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Building a *silent* computer

T

The Quilman

n00b
Joined
Jun 30, 2004
Messages
2
My old computer is starting to become grossly out of date, and I'm going to need a new one very soon. I've been forced to listen to the lawnmower like noise of the fan attached to the heat sink of my XP1900 for two years, and I'm sick of it.

I want a silent computer, or as silent as one can be, but I don't want to sacrifice power in the process. For the potential part list I have

Processor - Athlon 64 (90nm upgrade when released, speed vs price will play a role)
Graphics Card - X800 Pro (hoping to softmod to XT speeds)
HDD - 160GB SATA HD (have been loyal to WD, open to any brand recommendations)
DVD Writer - NEC-2500A (with a firmware upgrade to 2510A. Been loyal to Plextor, but I don't burn a lot of stuff, so I'm trying to save money)
RAM - 1 GB DDR2 667 (brand? been loyal to crucial, but open any to recommendations)
Case - I've been having trouble with this. I need something well made, non-fugly, and big enough for a custom water cooling setup (constructed by a first timer).
Mobo - Drawing a blank here too. There are no board for this setup (90 nm A64 and DDR2). And aside from that, I know nothing about choosing one either.
PSU - SilenX (unsure of how much wattage I'll need)
Sound Card - M-Audio Revolution 7.1 (after my last experience with creative's audigy, I'll never buy another creative product as long as I live)
Custom Water Cooling setup - cooling the CPU, and GPU if it's too damn noisy for me...how much noise do these pumps make?

I know it's possible to make a powerful computer, but keep it quiet at the same time, and that is my goal. This seemed like the most relevant place to put a thread about building an entire computer, if not, just move it. Help, input, and comments appreciated.
 
Water cooling is a good start. I don't have any experience here, but I have heard of a few products that are really quiet ( you may want to ask around the Water Cooling forums for advise there). Make sure they support CPU and GPU, possibly North bridge adapters if you want it cool. You should at least pick up one case fan, and there are a few "quiet" fans out in the market, again you may want advice from the cooling forums there.
Mobo: I recommend ASUS, but as they don't support DDR2, you may have to look elswhere.
RAM: Crucial's good. Kingston and Corsair are awesome though.
Case: I can't really tell you. Be careful though, as a lot are small, too small to fit a watercooling system in.
HDD: good size, WD are good. No problems there.
PSU: You will need quite a bit of power if you are running a water cooling system off it, probably 500W, less if you have an external power supply for the water cooling.
Sound Card: with 7.1 sound it won't be quiet! :p I reccommend Hercules cards, they support everything, are cheaper and support 7.1.

Well, hope i helped. You may want other opinions about the water cooling though, which is fair enough. But i hope this gives you a start.
 
4keatimj said:
RAM: Crucial's good. Kingston and Corsair are awesome though.
Click to expand...


Corsair is the quietest ram :rolleyes:

But seriosuly. If water is out of your budget take a look at the thermaltake silentboost (works wonders on my a64) or the zalman 7000cu. Either are nice sinks.

WD's are quiet drives. You might want to use nero drivespeed to slow down the CD drive a lil

For a case look at the antec sonata or the lian li pc 6070.
 
I'll just add my two cents...imho, Samsung make vey quiet drives. The sounds coming out of it are more muted than from my WD or Seagate. I also recently purchased one of the Noisetaker PSUs from Enermax and they are very quiet for an actively cooled PSU. I also updated my Pioneer DVD burner with the latest firmware which included some sort of noise suppression (probably makes the drive spin slower) but it was a very quiet drive to begin with--even at full speed.

The case will prolly be your hardest decision :p

-TFR
 
Graphics Card - X800 Pro (hoping to softmod to XT speeds)
- Nope. Even volt modding with watercooling usually can't get to XT. 12 vs 16 pipeline.

HDD - 160GB SATA HD (have been loyal to WD, open to any brand recommendations)
- Samsung Drive. Previous king Seagate isn't as quiet as them any more.

