quieting my pc

Willbo · 19 Aug 2006 at 21:46

what can i do to quieten down my pc?

i am running the below with all the factory supplied fans within a Coolermaster centurion pc case (i think i cant remember the pc case name) but i'm sure they all use pretty much the same fans

Zefan · 19 Aug 2006 at 21:50

BE WARNED.

Silencing your PC can become avery very costly goal. I investing in W/C to quiten stuff down (Back in my nooby days) and all I can here now is my PSU (Even though it's silent ) and my hard disks. The thing is, I'm actually more annoyed by the noises I've unearthed by silencing others. Just be aware that it can be more annoying spending money and not getting very far than just leaving it.

I'd advise swapping in some slower fans and maybe replacing your 3D Card's stock fan (If it's even noisy). Try turning other fans off and running components individually to really work out what's making noise.

Dr.EM · 19 Aug 2006 at 21:56

I recently did this. I changed the CPU cooler, GPU cooler, PSU and case (fancied a new case and it had 120mm fans). It is a lot quieter and was probably worth doing, but isn't silent. I can hear the hard disc and optical drive now a lot more though. Something that should help and is free is trying the 7 volt mod on your case fans.

Amp34 · 19 Aug 2006 at 22:27

The standard X2 coolers are pretty noisy (although quite good). If you haven't already I would suggest changing that for a start, get a good heatsink and stick an akasa amber 120mm fan on it and it will be pretty much silent.

fish99 · 20 Aug 2006 at 01:33

Changing the CPU cooler is a doddle and doesn't affect any warranties so there's no reason not to do that. A 5.25" bay fan controller would be a great idea for your case fans. 12cm fans at full speed are damn loud. With a fan controller you can slow them down to under 1200 rpm and they will never bother you again.

The X1900XT is another matter though since you probably lose the warranty by changing coolers. Whether it's worth doing would depend on how loud it is, I've never heard one. VF900 would be the best cooler to put on it, but if the card breaks and you need to send it back and put the original cooler back on there's the question of whether they could tell you had swapped coolers. Getting that sinks off the vram would be an issue too.

CPU/GPU coolers aren't just quieter, they also cool much better. VF900 takes 13 degrees and 4 dBA off an X1800 XT at idle, and 20 degrees and 11 dBA off under load.