(Figured I'll just post this here in case anyone else is considering a similar project...)

I have a dual 866 desktop running in a Lian-Li PC-60 case that I was liking in just about every respect except noise. The Tyan 230 MB is behaving, the case has gobs of space and fans -- but it sounded like a 707 taking off. It was really getting on my nerves.

I decided to throw the book at it, more or less, with different soundproofing add-ons (some of them expensive). Before starting, I put a Radio Shack SPL meter on a tripod 16 inches away from the front panel of the PC and recorded noise level (with everything else in the vicinity turned off).

The initial reading was 58db (C weighting)

Step 1 was to line the interior of the case with a product called DexDamp. It is a better Dynamat -- doesn't smell, easier to apply (but would be a *bear* to remove). I even put this on the back of the motherboard tray. I also added some 1/2" mylar-coated foam sound-proofing sheet on the PC's big side panels. I got all this stuff from a local marine pump supply place called Hamilton Jet.

Result after step 1?: 55-56db. And some of the more annoying vibration/harmonic noises seemed much reduced.

Step 2 was to a add a pair of nastily expensive CPU coolers from Germany called Silverados. I got them from a place called Plycon (www.plycon.com). they include resistor adapters that allow you to drop fan voltages to 6 or 9 volts. I'm not running 1.x G AMDs or anything, so I set them to 6V.

Result after step 2: <=50 db Yes, a slight problem with my methodology. I dropped off the bottom of my meter's scale. I should have taken a second set of readings from closer to the box (but I didn't want to get too close lest I read the sound level from a single source like the front fans. Oh, well!)

Step #3: I added a fan controle module (also from Plycon) called a Digital Doc 5. It has 8 thermistor sensors and 8 corresponding headers for fans. I installed 5 sensors. I don't let it turn off the 2 CPU fans, but i let it control the other case fans. I used a program (called CPU-Burn, I think) to heat up the CPUs then set the case fans to come on at a range of temps between 29 and 31 centigrade. Those fans mostly stay off now unless I fire up a game or something demanding.

Not sure what the sound-reducing effect of step 3 is, bu the overall effect of the effort was gratifying. $60 for a CPU cooler was a bit much, but it is a lot easier to sit next to this PC now!

Oh, another nice little program I discovered during this process is a Windows utility called MBM - Motherboard Monitor. And a spin-off benefit may be that I'm going to add a touch of DexDamp to the front door panels of my car to see if I can get rid of a slight buzz that occasionally comes from the right-front speaker.

[edit = typos]

Jim, great project! I HATE how loud PC's are now! Does anyone make quiet fans?

I get that buzz from the front right speaker too... lemme know how that turns out.

What about the main power supply fan? As I recall, PC Power And Cooling makes "Silencer" power supplies which are quieter overall.

Glad to see some info on the effectiveness of the soundproofing material. I had come across this recently, and was wondering how effective it really was. I'm going to be building a new system this summer in time for QuakCon, and want to make it as quiet as possible. I dropped the desire to overclock after the Celeron 300 days, so that should help a bit. I'm aiming at building a very small case, so that could lead to the need for more fans to help move the air around.

I wish one PC maker out there would actually sit down and try to engineer a decent, but quiet PC. The best that I have seen is the Compaq iPaq Desktop, but it has no graphics expansion capabilities.

The best expandable design I have ever seen was the Apple Cube. It has no fans, had a replacable AGP video card (that could include a fan), replacable hard drive, memory expansion, and wireless networking addon. I'd love to see a PC designed like that, with the goals around making a small and silent, but powerful system. Some cube owners have even upgraded the processors to a dual processor config.

I guess the past few years of working on quiet laptops, and more recently a quiet iMac have spoiled me. Or it could be all the work around 8 proc fan noise from hell servers at work.

Does anyone make quiet fans?

Well, I see a lot of hoopla about silent fans, and I have seen a few box fan models that tout a different fan blade shape (can't remember the URL), but I am a little skeptical of most of the claims. The Silverado's claim to fame rests on using a squirrel-cage fan (two, actually) for each cooler and they assert that these fans move more air with less noise than box fan varieties. My research in some other areas suggested that this was true and my results suggest as much (but it would have been interesting just to change the existing fan to 6V with lower RPM to see what the noise level was like...). Up to a point, though, more CPU == more heat == more fan == more noise.

