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Is your system silent enough?

How noisy is your system, and would you want to make it more silent?

  • I've been declared legally deaf, you insensitive clod!

    Votes: 10 6.3%

  • My system is incredibly noisy, and I want to silence it

    Votes: 16 10.0%

  • My system is incredibly noise, but I am not planning to silence it

    Votes: 13 8.1%

  • My system is relatively noisy, and I want to silence it

    Votes: 44 27.5%

  • My system is relatively noisy, but I am not planning to silence it

    Votes: 39 24.4%

  • Next thing I'm going to silence are those noisy LEDs!

    Votes: 38 23.8%
  • Total voters
    160
E

Elledan

[H]ard|DCer of the Month - April 2010
Joined
Oct 18, 2001
Messages
15,913
Are you one of those lucky few who have systems which can literally not be heard unless you put your head right next to the case? Or have you become immune to the deafening roar from the (too) many fans?

I personally don't mind the white noise produced by most fans. What really gets to me, however, are high-pitched noises. Having been blessed with relatively sensitive hearing, I find that the squeals emitted by many appliances really make me feel uncomfortable. Lower frequencies have a somewhat calming effect, though.

My goal is therefore to make my systems as silent as possible in the higher frequency ranges, and reasonably silent in the lower ranges.

What about you?
 
I like how your poll goes from relatively noisy to dead silent with nothing in between. Id think most people would fall into that range but I may be way off.

I have a total of 5 Zalman Z1 80mm case fans, 2 PSU fans, 1 Zalman 7000c CPU HSF, 1 arctc cooling VGA cooler. I have a 6 fan controller but leave all fans at full speed. The comp sits on the desk less than 3 feet from my ears and the HD is the loudest part. I have had vibration type sounds from the PSU and HD but those just needed some foam padding . I have heard some peoples comps that sound like theres a war going on inside but those are mostly prebuilt systems.

The only reason I got the fan controller is for when I get my water system finished there will be 2 external 120MM fans on the rad on top of the case.
 
I have a noisy ass 120 mm fan in back, REALLY noisy 80mm up top that i just put in and only used a noisy one because it was there, and the fan on a 6800GT is VERY loud...so im gonna get a quiet 120, 80, and NVS5...yeeeeea
 
Elledan said:
I personally don't mind the white noise produced by most fans. What really gets to me, however, are high-pitched noises. Having been blessed with relatively sensitive hearing, I find that the squeals emitted by many appliances really make me feel uncomfortable. Lower frequencies have a somewhat calming effect, though.
Click to expand...

I'm exactly the same way. Believe it or not, the most noisy part of my system was the inductors (the coils near the CPU) on the motherboard up until a few days ago. The little bastards hissed, beeped, clicked and whatnot (all high pitched). All modern motherboards I've heard recently do this, it's just that most people don't hear it over very quiet, but not silent, fans. I bought some Airplane Dope (laquer - a bit like nailpolish) and very carefully coated all the inductors on my motherboard. Let it dry 24 hours. Now my motherboard is virtually silent. I can still make out some noises from the inductors, but they are way way quieter.

Just explaining why I chose the most silent option in the poll... ;)

I agree with an above poster. There needs to be more poll options.
There's no "relatively quiet" option. Just an "absolutely silent" one.
 
my motherboard and video card is a bastard when it comes to that also... but my case absorbs most of the sound as long as my side panel is closed... only time i hear anything is when i load mbm or sandra.. in game video card is noisy but doesnt make too much of a difference
 
My little Aopen box, OCed from 2.4 to 3.0 Ghz is so quiet @ idle that I don't even know its on when I sit down at my desk.

It gets slightly more noisy when it heats up (which really hasn't happened outside of Prime95) but is still the most quiet computer I've ever used...with stock cooling. ;)
 
I must have sensitive hearing or something... my quietest machine is a mobile athlon 2500+ which I underclocked/volted and put in a shuttle box to run mythtv on. It's very quiet but I _can_ hear it if I within about 4 ft or so. I ripped out all the stock fans and put in low noise fans. The HD is a barracuda 200gig which is one of the more quiet run-of-the-mill HD's out there.
 
My Koolance is as loud as it gets... just a soft hum at 45% fan power... I can hear my HD's heads over it...
Now when the CD drives spin up, that's another story..
 
My system is pretty quiet. I have to really be listening in order to hear it....
 
