Cooling and quieting the PC....

[leech]

I think this could be considered a new form of art. I was wondering how other people manage this. After way too many complaints at network parties that my computer was too loud, I decided to start cutting down the sound.

I already bought two 'Smart' fans, that will run quiet as long as there isn't a lot of heat in my case. Problem is I have a 120mm fan in the front of my case (it's pretty quiet for the most part) and the two smart fans in the back (80mm) and a 80mm fan on the side of my case.

The PSU has two fans on it as well. The only other fans are the one on the Parhelia, and the Pentium 4 3.06ghz that I have.

I have found this acoustic absorbtion mat.

http://www.akasa.com.tw/

It's the one called pax.mate.

And also I have found this.

http://www.casecooler.com/zalvgaheatco.html

Anyone try either of these products to see if they work pretty well?

I just ordered rounded cables for the rest of my system (Already had a Ultra160 one, so I had to replace the floppy cable and the 50 pin SCSI cable) So airflow should be better.

Leech

[az]

Do you really NEED that many fans?

Try www.noisemagic.de - Dogbert bought case mats there. They also sell quiet Enermax/Pabst fan PSUs.

AZ

[Frank Marshall]

Just bought an Enermax PSU (almost twice the price of a generic cheapie) and now the only thing I can hear running on my PC is the C: drive (unless I power-up one of the optical drives of course).

Thermaltake are also reputed to be quiet but here in Australia they cost almost twice as much as an Enermax equivalent. Can't see a reason to spend that much when Enermax seem to have a good reputation...

You can find some information on quieting PCs at the much-maligned Tom's Hardware website.

[uberlad]

Goddamn! My Enermax PS sounds like a tiny jet. Obviously I got it before they started using decent fans.

If only I had the cash I'd replace it. I might take it apart and clean up the fans though.

Uberlad

[Fat Tone]

I'm using paxmat in my case. It makes a difference, and was prolly worth the £10 it cost, but its not a magic cure.

Spending money on quality, large, slow fans is probably a better idea.

T.

[GNEP]

Using Zalman stuff here and it's v. good and quiet.

http://www.quietpc.com/ should give you some ideas at least.

[Seaspray]

A quiet pc

You don't necessarily need case fans, unless you have SCSI hard drives or a very full case. If you do use case fans, Papst make ones that are almost inaudible.

In my old system I had one Papst exhaust fan (19dB I think) (~£10), and a Globalwin CBK-II58 (~£25) cooler for the CPU. This is very quiet and can handle up to an XP2800+ so long as you are not overclocking. For a PSU I was using an Antec True Power 350W, which supposedly has an intelligent fan that increases speed depending on the temparature. Anyway, it was very quiet. Look for a motherboard with passive cooling on the northbridge.

The only other fan in my system was on my MSI GF4800SE, which I specifically chose because it is meant to be quiter that most. (Apparantly, due to the larger heatsink the fan is able to run slower and therefore quieter).

This system was completely stable and never needed any additional cooling, whilst it was also very very quiet, which was important to me as my pc is in the living room.

Recently, I bought a Coolermaster ATC 200 case, which has 4 YS Tech 80 mm fans fitted (I replaced one with the Papst from my old case). This is noticeably much noisier than my old system. When I get round to it and have the money I will replace the YS Tech fans with Papst (or I might just turn them off, I don't really need them).

Personally, I never bothered with an absorption mat before because the system was so quiet anyway.

[bsdgeek]

Recommended: Panaflo fans (L1As), Seasonic & Fortron PSUs.

That acoustic mat stuff will reduce noise a lot, but it will raise your temperatures too.

I never really liked rounded cables, they seemed to get in the way all the time. What I did was just fold my IDE cables around until they weren't blocking anything.

This picture should give a good idea of cable folding. (not my box though)

And you should go here.

[leech]

Well, as Seaspray said, you shouldn't need case fans unless you have scsi..... I have a 73gb Ultra160 10,000rpm drive and a 9.1gb 7200rpm ultra80 drive in my system, and damn do they get hot. (The 120mm fan is in front of the 73gb one, otherwise it'll overheat and die.) I'm thinking a lot of the noise could be coming from my PSU. So I think that maybe my next purchase, though I got the 400w one because I figured it'd help with all the crap in my system. But my case did come with a 350w PSU, and the case is an Enermax one. CS-3051L-B3A is the model number.

http://www.enermax.com.tw/product-05.htm

I may just put that one back in (never tried it, when I bought my new case, I stripped everything out of it even the PSU)

Thanks for all the advice, I'll first work on getting the cables all straightened out, finally found the rounded ones, so life will be good. As a side note, whenever I'd play Rise of Nations over at Byock's house, it'd lock up after so long, as would Scumhawk's PC. Oddly, Scumhawk and I have almost identical hardware. Both with Asus P4PE's and Parhelia's. I do think it was a heat issue, because my CPU would jump a pure 20 F just by starting the game.

Leech

[Byock]

I still don't think it could be a heat issue. The other 2 machines, AMD XP 2000+'s ran the game flawlessly, on a KT400, and Nforce2. I think the game has issues with the P4PE. Your temp never went above, what 134? That is what my AMD runs normally.

[leech]

Originally posted by Byock
I still don't think it could be a heat issue. The other 2 machines, AMD XP 2000+'s ran the game flawlessly, on a KT400, and Nforce2. I think the game has issues with the P4PE. Your temp never went above, what 134? That is what my AMD runs normally.

No it didn't, it ran like crap on that other nforce2 board. It is a heat issue, 'cause it never locked at Scumhawk's house while playing multi-player. And my CPU jumped up to at least 145 F. It's running now at 129 F.

Leech

[The PIT]

I like my noisy case drowns out all the other annoyances.

1) Mobile disco's
2) Noisy kids
3) Lawn Mowers
4) My Mother
5) Hedge Trimmers
6) Electric drills

[leech]

Too true, Pit. Maybe I should just leave it loud, I don't hear it anyhow, since I'm used to the tone, and I'll just laugh at everyone at network parties that complain it's too loud

Leech

[Topha]

Verax

Expensive but goood.

[az]

Stock Enermax isn't too quiet either. But I suspect people are complaining about the noise your 10,000 RPM harddrive puts out - what do you need such a thing for anyway?

Topha is right - Verax are THE quietest (yet very expensive) fans.

Mats help, especially with harddrive noise (both body noise and bearing whine), but they raise your temperatures 3-5°C. If you have a CPU heat problem, you might want to try a duct from the outside to the CPU, so the CPU gets cooled with fresh, cool air from outside the case.

AZ