quiet PC

[Madison Kelly]

Hi,

   May I make a few suggestions?

   I build (and have been building) systems for some time now and to be 
honest the current crazy to stick a fan on everything (which I admit to 
being swpet up in a few years ago) is a waste for almost all 
applications. The hard drive cooling fan can almost certainly go. Even 
the Seagates, which I love and get notoriously hot, are fine without 
auxiliary cooling.

   Now I assume by chassis you mean the fan built into the power supply. 
Am I right or is there a seperate auxiliary case fan? At any rate, Antec 
Inc. makes an 80mm cooling fan with a hub-mounted thermistor that only 
raises the speed of the blades (and thereby the sound levels) when a 
certain thresh hold temperature is exceeded (lowest thresh hold is 20oC 
where it start to climb from 1630rpm @ 21dBA pushing 28CFM and climb up 
through to 50oC where it hits 2900rpm @ 34.5dba pushing 45CFM). 
Replacing the PSU fan with this one would require a little monkey work 
and would have to be comfortable working IN a power supply but if you 
know how to be safe around capacitors then it is a relatively easy hack.

   On the more expensive but easier front I would recommend the Antec 
VAR series SX1000 II mid tower chassis with an Antec TruePower 330 power 
supply. I build alot of boxes around that chassis and power supply and 
it is about as quiet as they get. In fact, if  Micheal Galea here on the 
list is willing, he has one of my boxes with that chassis and PSU. It 
has two auxiliary 80mm fans that are powered by a variable speed circuit 
built into the PSU. It also has two more 80mm variable speed fans built 
into the PSU exhausting the chassis air in series. All this translaets 
to a chassis that exhausts plenty of air without producing virtually any 
noise. In fact, the CD-ROM spinning up usually doubles the audio 
pressure leaving the chassis :D.

Madison


Chris Aitken wrote:

> I have a need for my PC to be quiet. This is for three reasons:
> 
> I have tintinitus several times a day, and when I don't the PC
> reminds me what it's like - it's like tintinitus-on-demand.  : /
> 
> I am starting a business for which recording acoustic instruments
> will play a large part.
> 
> My PC is exceptionally loud - so titinuitus or not, acoustic recording
> or not, it's damned loud.
> 
> Has anyone had luck shutting their computer up? I have a lot of
> start up expenses - weighted 88-key keyboard, clarinet, etc. so I'll go
> to great  lengths to quiet this one before I'll buy a new one.
> 
> In the last home studio I had, I had the PC in a closet - but I'm tired
> of positioning my recording/PC station to the lowest common
> denominator (the short leash of mouse, keyboard, etc.) - it's
> just silly.
> 
> I guess this is a rhetorical question: Is the fan the only thing that
> makes
> noise? I have three fans - CPU, chassis and removeable drive bay.
> 
> I suspected it was the removeable drive bay, so I replaced it with
> another,
> identical bay. No improvement - of course that doesn't prove that the
> bay
> is not the culprit - this brand might just have a noisy fan assembly.
> And to
> be completely honest, the unwanted sounds were different (but not less)
> with the second bay than with the first.
> 
> So, I guess my next step is to remove the bay and just install the hard
> drive
> the old-fashioned way (?). If that doesn't help it must be one of the
> other two
> fans (?). Or chip creep? What else is there?
> 
> Also, I'll be in Toronto over Christmas and I could take the PC back to
> Honson
> - they built it for me. I hope they will work hard on it without soaking
> me as they
> built it.
> 
> Chris Aitken


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