I want to make my computer smaller and quieter

[Rob_Merritt]

My computer is too big and too noisey. I would like to use a new case and motherboard but something tells me that might not be enough. So I'm here fishing for advice.

Here is my current setup.
Video card: ATI Radeon X800PRO 256MB GDDR3 AGP 4X/8X Video Card - Retail
Power Supply: THERMALTAKE Silent Purepower W0014RU ATX 480W Power Supply - Retail
Motherboard: MSI K8N Neo Platinum Socket 754 NVIDIA nForce3 250Gb ATX
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Newcastle Socket 754 Processor Model with Retail fan & heat sink
Memory: GeIL Value 512MB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) With Extreme Performance Heat Spreader
Optical Drive: NEC DVD+/-RW ND-2500A Black
Hard Drive: Maxtor drive, 250 gigs, 7200 rpm, 8 meg cache, 9.3 seek, ultra ata133
Case: COOLER MASTER PAC-T01-EK Black All Aluminium Alloy ATX Mid Tower

[Kyle Wilson]

http://www.cappuccinopc.com/

[Aleck]

You should look at some of the Small Form Factor PCs (also called mini-PCs) that are out there. Most of them require you to build it yourself, but I'm sure there are vendors who sell full machines, too.

The site I'd look at is www.sfftech.com. They do pretty good and consistent reviews of the offerings.

You could also look at a high powered desktop replacement notebook, if that strikes your fancy.

[Rob_Merritt]

Thanks, but I said I want to make my pc smaller and quiter. Not buy a whole new system that wouldn't be very functional anyways.

[Winterrain]

I would advise to swap fans first.

Get a decent CPU aftermarket cooler.

http://www.thermalright.com/

Check the XP120 - I would add a Papst 4412 FGLL or Noiseblocker SX1 fan to that and here we got a very quiet system

Then get a nice cooler for your GPU

http://www.zalman.co.kr/eng/product/view.asp?idx=149&code=013

The VF700-CU can be set to very quiet noise levels.

Get a Northbridge passive cooler:

http://www.zalman.co.kr/eng/product/view.asp?idx=71&code=014

(works great if you got a bit of airflow in your case)

I heard the Silentmaxx cases have a good price performance ratio. Im not sure about it as I´ve never seen one in front of me. Most of my friends have CM Stackers (way bigger then your praetorian) or Lian Li´s. Lian Li PC-V1100 series is a sexy and silent case but the question is are you willing to shell out 250 dough?

I dont think you will be able to shrink it much more then your current Praetorian case.

If you got some noisy case fans, swap them for quieter ones or reduce the voltage for the fans. You could go and get some ready made resistors that shrink the voltage to 7 Volt.

[steve]

My computer is too big and too noisey. I would like to use a new case and motherboard but something tells me that might not be enough. So I'm here fishing for advice.
The first thing to consider replacing is the heatsink/fan on the CPU.

You could try unplugging some items and seeing what actually makes the most noise. In your case, it's probably the CPU fan, the GPU fan, and case fans (probably in that order).

You could consider something like an Antec Sonata case. Instead of having small case fans, it has a single 120mm fan in the back. It's pretty quiet.

Head over to Quiet PC (http://www.quietpc.com), and browse the "quiet" parts at Directron (http://www.directron.com) for some other ideas.

[BaconTastesGood]

Read this article http://bookofhook.com/Article/Misc/EasyStepsforaQuietPC.html

[Aleck]

Thanks, but I said I want to make my pc smaller and quiter. Not buy a whole new system that wouldn't be very functional anyways.

Sorry -- when you said make it smaller, I assumed you meant looking at new cases (isn't that pretty much the only way to make it smaller?) :wink:

There's a great yahoo group called silent-pc that shares lots of good info on silencing your computer, too. The four big sources of noise are your case fans, CPU fan, PSU fan, and video card fan. Try playing around with them to figure out which one(s) are the source of your greatest annoyance, and go from there.

