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Silent Desktop PC

Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
in General Chat
What lengths have you gone to, to make your PC as quiet as possible?

Anyone bought any special cases or lining for the inside of their desktops to make them quieter? If so what made the most amount of difference?

I'm not talking about buying one of these fanless VIA jobs but a proper Athlon or Pentium 4 type system.

I'd bought a Tagan power supply a number of years ago to replace a very noisy 3 fan Q-Tec power supply but now even I find that louder then I want.

The noise seems to have gotten louder when I moved from a full tower system to a midi case.

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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I bought a pre-made system from Mesh and it's fairly quiet.

    Most of my home-built ones have been loud, though I did get a power supply from www.quietpc.com which was .. quiet.

    Some people seem to go to great lengths to reduce the noise from their computer, probably admirable but normally expensive.
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    just avoid fan based as much as possible and if you need some proper ventilation, use a case that suport a big fan as they are less noisy for air transport
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Well you could move to watercooling but there really is no point unless you want a nice overclock.

    My Hiper Type-R PSU is pretty quiet and I also have a Gigabyte Pro CPU fan where I can change the RPM by turning a nob at the back of my PC. So if I am running my PC for normal use then low RPM's are all that's needed, if I am gaming then I will turn it up.

    Case fans can make the noise considerably louder I have found.
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I run my Athlon with the side off the case. She's overclocked from a 1700+(1433mhz) to a 2400+(2ghz). The fan on the CPU is moddded to run on 7v, and I have two 80mm fans hanging from the PSU, also running on 7v. Video card cooling is also modded to 7v.

    My system is on 24/7, and has been for a few years now. Noise isn't an issue for me.
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    The noise that most desktop PC's make does my head in. Can't concentrate properly with something whining away in my ear.

    I've currently got a Tagan power supply. Lovely and quiet.
    I have a Zalman 80mm fan being run at 5 volts working as an exhaust fan
    And a Speeze (sp) heatsink/fan running via a Zalman variable speed controller which helps quieten it down.

    I used to run a Zalman Flower cooler/fan - but the fan started to wear and become noisy, but I plan to refit it with a new fan and better home made bracket (so I don't have to keep removing the fan/bracket assembly to remove some of my PCI/AGP cards).

    But in my quest for noise reduction I've been eyeing up the Zalman Reserator water cooling system, and proper fanless power supplies. Then the only fans I'd have in the system would be quiet, slow speed, fans to keep some airflow going over the other components (motherboard, video card, hard drives). And I also want to add some sound deadening material in the case too. Then there's only the hard drive noise to deal with - but most modern drives are fairly quiet - a current 200 GB Seagate drive is very quiet.

    The only problem is cost. :(
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Nash wrote:
    Well you could move to watercooling but there really is no point unless you want a nice overclock.
    There is! If it's a quiet water cooling system (without noisy cooling fans on the radiator), then it gets rid of noise! Noise noise noise noise! It's the bane of computer systems! :(

    I've used laptops that have effective cooling in them, so that they don't need a fan, and the only noise is the very quiet and muted noise of the hard drive. What an amazing difference! Virtually no noise! They're a godsend! If only desktop PC's were as quiet.

    Noise isnt' much of an issue if you're gaming, or playing MP3's/watching movies loudly. But otherwise it's a pain in the arese!
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I put in a proper Fanless PSU into my PC today to replace the Tagan - I'm not sure if the Tagan if faulty or not cos it seems louder then it should, bu anyway the fanless PSU has made a big difference, only thing now is watching the system and CPU tempretures as there is no PSU fan at all to expell any heat inside the case and in this case there is no place to put your own exhaust fan, so current have 3 fans on the inside cooling the system, CPU and one onthe hard drive to keep that cool as well.

    Think though I'll need to get a slightly taller case though as at the moment the PSU is so close to the CPU.
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    Teh_GerbilTeh_Gerbil Posts: 13,332 Born on Earth, Raised by The Mix
    I.. have a quiet Type-R PSU. And 120mm Exaust... 3x80mm Intakes... one on side two front.

    And its a darn sight quiter than my P4 rig. With one 60mm and one 80mm and a 72mm CPU fan. The new one has one too... but a quiter one by alot.

    32 degrees too!
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I did loads of testing with my existing case with is a tower with 3 external 5.25 bays and for sure it's not big enough for a fanless PSU, the system gets way too warm, ATM I've got the PS outside of the case sitting on top of the case and CPU is 40C, and system temp 43C and hard drive 47C, think I'll have to go back to my big tower case or shell out for something else.
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