Quietening PC

Willbo

Willbo

Willbo

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Joined
28 Jul 2004
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Location
Solihull, Birmingham
I'm looking to quiet my PC down abit as its fairly loud, especially at night, the vibrations sound into the next room (just happens to be my parents room so not good)

I'm looking to replace the stock E8400 CPU cooler with the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler, it looks impressive and at a good price. On the product description it says it has a noise level of 0.9 Sone....is this good?
 
Definetly looking at the Zalman now. But can't decide between the Zalman CNPS9500-AT or the Zalman CNPS9500A-LED.....
Both look identical....

I'll be using it with my E8400 and Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R
 
Those coolers are identical - except one has an LED fan. LED fans tend not to be as quiet at very low speeds due to the transparent material of the fan blades.

A good site for PC quietening is silentPCreview, google it for a wealth of information.

Almost every cooler on the market comes with good thermal paste - some are better than Arctic Silver and some are worse but none of them make more than 1 or 2 degrees difference. Don't bother buying the arctic silver unless you intend to refit the cooler several times - just use the supplied paste.

Consider (if you really want it to be quiet) useing a passive cooler such as the scythe ninja.

If the vibrations are causing an issue it might be the hard drives rather than the cooler - consider susspending them in the 5+1/2 inch bays using bungy cord or similiar. There's loads of info on this at SPCR (silentPCreview). Also remember your PC is only as quiet as the loudest component - for shear noise under load the graphics card fan and power supply are normally the worst culprets.
 
If your looking to reduce noise levels but want the same airflow i would recomend Noctau, there stuff is pretty exspensive but definitly worth it. my comp was really loud and so i bought 2x80mm, 2x120mm Noctau fans and a Thermalright vga cooler, and the only thing I hear is my hard disks :)
 
Willbo said:
Definetly looking at the Zalman now. But can't decide between the Zalman CNPS9500-AT or the Zalman CNPS9500A-LED.....
Both look identical....

I'll be using it with my E8400 and Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R
Click to expand...

I'll go for the Arctic Cooling one. It is cheaper and as far as I can remember they are nearly silent (I used to have one). They have also got cracking reviews if you look around.

PSU's usually make a fair bit of noise. Your case fans probably do too. Arctic Cooling makes very cheap fans, but high quality ones that dont make much noise are the Scythe and AcoutiFan. Try also to buy a graphics card that doesn't make much noise and change your HD to Samsung ones! :)

That's all I can say.
 
If you don't want to mess about bungee cording your HDDs consider getting a Zalman hard disk caddy, puts the disk into aa 5 1/4 inch bay and passively cools it too. :)
 
If u wanna go the whole hog, I find a steel heavy case with noise dampening tech to be better only the coolermaster cosmos has it I belive with thick steel. But u can grab the Akasa Paxmate or this stuff here:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CM-001-AF&groupid=701&catid=7&subcat=

Which should dampen out most noises from the pc as best it can.

Id also recommend this

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=SY-000-GJ

for your hdd this will completly kill the noise from any hdd even the silent ones.

Using less fans is good but sometimes u do need a bit of airflow going, u can get silent fans available the noctuna fans are advisable I find there tad expensive but very silent and have adaptors to make them even more silent if need be.

You can even put your pc on top of a fluffy pillow, this will cut down vibrations and overall noise of pc ;)

You can grab nero drive speed to make your cd/dvd drives run at 2x that way they wont make a peep either.

So many little tricks u can do frankly ;) goodluck
 
To replace fans for the casual silencer Sharkoon Silent Eagles can't be beaten. Lots of airflow with low noise - they'll never be inaudable if you've got all quiet components otherwise but will give better airflow/noise ratio than any other 120mm fan I've come across.
 
Thanks for all your help. In my rig I have the following components which add the noise;

Gigabyte GeForce 8800 GT 256MB
Intel E8400 CPU inc Stock Cooler
Enermax Liberty Modular PSU
Western Digital Caviar SE16 320GB SATA-II (WD3200AAKS)
Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB SATA-II (WD5000AAKS)
Akasa Amber 120mm Case fans

I'm going to have a play around tomorrow when its not so late by disconnecting certain things at a time to see where the majority of noise comes from.
But I've come up with the following products I might order depending on what turns out too noisey;

CPU - Noctua NH-U12P CPU Cooler / Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro
Case Fans - NoiseBlocker BlackSilentFan XL1 120mm Fan (16db)
Case - Akasa AK-PAX-2 PaxMate Plus Acoustic Absorption Mat
HDD's - Icy Dock MB-453SPF 3-Bay Internal SATA Drive Enclosure
 
Another vote for Noctua here. Zalman are no longer the innovators they once were. Beauty of the Noctua is you can stick any 120mm fan on there you like should you later want something a bit breezier.

I'm running a quiet case myself, the HDDs are in silentmaxx enclosures and all the fans are Noctuas on ~900rpm. In an Eclipse 62 case you can have a decent compromise between speed and quiet on air-cooling. I'm considering whacking an HR-03-PLUS on the 8800GTS as all I play is live for speed (hence downgrade from relatively noisy/hot 8800GTX) and would like to get the noise down that little bit more...
 
My advise is don't bother with PaxMate - only one of those products that makes a real difference is acustipack and even that's not great as the sound tends to escape out of the big holes in your case where the fans are.

That drive enclosure will not decrease noise. Consider Scythe quietdrive if you want to use an enclosure to reduce noise. Bungy cord suspension as an alternative to enclosures is an effective and cheap solution. The main cause of noise from drives is the vibrations transfered to the case. Can't link due to competitor links on the page but there is a good artical on hard drive suspension on SPCR.

Your choice of fan is good. Your choice of heatsinks are good.

The case may make some difference but probably not enough to justify the expense.
 
I have a Zalman 9700 and it's silent. Playing Crysis the temp doesn't break a sweat with my Q6600 at around 40C OC'd at 3ghz currently. I run it at about 2000 RPM with the controller box that comes with it. Also the thermal grease supplied is very good and paints on with a brush. It looks nice inside my case and blows directly onto my rear case fan. It is also small enough so case airflow is good and the supplied bracket is excellent (I will never, ever get a fan with the push plugs like the stock again...ever).

Look online for cooling comparisons and i think you'll find this particular fan quite high up, without the embarassment of a heatsink bigger than your case..
 
V3g3tto said:
I have a Zalman 9700 and it's silent. Playing Crysis the temp doesn't break a sweat with my Q6600 at around 40C OC'd at 3ghz currently. I run it at about 2000 RPM with the controller box that comes with it. Also the thermal grease supplied is very good and paints on with a brush. It looks nice inside my case and blows directly onto my rear case fan. It is also small enough so case airflow is good and the supplied bracket is excellent (I will never, ever get a fan with the push plugs like the stock again...ever).

Look online for cooling comparisons and i think you'll find this particular fan quite high up, without the embarassment of a heatsink bigger than your case..
Click to expand...

My friend has this cooler. I disagree that it's silent at 2000rpm. I have yet to meet a fan that is silent at 1000rpm - let alone 2000.
 
Well I've just a look inside my rig to look more at what is causing the noise......I stopped the CPU fan once running, and made no difference to the overall noise, stopping the case fans and 8800GT fan made a noticeable difference. But the main one seems to be my PC is quieted with the side off, and more vibrations when its on. I've got the Akasa Eclipse case.
 
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