DVD Writer - NEC-2500A (with a firmware upgrade to 2510A. Been loyal to Plextor, but I don't burn a lot of stuff, so I'm trying to save money)
- Good choice. It even burns quieter than any drive I kow. (well not as quiet when reading)

Case - I've been having trouble with this. I need something well made, non-fugly, and big enough for a custom water cooling setup (constructed by a first timer).
- Anything that doesn't look ugly and is big enough to put your stuff easily in. I recommend full tower case. (severly limiting offerings :p) Lian-Li is outstanding in this arena as well as cooler master. (Try to get thicker steel case or thick aluminum case to reduce noise as much as you can).

PSU - SilenX (unsure of how much wattage I'll need)
- Just grab passive one. They are reasonable in price compared to SilenX now.

Custom Water Cooling setup - cooling the CPU, and GPU if it's too damn noisy for me...how much noise do these pumps make?
- 1048 would make as much noise as... say... 80mm fan running at about 800-900 RPM. 1250 makes about fans running at 1400 RPM. (granted both are ISOLATED) I heard some good thing about CSP pumps so they might be an option. With quiet enough system,. I recommend against reservoir. The turbulant water noise can be heard in extremely quiet cases... (first hand experience)

You might have to put few extra fans running slow to cool other components that usually are cooled by CPU heatsink.
 
If you aren't into watercooling and just want a good aircooled system, the Antec Sonata is an awesome case. It's an incredibly tightly built mid tower with their own quiet power supply and a 12cm fan in the back held in place with rubber mounts.

A VERY nice quiet case and they're just a little over $110 with the power supply.

Then I recommend the Zalman CM3000 fan. It'll set you back about $40 but it's quiet, big enough to allow some serious overclocking, and supports P4, AMD, and AMD64. (not the new sockets, the existing stuff)
 
id say go with a lian-li case. they are very easy to work with.
you could easily take out the floppy bay in a case like this and put the pump there.

you could then fasten the radiator to the top of the case, as for the resevior, you could put on in the optical bays or maybe even squeeze it in under the pump in the 3.5"
 
You could get something like this for the case. You could also get a fanless PSU.
 
For a silent case, the Antec Sonata is a good place to start. Pretty cheap for a nice case + PSU, and it's damn quiet. The only thing i hear is my stock P4 heatsink fan. And I'm getting ready to put a whole watercooling system in it, but the only reason it will really fit is because i only have one hdd and optical drive, and i'm not going to be able to use the hdd rack, all my drives have to go in the upper bays.
 
After seeing some more stuff the past few days, I've been considering air cooling this computer, mainly because it would be cheaper than water cooling, and I'm already running up more than I wanted to spend (guess I underestimated the cost of having a pretty decent system).

But if I'm going to go air cooling, I do have some concerns. I looked at the Antec Sonata, but it only had one fan port for cooling, I like the Lian Li V1000, the passive cooling holes on the front allow me to add a blow hole on the top, or one on the side (ok that's excessive) but it's just moving way more air through the motherboard part of the case.

I'm also worried about adequate cooling for the CPU. If I go air, I want to be able to put a 120 mm fan on the heatsink. I looked at that Zalman cooler, it's for a 92 mm fan, and I couldn't find any 120 mm's on their site. They didn't say how loud or how much air the fan was pushing, so I started looking elsewhere. I haven't found a better combination of air pushing and quiet than these fans by SilenX, but is 58 CFM enough to cool an A64?
 
Unless you are going to spend one boatload of time getting just the right case and just the right fans and just the right fanbus, all you're going to do is end up loud.

You said you wanted quiet. The Sonata may not have the fancy side fan or brushed aluminum looks of the LianLi, but it's quiet! And their cooling should be adequate for any overclocking that isn't too extreme.

Without crazy mods like watercooling, you just can't have high speed and quiet operation. Even with watercooling, there's still the power supply fan, and your hard drives. The tighter built and heavier the case is, the quieter it will be.

