Quieting those Fans

Fudge asks: "I've found that as we trundle along the Intel processor road, each successive generation of processor generates more heat than the last. Now my latest PC, a dual PIII-500, has two enormous fans to dissipate the heat which generate an awful amount of noise. Does anyone know of ways to deaden the noise without sacrificing the heat dissipation? I'd also prefer not to void the warranty, but I could be persuaded to compromise on that. "

Comments

Move to Another Room

[F.O.Dobbs]

I got rid of the vast majority of my sound problems (Celeron 366->567 with 5 fans) by purchasing extension cables for my monitor, keyboard and mouse and putting the computer in a closet. I drilled a 2" hole through the wall, passed the cables through the hole and covered it with some foam rubber. The only problems that arose were getting to the computer for changing media and my closet is about 100 degrees. Make sure you get a high-quality video cable so you don't have any image problems.

Since then moving my primary machine into the closet, I've also put my gateway/firewall/cd-burner/X10 server machine in there on a 2 machine switch box. Again, don't skimp on the quality of the switchbox (get one for professional AV, around $80 or so). Of course, you could just ssh into the machine if you prefer (I use the box because I've installed a gaming OS on one of the machines).

F.O.Dobbs

Quiet Fans and Power Supplies

[Jahf]

I went looking for the same thing a while back and found the following:

• PC Power and Cooling "ultraquiet" PowerSupply.
• Silencer 80mm Fan (sold by someone else but made by PC Power&Cooling)
• CoolerMaster PIII Fan ... they list the noise level as 29dba
• 24dba SECCII fan

I found these with AltaVista and Google ... if you need more just go do a few searches and you should come up with something good.