How To Get Your Gaming PC Running Quietly? 62
Thanks to Penny Arcade for its 'Hook Up' column discussing ways to build your gaming PC to run as quietly as possible. The author indicates: "I was able to reduce my Tiny God's noise level by over 30dB (!) measured with my RadioShack SPL meter", and goes on to list ways to silence components such as power supplies ("...the power hungry components that an elite gamer uses... can be extremely noisy") and fans of various kinds ("it's often a toss-up between your CPU fan and your PSU cooler in regards to which one is the loudest"), before pointing out: "You might have 1,000 watts of power driving your speakers, but sometimes nothing beats the sound of silence."
hint: look for the power plug (Score:2, Funny)
Re:hint: look for the power plug (Score:2)
Target shooting?
Re:hint: look for the power plug (Score:2)
Re:hint: look for the power plug (Score:2)
Alternatively... (Score:2, Interesting)
The Hook Up (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The Hook Up (Score:2)
Why wouldn't cellphones be a better modern-day katana? You can customize/detail them more so they are more uniquely special items. In fact, considering they give you almost instantanous communications around the world, they would be more "magical" than iPods.
Re:The Hook Up (Score:1)
easy way (Score:3, Informative)
Re:easy way (Score:3, Informative)
The PSU fan is variable speed, and at top speed is also rather noisy. Adding a second case fan at the front helps keep the PSU fan spinning a bit slower.
And the rubber mounts for the drives were a bit dissapointing. I don't notice any difference between the rubber mounds and plain old solid mounts.
But the case sure is shiny, and I appreciate that.
I think for the same price, you could get
Re:easy way (Score:3, Interesting)
After that, the most noise was coming from the case fan. What I did with that was rewire a power plug to provide 7V (swap the fan's ground and +5V). It's much quieter now.
At this point, the noisiest thing, as far as I can tell, is the northbridge fan. Unfortunately there isn't room for Zalman's NB heatsink there because of the CPU heatsink (all copper, huge). I'm tempted to try
Re:easy way (Score:2, Informative)
The rubber mounts only do some good for hard drives and such that really vibrate. Most newer ones don't seem to have that problem anymore.
Shiny Shiny!
I am still pretty happy with my sonata - the other computers near it have needed quietening just to try and compete now.
Re:easy way (Score:2)
A quieter case fan definately helps out.
Re:easy way (Score:1)
But I LIKE the noise! (Score:4, Insightful)
If anything, I should probably install more fans in my CPU case, and not because it needs the extra cooling.
Re:But I LIKE the noise! (Score:1, Redundant)
My office is the same way- 2 computers running all the time (mine, and my wife's Mac, which disappoints me whenever it hibernates).
Re:But I LIKE the noise! (Score:1)
Re:But I LIKE the noise! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:But I LIKE the noise! (Score:2)
"He said 'The streets were dark tonight, it was like another century, with dim lamps and candles lighting up the icy trees and the clouds and a covered moon.' She said 'What kind of people make a city where you can't see the sky a
Re:But I LIKE the noise! (Score:2)
Re:But I LIKE the noise! (Score:1)
I mean, it's a wild ass guess, but maybe other people have priorities and desires that are different then yours. Nah, can't be it. I must have the Space Madness.
Re:But I LIKE the noise! (Score:1)
My solution (Score:5, Insightful)
1 x USB extension coord
1 x VGA-cable extension coord
1 x sound extension coord
1 x PS/2 keyboard extension coord
1 x nearby room with a door
Basically, I just moved the PC in behind a nearby door. Making the PC make it's noise in another room. You can of course also use a closet or similar.
PRO
This makes the PC go almost 100% quiet, and you do not have to invest into an expensive fan or similar stuff.
CON
I seem not to use the cd-rom any more, but some of you that DO use cd-rom (or other hardware devices) may be prepared to walk some steps each time one has to change the cd or similar (i use nocd-cracks or daemon tools anyways).
Re:My solution (Score:1)
Re:My solution (Score:3, Insightful)
Or if you're on DVI then you can get a much better signal over a longer distance.
Re:My solution (Score:1)
Cheers, Malc
Re:My solution (Score:1)
Re:My solution (Score:2)
Re:My solution (Score:1)
Re:My solution (Score:2)
Mini HOW-TO (Score:5, Informative)
Swapping out HDs makes a big difference and is one of the less invasive upgrades towards a quieter PC. I replaced a Western Digital 60 GB drive with a Samsung (who knew they made HDs?) and the noise/whine difference is substantial. I could hear the WD spin up at startup from the next room (wwwwwwhhhhhhhEEEEEEEEE!) and it continually produced a high-pitch whine while idle. The Samsung produces imperceptible levels of noise at startup or idle and its seek chatter is very low.
