Antec Sonata Noise Levels

Fidelis

I've heard great things about these cases, very quiet and all that but are they so quiet that they wouldn't disturb you from sleeping? I'm looking for first hand experience of people who would have their case in the same room as them, who could say for definite that at night, when the ambient noise is much lower - that you wouldn't be kept awake with the PC still on.

I'm trying to decide whether to get a very-quiet PSU (17dB) and a couple of silent Papst fans (12dB) for my existing POS Codegen case to quiet it down so that I can leave it on throughout the night as I sleep. Either that or get a new case, the Sonata, which I would prefer to do as it looks great and is miles better in terms of build quality than my case. I'm just worried that it's quiet, but not quiet enough. I'd also be cooling the CPU with a Thermaltake SLK 948U + 92mm Papst fan (16dB).

Cheers!

BloodBath

Couldn't tell you.

The main culprits of pc noise are psu, cpu fan, northbridge fan, graphics card fan and case fans.

Depends how light a sleeper you are. my machine is pretty loud but I can still sleep with it on.

If you want ultra silence you can get passive psu's or ones with a slow 120mm fan. A zalman on a low rpm for the cpu. A good passive northbridge fan. A passive graphics card cooler. A fan controller for the case fans and turn them right down.


BloodBath

Kevok

I have one, and yes it is extremely quiet. PSU is only audible at startup and under heavy load (games), but even then it's still quiet.

After I got the case I found that the noisiest part of my pc was my cpu fan which i replaced with a zalman. After that, the graphics card was the culprit, so I got a passive heatsink for it.

After all that, the noisiest part of the computer are the dvd drives, which have to be lived with. However since you are not going to have them going at night, the computer is near enough to silent for sleeping.

Jammer

the sonata with the supplied 120mm is silent.

the sonata has "fan only" molex connectors, they are 7V connections for case fans so they are quiet. Excellent build quality and finish!

jozi

Yeah i'm going to agree with the above.

Not sure if i can sleep with it on, have a diff psu than the one suplied so mine could be more quiet.

i think there's a site www.silentpcreview.com that should have a review of it and many more (more) quiet cases, the sonata is a nice looking case thou

Jozi

stakey

is the sonata psu compatible with athlons?

i'm going to order one and i just want to make sure all is cool....

Col_Loki

Yea its perfect for P4 and AMD's.

Sonata is great, very quiet 120mm fan, hard drive gommets for less noise, very quiet PSU......... great buy for silence.

silverside

Yes it's almost silent. It wouldn't keep me awake, though I prefer total silence so I turn it off anyway - I have no traffic noise or anything to mask it. Makes about as much noise as a fridge I suppose.

Especially if you use SpeedFan and have an aftermarket cooler on your GFX card - you won't get much quieter. I think it's a great case - my temps hover around 35C with the standard fans turned down as low as possible, looks stylish, easy to put together.

Col_Loki

Nearly every other thing in your case will make more noise than the sonata...... NB, GFX, CPU cooler. Its hard to go wrong with this case IMO.

n1ck

My pc is actually very noisey due to case fans being on full speed and noisey psu... you can hear it from downstairs and i can sleep with it fine.

K!LL!@N

I too have a sonata.
It's very very quiet.
It was slightly louder before when i had my old graphics card in it.
But that died and i'm using an old card with no fan and it's dead quiet now.
And thankfully the graphics card is being replaced with a sapphire with zalman passive cooler.

I actually find that i can sleep fine with a constant noise like a fan but find it very hard to sleep with an intermittant sound like a ticking clock, which drives me crazy.

Definitely a great case.
Though with the black finish it does need an occasional wipe down with a dust cloth.

Killian

Fidelis

Gonna go ahead & order one from Elara for €145 (inc. S+H). Saw it for €20 cheaper on pc-look.com but it end's up the same as Elara after shipping, similar story for overclockers.co.uk

Thanks for all the replies!

BloodBath

you can hear it from downstairs and i can sleep with it fine.

Sounds like mine. You can hear it from most other rooms in the house late at night when it's really quiet but I can still sleep with it on.


BloodBath