I've got a Chenming-style aluminum full tower, and it was a pain in the butt getting both enough cooling to run a P4 2.8 at 3.5, and keep the noise level relaxing in a quiet room. Fanbus, Zalman CPU fan, Zalman heat pipe VGA cooler, Enermax power supply with manually adjustable fan speed, new hard drives (stupid old noisy hard drives), lots of cable ties and round cables. It all adds up.
 
instead of trying to make it silent....just buy really powerful speakers......mine isnt decently silent but i wouldnt know if i dint have to sleep......i got 250$ 5.1 altec lansing speakers....the sub si bout 16inches tall...dont no how much it puts how but you can hear it through the floor so tis doin SOMETHING......just pop dimmu-borgir or cattle decapitation in, crank it up and i GUARENTEE you wont hear your computer
 
TekieB said:
WD's are quiet drives.
Click to expand...
Mine wasn't. I was building a computer with gaming and low-noise in mind (specs in sig). I chose a Western Digital WD1200JB drive (120GB, 8mb cache, ATA100). It was far from quiet. The constant whine that this drive put out was easily the loudest component in my system. I put up with it for a few weeks until I bought a Seagate 7200.7 Plus (120GB, 8mb cache, ATA100). A huge difference. I now use the WD as a backup drive, and it stays off until needed.

I recorded some short 158KB MP3 files. You gotta hear the difference for yourself.

WD1200JB
Seagate 7200.7 Plus
 
thermaltake silentboost or the zalman 7000cu for HSF, and a antec sonata case..
 
Lian-Lis are overpriced and underfeatured IMO. Check out the Antec Sonata. It's great and the price is pretty low these days.
 
I recently tried to quiet down my TIVO-HTPC box. I put it in an Antec Overture case and the results were very good. The Antec power supplies have "fan only" power connectors that slow down any fans connected to them when the PSU temp sensor detects that temperatures are reasonable. The Overture comes with a slip of paper saying that you should not use these "fan only" connectors for the fans included with the case. But, after a few days, I did it anyways. Things are still staying cool, and things are much quieter. Not that it was loud before.

I put a Zalman 7000A cooler on the CPU and cranked the included fan controller down to its minimum. The case is now very, very quiet.

Actually, the loudest thing in the case now is the fan on my Northbridge chipset. I'm going to throw a fan controller on that as well. . . at which point I expect the computer to be near-silent and/or whisper-quiet from any appreciable distance.

Good Luck!

H
 
Sonata/lanboy cases with dual 120's will let you move some air while being fairly quiet. EAR composite fan mounts will isolate them from the case. A Zalman aurora with 120mm is a good quiet PSU. SilenX isn't a company that has shown a lot of integrity so some people don't buy from them.
 
I got the new thermaltake tsunami case and its actually not loud at all, take your normal small oscilating fan on a low speed and that drowns out the case sound, running a seagate 160 gig sata baracuda and i never hear it, though case has rubber absorbers or whatever so that reduces noise, heard it somewhat in my last case
 
darktiger said:
thermaltake silentboost or the zalman 7000cu for HSF, and a antec sonata case..
Click to expand...

I have the silent boost.. it is indeed pretty silent.. and let's you overclock. It's definatly not the best HSF for overclocking.. but you can definatly overclock with it pretty decent..
 
Complete silence is important, pay no mind to anyone saying otherwise.

You can make a silent system with aircooling, but you will need big (huge) heatsinks on everything so you can run your fans at 5v or so.
Use mousepad material on everything that vibrates. Cut little squares of mousepad and glue them to the corners of your fans, and mount them that way. Do the same thing with your hard drive - four chunks of mousepad in the four corners on the bottom of the drive, then glue the mousepad chunks bottoms to the bottom area of your 5 1/4" bays. Get any case with enough room to put (or cut holes for) a few undervolted 120mm fans.

The components just don't matter as much as how much time you spend tweaking the completed setup.

Don't cut any holes in the sides of the case. you don't want open air between your ears and the insides of your case.
 
