Basic info for a quiet PC

sionnach

Here's a component by component guide to having a quiet computer.

case
the case you choose is vital in determining how quiet your system will be. Good airflow through the case is a must as the quietness of your computer depends largely on how cool the components are. A good case for a quiet system would have 120mm fan mounts front and rear with unimpeded airflow through the case. A lot of cases have poorly designed hard drive bays which prevent air from freely flowing from the front to the rear of the case. A little modding usually solves this problem.
The material the case is made of also affects how noisy it is. An aluminium case will resonate easily, creating a very audible "hum". Steel cases or antec's aluminium/plastic composites resonate far less and are thus much quieter.

Acoustic sound absorbing foam can be used to quieten your case even more. The impact of acoustic foam on system noise is small but noticeable, especially on an aluminium case. The foam not only dissipates some of the sound from your internal components but also "deadens" the case panels and thus reduces case resonance. It can be quite heavy though, not really suitable for lanners.

list of some cases suitable for quiet pcs:
Antec P180
Antec P160
Antec SLK3000B
Silverstone TJ06
Coolermaster Stacker

case fans
Case fans are the primary sources of noise on the average loud pc. Replacing your case fans with good quality quiet fans will dramatically quieten your pc. Be warned though, quieter fans also push less air than louder ones, so you'll need to know roughly how hot your components are before deciding on which fans can adequately cool your system and thus which to buy.

The larger the fan, the quieter it can push the same amount of air as a smaller fan, so 120mm fans all round is the desired setup.

fangrills: this is a very important section. Most cases today unfortunately come with very restrictive stamped fan grills. These not only reduce airflow by about 20 percent but also create a LOT of wind cut noise. If your case has grills like these, cut them out with either a dremel or aviation snips. Place a default chromed fan grill over them, not any of those stupid laser cut skull grills etc. Anything placed in front of the air coming in or out of your fan is bad full stop, the only reason i'd even place the default unimpeding chromed grill over the fan when you're done cutting is for the safey of any curious cats.

mounting your fans: Hardmounting your fans to your case (i.e: just screwing them on) will transmit the vibrations from your fan directly to the case, which we want to avoid. Using soft rubber grommets will reduce noise. The fan can also be mounted using zip ties and blocks of foam, not a pretty solution but works more effectively than grommets.

fan speed adjustment: Fans run at 12v by default. This will make them spin faster than is required to cool your system. Slowing down your fans will reduce the noise they produce exponentially. This can be achieved by a variety of methods. You can use a drive bay fan controller which can control the speeds of around 6 or so fans. Zalman's fanmate 2 is another good option for individual fan control.
Some mainboards can adjust fan speeds themselves. Using a program called speedfan you can set up your system so that your fans speed up or slow down depending on your system temperatures, ensuring that your pc is always as quiet as possible and adequately cooled.

list of quiet fan makers:
Nexus
Globe
Panaflo
Papst



cpu and heatsink
First things first, pentium 4s are hot, athlon 64s cool. So if you've been paying attention so far you will automatically infer from this that an athlon64 system will be quieter than a pentium4. The athlon 64 winchester and venice cores are a silent pc enthusiast's dream, pentium 4 prescotts a nightmare.

Stock heatsinks and fans are generally inefficient and noisy. Replacing them with good heatpipe heatsinks and big quiet fans is a must. Athlon 64 venices and winchesters can often run passively cooled with a good heatsink and in a case with very good airflow. At worst they will need a barely audible slowed down fan to cool them. P4 prescotts will always need active fan cooling.

good heatsinks
Thermalright xp120
Thermalright xp90c
Scythe Ninja

psu
Most people know very little about what makes a good psu and their own requirements for a psu. A pentium 4 system with a high end graphics card and one or two hard drives will run fine on a 300W psu yet people rush out and get 550W psus for these systems thinking they need it.

This is a big mistake to make, especially if you want to have a
quiet pc. These high wattage pcs have very low efficiencies at low power draws (which is what your pc will be drawing 90% of the time). Low efficiency means more heat given out and thus a harder to cool pc and thus a louder pc. A lower wattage psu will be much more efficient in these ranges and make for a quieter system.

Efficiency is just one aspect, the noise produced by the psu itslef must also be considered. A lot of psus feature a dual 80mm fan system. These are louder than we want. psus with temperature controlled single 120mm fans are what we are after.