Tony, I had already added a *supposedly* quieter Enermax power supply to this particular PC and, yes, it did seem to reduce some vibration-related noise (I figure a cheaply-made power supply can produce extraneous vibration noise regardless of the amount of air that it moves). I looked at some reviews of the Silencer power supplies, but was a bit concerned at suggestions that they reduced their noise levels just by reducing air movement by default (and that reviewers' temperatures were higher than they should be)

Drakino, one of the items on my PowerBall list (a loosely organized stack of the things I will do when I win a multi-state Lotto) is to install the ultimate extended whole-house vacuum. Not only will you be able to have outlets everywhere into which you plug a vacuum nozzle, but you will be able to switch some of these outlets into a low-pressure, always-on exhaust system that will take a 3" outlet from your various PC cases and recycle the exhaust heat into a hot tub heat exchanger!!

[edit: "Silencer" power spplies, actually]

The way we do it in TV Studios....

We use a high volume/low speed meathod. Basically, instead of having a pair of small ducts moving air real fast (and loudly) we use a dozen or so ducts moving air reeeeeal slowly. But the volume of air is huge because there are so many ducts.

An ideal solution would be to have the fan INSIDE the box, not on the outer edge. And have a long duct connect it to the vent on the outside.

My Atlhon XP 1600 machine is dead silent. Of course it's due to the $300 worth of crap I bought from www.quietpc.com. I was worth it.

/me considers their SilentDrive enclosure and wonders if he could shoehorn that into the casing of his Jupiter prototype.

Time to ask this question on the other BBS...

I had doubts about that flower cooler on quietpc.com. Does it work ok? How difficult was it to get those clips on?

Sean

. I was worth it.

Yes you were!

I was too. It was a goodly chunk of change for the various sound bits, but worth it. I saw those Silentdrive enclosures and I was tempted, but I have 4 drives stacked in the bootom of this case with very little space. If I added the enclosures, I think airflow would be zilch.

QuietPC has a neat little fan contol module for about 10 bucks. I almost got a couple of those, but then I stumbled across a how-to for a very simple fan control with a temp sensor that I'm going to try in 2 other PCs. The instructions are at: http://www.heatsink-guide.com/tempcontrol.htm Even with my pathetic near vision and wimpy soldering iron, I think I can build a few of these!

Fans are one thing, but another thing that makes A LOT of noise are harddisk drives. Actually I found that the noise my CPU and PSU fans make is negligible compared to the noise my drives make (7200 RPM drives). I've seen some solutions for that, but they almost always mean I have to put my HD's in to a sound-absorbing box, which I then have to put into a 5.25" slot. I could do that, but quietPC mentions that their Silentdrive casings are 7200RPM compatible 'in most cases' (here), however, their dutch site mentions THE SAME product as only 5400RPM compatible. (here) Anyone ever used on of those Silentdrive boxes ? Do they work with 7200rpm drives? (Mine are 80gig Maxtor drives)

This is my case. It's the Chieftec DX-01BD. I absolutely love this case. Not only for it's colour - a cool black-, but also because it's *very* solid. AND because I can open it up with very little effort, much like I open the hood of my car.

I only have one problem with it :
As you can see in pic 10 & 11, it's possible to add a fan to the HD holder case. This case then just "clicks" into the PC casing. A very good idea, weren't it for the fact that that fan is then sucking it's air from the front through the air holes provided. And this DOES make a lot of noise. I believe this is because of the air slipping though the holes in the case, rather than the fan itself. (could be wrong though).
I of course could always diconnect the fan, but I don't want to leave my HD's without any active cooling. After all, as said before, they are 7200RPM drives and they DO get pretty hot.
Quietpc.com mentions Ultra-Quiet Case Fans here. Anybody tried one of those yet? Do they really differ that much?

The first thing to remember is that there is 2 elements to quiet efficient PC cooling - CPU and case cooling. If either of these are noisy or inefficient, then you will end up with a noisy or hot PC, so both need to be tackling both elements in tandem.

