NOISE DAMPENING KITS Do they make much difference?

[gab344]

Total noob regarding experience with any kind of acoustic dampening.

Case is a Graphite 780T

Kind of stuck running an old MSI gaming 1060 6gb o/ced on stock cooling (Aggressive fan curve) and 4960k Devils canyon @ 4.8o/c with 240 top mounted AIO, (both overclocked as far as I can get them till a,I can actually buy a 3080 FE and b, Intel bring out a PCIe 4.0 chipset so I can use latest gen NVMe SSD's).

Couple of 7200rpm HDDs in as well.

Would a kit make a any/lot of difference lowering general Fan and Hard drive noise?

 

[Defy Belief]

Minimal, there are plenty of videos on YouTube where it made little to no difference.

Will likely increase temps of the case too, I'd just say reduce your fan curve / overclocks slightly. Not a lot you can do about vibrating hard drives, mounted with the rubber mounts etc.

 

[chaparral]

I always found the biggest difference you can make is if the PC case is mounted on top of the desk right next to you then move it onto the floor under the desk
That way the case/fans are much farther away from your ears and also the desk work top will act as a noise blocker

Sorry i guess this ain't going to help you if your PC case is already on the floor under the desk

 

[EsaT]

Mass damping could prevent/lower vibration induced noises from bad fans or (basically normal) HDD vibration.
That happens by adding literal weight like some bitumen etc dense mat into metal panels of the case.

But for airborne noise you couldn't do anything, because of direct noise escape paths allowing free escape of noise from that case.
Or if you tried adding sound absorpting stuff into those holes it would also block airflow and kill cooling.
Only thing you can do for that noise in that case is stopping its creation in the first place:
Meaning lower fan speeds and such.

And there's no sense to wait for Intel to bring otu anything with Zen3 likely making Intel bad choise in everything in week and half.

 

[pc-guy]

Noise damping material will help with the HDD and also invest in some rubber isolation pads for HDD mounts then there is less “structural noise”.

the fan noise is harder to sort out as fan needs air to work. Naturally if the there is less air fan has to work harder but if too much free air then it might as well be an open box etc.

The only way I think you can minimise fan noise is to use as large fans as possible and run them at as low RPM as you can have them running without your thermals going through the roof. So for radiators maybe do push and pull to have good air flow into the case at low RPM and a couple large case fans.

I do find noise damping materials put on side panels help a lot to keep noise within the case, within the case. Basically those thin metal sheets are like a drum skin, will resonate with any noise very easily. Therefore by putting damping material makes them more resilient. And put case on the floor on carpet is good. Sitting on desk with no isolation is bad - then you will be able to hear every whine and click.