When it comes to efficient, quiet psus, one brand is easily the best, Seasonic. With 80%+ efficiency across the board and the quietest fans of similarly powered psus their new s12s are in a league of their own. Antec and enermax psus are also quite good and easier to find than the very rare seasonics.

note: Fanless psus such as those made by antec and silverstone are of course, quieter than the fan cooled seasonics. However you REALLY need to know your stuff before using one of these, your airflow around the psu must be very good. Don't buy one of these unless you either know what you're doing or are prepared to fry an expensive piece of hardware.

hard drives
If you've spent a good deal of time and money on silencing your pc, chances are that when you're done, your hard drive will be left as the noisiest component in your system.
Hard drive seeks are pretty noisy but fortunately there are a few ways you can quieten them a bit.

Decoupling your hard drive from your case is a MUST. A hardmounted hard drive is a massive source of system noise.
Decoupling your hard drive is the single most effective silencing mod you can do. You can do this by suspending your hard drive in a 5.25" drive bay using sewing elastic (don't use normal elastic bands, they dry and crumble over time) or taping your hard drive onto a soft foam base. This method will drastically reduce the vibrations being transmitted to the case and thus reduce case rattling and resonance.
For those in pursuit of silence at any cost, slowing down your hard drive speed is another option. Using Hitachi's aam drive tools you can slow down the drive a bit. This increases seek times marginally but reduces the noise produced by the drive itself and also the vibrations it transmits to the case.

Companies which make quiet hard drives are seagate and samsung.

northbridge
Most powerful motherboards sold these days have incredibly loud 40mm fans cooling the northbridge. These things can easily be the loudest component in any system.
Replacing this fan with a zalman chipset heatsink is an automatic mod for a quiet pc. This is usually sufficient to cool the northbridge however in a very high powered system it can fall short. If you use one of these, make sure to stress test your system to see if the heatsink is up to the task. If not, get a quiet fan mounted on the heatsink to get a bit of airflow around it.

WizZard

Very nice sionnach, well done and thanks!

Dooom

Nice one sionnach. Although you forgot one thing...watercooling
Seriously though, good guide, well done.

secret_squirrel

Quietpc.co.uk are a good source for making a quiet PC (duh!)

Postage is a bit high to Ireland tho.

QTechnology PSU's are nice and quiet - built in big 120mm fan. (Not to be confused with QTec psu's which are shíte.)

Passively Cooled GFX Cards

Gigabyte do a range of passively cooled cards 2xGeforce 6600 GT's (AGP and PCI-E) and 1 x ATI X800xl

here

sionnach

oops forgot graphics cards, i'll amend that soon. I've ordered a gigabyte 6600gt pci e for my pc (: Kicks the ass of almost all other fan cooled gts too.

I'll update the guide with pictures and etailer links tomorrow.

savemejebus

the Arctic Freezer 64 is a seriously quiet but efficient A64 cpu fan, also the antec sonata is a really good quiet case

sionnach

savemejebus wrote:

the Arctic Freezer 64 is a seriously quiet but efficient A64 cpu fan, also the antec sonata is a really good quiet case

the arctic freezer 64 isn't in the same class as the others i've recommended. What i list is the best of the best. If i listed all those as good as and better than the freezer it'd be a long list.

Same for the sonata, it's quiet but has a couple of flaws stopping it from being in the same league as the cases i've listed, most notably a very poor front air intake. Also it comes bundled with a psu that, although quieter than the majority of psus, isn't up to the standard i'd demand

Loobz

Thanks Sionnach, excellent guide. Very clear. This info will help me alot when I get a new case.

PS: Shhh...

Raz

Excellent guide sionnach. Any ideas where to get a scyth ninja without a credit card?

Loobz

Check Silent PC Review for reviews on quiet pc components. Someone pointed the site out to me recently, cant remember who (kudos to you). There are also some good DIY guides in there. One that caught my attention was this one.
Simple PSU Mod.

po0k

Raz wrote:

Excellent guide sionnach. Any ideas where to get a scyth ninja without a credit card?

http://www.hitide.ie/catalog/default.php/cPath/21_23_46
One of those should do you fine.
You can order via email/phone and call in to pay for and collect it.

Raz

SyxPak wrote:

http://www.hitide.ie/catalog/default.php/cPath/21_23_46
One of those should do you fine.
You can order via email/phone and call in to pay for and collect it.