CPU cooling is fairly basic nowadays as there are some good coolers out there - use a cooler processor (eg Athlon XPs are cooler than non-XPs), don't overclock to extremes, and choose a cooler that will accept a 80mm fan rather than 60mm as it allows slower/quieter fans to achieve the same airflow as a faster/louder fan. In the past 6 months, the Alpha PAL8045 has been really popular. The Silverado, and Zalman Flower are also well respected. I'm not sure about stuff thats come out in the past couple of months though. Stick a good quiet fan on it (papst, panaflow are respected for their noise levels.)

Case cooling is a trickier subject - without efficient case cooling, you cannot get good CPU temps. Period. But every case fan you add potentially adds noise as the fans are basically open to the atmosphere. So it's about striking a balance. The idea of using temp-controlled case fans is a very good one - when the CPU is idling, you should be able to get good enough temps using only 1 quiet case fan and a quiet PSU fan. But when you're playing RTCW 3 hours straight you probably will need another fan to kick in. Again, panaflow or papst fans are good quiet fans.

www.avsforum.com has an Home Theater PC forum which is a great resource for this kind of information.

I have the same case, actually it's the white one, and well I paid extra for the Antec sticker on it not knowing they sold them under Chieftec. But anyway that's my case, and I installed that fan.

I also installed two others in front... But to step back a second, I currently have my setup as follows: One power supply fan, one case fan in back, and a CPU fan which are all three on at all times, all wired into the power supply.

I have a second group of fans however: Another rear case fan, three! in the front - two in the lower front of the case and that third in front of the hard drives. There's also a 486 heatsink and fan over the chipset for the motherboard. These are all wired together and all are also run off the power supply. The trick here is that I took all of the grounding wires and ran them together and then through a single on/off switch that I stuck in the front of the case.

When I'm surfing the internet or watching a DVD (I use my PC-DVD to watch movies on my television), I have the switch off and the small number of fans going. It's not as quiet as what most of you are describing, but it's never bothered me either. But if I'm gaming, or crunching DIVX movies or anything else intensive, I flip that switch on and launch the other four fans into motion. Yes it's loud, but it causes a mini tornado inside the case to keep it cool. And when I'm gaming the sound is turned up so loud I don't hear them.

Really my point is, if anyone's borderline on what is "adequate cooling", you might simply run a $1 switch to the ground wires so you could turn on or off your noise makers as needed.

read more info on the silentdrive casings here: http://www.quietpc.com/silentdrive.html

Ive had 2 ibm 7200 rpm drives running inside silent drive enclosures for over a year with no problems.

Sean

I actually had two fans in the back installed as well, but I removed those since everytime I powered up my PC I thought it was going to take off by itself.

I like the idea of starting up more fans as you need them, but this isn't much good to me since I already think the CPU/PSU/videocard/HD fan combo is too loud.

The first link in my post is actually the same as the one you are providing.
But as said, the Dutch reseller claims on his site that it's only good for 5400RPM drives. This confused me a bit.

But since you state that you're using it with 7200rpm drives for more than a year now I guess it's pretty safe. Thanks.

The whole thing about fast-RPM drives is that heat WILL kill them, period.

FAST DRIVES MUST BE COOLED in order to survive any length of time. The more I read about the silentPC enclosure, the more I think it's a bad idea.

I've had some server drives go bad which I thought were adequately cooled. The problem is that there were three hot drives mounted right next to each other in the tower, and the feedback-loop of shared heat killed them after a few months.

Sometimes you need fans blowing directly over your drives if you want them to last.

Off topic but in case anyone needs some cheap storage, CompUSA has some 80G 5200 desktop drives for $99. They are Maxtor manufactured but CompUSA branded.

I'm not saying it's as good as fans, but the SilentDrive (or whatever it is) enclosures has a large metal plate that presses against the top of the drive and one that presses against the bottom. These plates are the same pieces of metal that attach to the main case of the computer, so it should do a reasonable job of transferring heat. So it's not like they're not being cooled at all. I'm sure that it would be better than your stacked drive example, but obviously not ideal from a cooling perspective.