Like Steve said, QuietPC and Directron are your friends in this endeavor. :) However, getting into quiet PCs can be an expensive (and neverending) proposition, as you'll eventually replace just about everything in your PC in the quest for silence.!

[JPR]

Check out Silent PC Review (http://www.silentpcreview.com). They have an extensive list of recommended parts as well as plenty of current reviews and DIY projects, if you're so inclined.

As for silencing your current system, you will want to replace the cooler on your video card, replace your power supply, and replace your Heatsink/Fan. The Zalman cooler that was mentioned in EvilIdler's thread would be a pretty good choice.

[Toddy]

How many case fans do you have? If youve got the standard gaming rig component of four or five, get a fan control panel ($20 or so from Newegg) and turn them down as low as possible. I did this with mine and cut case noise by a good 60%.

[mono]

$370 is probably a lot more than you want to spend, but just in case...

The Antec 480W Neopower PSU is pretty much the best PSU out there; the 120mm fan is very quiet and the modular wires make clean wire management practically a non-issue.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817103924

Mnpctech.com is the site of a custom modder that sells modded cases, not ricer, neon jobs, but built to allow for good airflow and quiet use.
I bought a case from him, no longer offered, but this SC195 mod is pretty nice. The Ultra Quiet version w/ pre-installed noise-dampening foam is closest to the version I bought. Combined w/ a quiet CPU fan and the Antec PSU makes my PC extremely quiet.

I figured it was a bit indulgent, but over time, it'll pay off, because I really can't foresee a need for a new case until/unless the BTX standard becomes a requirement in the next 3 years or so...http://www.mnpctech.com/SC195.html

[Gordon_Bleu]

I"ve used Zalman Fanmates to quiet my existing fans...

http://www.frostytech.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=883

[Winterrain]

The THERMALTAKE Silent Purepower is not a VERY noisy PSU. If you power it down with the 2 knobs (I hope you got the version with the frontside knobs?), its ok, not silent, but there are worse.

You also dont need to place a fan controller in it. You can simply plug the fans onto the 5 Volt rails of the molex connector, if you push the contacts out and exchange them (the yellow 12 V with the red 5V).

For 370 US I could build you a passive cooled watercooling system, easily.

[Rob_Merritt]

I've decided to go ahead and buy a fan control from newegg. Really just because I can and found one that has different color info displays and all sort of neat stuff.

However I don't think that is my major problem. Upon the advice, I decided one wuite evening to open up my case and start disabling things to determine where the noise is coming from. Here is what I discovered from loudest to quietest.

1. Hard drives. Forgot I have TWO hard drives and one of them has a high pitch whine. Sounds like a freaken fan but now its a drive. Its my secondary 160 gig so it may be replaced very soon.

2. CPU fan. Actually its pretty close to which is the loudest. The cpu fan or the hard drive.

3. DVD drive. If there is a disk in it it rumbles quite a bit. I think some padding might help.

4. The five case fans. Individually they are quiet. Together they put out quite a bit of noise

5. The videocard fan. Not really much noise at all

6. Power supply. Hardly hear it but since it did make some noise, I figure I should list it.

So my plan is: New heatsink and cpu fan, replace squeaky hard drive(s), pad the dvd drive, and get a fan control.

[headtrip]

http://www.atechfabrication.com/products/heatsync_6000.htm

these things seem pretty bad ass the case is the heat sink as well. At least im pretty sure thats how they work. May be a bit pricey though :?

[TriggerHappy]

I've decided to go ahead and buy a fan control from newegg. Really just because I can and found one that has different color info displays and all sort of neat stuff.

However I don't think that is my major problem. Upon the advice, I decided one wuite evening to open up my case and start disabling things to determine where the noise is coming from. Here is what I discovered from loudest to quietest.

1. Hard drives. Forgot I have TWO hard drives and one of them has a high pitch whine. Sounds like a freaken fan but now its a drive. Its my secondary 160 gig so it may be replaced very soon.

