teh Forum

I have two filthy big tower computers and they're both very noisy. I'd like them to shut up. I also have things to say about Nick Berg, but I don't think I will. So I'll ask about PCs instead.

Does anybody have any experience of tackling this nauseating problem, either from the inside or from the outside? I'm thinking more in terms of a cabinet deal that goes over the top of both the noisy bastards, but I'm aware that heating is also an issue.

I'm thinking a bong-like structure might be quite effective for cooling and noise insulation, but I can find no literature online about PC bongs.

A nice German has put his ideas up but it looks like hard work. 20 hours of hard work in fact.

http://www.carsten-buschmann.de/noise-protection/

Any thoughts?

I recently had this same problem with my PC, I just replaced the motherboard fan with a heatsink designed for replacing noisy northbridge fans and replaced my CPU fan with a very quiet one that resembles a case fan. Quiet now, and loving it. The motherboard's northbridge fan was the most annoyingly loud of them all, they have always been since manufacturers began putting them onto motherboards. Usually within a couple months (2-3) that fan never fails to becoming more annoying than a leach in your armpit.

I also replaced the NB Fan on my motherboard. My system is quite quiet now. I'm using the standard Intel P4 cooler, which isn't that loud in the first place. Only using one case fan too. The rear exhaust fan is much more important than a front intake fan, so you can disconnect the front fan too. By blowing air out the back, cool air will be brought in anyway from the front and side.

Welcome Ocean - I have seen people that have done crazy things like Dynamat their cases, but the best way to quiet down a noisy system is removing extranious case fans and buying a quieter CPU fan, Northbridge fan (if your Northbridge has a fan, which it quite posisbly won't) and even replacing the Power Supply with a quieter unit.

Check out PC Power and Cooling for some options.

A cabinet for your systems doesn't necessarily mean they will overheat. Make sure there is room for air to move from the front of the systems to the back. You always want to have one fan pulling in air from the front of the case near the bottom and exhausting it out the rear, usually through the power supply. Try it out and just monitor the heat. If you are not overclocking or running an ultramega video card you should be all right.

Thanks!

So it looks like a recommendation to tackle it from the inside then. This calls for some investigation. ender, I don't suppose you can recommend any brands of quiet fans available in Japan? And if you buy in the US, do you buy online (fishing for an URL here)?

I don't know much about leeches, but I do have a colony of No-See-Um bugs living in my sweaty skate pads. They bite insistently and the bites itch like crazy for days. There are some of them in cycling gloves too.

I think I might try a handsome jerry-built cabinet as well as looking at quieter fans.

If you put them in a cabinet, make sure there is some outside ventilation. (Which will keep the computers alive, but lessen the sound dampening.) Panaflo makes really quiet fans, and they should be available to you. Don't rely on just the power supply fan for exhaust. There is usually a spot for an exhaust fan in the back of the case which will be near the video card and ATX connector area. Put a fan there that blows outward. You really don't need a fan in the front bringing in cool air, as the exhaust fan will do that inherently. If you move air out the back of the case, then other air has to move in to take its place. That will cut some noise. Pushing in cooler air is not as effective as pushing out hot air. Also, on the back you'll be mounting to the case metal, which will vibrate less than the plastic mounts in the front. A general rule is, the bigger the fan, the quieter it will be. (This depends somewhat on how fast they are turning, but a larger fan doesn't need to turn as fast to move the same amount of air.) Fans on video cards and chipsets will be the worst. Then CPU, then case. If you want to really quiet the system down, look into the Zalman CPU coolers. They use a passive heatsink with a 90MM fan that mounts above it. They work really well, (both in cooling and noise reduction.)

Thanks J3RK.

I've been checking out fans - is 18 dB quiet for a case fan? Quietest CPU fan I can find is 22 dB. Panaflo seems to be a little above that, so I guess it's quiet.

Also, I read that changing the PSU fan can be really dangerous (and I'm not that familiar with the inside of my PC). Is it doable/worth doing?

And, has anybody tried the SpeedFan shareware?

It's not very hard to mess with the PSU, but if you don't want to, you can get one that's quiet already. The Silencer line from PCP&C is nice. If you just unplug it and leave it that way for a few hours, it should be discharged enough to mess with it. You will have to remove everything to get the fan out though. Try to avoid the big capacitors and such.

Actually, you may not have to remove everything to get it out, but sometimes the PCB is in the way, or the fan is soldered to it, so it may not be worth it unless you're comfortable messing with all that. The PSU fan is usually not the loudest part anyway.

Yeah, I would probably just buy a new power supply before I actually tried to replace the fan unless I had a power supply that I really liked and the fan just stopped working.

This is from a few months ago, but it might help: Tech TV: Build a silent computer.

Cheers y'all. I think I've got enough to go on here. Now I have to get down to it.

I installed SpeedFan, but I'm clearly too ignorant to set it up properly, so I'll have to wait until I've put in new fans and figgered out what's what.

Mr*, judging from Yoshi's sound stats, 18 dB is pretty quiet.

I've opened up one of the noisy bastards, and I've identified 2 problems


How do you get this thing off?! I've tried releasing the plastic levers but the heat sink just rattles around inside the plastic cradle, but nothing comes off. I've tried that gingerly tugging thing that you do inside computers, but without any progress.

Also the case fan unit appears to be glued to the case.