Thermalright [thermalright.com] makes heatsinks. Or more accurately, "massive machined chunks of copper". There's a reason many of their models require bolts to install, they'd pull the socket right out of the motherboard without the additional support. The heatsinks are great besides the heft because they don't include an integrated fan, you can buy a quiet 92mm Panaflo or Pabst fan and quietly cool even top-end CPUs.
Installing a fan controller helps squeeze the last few decibels out of the case, but you might run into the problem of the controller producing a rapid clicking noise at low voltages (the Vantec NXP-201 suffers from this problem, but is dirt cheap). SpeedFan [almico.com] is a software fan controller, but I've never quite figured out its usage.
A PC with a low noise floor makes listening to music more enjoyable as the dynamic range comes through without having to crank of the volume to drown out the fans.
To hangout with the hardcore "suspending harddrives with elastic / undervolting motherboards / 0 db computer" crowd visit Silent PC Review [silentpcreview.com].
Re:Mini HOW-TO (Score:2)
ROAR (Score:2)
Kind of like the internal combustion engine. Probably when we're all using super-vacuum-cooled, silent, 2 degree kelvin quantum computers, I'll record the fan noise from this baby and play it through my headphone implants.
I will be called everything from nostalgic to relic, but I won't be able to hear it over the fans.
Re:ROAR (Score:2)
On a side note, has anyone considered mounting a handful of small speaker/mic pairs around the case, and doing active noise cancellation?
Good tips there! (Score:2)
For those of you that were going to respond: "fan noise at a LAN party? I can't hear my fan over my speakers!", we ban speakers from our LAN parties due to conflicting noises from people who get separated makes for a confusing experience. Bring headphones and keep t
Wonderful (Score:1)
$#$!
(-2 Troll, Offtopic)
Re:Good tips there! (Score:1)
Woohoo! Where do you host your lan parties? From the sound of it, you guys don't like to use sound at your lan parties, but you'll tolorate those who do. Mind if I join? I promise I won't use the sound to my advantage *that* much
Best site around (Score:4, Informative)
Great article (Score:1)
Re:Great article (Score:1)
Hard Drive noise (Score:3, Insightful)
One is a mounting bracket made by Zalman [newegg.com] that includes rubber bumpers that fit between the bracket and the case. This prevents the transmission of noise from the drive to the case, which is much more likely to have some surface that resonates at the frequencies produced by hard drive seeks. The downside is that your case is actually a pretty good heatsink for your hard drives, and unless you get a good quiet low-flow fan to blow over the copper bars on this bracket, you can expect HD temps a few degrees celsius higher than normal.
Another way to reduce HD noise during seeks is to activate the "noise reduction" feature that a lot of modern hard drives have. This feature increases seek time in order to reduce seek noise. If you're running Linux, hdparm has a switch to adjust the NR setting for your hard drives.
Quite simple, really... (Score:1, Troll)
A Good Place to get Quiet PC Parts (Score:1)
Check your GPU fan! (Score:1)
PS. I don't have one of those monster GF-FX
Re:Check your GPU fan! (Score:1)
Phase inversion? (Score:3, Interesting)
For those who may not have run across the concept before, the basic concept is this: For any soundwave, there is an inverse soundwave. This inverse sounds identical by itself, but when played at the same time as the original, the result is silence.
At any rate, there's probably a terribly good reason I've not heard about this concept being applied to PC-muffling, and if so, I'd love to hear it.
Re:Phase inversion? (Score:3, Interesting)
Loud piece of Hardware (Score:2, Interesting)
water cooling (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:water cooling (Score:2)
Re:water cooling (Score:2)
What I did (Score:3, Interesting)
The CPU:
I run an OCed Barton 2600+ (OCed to 3000+ @ 200 FSB) with an SLK947-U and a quiet fan on the heatsink. Running the fan throttled to around 65 i get decent temps AND it overclocks flawlessly.
The Disks:
2 7200 RPM hard disks sitting on the bottom of my case on top of some foam. This keeps them from vibrating the case, which amplifies the noise considerably. The samsung SP80N ( i think) really is a quiet disc AND has a 3 yr warranty!
The Graphics Card:
Just a stock powercolor radeon 9700pro, I don't really have any sound problems with it.
The Case:
I just put some old T-Shirts on the sides of the inside of my case. I have good ventillation with 2 throttled fans, one intake (filtered) one outtake. They have a somewhat audible air moving noise, but the fan motors are pretty much silent (good quality fans). Wooshing air doesn't bother me, but I could easily get rid of that were I to have my computer in a room that doesn't seem to be hotter than the temperature outside.
silenpcreview.com (Score:2, Informative)
Be warned, though... They are quite obsessed, and some of them have gone to extremes in their quest for silence. But their reviews are very well-written, and the forum is a great source of help and advice.
alternatively (Score:2)
that's an option I'm looking at right now