My system is fairly loud but I don't care, I'm about half deaf anyway and it's another excuse to not "hear" my wife.
 
v3rt1g0 said:
I'm exactly the same way. Believe it or not, the most noisy part of my system was the inductors (the coils near the CPU) on the motherboard up until a few days ago. The little bastards hissed, beeped, clicked and whatnot (all high pitched). All modern motherboards I've heard recently do this, it's just that most people don't hear it over very quiet, but not silent, fans. I bought some Airplane Dope (laquer - a bit like nailpolish) and very carefully coated all the inductors on my motherboard. Let it dry 24 hours. Now my motherboard is virtually silent. I can still make out some noises from the inductors, but they are way way quieter.

Just explaining why I chose the most silent option in the poll... ;)
Click to expand...
Heh, I haven't reached this stage yet with my systems, but I'll be certain to keep this in mind :)

I agree with an above poster. There needs to be more poll options.
There's no "relatively quiet" option. Just an "absolutely silent" one.
Click to expand...
Reviewing the options in the poll, I agree that there's a gap. I would add the missing options, if only I knew how :confused:
 
krizzle said:
My Koolance is as loud as it gets... just a soft hum at 45% fan power... I can hear my HD's heads over it...
Now when the CD drives spin up, that's another story..
Click to expand...
CD/DVD-drives are definitely one of the worst offenders when it comes to noise. Especially if you put in a somewhat unstable CD (labels on CD-Rs are possibly the worst idea ever), it can sound like a small airplane is making its way towards your position.

No one yet with a watercooled system?
 
My system is pretty quiet. I have a Foxtron or Fortron brand PSU (I don't know I forget). Either way its not a top of the line name brand, but its rated at 450watts or so.

So here's the tricks I did:

I opened up my PSU and added a zalman fanmate to the fan, cause it was spinning at full speed all the time. Well I slowed down the fan and now its really really quiet. This was the loudest part of my system.

Then I have a Zalman 7000AlCu HSF, CPU Fan header speed set at 60% speed in the BIOS. Again, very quiet. And yes if the thing is running at full speed it makes it louder. I can notice it.

VGA Silencer Rev. 2 set to low speed on my Radeon 9700Pro.

I then took a piece of tape and put a tagboard type of paper over the exhaust of the PSU fan on the back of the computer. Its like a flap, so the air pushes it out as it needs to. Hides a slight amount of noise.

The hard drives are Seagates, very quiet.

I love my quiet ass system :)
 
As soon as the funds arrive, I'm getting a fanless PSU and the Thermal take blue colored heat pipe fanless CPU heatsink... oh yeah....
 
Elledan said:
CD/DVD-drives are definitely one of the worst offenders when it comes to noise. Especially if you put in a somewhat unstable CD (labels on CD-Rs are possibly the worst idea ever), it can sound like a small airplane is making its way towards your position.

No one yet with a watercooled system?
Click to expand...
OEM CD/DVD drives are the worst by far, the Dell my sister purchased recently is suprisingly quiet (many times more quiet than my dad's old P3 Dell), can't really hear it at all where she has it (in between a bookshelf and her desk, both wooden)... But man oh man, when that CD-R spins up, jesus... Sounds louder than most really loud fans I've heard.

Doesn't really have to be that way at all tho, even the old SCSI 8x Plextor drive I've got on my secondary rig is quite silent, you get what you pay for I guess. Someone above mentioned having a Koolance system btw.
 
have 3 zalman zm-f1's, 20db, one zalman zm-f2, 20db, a thermaltake Volcano12, 21db, Thermaltake Silent purepower, i dont know the rating.. but its really really silent... and the nv silencer5.

all i hear is air being pushed, i love it. none of that high pitched whine bullshit.
 
I have a pretty noisy pc. It's in my basement, and I can hear it all the way upstairs :eek: Not very loudly and only close to the stairs but still ! It doesn't really matter to me cause I always have music playing whenever I do anything, or I am gaming. My comp is going in my room in our new house, so I'm going to try and quiet it down then.
 
Air rushing through my rad makes too much noise. Also, my PSU makes less noise, but it's higher pitched so it bugs me just as much. :mad:
 
Impulse said:
OEM CD/DVD drives are the worst by far, the Dell my sister purchased recently is suprisingly quiet (many times more quiet than my dad's old P3 Dell), can't really hear it at all where she has it (in between a bookshelf and her desk, both wooden)... But man oh man, when that CD-R spins up, jesus... Sounds louder than most really loud fans I've heard.