2. CPU fan. Actually its pretty close to which is the loudest. The cpu fan or the hard drive.

3. DVD drive. If there is a disk in it it rumbles quite a bit. I think some padding might help.

4. The five case fans. Individually they are quiet. Together they put out quite a bit of noise

5. The videocard fan. Not really much noise at all

6. Power supply. Hardly hear it but since it did make some noise, I figure I should list it.

So my plan is: New heatsink and cpu fan, replace squeaky hard drive(s), pad the dvd drive, and get a fan control.

Some rubber grommets for your hard drives, dvd drives, and fans might help a good bit. It'll be a ton cheaper than replacing any of your stuff, too.

Read up on volt modding your fans. 7 volts is almost always enough for a case fan, especially if you have 5 of them. The difference in sound is huge, too. It's very easy to do, too.

Why do you have 5 case fans? Are you getting negative air pressure (too much out, not enough in)? That's bad, and noisy. Looking at your specs a 7volt 120 in and 7volt 120 out should be enough. If all you have is 80mm fans use a 12 volt in and 12 volt out.

Lastly, how much money are you looking to spend? With a couple 7 volt 120mm case fans, a passive Zalman gpu cooler, rubber grommets for your hard drives and dvd drive, and the Zalman reserator you can have a nearly silent PC.

[Rob_Merritt]

The 5 fans in my case are 3 going in and 2 going out. So the net should be positive air pressure inside keeping the inside cool and dust free.

I was looking to spend under $500 so anything should be covered.

[BaconTastesGood]

Unless you have a VERY hot machine, you really don't need 7 case fans. In fact, you can probably get by with a single 80mm exhaust fan clocked at 7V.

I'd be leery of rubber grommets for the hard drives, they tend to heat real badly with those (the connection to the case allows the drives to dissipate heat over a much larger area). Just get a nice and quiet drive (Seagate or Samsung) and then if you're real psycho, a SmartDrive enclosure.

[Rob_Merritt]

Today (which was different than yesterday and likely to change tomorrow) I'm kind of leaning to building a small form factor and silent pc. Here are the cards at newegg that are reasonably powerful and are cooled with huge ass heat sinks instead of fans. Any comments about the cards below?

SAPPHIRE ULTIMATE RADEON 9600XT Radeon 9600XT 128MB DDR AGP 4X/8X
XFX PVT44AWA Geforce 6200 256MB DDR AGP 4X/8X
SAPPHIRE RADEON 9600 256M Radeon 9600 256MB DDR AGP 4X/8X Video Card
ASUS EN6600/TD/256M/Silencer Geforce 6600 256MB DDR PCI-Express x16
GIGABYTE GV-N68128DH Geforce 6800 128MB DDR AGP 4X/8X Video Card
GIGABYTE GV-NX66256DP Geforce 6600 256MB DDR PCI-Express x16 Video Card
GIGABYTE GV-RX80L256V Radeon X800XL 256MB GDDR3 PCI-Express x16 Video Card

[Chris Nahr]

Even if you change your opinion on silent PCs, I don't! If these cards are any good I might even throw out my perfectly good GeForce FX 5900 XT, just to have a video card without a fan.

[Kalle]

Cristoph, there are 3d party heatsinks you can mount on your videocard. No need to throw it out yet.

[Chris Nahr]

Yeah, but those that I've seen are huge and also don't fit on any card. I was hoping for new card designs that ran cooler so they'd just need a small heatsink.

[Chris Nahr]

Today (which was different than yesterday and likely to change tomorrow) I'm kind of leaning to building a small form factor and silent pc. Here are the cards at newegg that are reasonably powerful and are cooled with huge ass heat sinks instead of fans. Any comments about the cards below?

