IntroductionThe purpose of this article is not to sell products or promote 3rd party retail solutions. We are simply showing products which are available in stores now which help you on your way to a silent system. If you are not afraid to mess around inside your PC then you will find plenty do-it-yourself methods on reducing noise. We will add them to each section to complete this article. They can be found at end of each section in YELLOW textOne of the most thriving segments of the hardware industry which has blossomed is without doubt silent computing. Almost any respectable manufacturer which deals with PC cooling has a product geared to those who can not stand noise.
While Dell, HP, Siemens and others have the advantage of incorporating their in-house designed cooling system with their desktop solutions, those who decide to buy a 3rd party PC (or assembly it themselves) must deal with components which are build for maximum compatibility. This often translates in louder then necessary systems due to the case, vga and CPU fans running at high speeds to keep things cool inside.
Today we take a closer look at how we can reduce the annoying noise from all those whirring fans and spinning hard drives. We start of with a relative small mid-tower case (with the included PSU) which features a pair of case fans, a stock CPU cooling and has everything screwed in tight.
The Noisemaker:Case:
Antec LanboyCase fans:
2x80mm (front: 2200rpm / back: 1800rpm) PSU:
Antec TruePower 350WCPU:
A64 3200+CPU Cooling:
Stock A64 heatsinkMotherboard/Memory:
DFI NF3 Lanparty / Mushkin PC3200 LVL2 V2Videocard:
Chaintech FX5900XTHard drive:
Maxtor DiamondMax 120GB PATAFancontroller:
Coolermaster Aerogate IIFor measuring noise the assembled system is placed in a room which measures a maximum sound level of
30dBA. The dBA is placed 60cm away from the front of the case.
Powering up the system gives us our first dBA reading:
39.1dBA
The system can be heard very well throughout the room, standing outside you can still faintly hear the spinning fans, with the door closed! So it's safe to say that this system is very noisy. Opening up the case it becomes apparent that most noise comes from the VGA cooler (the Chaintech cooler IS very noisy when compared to the stock FX5900XT cooling) and also the twin 80mm fan Antec PSU is causing some air turbulence.
We could simply power off all the fans inside the system and hope for the best, but PC components are quite susceptible to heat so we will be monitoring temperatures of different critical parts:
CPU (through Speedfan – reading from the DIE temp)
System (this is actually the Southbridge temp of the motherboard – through Speedfan)
PWM (the power circuit on the motherboard near the CPU socket – through
HDD (onboard temp read through Speedfan (SMART))
RAM (CM Aerogate II sensor between chips and heatspreader)
VGA (onboard GPU DIE temp read through Speedfan)
Top Case (CM Aerogate II sensor placed 10cm near top of case)
Bottom Case (CM Aerogate II sensor placed 5cm near bottom of case)
With the system running at 39.1dBA we measure the following temperatures from the different components (in °C). Room temp during all tests was kept at 22°C
System was loaded with K7 CPU Burn and 3DMark2001SE in loop until a stable temperature was measured for all components
CPU: 57
System: 34
PWM: 46
HDD: 29
RAM: 38
VGA: 57.5
Top: 33
Bottom: 31
Let's see how we can improve things ->
Good review, Good subject