Now the one below is going to the xtremetiy... If you wan't any OC... follow all his advices except few things. Put good HS (XP-120) run it at low volt, Put another 120mm fan inside case somewhere turning slow where ever it might be hot or stagnating air.
Few other things if you get to do what he says is that intake exhaust vent could have shroud over it with sound dampening material with non direct path to outside of case. (Quite frankly, if you got that far to need it... you are pretty nutty).
Above all, suspend the HDD and good selection of PSU.

v3rt1g0 said:
Complete silence is important, pay no mind to anyone saying otherwise.

You can make a silent system with aircooling, but you will need big (huge) heatsinks on everything so you can run your fans at 5v or so.
Use mousepad material on everything that vibrates. Cut little squares of mousepad and glue them to the corners of your fans, and mount them that way. Do the same thing with your hard drive - four chunks of mousepad in the four corners on the bottom of the drive, then glue the mousepad chunks bottoms to the bottom area of your 5 1/4" bays. Get any case with enough room to put (or cut holes for) a few undervolted 120mm fans.

The components just don't matter as much as how much time you spend tweaking the completed setup.

Don't cut any holes in the sides of the case. you don't want open air between your ears and the insides of your case.
Click to expand...
 
I had the exact same problem with my 1800 XP until I ordered a new PC (still in the mail). It sounded like an industrial central air system and my girlfriend hated it too. I went with a watercooling setup with a huge heatercore. The case is a Lian-Li PC-V2000 which has plenty of space for a watercooling setup (and then some) and lots of openings to the outside. The heatercore is going to be on the top of the case with 2 120mm fans pushing air out of the top running as slow as possible. I'm trying to go for the mac G5 design of low noise and max airflow. Havnt built it yet but I'm hoping it will be whisper quiet!
 
aphexddb said:
I had the exact same problem with my 1800 XP until I ordered a new PC (still in the mail). It sounded like an industrial central air system and my girlfriend hated it too. I went with a watercooling setup with a huge heatercore. The case is a Lian-Li PC-V2000 which has plenty of space for a watercooling setup (and then some) and lots of openings to the outside. The heatercore is going to be on the top of the case with 2 120mm fans pushing air out of the top running as slow as possible. I'm trying to go for the mac G5 design of low noise and max airflow. Havnt built it yet but I'm hoping it will be whisper quiet!
Click to expand...

That case is sweeeeet. Has all the looks of the v1000 but with lots more room. Update us on how it goes with that, cuz I am debating between that case and the CM stacker.
 
Silentpcreview is a great place for information. Any question you'd want to ask about silent computing has probably already been asked in its forums.

The Antec Sonata ok, but I wouldn't buy another one. It's cramped, the airflow's not great, but it sure is pretty. It's about as loud as my Antec SLK3700AMB, which has better airflow and is cheaper - $69 + free shipping at newegg right now. The Antec SLK3700-BQE addresses some of the shortcomings of the Sonata. However, the Lian-Li and Coolermaster recommendations, that have been recommended in this thread, are more appropriate for watercooled systems.

The Silenx is a decent ps, but don't get too taken in by the 14db rating. Here's some food for thought.
 
v3rt1g0 said:
Complete silence is important, pay no mind to anyone saying otherwise.
Click to expand...

Hehe. Why not just say: "Only what I think matters."

Anyways. . . I put that fan controller on my northbridge chipset fan. My sonata-based HTPC is now almost completely silent. I don't know it's on at all unless I put my ear next to it or am standing within a foot or two of it.

H
 
Actually, I said that because of the nutters saying crap like "pretty quiet", which means anything but silent. I don't want anyone talking him into having a "kinda quiet" setup (which on these boards can mean "kinda loud" with some guys hearing loss :rolleyes: ) when he was shooting for silent.
 
