How to quieten an older pc

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Big heatsinks, large slow moving fans, and as open case vents as possible are the keys to a quiet PC.

That's pretty much been covered though.

One tip once you've silenced the worst offenders - If you've got a spinning disk rather than an SSD, suspending it with elastic from a drive bay reduces the noise a lot as mostly it's vibrations amplified by the case.
 
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The 710 is in and the lack of noise is superb :D

I'm looking to change the case fans next, so looking at silent 120 and 140 options. I've seen PWM versions of the same fans listed, would I need these or non PWM fans?
 
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Any pointers for the thermal paste and what product I'll need to remove the old stuff?

IC Diamond thermal paste.

Arctic Silver ArctiClean to clean old paste off.

Been using the above two products for around 8 years and I won't be changing any time soon.
 
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Once you've done with the heatsink and case fans then maybe do the hard drive mod suggested above or even better swap to an SSD if you're not using loads of harddrive space.

I have the same GPU that you just bought in a totally silent video encoding machine. The only way I know it's on is the light on the top button.
 
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Right then, my pc is almost silent. I've managed to silence the cpu fan using SpeedFan and temps are remaining stable. I've already got an SSD. The only noise now is coming from the case fans but I've got silent replacements arriving tomorrow.

Would upgrading the cpu and memory bring a noticeable performance increase for this old machine? It's got 4GB DDR3 memory and a core i5 750 cpu.
 
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Right then, my pc is almost silent. I've managed to silence the cpu fan using SpeedFan and temps are remaining stable. I've already got an SSD. The only noise now is coming from the case fans but I've got silent replacements arriving tomorrow.

Would upgrading the cpu and memory bring a noticeable performance increase for this old machine? It's got 4GB DDR3 memory and a core i5 750 cpu.

8GB is really minimum now for a Windows PC, however if you do anything that professional related such as software dev, or photoshop, then would be looking at 16GB thats the max an i5 750 can take.

Re speed, you could get a cheap first gen i7 such as the i7 860, these will give you about 25% more power due to Hyperthreading, however another option is to overclock your i5 750. The i5 750 is a great overclocker, and it's easy to get another 20% speed. Only issue is you will increase system noise. If your not using the computer for anything processor intensive I would maybe leave at stock, and just increase RAM.
 
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Would upgrading the cpu and memory bring a noticeable performance increase for this old machine? It's got 4GB DDR3 memory and a core i5 750 cpu.
Latest Windows for which that amount of memory was somewhat tolerable is Win7.
Is mass storage also some dozen years old slowest model when new HDD?

CPUs of that era are definitely quite aged by now.
Also unless getting CPU for pocket change money there's not much sense to start changing CPU.
 
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Would upgrading the cpu and memory bring a noticeable performance increase for this old machine? It's got 4GB DDR3 memory and a core i5 750 cpu.
Only if you actually need it, which you can see by: if you feel like there's a performance issue, have a look in task manager and see if all the ram is used or if the cpu is at 100% - then you know which resource is the bottleneck. You can also see which program is using the resource, so maybe you close it, change its settings, or find a more efficient replacement program. If you do upgrade anything at all, it's likely to be going from 4GB to 8GB RAM. The issue with a system this age is it's money after old rope, better off saving up for a new pc at some point in the future. For now, your system should be okay for general web browsing n stuff. Glad you got the noise down.
 
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People saying this i5 750 is old. I actually have an i5 750 as a HTPC with SSD, 8GB Ram and GT720 running stock, and for You Tube, Kodi it's fine. It will also stream 4k video.

My main computer is an i7 8700, so yes this i5 750 is old but for general usage there still totally fine.
 
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Alright, looks like I'm upgrading the memory.

I've currently got a Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit installed.

Would I be better off buying an identical dual channel kit to bump it up to 8GB, or buy 1 8GB stick? Or 2 new 4GB sticks?
 
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The cheapest way to do it would be to clean your heatsinks and install quieter fans. As it’s a very open case, I’d suggest be quiet Silent wings 3. There are much quieter cases out there if you’re up for rebuilding eg Define C.
 
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Not sure if it has been mentioned yet, but if you have no issues with temps you can get the low rpm adaptors which you put in line to drop the speed of the fans and as such noise to.

I like to use them in builds that are going into areas where there is adequate space/cooling but noise is a concern and budget is strict. You can use a cheaper fan that way and still get low noise.

Food for thought anyways as theyre very cheap
 
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Silence has been achieved. I'm now thinking about changing my monitor to something more recent.

I currently use a 24" Dell 2407WFP-HC monitor that's over a decade old. I've got no issues with it but was wondering if I'd see much benefit upgrading to a newer IPS screen of the same size. The resolution of my monitor is 1920 x 1200 but the newer 24" screens all seem to be 1920 x 1080. I'd lose some space vertically but would an IPS screen outweigh this? Quite like the look of the ASUS VZ249HE.
 
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