Cheers SyxPak

sionnach

yup, silent pc review is the bees pyjamas for information about silent computing.

jozi

Nice Guide (would this be sticky material *hint*hint*)

1 thing that Scythe Ninja is massive :eek: makes my xp90 look tiny!

Can i add that for gfx cards a arctic cooler is a good option to for good cooling and low noise. Can you overclock (much) with passive gfx card coolers?

Jozi

EDIT: agree that spcr is a great source, have pointed people there a few times

secret_squirrel

jozi wrote:

Can you overclock (much) with passive gfx card coolers?

I seem to recall that the Gigabyte passive's O/C's pretty well considering. Do a google for the Gigabyte part number and the words review and overclock. I seem to recall a review on arstechnica or similar.

Fobia

Any chance this could be stickied? It's a good guide for newbies to this sort of thing and as such it'd be a shame to let it vanish into the archives.

Dundhoone

Akasa Have released a new cpu heatsink using a 120mm speed controllable fan: Evo120
http://www.akasa.co.uk


also the Asus AN8 Mb now comes in a premium version, with the northbridge cooled with a heatpipe rather than the noisey fan on the previous versions.

http://www.overclock.co.uk/customer/product.php?productid=18564

Col_Loki

Very nice post, its now a sticky.

On the power supply thing some good points, its an area that ive looked into quite a bit and had quite a few different types. If your going for a silent system i would advise against antec/enermax in general (except for certain models, ie the Sonata 380w Single fan). Ive tried enermax, a couple of antecs, a couple of 120mm fortrons, be-quiet....

I really have to say the be-quiet impressed me, along with the fortron (for the price). The antec (480w TP) and enermax i found a little noisey, while the 380w antec was silent.
With the fortrons 120mm fan on temp controlled, it could get very loud when on max load ... i modded it to 5v and it worked perfectly and silently for the 5months i had it in my system.

Generally with the better quality PSU's (and increasing wattage) they have much bigger heatsinks which means lower fan speed and quieter operation. Given lets say a 450w PSU v 350w PSU , to power a system the 450w is going to have less % load on it than the 350w PSU so it tends to have slower running fans.......

just thought id add that, feel free to comment if im going astray!!
Will be back later to clean it up a little..

amp

Excellent thread, my main pc is giving me headaches.

Hendrix89

Good advice! My homebuilt PC is like a jet engine!! Really though I can hear it from downstairs through the floor clicking away!!

Overheal

I have an Aluminum case; and let me tell you I've picked that thing apart to find out what was the real cause of that noise I was suffering from..

For a start, I have a 450W psu...Im sure I can't be using all of it

but thats really just wind: what bothered me was the case humming, and I identified it as the CPU fan.

My first instinct was to take it out and put a foam layer between it and the heatsink; but that costs money so I tried a BluTack experiment: works terribly when the components heat up!!!

Anyway back to my point: it turns out the fan itself was incredibly quiet when held softly..

I very quickly determined that the screw holes on the fan mount were misaligned: causing the shape of the fan to elipse, which threw the whole fan off and cause a lot of vibration.

I've since fixed this problem by only using 2 out of 4 screws to hold the fan in place: now that the fan is no longer warped, its quieter AND I've scored another 700rpms out of it.

Something to be mindful of next time you mount a fan, folks.

L31mr0d

like the old PC cliché, a quiet PC starts with quiet components.

atm, I have 2 seagate barracudas 7200.10 in a HTPC and their seek noise is terrible, worse, imo, then that of the Raptors. The seek noise of the raptors is loud but infrequent, these seagates make seek noise every time I move the mouse.

Also, if you are building a quiet PC, make sure the mobo you use has good fan controls for temperatures, it can make all the difference when the machine is idling and the fan speeds have been automatically turned low.

I have a lapped stock AMD heatsink with AS5 in the HTPC and the CPU fan is the quietest component in the system as the CPU temp never breaks 35'c at full load.

Also never look up the companies specs on the dB rating of their components, search the forums for personal information from people who have actually used them, as their ear will be a little bit more accurate.