Doesn't really have to be that way at all tho, even the old SCSI 8x Plextor drive I've got on my secondary rig is quite silent, you get what you pay for I guess.
Click to expand...
Buying a drive from a good brand definitely helps, but as a general rule, the faster a CD/DVD drive, the more noise it'll make. An 8x drive spins the disk very slowly compared to a 52x one. It's kind of like comparing a fan which spins at 1000 rpm and one which spins at 6500 rpm.
Someone above mentioned having a Koolance system btw.
Click to expand...
Didn't see it until now. I must have been somewhat tired last night when I last responded to this thread :)
 
my system is very quiet but not silent (Noise making componants: Antec BQE case with one 120can, Zalman CNPS7000B-Cu, Artic cooler on my Radeon 9700 pro, seagate 120gig and 40gig harddrives). It will be my main server after xmas and out off the way. My next pc (oh and i have almost enough componants around to make another main pc (a Pc that i use nearly every day). My next new one will be watercooled and i'll do all it takes to make that silent & powerful!
 
my case fans aren't very loud but my cpu fan is about 48db running max rpm(6800) .. but i'm ordering a kingwin water cooling system (i'm new to water cooling) in the next week or so to eliminate all noise and hopefully get some higher clocks on my stuff :D
 
Impulse said:
OEM CD/DVD drives are the worst by far, the Dell my sister purchased recently is suprisingly quiet (many times more quiet than my dad's old P3 Dell), can't really hear it at all where she has it (in between a bookshelf and her desk, both wooden)... But man oh man, when that CD-R spins up, jesus... Sounds louder than most really loud fans I've heard.

Doesn't really have to be that way at all tho, even the old SCSI 8x Plextor drive I've got on my secondary rig is quite silent, you get what you pay for I guess. Someone above mentioned having a Koolance system btw.
Click to expand...


It's the speed, not the brand of the drives... I found once they eclipsed 24x or so, optical drives started to get hideously noisy.
 
people need to realize that in most cases, case fans don't do much help except to generate a bunch of noise. i only have 2 case fans and a psu fan cooling my 2500m@2.4ghz, and i get reasonably low temps. 40-43idle on hot days, and high 30s on cold days.
 
I used to have a jet engine inside my PC. Used an 80mm delta screamer on the cpu and had somewhere around 8 other loud fans in the case. I could hear it outside. That was a few years ago tho, I have since switched to watercooling with the only fans being of course in the psu, on the rad and near the HDD bay. All operate below 20db, and I have sound deadening (fatmat actually) lining the insides of the case. I can't hear a thing. ;)
 
tobywong said:
It's the speed, not the brand of the drives... I found once they eclipsed 24x or so, optical drives started to get hideously noisy.
Click to expand...

my plextor premium is surprisingly quiet compared to other 52x drives i have listened to. so that statement isn't entirely true IMO.
 
tobywong said:
It's the speed, not the brand of the drives... I found once they eclipsed 24x or so, optical drives started to get hideously noisy.
Click to expand...
I wasn't comparing the newer drive's sound merely to my old 8x writer... The facts are that the one drive on that Dell system is loud regardless of what it's compared to, it's loud even just reading (noticeably louder than the cheap read-only 52x drive they tossed in for free).

There can be a big difference between brands sometimes, whether it's due to better firmwares that adjust the drive in a smart way or more solid parts inside the thing (I know Plextor used to brag about using mostly metal gears inside their drives).

P.S. What are people using for sound deadening material these days?
 
let me see... i have a 120v blower, cooling my rad, that i can hear down the hall in my dorm with the doors closed and people playing music. is that loud enough???
 
maxxo said:
my plextor premium is surprisingly quiet compared to other 52x drives i have listened to. so that statement isn't entirely true IMO.
Click to expand...

I believe you that it's quietER than other 52x drives but that really isn't saying much since 52x drives sound like a jet engine warming up.

