Make computer silent??

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kenny

Is there a way to make the noise of a computer lower?
I know that there are water and oil cooling systems, and special boxes that
play the role of a colling system..

But I am asking about a normal box. Can I insulate it somehow? or whatever?


Another question is about the cord legnth of montitors that have DVI
connections.
I know that the quality of image got worse if you used an extention with the
old type of VGA connections.
Does this happen with DVI or because its digital there is no loss of
quality?

THANKS
 
kenny said:
Is there a way to make the noise of a computer lower?
I know that there are water and oil cooling systems, and special
boxes that play the role of a colling system..

But I am asking about a normal box. Can I insulate it somehow? or
whatever?

Another question is about the cord legnth of montitors that have DVI
connections.
I know that the quality of image got worse if you used an extention
with the old type of VGA connections.
Does this happen with DVI or because its digital there is no loss of
quality?
Click to expand...

Yes. Just like you would insulate anything else for noise - foam works well
along the inside of the cas - but remember to leave room for proper air flow
through the case! You can also replace the fans with quieter fans.

As for the second question - although I would bet the length is greater - it
will still degrade over length - everything does since there is impedence in
the medium in qhich the signal is transferred.
 
Noise is a combination of things in a desktop PC.
(1.) Power Supply exhaust fan
(2.) CPU Fan
(3.) Any acoustic whine from hard drives (Faster rotational
speed the higher pitch the sound it will make, so a 7200
RPM will have less "Whine" than a 10,000 or 15,000 RPM.
Can be louder if drive not securely attached to bracket.
(4.) Any additional intake/exhaust fans

Just replacing existing fans, which are fairly inexpensive may
lower the noise the PC makes. Sometimes two newer fans
will generate less dB than a single older fan. There are lots of
sites on the web that discuss cooling and noise reduction in a
PC.
 
In
Shenan Stanley said:
Yes. Just like you would insulate anything else for noise -
foam
works well along the inside of the cas - but remember to leave
room
for proper air flow through the case!
Click to expand...


Personally, I would be very reluctant to put foam inside a case.
It's hard for me to imagine that it *wouldn't* impede the airflow
no matter where you put it.

You can also replace the fans
with quieter fans.
Click to expand...


Yes, and that's certainly a good thing to do. Some fans are much
quieter than others. Also you can't normally change the fan in a
power supply, but you can replace the power supply with a quieter
one.
 
kenny said:
Is there a way to make the noise of a computer lower?
I know that there are water and oil cooling systems, and special boxes that
play the role of a colling system..

But I am asking about a normal box. Can I insulate it somehow? or whatever?


Another question is about the cord legnth of montitors that have DVI
connections.
I know that the quality of image got worse if you used an extention with the
old type of VGA connections.
Does this happen with DVI or because its digital there is no loss of
quality?

THANKS
Click to expand...

As when solving any problem you first need to know exactly what the
problem is. Where is the noise coming from? Case fan(s)? Power supply?
CPU fan? Video card fan? Hard drive(s)? etc, etc, etc. Determine which
noise source is the most annoying and then fix that cause. If the system
still isn't quiet enough then move on to the next. Quiet fans are easy
to come by and not terribly expensive. Silent or near silent power
supplies ditto. Video cards generally will need more than a fan swap but
complete heatsink and fan kits are available for them. When it finally
gets down to drive noise and the like it is usually time for adding
sound deadening material to the case and vibration isolation to the
drives where possible.

There are many sites on the web covering quiet computing and many times
more offering equipment and materials with which to attack noise problems.

John McGaw
http://johnmcgaw.com
 
Take a look at http://www.silentpcreview.com/

It is easy to spend a considerable amount of money on trying to quieten down
a PC - it is important to address the major noise causes first and work
forward from that.

Often the culprits are the obvious ones: CPU Heatsink and other "Howlers"
such as poorly chosen case or PSU fans. These are easily fixed although I
would not recommend a novice changing a PSU fan as it is dangerous & if you
replaced the PSU fan with one that had a lesser flow inadvertantly you could
blow up your PSU ==> motherboard sometimes.