Personally, I have one drive that's way louder than my others, and I've been thinking about getting just one of these to house that drive.

Sorry about reposting the link, I just saw the dutch site link. As long as the drive dissipates 6.8 watts of heat or less, it should work ok. Check the specs on your drive to be sure.

Sean

I don't think that drive enclosure would like my 10k spin 18GB Seagate Cheetah.

My drives are all very quiet - even the Seagate. The other two are Maxtor ATA-100 7200rpm 60GB and 20GB. From looking at the pictures on the site, I have a hard time believing those drive cases would allow the drive to run any cooler than without it. Quieter, yes, cooler, no. Having a piece of metal on the top or botom doesn't increase the surface area for heat exchange. And the connection of those plates to the rest of your case doesn't seem much beyond the drive's own attachment to side rails or 3.5" drive bay.

I'd probably invest in a new hard drive instead.

The CPU coolers and the video card cooler look excellent though. You'd have to be very careful with the video card cooler and the newest graphics cards though. The asics get very hot. Definitely a site I will be using when I re-build my PC. Every current fan in my case is a piece of garbage (my machine is very very loud unfortunately - and I need good air circulation because the case is surrounded in plastic which acts as an insulator).

Bruno

And the connection of those plates to the rest of your case doesn't seem much beyond the drive's own attachment to side rails or 3.5" drive bay.

No kidding. I share your and Tony's skepticism about the thermal benefit of these. Also, even if the attachment conducted heat to the chassis, I'm doubtful of how much that accomplishes. Lian-Li makes some pluggable drive chassis that are much more heavily heat sinked (they even differentially rate them for 7200, 10K RPM, etc) and they make a big deal about their aluminum cases running cooler, but I don't think that's where it's at. Past a certain point, if you don't move warm air out of the case as needed, all the heatsinks in the world aren't going to help. The case of the noisy PC in my original example always seemed reasonably cool; I pretty much sacrificed any heat-conducting value it had by essentially insulating it with DexDamp and foam. I worked instead on better fans and fan control.

FYI, Enermax has some 80mm case fans with a built-in manual speed control that are around $10 at www.coolerguys.com. I just got the parts need to built another cheap (~$10 in parts) multi-fan thermostat for another PC; not as fancy as that Digital Doc, but $50 cheaper.

I can tell you that the silent drive enclosure works very well to cut the noise. I can also tell you that on a machine that was running for about 2 year straight with it, and a 5400 rpm drive (I forget the brand--can check if anyone really cares) it was fine... UNTIL I hut it down for about a month. Moved it upstairs where I was going to use it for an in-front-of-TV machine, and the drive simply wouldn't come back up. In frustration, I pulled the silent drive off, and did a kindof rotating shake, so as to try and loosen up the spindle (ok, I'm not that technical.. the drive simply didn't spin at all). This manuever actually worked, and has been fine since. I am concerned however, and won't be using the silentdrive in the future.

What I found, that is a MUCH better solution, is to use the newer Seagate Baracuda (sp?) IV drives. They are so quiet, you'd be amazed. Better even than a normal 5400 rpm drive in a silentdrive enclosure. And they are 7200 rpm..

Other worthwhile additions are any "silent" technology from Zalman Tech (http://www.zalman.co.kr/english/product/product.htm). I've got the video board heatsick, and the cpu cooler, which use larger external fans blowing on copper-fin heatsinks. The larger fans are about 20-21 db, vs. the smaller fans which are pretty noisy.

The fan's from quietpc are also good, and I've swapped out standard powr supply and case fans with these, with great results.

The end result is a nearly silent 1GHz PIII machine with two 60 gig drives, an ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon video board, which doesn't overheat, and is so quiet, most poeple don't hear it all all in the living room, where it's kept. I, of course, hear it, but it's *extremely* quiet! A Far cry from my other systems, where the scsi drives, and Slot 1 CPU coolers just won't keep quiet.

Hope some of this helps.. Let me know if anyone has specific questions that I might be able to answer..

-Tim

Two 120 gig Rio Cars and a few spares