much more noise than larger PSU fans.

So, carefully stop each fan in your system in turn to see which makes the most noise. You will be able to tell becuase you will notice a big difference in sound when you stop the loudest one, while the others will make very little difference. Find a way to quieten it, and the repeat the process.

My system is water cooled, and has three fans. Two are 92mm Panaflos running at 4.5V, which are inaudiable. The third is a 120mm PSU fan, which also cools the water, which I can hear and is the loudest thing in my system. With the window open, the system is totally silent, without it is just audiable.