Just for the hell of it I grabbed my sound level meter and ran a very informal test... I copied a winxp pro CD from an LG 52x optical drive to HD. System idle was ~45dB, once I started copying, it shot up to a steady 65dB. Have you measured how loud that plextor is? I'd be interested to compare.
 
i live in hawaii and the summers over here are 90-95F, sometimes 100 on hot days. i have 5 case fans that blow 72cfm and are rated 50dba. i even put those fans in my psu for extra cooling. noise canceling headphones are next on my list :D
 
loudest thing in my computer is the raptor.


psu = not audible
nv silencer = not audible
5 coolermaster neon led fans w/ rifle bearings on fan controller = single one is not audible, but together I'd consider them "quiet"
92 mm thermaltake smart fan on the cpu on my fan controller = audible, but very quiet(more so than the 5 coolermaster fans combined)
burner = clearly audible at 52x burn/read
raptor = clearly audible when seaking
120 gb = quiet

Overall: quiet with the exceptions of the raptor seaking or the burner at 52x . it emits a small buzzing sound that is drowned out by noise from my speakers at all but the lowest volumes.
 
tobywong said:
I believe you that it's quietER than other 52x drives but that really isn't saying much since 52x drives sound like a jet engine warming up.

Just for the hell of it I grabbed my sound level meter and ran a very informal test... I copied a winxp pro CD from an LG 52x optical drive to HD. System idle was ~45dB, once I started copying, it shot up to a steady 65dB. Have you measured how loud that plextor is? I'd be interested to compare.
Click to expand...

nope. sorry, but i have no devices which can measure sound.

from my perspective it is noticably quieter than my old 8x cdrw and 24x cd-rom. i would compare the sound it makes to a 80mm or 92mm fan creating ~35/~40 dB of noise, it really just creates a low-pitched hum.

and i would say it is EXTREMELY quieter than my friend's generic 52x/24x/52x. i wouldn't be surprised if that thing creates 60-70 dB of noise when reading or writing..
 
my system is pretty much inaudible during the day at night it can not be heard at 2 meters. My zalman 7000 at lowest setting is the loudest part (i think), that or my hd.
 
v3rt1g0 said:
I bought some Airplane Dope (laquer - a bit like nailpolish) and very carefully coated all the inductors on my motherboard. Let it dry 24 hours. Now my motherboard is virtually silent. I can still make out some noises from the inductors, but they are way way quieter.
Click to expand...
Where might one buy this Airplane Dope? What else could be used for silencing those noisy coils?

I'm currently trying to silence this awfully noisy PSU. The fan is virtually silent now (can't hear it from a meter away with some ambient noise), but those coils are driving me insane :)
 
Once upon a time, when I first started my PC hobby, I was tempature insane. If my CPU and case's were so much as 1c off, I would freak and do everything possible to keep my system running as cool as possible. That was also during my noobn modding days where "More was better" and had little incite into the end results.

That being said, "Ice Chamber" had an insane 10 fans running at once. 2 Intakes, 2 exhaust, 1 blowhole, PCI exhaust, CPU, HDD cooler and PSU. THe noise from it was absolutely insane. I could physically feel the dust being drawn around my room into my case. I had to crank up my headphones just so I could hear the right speaker over the noise.
finalfront.jpg


Over time, I become more "wise" in my modding abilities and the noise started to become a real pain, especially leaving it on at night while trying to download stuff over a 56k was painful. I even did water cooling in my last ditch desperate attempt for silence. Though it was quiet, was much more of a pain for maintence and TOTAL fucking pain for LAN parties.

Fed up at long last, I went back to basic and researched and built from the ground up "Blue Fantasy II" to be quiet as possible. After all the hard work, it is my quietest case yet. I use thermally managed 120mm Vantec Stealth for intake which is MUCH better then any Panflo fan that i've owned. All my exhaust fans are thermally controlled 80mm intakes running low at all times. I use a Zalman 7000 for my CPU and soon a VGA silencer for 6800GT.

The end result is now all I hear is a gently humm from my case instead of an Apache revving for take off. The dual WD's are the loudest thing now, though the lame GT stock HSF is noisey but the VGA silencer will be taking care of that.

inside33.jpg
 
Mine is almost quiet, going to replace the A+GPB with a quiet Antec PSU today (model SL350... $14.99AR @ Fry's).

Things already done to quiet my case:
from Tt Venus A64 cooler -> CNPS7000-AlCu
7v mod 120MM intake fan (just to keep the hard drives cool)
replaced case exhaust fan with a quiet coolermaster fan
BFG 6800GT stock cooling -> NV Silencer 5

after replacing the PSU it should go from quiet to very quiet.
 
My system used to be quiet. Then ID release DoomIII and I bought a new video card.
Then my system was a little louder, but not a nuisance. Then I bought a more powerful processor and heatsink running a Vantec Tornado fan.
Now my system is LOUD.
 
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