Silence is golden...

[BoomAM]

Hi.
Ive been using my Laptop all day as my primary system, with a USB mouse/keyboard plugged into it.
Its near silent. And ive fallen in love with the silence.

Im waiting for OCUK to get back to me about my broken mobo (it best be replaced with a board that meets the requirements of my original board [passive cooling, sata2, DC support]).
Anyway.
What ways can i use to make my system as quiet as possible?

Specs, noise wise are:
SI-120+Akasa Silent 120mm.
Antec TrueBlue 480W Rev.1.
VGA Silencer on X800XL.
3x Hitachi SATA2 HDDs.
2x Coolermaster 4in3 cages+stock fans.
1x Coolermaster Stacker Stock 120mm exhaust.
1x Coolermaster Stacker Stock 80mm exhaust.
Case is CM Stacker.

Ive got a feeling that most of the noise is coming from the PSU, as when anything else in the system is unplugged to stop the noise, theres no change in noise level.

Ideas/Tips?

Thanks in advance all.

 

[Xionic]

well if thats the case and it is the PSU, go for a modular PSU, or a enermax noisetaker

 

[Phil99]

What sort of system are you running? That seems like a lot of fans to be running.

In here at the moment I have a single 120mm exhaust fan, 92mm fan on the CPU and the standard graphics/psu fans.

You could probably lose the 2x fans in the drive cages, the 1x80mm exhaust, lower the rpm of the CPU fan a tiny bit along with perhaps the 120mm exhaust and depending on the noise of the PSU get something like a Tagan to cut out that noise.

That all depends on how warm you're running at the moment though, when running a quiet system unless you spend a lot you have to compensate noise for heat, but you obviously don't want to overheat your system.

Another thing to try would be disconnect all the fans and HDDs and see how noisy the system is, then attach the HDDs with no fans to see how noisy they are to see if anything needs to be done about those.

 

[BoomAM]

You could probably lose the 2x fans in the drive cages

Not an option. I get a 30*c drop in HDD temps with those drive cages. I could replace the fans though.

Another thing to try would be disconnect all the fans and HDDs and see how noisy the system is, then attach the HDDs with no fans to see how noisy they are to see if anything needs to be done about those.

Already tryed all that. Seems to be the PSU.

 

[Phil99]

Something like a Tagan would be completely silent from more than 50cm or so away, but they tend to run a bit warmer than your current one probably is. I'm only mentioning Tagan here as the one I had was completely silent compared to my current Enermax which is quiet, but still audible, there's probably a couple of others to choose from as well.

Best option sounds like getting rid of the main culprit (PSU) and then experimenting with lowering the rpm of some of the fans to get it down even further if necessary.

 

[Kaiju]

Get a Seasonic S12 PSU, it is barely audible even at close proximity. Also, for constant HDD seek times i'd suggest some Samsung Spinpoint drives if you are looking for absolute quiet.

 

[BigDom]

Tagan is best choice from my PoV - using two and basically can't hear either PC.

 

[BoomAM]

What are the Antec NeoPower Modular PSUs like?
Ive heard good things about them.

 

[Eliminos]

Speaking from personal experience, for Tagans the Easycons are a fair bit louder than their non-modular cousins. The non-modular Tagans are very quiet, but not silent.