Making my PC Quiter

talking_walnut

Hey,
I made a pc last year but I cut a couple of corners and now its a noisey beast of a thing. Its in my bedroom so I could do with some advice on how to get it as quiet as possible without costing a fortune.

I think my main problem is with my power supply. I've got a Q-Tech 450W. Think it should be the first thing to go. I'm having trouble figuring out what wattage I can get away with though. I think the 450w was overkill as I'm not overclocking (plus i've got a zalman flower on the cpu), and not running any heavy graphics games or anything. I've been looking at Quietpc.com but their prices are pretty dear. Can anyone recommend cheaper places to get them or other products that would work?

I was looking at the other products on the site as well and was wondering if anyone has any experience with them and if any are actually worth getting?

Here's an overview of my system:
Asus A7N8X Motherboard
AMD 3000+xp (not overclocked)
Radeon 9600
Seagate 9gb HDD
Western digital 200gb HDD
DVD Drive & CD writer

Any advice on getting it quieter would be welcome. I don't have much money at the moment but I should be working again soon so could buy things later in the summer.

Cheers:cool:
*edit: just noticed my spelling. silly me

secret_squirrel

Step 1 identify whats making the noise.

1st mod - free download speedfan. That should quieten down the case and cpu fans. although I would assume the Zalman H/s is quiet or passive?

2nd Mod. - If the zalmans not quiet then consider a swapsie with someone for a quieter one. You may be able to get enought cash for it 2nd hand to get a quiet one from a lesser brand. Coolermaster or some such.

3rd. Check case fan's. See if you can fit bigger more slowly rotating fans.

4th If you only have 1 case fan. Consider getting a second (sounds silly I know but bear with me). Set 1 fan sucking air into the case at front bottom, the second should blow air out of the case at top back. This creates a natural positve flow coz hot air rises.

5. Replace your psu for a quiter model. I reckon a GOOD 350W will do that config.

6. Not sure if your 9600 has a fan? If so replace it with a zalman passive cooler or similar.

7. Start getting silly with sound isolating foam for the case and hard drive isolation cager.

8. if you want to trade speed for silence consider underclocking your chip. You can get a few utilities that let you over/underclock directly from windows. That way you can crank up and down at the press of a mouse.

CombatCow

I have the same psu and i just replaced the fans with two l.e.d 1's and i have them hooked up to a fan controller at the front of meh case.Or you could just replace them with 2 quieter 80mm fans like these for 30 blips (http://www.hitide.ie/catalog/product_info.php/cPath/21_23_41/products_id/170 ) Instead of getting a whole new psu.

CombatCow

talking_walnut

That replacing the fans in the psu sounds interesting. 1 question though; will buying a specially designed quiet psu give much better results?

CombatCow

I would dout it tbh,but as you might have found out the qtec psu's get a really bad rep on the net,i cant say theres nething wrong with mine, but im gonna upgrade to a bequiet psu over the summer for my A64 system


CombatCow

maxheadroom

maybe have a look at http://www.silentpcreview.com and look through their forums