SAPPHIRE ULTIMATE RADEON 9600XT Radeon 9600XT 128MB DDR AGP 4X/8X
XFX PVT44AWA Geforce 6200 256MB DDR AGP 4X/8X
SAPPHIRE RADEON 9600 256M Radeon 9600 256MB DDR AGP 4X/8X Video Card
ASUS EN6600/TD/256M/Silencer Geforce 6600 256MB DDR PCI-Express x16
GIGABYTE GV-N68128DH Geforce 6800 128MB DDR AGP 4X/8X Video Card
GIGABYTE GV-NX66256DP Geforce 6600 256MB DDR PCI-Express x16 Video Card
GIGABYTE GV-RX80L256V Radeon X800XL 256MB GDDR3 PCI-Express x16 Video Card

So I've looked around the web for info on the passively cooled GeForce 6600/6800 cards since I discovered that I could get the Gigabyte ones from an online retailer.

What I discovered wasn't pretty. Not only are those heatsinks freaking huge, making the card 3-4 times as heavy as an actively cooled one, but they still can't prevent the card from running at up to 120°C under load! That's after only 30 minutes or so.

Nvidia is reported to say that this temperature is okay for their card but some customers reported otherwise, and one testing site said that even though their Gigabyte 6800 ran fine they couldn't overclock it by even 5 MHz without it locking up. Absolutely no breathing space there.

And there's another thing... these cards run so hot that they heat up the rest of the computer to such a degree that the remaining fans (CPU, power supply, case if present) have to work harder! One user reported having to install two extra case fans to dissipate the heat generated by the Gigabyte 6600GT model. End result: the passively cooled card was louder than an actively cooled one that didn't need the extra case fans.

So basically it's not a good idea to get these cards since they just weren't designed for passive cooling. However, I also found that the small 6200 -- which is now available for AGP and which runs cool enough for a small heatsink -- delivers fairly solid performance (at least 2x GeForce 5200) at a ridiculously low price (around €70 incl VAT).

It's kind of hard to get solid info on this chipset since the tech specialist sites tend to ignore budget cards but what I've seen looks okay. There's a "TurboCache" variant that substitutes main RAM for onboard RAM and is therefore crap, but I haven't even seen one of those for sale -- apparently they only appear in OEM deals such as Dell PCs. The 6200s that were sold individually were all the regular models with 128 MB on-board.

Since there aren't any action games I'm looking forward to on the PC I think I'll just get one of those and keep the 5900 XT in reserve. The 6200 should be fast enough for Civ4 and GalCiv2... maybe also for the new Age and Empires installations.

[Kevin J Baird]

Unplug it and hit it with a sledge hammer. Quieter and smaller... And free...

K

[Winterrain]

What about watercooling? I have my PC in the bedroom, its so quiet that I can sleep next to it and no, im not deaf. Loudest thing in my system is my harddisk.

[sluggo]

I've got a 6600GT in a Biostar mini-PC -- it's quiet, runs everything well, and I've never had any heat issues.

[Backov]

How do you get a watercooling setup going? Seems like it would require pro installation?

[Nick Walter]

What about watercooling? I have my PC in the bedroom, its so quiet that I can sleep next to it and no, im not deaf. Loudest thing in my system is my harddisk.

Interesting, I've often wondered about watercooling. Are the water pumps and fans for the radiator quiet? Does the watercooling replace all the fans in the system including the PSU?

[Winterrain]

Interesting, I've often wondered about watercooling. Are the water pumps and fans for the radiator quiet? Does the watercooling replace all the fans in the system including the PSU?

Depends on your conditions. You can use passive cooled PSU, but I would generally use a fan cooled one, as IMHO the passive are not really as good as the fan ones, yet. Little power and too pricey. I use a Enermax 700 (660 Watts) coolergiant with fans on low. I cant hear it.

I also use 2 x 120mm fans on 5 Volt for case ventilation. There are things like voltage regulators etc. that could get hot and should better be cooled, even if its just a hiss of wind.

The pump is quiet as long as you make sure it does not give any vibrations to your case. I hung my pump on 2 gigantic O-Rings and its absolutely silent, though its a bigger one.


How do you get a watercooling setup going? Seems like it would require pro installation?

You just need to be a little careful and not a little crafty. There is a severe difference between watercooling in the US and in Europe.

