PCA Forums

The recent issue of PC World talks about how to quiet your PC (and mine is sure noisy). Here are some of the products they recommend. And do you know anything about them?
**PC Power and Cooling Ultra-Quiet Silencer 235 Watt power supply. (The same company sells PSUs up to 400 Watts. How do I know how much power I need? I have an XP 1800+, 40GB 7200RPM hdd, 2 CD drives512 DDR Ram, ABIT KR7A mobo, GeForce 3 Ti200 vidcard, I'm NOT a gamer or overclocker).
**PC Power Sand Cooling Silencer Auxillary Cooling Fan.
**A passive heatsink (no fan).
**Molex's Silent Drive (plastic case to cover drive). The magazine talks about it working with a 7200RPM hdd, while the company"s website says up **Dynamat Extreme Computer Kit (for vibration dampening)
**Anti-vibration mat.

Any experience with these? Thanks 4 help.

Welcom to PCA!
here's my take on the stuff you listed:

PC Power & Cooling 235w P/S - WAY overpriced and WAY underpowered for your system... try the new Antec True Power 300w or higher powersupplies.. they're supposed to be fairly quiet and Antec has always been very reliable and affordable

Silencer Fan - Again... there are cheaper alternatives like Panaflo and Vantec Stealth fans which have 27ish CFM air output and still maintains a low 21dba

Passive H/S - BIG NO NO in AMD CPU's since they produce way too much heat to dissipate w/o a fan.. there are quite a lot of coolers to choose from that are quiet... since you don't overclock, it may be feasible to use a Dr. Thermal cooler or combine a Thermaltake AX7 w/ a Panaflo fan (Blade's our main man on AMD cooling)

Silent Drive - complete waste of money since HDD noise is fairly low and pretty much negligible in most cases

Anti-vibration/noise mats - from what Nexus_7 told me, it doesn't help too much... but if you must.. go for it


All in all, in my opinion, the folks at PC World (as much as I like to read them) tend to be at times out of touch with things and do not always know what they're talking about... and in this case, this seems true

Anyone have anything to add?

chotto, thanks for the input. I'm using 2 stealth fans and one thermaltake with a sensor. The power supply is Antec 400watt, but not the new quiet one. It's only 3 months old. Would it pay to go new or might I replace the fan on the old PSU? I'm kind of electrically challenged, although I've built to PCs. Is that a job better left for someone else?

I also must admit that a cheap case is killing me. I wanted to mod it and put in a window and some other good stuff and bought one called Storm That may account for some of the noise. I learned my lesson and used an Antec case on my wife's computer.

also...what heatsink combo you using on that cpu? some of them are unbareably loud. also, you might want to look into other things...if the fan places on the case have lots of holes or some other Stupid design think about cutting them away and using a normal fan grill. and another option is to get a bay bus devise from http://www.highspeedpc.com so you can control your fans. I use those on 2 of my systems. they have 3 settings low, high, and off. Might be worth a shot if you cant pin it down another way.

Greg

The fan inside the PSU is relatively easy to fix if you know how to solder. It's a standard 12volt fan. Take a measurement (in millimeters) and you can order one in the same size. Suncom and Panaflo are two fan brand names I can think of off the top of my head that come in quiet versions for a reasonable price.

Try Newegg.com or Directron.com for quiet fans at reasonable prices. Maybe someone can suggest some other places.

The fan is usually soldered directly to the PSU circuit board and it can be a bit challenging to solder it to that. To make it easier I just cut the wires on the old one and splice the wires of the new fan to the old wires. Use heat shrink tubing (you can get some at radio shack) to cover the splices neatly.

There's nothing in the PSU that can harm you as long as the power cord is not connected while you work - no dangerous voltages are stored in capacitors.

If you have a good CPU heatsink now, you can just replace the fan if it's noisy. Heat sink fans don't last long in my experience anyway. No reason to buy a whole new HSF when a new fan will do.

If the case has a front intake fan you want to find a quiet one to replace that with - that is usually the fan whose noise you notice the most.

Don't over-do it on fans. Unless you're overclocking, a properly ventilated case with good air flow usually only needs an exhaust fan in the PSU to stay cool (in addition to the HSF of course). Tie up all your ribbon cables out of the way so you have a clear path from the front intake, across the top of the card slots and CPU, to the exhaust vent.

If you're overclocking or you have ventilation problems, then most cases are designed to have an intake fan in front sucking air in.

KEEP YOUR FANS CLEAN! Even the quietest fans become noisy once they build up even a thin layer of dust. Buy a can of compressed air at Office depot and blow your fans and heatsinks out once every month or two.

Don't let the dust stay on the fan too long - the dust will throw the fan out of balance which will wear out the bearings eventually making the fan noisier.

There are other tricks you can try. For example I have a full tower case with TWO intake vents in front, designed to each house a seperate fan. I've found I do need intake fans on this case or it gets too hot BUT two fans are VERY noisy. One fan doesn't work (actually makes it hotter - I guess the air is forced back out the second intake).

My solution was to buy two very quiet Panaflow fans, and then wire them in series so they each got half the normal voltage (6 volts instead of 12 volts). This made them substantially quieter by reducing the RPMs. Although this reduced their airflow, the combined airflow from both fans was adequate to do the job and I can barely hear them with my ears against the case.

Thanks for the great advice, Old Fart (and Nexus 7) . I had been considering a baybus or rheobus for some time and now might be a good time. B]I wonder if you can/should control the CPU fan with it?[/B]

I'm not much at soldering. Would replacing the whole unit be a dumb idea?

I have this heatsink. Tell you the truth, I bought one that got pretty good reviews, but mostly because of the way it looked (bad, bad, bad).
http://www.nexfan.com/29/331.htm?674

Other ideas were good as well.

From another OLD FART

yea, you can control the cpu fan with one if you have it set up that way.

I have mine setup with the CPU fan, rear case fan, moded fan behind the cpu, and moded third fan into the PS.

Greg