Overheal

^ What do you want to eyeball on a Motherboard specsheet for temperature contols? I have an older Asus mobo and it only has monitoring for the CPU fan

secret_squirrel

Its worth noting that both speedfan and Centrino Hardware Control can help keep both your PC fans quiet, by reducing RPM's, MHz and Heat, and they both now contain options to activate Acoustic Management on Hard Drives like the hitachi tools mentioned above.

sebastianlieken

Im currently in the pursuit of silencing my pc as much as possible, and i had come to a stand-still with my two case fans. both of which are 120mm 4 pin molex connected. I came accross a great mod that you can do which allows you to choose a high (12v) , med (7v), and low (5v) setting.

Ive used this on both my fans, its literally 5 mins work at most, and makes a huge differance!

check it out here

awhir

or u can just solder a resistor to make it look neater.

sebastianlieken

.......

but...the way above, you dont even have to go get a soldering iron, solder, the right resistor...etc. all you have to do is put the ends of the wires into the alternative crimps in the molex connector....im gonna say jus switchin wires around is neater than solderin in a resistor

L31mr0d

sebastianlieken wrote: »

.......

but...the way above, you dont even have to go get a soldering iron, solder, the right resistor...etc. all you have to do is put the ends of the wires into the alternative crimps in the molex connector....im gonna say jus switchin wires around is neater than solderin in a resistor

I'm going to have to side with Silenceisbliss on this one, its possible to just pop out the wires on molex connectors and just switch them around. Which would be a lot easier then soldering in a resistor.

nibble

Also your average 1/4watt resistor wouldn't cut it, you'd need a bigger one which you prob wouldn't have lying around. But molex pin flip FTW, I've got me Yates running at a nice quite 5v .

I'm going to maybe get some sort of PWM type controller sometime, you can get much lower speeds out of your fans with one of them. I was thinking maybe a BigNG, you can control fan speed based on temp and a whole load of other stuff, anyway thats just me rambling...

Capt'n Midnight

One simple mod I've made on two wire (red - black) 12V fans is to put them in series so 6V across each. They run a lot slower, and even though there are two the cooling is less than a single 12V fan

White_Wolf

Thanks for this will help me alot on my htpc

Unregistered.

sionnach wrote: »

Here's a component by component guide to having a quiet computer.

case
the case you choose is vital in determining how quiet your system will be. Good airflow through the case is a must as the quietness of your computer depends largely on how cool the components are. A good case for a quiet system would have 120mm fan mounts front and rear with unimpeded airflow through the case. A lot of cases have poorly designed hard drive bays which prevent air from freely flowing from the front to the rear of the case. A little modding usually solves this problem.
The material the case is made of also affects how noisy it is. An aluminium case will resonate easily, creating a very audible "hum". Steel cases or antec's aluminium/plastic composites resonate far less and are thus much quieter.

Acoustic sound absorbing foam can be used to quieten your case even more. The impact of acoustic foam on system noise is small but noticeable, especially on an aluminium case. The foam not only dissipates some of the sound from your internal components but also "deadens" the case panels and thus reduces case resonance. It can be quite heavy though, not really suitable for lanners.

list of some cases suitable for quiet pcs:
Antec P180
Antec P160
Antec SLK3000B
Silverstone TJ06
Coolermaster Stacker

case fans
Case fans are the primary sources of noise on the average loud pc. Replacing your case fans with good quality quiet fans will dramatically quieten your pc. Be warned though, quieter fans also push less air than louder ones, so you'll need to know roughly how hot your components are before deciding on which fans can adequately cool your system and thus which to buy.

The larger the fan, the quieter it can push the same amount of air as a smaller fan, so 120mm fans all round is the desired setup.

fangrills: this is a very important section. Most cases today unfortunately come with very restrictive stamped fan grills. These not only reduce airflow by about 20 percent but also create a LOT of wind cut noise. If your case has grills like these, cut them out with either a dremel or aviation snips. Place a default chromed fan grill over them, not any of those stupid laser cut skull grills etc. Anything placed in front of the air coming in or out of your fan is bad full stop, the only reason i'd even place the default unimpeding chromed grill over the fan when you're done cutting is for the safey of any curious cats.

mounting your fans: Hardmounting your fans to your case (i.e: just screwing them on) will transmit the vibrations from your fan directly to the case, which we want to avoid. Using soft rubber grommets will reduce noise. The fan can also be mounted using zip ties and blocks of foam, not a pretty solution but works more effectively than grommets.