If you are going to replace the CPU heatsink, make sure you are familiar
with how to mount a CPU heatsink correctly first - see www.arcticsilver.com
for some details.

Plan, research - a lot, review and don't forget that at the end of the day
you may reduce the noise level of your system markedly but after a day or
two still not be satisified. Personally, I find it extremely difficult to
get / build systems that are quiet enough.

I had a server that was so noisy (it had early model Seagate Barracuda HDD's
which were so noisy!) the solution in the end was to relocate it to the
laundry and use Terminal Server on it full time.
 
kenny said:
Is there a way to make the noise of a computer lower?
I know that there are water and oil cooling systems, and special boxes that
play the role of a colling system..
Click to expand...
But I am asking about a normal box. Can I insulate it somehow? or whatever?
Click to expand...

You can get fans with various noise ratings. Big slow turning fans can
move the same amount of air with a fraction of the noise that whiney
fast little fans do. If you google for silentpc you will fine some
web sites with good info. I've tried a variety of things with little
luck.
Another question is about the cord legnth of montitors that have DVI
connections.
I know that the quality of image got worse if you used an extention with the
old type of VGA connections.
Does this happen with DVI or because its digital there is no loss of
quality?
Click to expand...

The guy I used to have make all my cables would ask
"Do you want a good one or a cheap one?"
There are very high quality vga cables. He would make 75 foot cables
for trade show exhibits. But they had to pay the price. Many of the
$3 or $6 cables you get from the discount store are worth about half
what you pay. But you can get very high quality cables if you find a
source that knows what they are doing. And, sorry, he is gone and I
don't know what I'll do for my cables now.
 
kenny said:
Is there a way to make the noise of a computer lower?
I know that there are water and oil cooling systems, and special boxes
that play the role of a colling system..

But I am asking about a normal box. Can I insulate it somehow? or
whatever?
Click to expand...


Presumably the loudest noise contributor are the fans. Speedfan is a
utility that can slow down the processor and case fan(s) to reduce noise.
Just don't set the speed to 0 (zero) RPM since the BIOS is probably set up
to shutdown the system if the processor fan isn't spinning. Whether
Speedfan works depends on what controller chip you have on your motherboard.
Only those fans with speed-sensing outputs and which are controlled by the
onboard logic can have their speeds regulated, so the front-panel and
side-panel case fans probably aren't included.

If you play games or otherwise consume lots of CPU cycles for long enough,
Speedfan sees the elevated temperature(s) and ups the fan speed. Once the
processor or case temperature goes down, it will slow down the fans again.
When you come out of Standby mode, it will run the fans at 100% but
progressively slow them down (this is a safety issue). You set what
thresholds you want for max processor and case temperatures, minimum fan
speeds (by duty cycle, not by RPM), and whether to tie together the
processor and case fans or monitor them separately (I do mine separately
since the processor heats up much faster than the case temperature under
increased load).

Some motherboards have onboard logic to provide this fan-speed control
(you'll see settings in the BIOS). However, for those of us where the BIOS
doesn't support fan-speed control (but for most motherboards made in the
last 3 years, or more, so the controller has fan-speed duty-cycle settings),
Speedfan works - and it is FREE.

http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php
 
Ken said:
In



Personally, I would be very reluctant to put foam inside a case.
It's hard for me to imagine that it *wouldn't* impede the airflow
no matter where you put it.






Yes, and that's certainly a good thing to do. Some fans are much
quieter than others. Also you can't normally change the fan in a
power supply, but you can replace the power supply with a quieter
one.
Click to expand...

Huh? I replaced the fan in a number of PSUs. Just take the old one out,
check the voltage and go to compUSA or where ever and get a replacement.

/dan
 
In
Daniel Ganek said:
Huh? I replaced the fan in a number of PSUs. Just take the old
one
out, check the voltage and go to compUSA or where ever and get
a
replacement.
Click to expand...


Yes, you're right. I stand corrected.
 
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