Making PC Quieter

zilog_jones

This is what I have but it's kinda noisy. I think it's mostly the graphics card and its puny little fan that is making most the noise. Any recommendations for a new cooler for that?

Also, is that foam stuff much good at reducing noise? There's some Akasa stuff in Maplin that seems reasonably priced. The case is all aluminium, so the sticky on reducing noise suggests it will help. Anyone have personal experience with it?

Any other recommendations? How much would I expect to be paying for a decent quiet CPU heatsink/fan?

Also, anyone else with that motherboard (see link)? It doesn't seem to control the CPU fan speed at all - SpeedFan doesn't make any difference to it either. It can control the case fans no probs.

uberpixie

zilog_jones wrote:

This is what I have but it's kinda noisy. I think it's mostly the graphics card and its puny little fan that is making most the noise. Any recommendations for a new cooler for that?

http://www.arctic-cooling.com/vga2.php?idx=125

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=306460

Might be an options worth considering

zilog_jones wrote:

Also, is that foam stuff much good at reducing noise? There's some Akasa stuff in Maplin that seems reasonably priced. The case is all aluminium, so the sticky on reducing noise suggests it will help. Anyone have personal experience with it?

No direct experience of the stuff but from what I have heard, damping foam does make a difference but will raise temps a bit.

At least you have learned the value of a more expensive case with better sound proofing for the next build: if you got a better case for an extra 70 Euro or so you prob wouldn't have to go to so much trouble to shut it up.

You will prob spend more than that now silencing your present build :-)

We all learn this the hard way though: my first case was a qtec case with qtec PSU which I replaced very quickly so I can't preach too much :-)

(At least you got a half dacent case with a good quality PSU first time)

zilog_jones wrote:

Any other recommendations? How much would I expect to be paying for a decent quiet CPU heatsink/fan?

Varies.

£14.99 sterling gets you this which is a very good cooler for the price and is much better than some higher priced coolers. It also will clip into the mobo like the Intel fan, some of the more hardcore fans will require you to remove the motherboard to fit them: so if you want the easy life...
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-017-AR&groupid=701&catid=57&subcat=821

zilog_jones wrote:

Also, anyone else with that motherboard (see link)? It doesn't seem to control the CPU fan speed at all - SpeedFan doesn't make any difference to it either. It can control the case fans no probs.

Check the BIOS?

There is usually some sort of CPU fan threshold in there.

(will have a look tomorrow: housemate has an MSI platnium MB, don't think he ever installed the fan speed software and the machine seems to ramp his stock fan up when it needs to, is fairly quiet to begin with though.. )

zilog_jones

uberpixie wrote:

http://www.arctic-cooling.com/vga2.php?idx=125

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=306460

Might be an options worth considering

Komplett seem to be broken right now, so can't see the second one. The first looks good, but I'm not sure if the airflow will be good enough - there's no fan on the side of the case, just a grated hole.

At least you have learned the value of a more expensive case with better sound proofing for the next build: if you got a better case for an extra 70 Euro or so you prob wouldn't have to go to so much trouble to shut it up.

You will prob spend more than that now silencing your present build :-)

Yeah lol. My friend has the same case, just with a fanless graphics card and a Samsung HDD instead (different mobo but there's no fans on that either) - it's hella quiet in comparison.

We all learn this the hard way though: my first case was a qtec case with qtec PSU which I replaced very quickly so I can't preach too much :-)

What, and that Chieftec with 5 fans or whatever was quiet?!

Check the BIOS?

There is usually some sort of CPU fan threshold in there.

There weren't any options specific to the CPU fan, and what I could change made no difference. I think the CPU fan is pretty quiet anyway.

uberpixie

zilog_jones wrote:

Komplett seem to be broken right now, so can't see the second one. The first looks good, but I'm not sure if the airflow will be good enough - there's no fan on the side of the case, just a grated hole.

Saw a review of that cooler and the reviewers mounted a low speed. 120mm or a 92 mm fan on top of the heat sink which seemed to make a difference to heat.

You could also look at
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=322423

(CustomPC gave it a very good review)

zilog_jones wrote:

Yeah lol. My friend has the same case, just with a fanless graphics card and a Samsung HDD instead (different mobo but there's no fans on that either) - it's hella quiet in comparison.

Could very well be the gfx card so. Replaced a Sapphire 9800 with an Asus X800XT PE a while back, made a very big difference to noise in the system, the Asus had a full cooper cooler and didn't make half the racket that the sapphire did.

If you will be replacing the gfx card anytime soon, it wouldn't be a terrible risk to spend 30 Euro or so on a VGA cooler.

zilog_jones wrote:

What, and that Chieftec with 5 fans or whatever was quiet?!

That was never a very quite case :-) Did have the advantage of coming with a real PSU and actually had airlow Vs the Qtec case + Qtec "deathtrap" PSU which had none and would crash the system after 20 mins playing a game if I left the side panel on:rolleyes:.

(I really did learn this the hard way)

zilog_jones

I got the Zalman VF900-Cu LED - in PC World lol! It was €45 but it would have cost the same from Komplett with shipping anyway, plus I got a student discount! They only had the VF700 in Maplin, at some retarded price.

The difference it has made is amazing. It's so quiet now that I can barely hear it at all when listening to music. I have the fan on about 1/3 speed and it's idling at about 36 degrees - with the stock cooler it was 45! Haven't tried any proper stress testing yet (GeoForms seems to be good for this), but haven't seen it go higher than the 50s yet.

I also got some Akasa PAX.mate insulation stuff - it's definately made the right side of the PC quiet by filling that useless gap of nothingness, but I dunno about anywhere else. I haven't got around to doing the top and bottom of the case yet...

DirkVoodoo

I was just going to suggest the Zalman 900 from PC world, saw one there yesterday. Thats not a terrible price, plus you didnt have to pay for shipping.

How are all your fans controlled? If your case fans are on a 12V rail they will be at max RPMs all the time. See if your mobo has any fan headers or maybe consider a 7V mod to some spare molex connectors.

zilog_jones

I'm using SpeedFan to control my case fans. At 55% (625RPM according to SpeedFan, but that's probably wrong since the two fans are connected together) they are barely audible and seem to keep temperatures pretty stable - and I'm running FAH on one core all the time

Just been running that GeoForms thing on pretty high settings @ 1600x1200 (Trinitron FTW) for about 2 hours, and the GPU seems to max out at about 45 degrees - which as I said before was the idle temp I was getting with the stock cooler. This was definately worth it!

I wish I could turn off the LEDs though...