Noise reduction?

[Britdude]

Hello everyone,

Im wondering what is the best cost affective way to reduce noise pumping out of my PC , im thinking rubber dampers but i don't know where to find them. any other suggestions? would buying water cooling lead to less noise due to less fan rpm (i have to 2 fans) but i don't really want to spend the earth.

Regards

 

[Mr5oh]

The most cost effective? That depends, the cheapest thing you could do is add resistors inline with your fans to reduce the voltage, thus slowing the fans down. Of course if your computer already runs hot, this may not be the best choice.

Watercooling generally does decrease your noise, but you will have to decide if the amount of money is worth the decrease in noise.

If you only have two fans, I don't see how your computer can be that loud, especially if they are stock fans. Some cases are loud, but generally stock cases are relatively quiet, so it won't be cheap to try and get it silent.

As for the rubber mats I assume you mean the sound deadening material that you can get, and not those rubbber covers for fans to stop vibrations. There are several sites here in the US that sell the kits to do one case for about $10, of course from your username I assume you are from Britain, so this probably doesn't help you much. I found this stuff at a local surplus store, they had a speaker section, and they sold pieces of mat in one foot squares for $0.95 USD, which is pretty cheap. You might want to check local speaker stores, or music stores.

What kind of temps are you currently running?

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[Britdude]

thanks for the reply.

The thing is, is that i don't know which is making the noise, and take it from me the noise is annoying my 3 family PC's are ALOT quieter (there's are dells mine is built)i have to turn the speaker quiet high to drown out the background noise lol

The cpu temp is at 45C to 55C so not that high really.

PC specs:

P4 2.8GHZ PRESSCOTT
SATA MAXTOR HARDDRIVE 80GB
9800PRO 128MB
512MB RAM
MB - GA-8IPE1000-G INTEL 865PE

 

[Mr5oh]

Might try unplugging one of the fans. Heck I found my temps aren't affected that much even when both my case fans are unplugged. Of course once both case fans are unplugged I realize how loud my video card fan is. I'd say the solution is probably quieter fans, or slow yours down. This can be down with a resistor, or there was some sort of wiring trick I have been reading on the internet to do this. Something about using a 5 and 12 volt wire to power the fans, giving you 7+ volts. If you do some searching you should be able to find this, as I don't remember exactly how it went.

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[o1die]

I use a zalman "fan mate 1" rpm adjuster on any fan that's too noisy. You can also switch to a quieter power supply. Coolmax makes one for $100 that uses no fan. I use a sparkle 12cm single fan, and it's extremely quiet when surfing the net, and increases speed when under load.

 

[endyen]

First thing to do is find out where the noise is coming from. The prescott stock fan is usually quite noisey, but the hdd could also be the culprit.
Try removing the case fans, then disconnect the hdd, then stop the hs-fan for a second. I know, stopping a prescott fan sounds drastic, but 1 second should be safe. That would only leave the psu, and the graphics card.

 

[Crashman]

Actually if he had 4 pin fans, the cheapest thing he could do would be to wire them for 7v. And that's a much better solution than using resistors, because all resistors do is turn energy into heat.

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[Crashman]

My system is around 28db with the case open, and much quieter with the case closed. Of course, I use water cooling, only 1 case fan at 7 volts, I had to add a 50mm fan to my northbridge for overclocking (also at 7v), and I have a passively cooler water cooler with submerged pump. The bulk of my noise comes from the hard drives. And when I close it up, very little noise comes from anywhere except the back, which is far from my ears and pointed away from me.

Oh, I have a Panaflow in the power supply too.

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[ChipDeath]

I'm fairly certain the Prescott Fan is the culprit. I built a few P4 2.8C systems for work - they're all northwoods apart from one, and the Scotty's stock fan is really whiney compared to the other systems - they all use the same case & PSU, but the difference is really noticeable.

See if you can replace the Fan, or maybe the whole HSF.

---
Epox 8RDA+ V1.1 w/ Custom NB HS
XP1700+ @200x10 (~2Ghz), 1.4 Vcore
2x256Mb Corsair PC3200LL/1x512Mb Corsair XMS PC4000 2.5-3-3-7
Sapphire 9800Pro (VGA Silencer Rev3) @418/742

 

[Britdude]

My system is not that noisey when i first turn it on, but my room is facing towards the sun so alot heat builds up during the day, ok in the winter that won#t be a problem but i guess i like things to be perfect 😀

When my pc is under stress the cpu fan runs at 3500-3700 rpm is this high?

I think fiddling around with the volts is way out of my league so i won't be doing that, i think ill buy a fan control unit don't nkow which 1 never really looked at them, then when i get the money ill just put a watercooling unit in and also i want to overclock so i tihnk it would be worth the money.

 

[Crashman]

3500-3700 is typical for a mid-sized CPU fan. If your system is kicking up the fans, it's doing it because it's set to. Some motherboards use smart fan control, which kicks up the fans when parts reach a certain temperature. Some boards include software that lets you adjust those aspects.

On the other hand, some systems have temperature detecting fans. And that would interfere with manual control of their lower speed.

Find out which you have. I had a Fortron Source 350W power supply that was whisper quiet most of the time, but extremely loud when it kicked up the fan. That power supply also had a manual control to set the minimum speed, and I found that increasing the minimum speed from a whisper to a mild "whoosh" would keep the thing cool enough that it never had to kick on full speed.

You could do similar if you had software controlled fan speed. As for temperature sensing fans, you'd have to disable the automatic feature to increase the minimum speed enough to prevent them from going into full-speed override.

And I should probably take the time to simplify everything I just said so typical users can more easily take it in...

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