Aaaggghhhh! I’m tired of my computer being so loud!
I’ve bought HIGH QUALITY fans. I can’t hear them rattle, but of course I hear the air moving.
Nice power supply, nice HD and nice CD/RW. I run CDs from images to conserve noise, so the CD/RW isn’t a problem, reallly.
Nice HD, so it’s not producing much noise.
Lian-li aluminum case sitting on four legs to reduce vibration
GGGAARRRGGGHHHH STILL LOUD
Any suggestions as to what I can do? I was thinking of some sound dampening materials, but what kind would I need? How much is neccessary?
Do you have a high-end video card? The latest Radeon/GeForce cards tend to have big noisy fans. You could consider downgrading to not-as-fast new video card that has a heatsink instead.
2)Do you ever use the floppy drive and those damned unstable floppy disks? If not, the yank the sucker out! It is the noisy thing by far in my case when it runs.
I wonderd the same thing, after spending money on “quiet” fans and finding that I could still hear the fans (even with the “silent” resistors in), and now hear the HD whine spinning more than ever. A couple people mentioned that Seagate Barracuda drives are among the more quieter, but I didn’t look up any comparative tests. I bought a Western Digital that got LOUDER about six weeks after I bought it–it started out very quiet, but now the head seek is quiet, but the disk spinning is loud.
My best guess would be to go with a mini-ATX PC that has no fans at all, and get a quieter HD.
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I’ve been working towards a quiet PC myself, and right now the loudest thing I have is the PSU fan. It came with a cheap case I had one, and is thus garbage.
If you want some quiet fans, look into Pabst, Panaflo, or Vantec Stealth models. 120mm fans, while likely larger than your case can fit (at least my PC-60 can’t), are apparently quiet since they can run at very low RPMs and still push a lot of air Worth looking into.
PC Power & Cooling makes some outrageously quiet power supplies and fans.
The description I keep seeing for the new Radeon cards is “leaf blower”
Only thing to do about noisy drives is replacement.
If you can hear the airflow, do you really need that much? If you’re overclocking to the point of risking meltdown, noise is just a price you need to pay. That, or switch to something like a heat pipe or liquid cooling.
WTF kind of super-hearing do you have that your PC is too loud for you?? Mines is at least three years old, with no special attention to fan loudness, harddrive is the same age, and I still can barely hear it unless I’m listening for it.
Q.E.D. that would be because you have a crappy computer… Sorry, three years old and I am betting nothing special added, you don’t have any hardware that does anything. Lack of action leads to little noise.
You really need to isolate where the noise is coming from. If its just a whole load of quiet noise sources adding up, then there’s a few things you can do. First of all, put rubber washers between your fans and the case, and all moving parts, drives, etc, and the case. keep them isolated. You’d be surprised how much this will cut down on vibration. Put some sort of foam or pad under the motherboard, directly beneath the CPU socket. It should be thick enough that the mobo is definitely resting on it, but NOT thick enough that you can’t screw the motherboard back down effectively. This will eliminate a LOT of vibration and noise. Also, if your fans have anything blocking their intakes (exhausts too, but thats much less of a problem), they WILL make a lot of noise. The poor quality stamped metal fan grills in most cases will do this.
If you decide to go the noise reducing material method, you have some options. The first is to use a material such as “Dynamat” or “Tacmat” that’s designed to prevent the metal panels of the case from flexing and thus transferring sound energy into the air. Another option is an acoustical foam such as SonexMini that’s designed to directly absorb sound energy. The downside is that all of these materials COST HARD, and Dynamat and similar materials may have an offensive odor. For dirt-cheap noise reduction, carpet underlay padding (the stuff thats made up of lots of foam chunks ground up and glued together) works well. It’s not going to perform like dedicated acoustic foam, but if you put a few layers in there, it will do pretty well. Since you can probably pick pieces of a good enough size to fit your case for free, it certainly offers the best bang-reduction for your buck.
One last suggestion: If your fans are your problem, purchase a Vantec Nexus or Sunbeam Rheobus. These devices go into a 5.25" drive bay, and have four dials to control the rpms of fans that you plug into them. They cost between $20-$30, but offer you effective control over the noise level of all of your fans.
Btw, regarding alternative cooling methods, forget peltiers. They require you to add noisy fans and pumps, as well as huge power supplies, to handle their immense heat output. You also need to worry about condensation and the other downsides to running your CPU at -10C. Watercooling can work well, but it’s expensive, and you still need the waterpump and perhaps fans on the radiator.
My computer is in an Antec Sonata case, which has one large, quiet fan and a fairly quiet power supply. I’m using a Zalman cooler on the Pentium 4 CPU. I run the CPU cooler at medium speeed. The hard drives are the latest Seagate drives.
The trouble is, the PC sits in an entertainment center. It seems that the fan noise bounces off the back of the entertainment center, which is only about six inches from the back of the case.
A couple easy suggestions:
If the PC is in an enclosed space, move it out.
Try rubber isolation mounts for the fans. Even if it doesn’t sound like they’re rattling fans are louder when they’re screwed tightly to the case walls.
A couple tougher, or costlier ideas:
Get long cables for the monitor, keyboard, and mouse and move the PC to another room.
Buy or build a hush box.
Actually, while it probably isn’t the fastest machine in the world, it could be getting quite loud from 3 years of wear and tear. If it is still the same configuration the the fans and hard drive would be quite a bit noisier than when new.
Your computer has five fans!? Are you running some kind of dual Athlon server/furnace?
Have you tried speed controllers on the fans? They work great. Just keep an eye on your CPU temp at first until you get an idea of how much fan you need.
Yeah, it’s ridiculous. I think I’m gonna take my CPU fan off and see how that works - I’ve already got a nice zalman heatsink, and the fan isn’t exactly helping my airflow.
I live in Alabama, so it gets REALLY hot around here. Number of Fans I have:
1 Exhaust on the back. Standard.
1 Exhaust on top. Gotta keep that air movin
2 Intake fans, side-by-side with a mesh filter in front (on bottom).