- The US market uses high power pumps with bigger tubing diametres because your radiators and watercoolers are more restrictive on the waterflow

- The Euro market uses smaller pumps and smaller tubing diametres, as our coolers are not so flow restrictive.

To h20 cool a system it takes a small bit of planning:

1.) Determine what you´d like to have cooled:

I got my CPU my GPU and my Northbridge cooled. I think CPU and GPU make sense, while the NB is a can, not a must. If you got a passive NB cooler, sometimes its enough but it depends on your cooling needs. I had a 40mm minicooler on my MSI board that was loud as hell and I decided to cool it with water

2.) Decide your components:

You need:

- 3 coolers: CPU GPU NB
- 1 pump
- 1 radiator (eventually fans, but you can use silenced 12cm fans on 5 Volts)
- 1 compensating reservoir
- Hoses and connectors

For example, my system:

Alphacool NexXxos XP bold cooler for my CPU:

http://www.alphacool.de/upload//mid/12913_1.jpg



Heatkiller 2.1 Nvidia for my 6600GT - Ram is sufficiently passive cooled

http://212.227.231.249/watercool/cms/shop_pics/10100.jpg



Alphacool NexXxos NBX-A cooler for my NB:

http://www.alphacool.de/upload//mid/12312_1.jpg



Radiator:

Monster Radiator MoRa 2 Pro with fan grill on the backside. The thing is huge (428 x 388 x 57mm), but a dual or tripple 120mm radi with 120mm fans @ 5 Volt should be sufficient.

You can equip it with up to 9 fans, but thats overkill. I got 3 silenced Noiseblocker 120mm fans on 5 Volt in it that I just need to activate when the room temps go beyond 75-80°F, the rest of the year it cools my system passively. Current room temperature is 85°F and my CPU temp is just about 103°F (AMD Athlon 64@2250MHz) under load.

http://212.227.231.249/watercool/cms/shop_pics/20310.jpg



Reservoir: Watercool AGB-G with bezel

http://www.alphacool.de/upload//mid/15805_1.jpg

I currently use a Eheim 1250 pump, but will change to a Laing DDC pump soon. The DDC is used in the watercooled MAC systems as well. Most waterpumps are pumps for aquariums. I use US-made Tygon hoses with screw connectors as they are the finest on the market.

Eventually, you need to cut some holes in your case for hoses and the radiator, but a DREMEL is your friend :D Its all very doable. I bet there are US forums for watercooling, I just currently dont know any.

[Rob_Merritt]

So far I have cut the noise down over half.

1. I removed the one hard drive that was whining.
2. I added rubber washers to the DVD drive and the hard drive. I mounted the hard drive in the back.
3. I turned on "quite and cool" for the cpu in the bios
4. I got a Vantec fan controller and turned all my case fans to low.

I'm pretty happy with the resualt so far. My next steps will be..

1. Replace the stock cpu fan with a later more quiet one.
2. Add some sound damping material to the case.

[playingwithknives]

Nice link on the Zalman northbridge cooler, my new Asus A8N has a horrible 9000 rpm fan on the northbridge and its the nosiest item in the PC. Rather than replace the board I can use one of those.

Water cooling is nice, but a bit complex for me. I built a Shuttle for my mum a while back, that had a pipe and radiator system that combined with the power pack fan, was very quiet.

[Winterrain]

A word of advice: Be VERY careful when replacing the NB cooler. Most of the time its bolted on and has additionally a small sticky heatsink thermopad on it. You need to wiggle it a bit and don´t pull it off brutally. If it goes not off slightly, apply a bit of warmth from your hairdryer, as this will add a bit of viscosity to the glue. You can clean the surface of the NB with alcohol/ethanol afterwards - please dont use acetone containing cleaning fluids, like nail polish remover.

[Chris Nahr]

I've got a 6600GT in a Biostar mini-PC -- it's quiet, runs everything well, and I've never had any heat issues.

What brand is that? The passively cooled Gigabyte one?