Making my comptuer more quiet

J

JoshuaD

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Feb 13, 2005
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I'm using a Phenom II quad-core 3.4 ghz on a Gigabyte motherboard.

I have a home recording studio setup. I'm looking for any bits of information anyone might have on how to make my computer more quiet. I'm open to almost anything but water-cooling. Putting it in another room is an option, but one I'm trying to avoid. (I'd like to use that room as a vocal booth).

Right now there are 4 fans.

When the computer is under normal load, the loudest is a typical case fan that blows over my hard drives. I'm sure I can replace this with a fan designed to be quiet. Anyone have any links?

Next is the processor fan. It's the stock AMD fan/heatsink that comes with the Phenom II. It's not terribly loud until the system is under heavy load, but then it's pretty strong. Unfortunately, when my computer is under heavy load is when I need it to be most quiet: it will be when I'm recording.

After that the next loudest is my video card fan. It's a Radeon X800. I don't play any video games or do anything particularly video intensive, but I do have dual monitors setup running at 1600x1200. Does anyone have a good fan-less video card to suggest, or any way to mod the X800 so it doesn't need a fan?

Finally there's the power-supply fan. It's pretty quiet, but it's still there.

Any further ideas on how to go about quieting this system down? Like I said, I'm open to anything but water cooling, which I figure is a little too risky for me. I'm completely open to surrounding/enclosing it in something to dampen the sound, but I'm worried about over-heating at that point. I would have no problem setting up the CD drive as an external drive and mounting it on my desk if that was necessary.

Any ideas or links to products are greatly appreciated.
 
I would recommend a new Heatsink/Fan too. If you get something with a 120mm fan and undervolt it, they can be pretty quiet. I just moved all of my components into an Antec Solo and the only thing I can hear right next to me is the video card fan, which I will be replacing soon enough anyway.
 
It would really help to know your full system specs (make/model) including your case. An aftermarket CPU cooler will almost certainly be required. The vid card won't be much trouble for you to quiet as there are many inexpensive, newer alternatives to you Radeon x800 that will run silently; some models are passive, others just use beefy coolers.

Be sure to give us your case make/model because what you house your computer in is a critical factor in quieting things down. Some cases are designed from the get-go to provide a fair bit of noise dampening.

Also, check out silentpcreview.com for gobs more info on the subject of quiet cooling. They are the hands-down experts on this stuff with lots of articles/advice to help educate you. They aren't comprehensive on every product on the market (their last case fan article is somewhat dated), but for the most part they rule.
 
Computer Specs:

Antec case, model unknown. It's plain and white. It looks a lot like this one, but it's a bit shorter and it doesn't have the hinge cover over the CD drives.
AMD Phenom II quad-core on a gigabyte 790xt
Radeon x800
2x WD 500GB hard drive
1x Maxtor? 120gb hard drive
4gb corsair ram, no fans
Corsair vx 550w power supply
 
JoshuaD said:
looks a lot like this one, but it's a bit shorter
Click to expand...
Small Chieftec.
80mm fans, PSU in hottest place, hard HDD mounting (Don't try Seagates on that) and plastic as baffle material isn't so great. (although that plastic door already helps some to noise of optical drives)

Would be easiest to just get case which actually has quiet design because you would have to considerably modify the case also decreasing its cooling. (with one of the hottest desktop CPUs made)

Antec P180-serie is classic (designed with help of silentpcreview's founder) and Fractal Design R2 good challenger with basic silencing done. Other quiet design cases would need work or are just unnecessarily big.

And get that passively cooled graphics card because without games you don't have any need for hot and noisy card in there.
 
I don't know if you have a fan controller or not but thats a cheap investment on quieting fans down/shutting them off when they are not needed.
 
I would recommend the Antec Solo over the P183 in this case. The elastic hard drive mounts go a long way in reducing/eliminating the rotational noise from hard drives. The P183 still has you screw the drives in, so they are still mechanically coupled to the chassis.
 
My advice is to start with a quiet HSF. Noctua's is one of the best out there, extremely quiet while performing just behind the TRUE: http://www.frozencpu.com/products/9...ket_AM2_AM3_775_1366_1156.html?tl=g48c373s956

Any fans in your case should be 120mm and 20db or quieter. I like Noisetaker fans. If your case can accommodate 140mm fans, even better. Corsair's current range of power supplies are very quiet, I would look into those.

My own PC (all info in sig), with the exception of the GTX 285 fan when it spins up under load when gaming, is almost as quiet as my 27" iMac. Note that the iMac is pretty much dead silent, so that's pretty darn quiet. :)
 
You don't even need to spend that much money to get silence... This is going to be a shoestring budget build for silence:

1: Buy a few Scythe Gentle Typhoon 800 RPM fans (you wont hear them even with your ear next to them) http://www.svc.com/d1225c12b2ap-12.html
2: Buy this heatsink for your Phenom and toss one of those fans on it: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835124020 or http://cmstore.coolermaster-usa.com/product_info.php?products_id=412
3: Buy a passively cooled video card.
4: Upgrade your hard drives. By condensing your drives, you'll have less noise, so go for a good 1TB 5400 RPM drive from either Samsung or WD for storage, and a 500GB 7200 RPM for your OS. Make sure the 500GB drive is the newer, single platter design, as those produce less noise.
5: Suspend your hard drives in your 5" drive bays, use the link as a guide: http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=19147

tada, silent computing. The only thing you'll hear after that MIGHT be your power supply fan and the seek noise from the drives, but even that will be nearly silent.
 
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Also, consider throwing an Accelero S2 on your X800 so you can run it passively. Costs $22 and beats having to buy a new card.
 
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