fan speed adjustment: Fans run at 12v by default. This will make them spin faster than is required to cool your system. Slowing down your fans will reduce the noise they produce exponentially. This can be achieved by a variety of methods. You can use a drive bay fan controller which can control the speeds of around 6 or so fans. Zalman's fanmate 2 is another good option for individual fan control.
Some mainboards can adjust fan speeds themselves. Using a program called speedfan you can set up your system so that your fans speed up or slow down depending on your system temperatures, ensuring that your pc is always as quiet as possible and adequately cooled.

list of quiet fan makers:
Nexus
Globe
Panaflo
Papst



cpu and heatsink
First things first, pentium 4s are hot, athlon 64s cool. So if you've been paying attention so far you will automatically infer from this that an athlon64 system will be quieter than a pentium4. The athlon 64 winchester and venice cores are a silent pc enthusiast's dream, pentium 4 prescotts a nightmare.

Stock heatsinks and fans are generally inefficient and noisy. Replacing them with good heatpipe heatsinks and big quiet fans is a must. Athlon 64 venices and winchesters can often run passively cooled with a good heatsink and in a case with very good airflow. At worst they will need a barely audible slowed down fan to cool them. P4 prescotts will always need active fan cooling.

good heatsinks
Thermalright xp120
Thermalright xp90c
Scythe Ninja

psu
Most people know very little about what makes a good psu and their own requirements for a psu. A pentium 4 system with a high end graphics card and one or two hard drives will run fine on a 300W psu yet people rush out and get 550W psus for these systems thinking they need it.

This is a big mistake to make, especially if you want to have a
quiet pc. These high wattage pcs have very low efficiencies at low power draws (which is what your pc will be drawing 90% of the time). Low efficiency means more heat given out and thus a harder to cool pc and thus a louder pc. A lower wattage psu will be much more efficient in these ranges and make for a quieter system.

Efficiency is just one aspect, the noise produced by the psu itslef must also be considered. A lot of psus feature a dual 80mm fan system. These are louder than we want. psus with temperature controlled single 120mm fans are what we are after.

When it comes to efficient, quiet psus, one brand is easily the best, Seasonic. With 80%+ efficiency across the board and the quietest fans of similarly powered psus their new s12s are in a league of their own. Antec and enermax psus are also quite good and easier to find than the very rare seasonics.

note: Fanless psus such as those made by antec and silverstone are of course, quieter than the fan cooled seasonics. However you REALLY need to know your stuff before using one of these, your airflow around the psu must be very good. Don't buy one of these unless you either know what you're doing or are prepared to fry an expensive piece of hardware.

hard drives
If you've spent a good deal of time and money on silencing your pc, chances are that when you're done, your hard drive will be left as the noisiest component in your system.
Hard drive seeks are pretty noisy but fortunately there are a few ways you can quieten them a bit.

Decoupling your hard drive from your case is a MUST. A hardmounted hard drive is a massive source of system noise.
Decoupling your hard drive is the single most effective silencing mod you can do. You can do this by suspending your hard drive in a 5.25" drive bay using sewing elastic (don't use normal elastic bands, they dry and crumble over time) or taping your hard drive onto a soft foam base. This method will drastically reduce the vibrations being transmitted to the case and thus reduce case rattling and resonance.
For those in pursuit of silence at any cost, slowing down your hard drive speed is another option. Using Hitachi's aam drive tools you can slow down the drive a bit. This increases seek times marginally but reduces the noise produced by the drive itself and also the vibrations it transmits to the case.

Companies which make quiet hard drives are seagate and samsung.

northbridge
Most powerful motherboards sold these days have incredibly loud 40mm fans cooling the northbridge. These things can easily be the loudest component in any system.
Replacing this fan with a zalman chipset heatsink is an automatic mod for a quiet pc. This is usually sufficient to cool the northbridge however in a very high powered system it can fall short. If you use one of these, make sure to stress test your system to see if the heatsink is up to the task. If not, get a quiet fan mounted on the heatsink to get a bit of airflow around it.

This is quite good, but @ 4 years old, does it need to be updated a bit?

Dan Sanchez

2005! I suppose the psu part could be updated as new high end cards/systems will need 550w.

Rezident

+ an SSD instead of mechanical hard drives.

jozi

Rezident wrote: »

+ an SSD instead of mechanical hard drives.

Combination of both is win-win in my opinion.

SSD for OS and some files, big **** of mechanical drive for file storage.

Untill SSD's become as inexpensive as mechanical drives.