Crucial or Corsair for the ram some people like mushkin too but i dont know how good they are.
 
if you get everything i have you'll end up with a barely audible system

antec sonata with the 120 at the back on the "fan only" line -> extremely low noise, guessing it spins at around 1500 rpm though it could be lower

antec 370W power supply, single fan model comes with sonata -> extremely low noise, 1600 rpm

zalman 7000 cu (you can go with alcu as well) -> low noise, 2000 rpm

Zalman ZM80C-HP Heatpipe VGA Cooler + the optional fan running off the 5 volt line -> extremely low noise, maybe 1500 rpm

all in all my system is nearly silent and there's no water anywhere near it...besides, water cooling is not the be all and end all of quiet computing, the water pump makes noise, the fan on the radiator makes noise, which is probably equivalent to what my system puts out with the added risk of having a water spill short your stuff
(on the plus side, water cools MUCH more efficiently so you can push your rig harder)
 
When i put together my PC two weeks I had the EXACT same goal in mind, because I got sick of listening to my previously loud comp. The rig below for me has been AMAZINGLY quiet and is only a whisper of fans beneath my desk. The case is what does it IMO, and the silentboost...
 
the silent boost is not very quiet nor is the antec sonata case, plus its to cramped. i would recommend a taller mid-tower case with a removable mobo tray, a zalman, a quiet psu, and a few panaflo fans that should be good enough.
 
Qwertyman said:
the silent boost is not very quiet nor is the antec sonata case, plus its to cramped. i would recommend a taller mid-tower case with a removable mobo tray, a zalman, a quiet psu, and a few panaflo fans that should be good enough.
Click to expand...
i must agree that the Silent Boost is not silent
its quiet yes, but not silent
 
1500 RPM 120mm fan in my book is kind of loud... :)
Try around 1000-1200 RPM on those... now those are kind of quiet.
80mm fan around < 1300 RPM is kind of quiet too :)
If you are talking close to silent, that would be below 900 RPM on most fans. This is the point where every single other thing starts to matter. HDD noise (even with suspension), air flowing through case (can't do much about it eh?), maybe coil whine from some components, etc.
 
I'm surprised no one has recommended Thermalright HSF with SilenX fans... SilenX fans are great! (Noiseblockers, and real Sharkoons are good too)
 
My PC-V1000 case is very quiet by itself. The only problem is it has a bunch of holes in the front and back with allow the noise of my 6800 GT out. Take that away, and even with my 7000A-Cu and the two included 120 mm fan running at 12v, it's pretty quiet. The video card is what's going to be your primary noise maker, as none of the stock cooling solutions of this newest gen are really quiet.

Lian Li makes a V1000 style case which is made for silence. It has sound deadening material and a thick front door. The board's layout in those cases do help with heat disipation.
 
travis_bickle said:
if you get everything i have you'll end up with a barely audible system

antec sonata with the 120 at the back on the "fan only" line -> extremely low noise, guessing it spins at around 1500 rpm though it could be lower

antec 370W power supply, single fan model comes with sonata -> extremely low noise, 1600 rpm

zalman 7000 cu (you can go with alcu as well) -> low noise, 2000 rpm

Zalman ZM80C-HP Heatpipe VGA Cooler + the optional fan running off the 5 volt line -> extremely low noise, maybe 1500 rpm

all in all my system is nearly silent and there's no water anywhere near it...besides, water cooling is not the be all and end all of quiet computing, the water pump makes noise, the fan on the radiator makes noise, which is probably equivalent to what my system puts out with the added risk of having a water spill short your stuff
(on the plus side, water cools MUCH more efficiently so you can push your rig harder)
Click to expand...

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I second everything travis said EXCEPT the VGA heatpipe cooler. I prefer the Arctic Cooling VGA Silencer instead. Its pretty much inaudible on its low setting, and it sucks hot air straight out of your case, which helps a LOT in lowering case temps.

Otherwise, I'm also running an Antec Sonata, 120mm fan connected to the fan only connector of the Antec Truepower 380S PSU, and the Zalman 7000 AlCu cooler on its lowest setting. Its as silent as an air cooled computer can get. :cool:
 
The only thing I don't like about the Sonata is the drive cage.. its same as my Super Lanboy.. I find it blocks a lot of airflow.. the Antec 3700 AMB has better flow IMHO..

The VGA silencer is one of the best products I've ever user. I love that thing!
 
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