A Cisco certified friend who works in Okinawa suggested I just unplug the fans (although he is also a certifiable nutter). Is this feasible? My CPU is not overclocked, and has the biggest heat sink I've ever seen...

If memory serves me... After you pull up those two white tabs from either side of the cpu fan, one one side of each pair of "legs," there's a little notch that hooks onto a tab on the heatsink mount. Pull each one a little bit, to clear the tabs and you should be able to yank it out.

heres an illustration:

That's a really very accomplished technical drawing Mr* - so much so in fact, the 'FAN' label is redundant.

However, where can I find the HAW flakes in my system? I took out a breeding colony of dust bunnies, but the HAW flakes were not apparent. Are they perhaps inside the power unit?

I'm almost looking forward to getting back in there and tugging gingerly at 'HERE'.

-----

ender, would you care to expound a little on 'really liking a power supply'? I'm quite curious about what that would entail. I suppose for some people there's a corollary emotion to absolutely fucking hating parts of their computer...?

yea... I didn't have my protractor or t-square with me, so the diagram is not as precise as I was aiming for. If you look hard enough though, you'll definitely be able to find here and here.



as for haw flakes...


they're everywhere... you just have to believe to see them.

Great thanks!

Believing is seeing eh? Always works for me...

Um, well I followed Mr*'s advice, and dipped into 'Inside Your PC' by Ginger Lee Tugging, and got the damn plastic cradle off. But lo!, the fan seems to be very firmly fixed to the heat sink, indeed, immovably so. Before I go yanking it off, are they normally one unit?

I have this mutherboard http://www.msicomputer.com/product/deta ... 45GE_Max-L

and I'm looking at this fan

(at http://shop.tsukumo.co.jp/goods.php?cat ... 4387000841 for those who can see Japanese). Is that a heat sink attached to the bottom of the fan? It's just a matter of plonking it on the muther?

Much obliged as always.

I know what Haw flakes are now too, Haw Haw, now I just need to try some.

Haw Flakes are the official stackable snack of the Monkey Lair. With any luck, Haw Flake tower induced strength will help defeat the damn Sigma Team once and for all.

Haw may not be able to help with your fans...or maybe just lend moral support. If you have extra case fans that seem superfluous but cannot be remove it is fine, and maybe even better, to just unplug them. You certainly do not want to run the system, even for a couple seconds, without a fan running on your CPU.

The CPU fan you have is the stock retail Pentium 4 fan. Any high performance/low noise aftermarket P4 fan you buy (such as that sweet PCP&C model there) will attach right where you removed the Intel fan. The heatsink will be attached, a lot of time by small screws. I recommend using the combination that comes together. If you haven't read already, it is a good idea to dab a bit of thermal compound between the cpu and heatsink. Many nicer heatsinks will come with a bit already on them.

I guess what I meant about the power supply is that I pretty much would never attempt to replace the fan inside one. I have removed working fans from dead units, but never replaced a fan in a functioning unit. If I had purchased some sweet 450W $150 power supply and the fan went out and for some strange reason I could not just return it for replacement then I would maybe attempt the fan job, but barring that situation I would just buy a nice quiet unit.

The HAW spreads!



I knew that the overseas monkey's would join the Cult of the HAW-Flake eventually. The only way to attain spiritual enlightment, success, and happiness is through HAW. Everyone knows that somewhere deep down. Not everyone wants to believe in HAW though.

I have just ordered one Cyprum fan for each of my 'puters, and a 13 dB fan which will go in the cabinet deal that I plan to build for the sake of it (I do own a drill after all - God I felt good after buying that!). I'll try unplugging the front case fans too.

Tsukumo don't seem to have HAW flakes on their website. I wonder why not? If I had some, maybe I would chew less gum.

Thanks for the advices.

You dirty HAWS. I will never become a corporate HAW to the evil HAW empire hell-bent on the corruption of the freedom-loving world of snacks (not even when you tempt me with mint chutney)

You know not the joy of HAW.

You will.

Well now I have my Cooler Master TM fans in place, and the case fans unplugged (is this weally, weally OK?) and WTF, the power supply fan (on one) and video card fan (on the other) are NOISY BASTARDS.

This is a bore. I must now make a cabinet. Cabinets in furniture stores do not come 50 cm deep for some reason. They do not want you to be putting two noisy bastard computers in them.

I am also considering buying myself a house for 18 million yen which is a girly-style stone's throw from the sea, just so the sound of the waves will drown out my noisy computers, and the sea breeze will cool them down, even with their case fans unplugged (ulp!).

Figured I'd dig up this thread for a little dead horse beating...

My standard northwood cpu fan has grown to sound like a jet engine on full blast. I'm gonna replace it this weekend, but I just wanted to see if any of you guys know of a p4 heat sink that does the same job as a fan+heatsink setup?

I have a particular fondness for Coolarmastar's higher end fans, although I can't really comment too much on their decibel ratings. If yours has grown louder then pretty much any nice new fan should be an auditory breath of cool clean and quiet air.

I find CoolerMaster and Thermal-Take to be loud, (no matter how quite people say they are.) I was just discussing this with Seth (The quiet PC master of Doom) Zalman is definitely the quietest way to go. The others are excellent cooling solutions, especially if you overclock, but for quiet cooling, use Zalman. Big fans equal lower RPMs, which equal less noise.