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Topic: My silent PC (Read 6601 times) previous topic - next topic
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My silent PC

German version of this first post:

http://www.dvdboard.de/forum/showthread.ph...?threadid=44173



Start point:

Standard-PC,
stable Tower,
PIII 600 @ 800 MHz,
Asus P3B-F,

2 fans, which cause noise:

1.  CPU - fan, boxed version, no alternatives.
2. a simple Standard-Fan 80x80x25 mm for PSU and indirectly Tower.

ATI Xpert 2000 for graphic, without fan, but without TV-out ->
I will exchange it against a card without fan, too, but with TV-out...

Sound:
Terratec 24/96 EWX
5 m Toslink, optical, to amp.
(hint for Germans: tanya_99 at ebay sells them quite cheap.)




To Do:

Actively:

1. CPU-Fan:

speedfan !

I slowed down from 4500 Hz to 2700 (60% in  GUI) , do it with your ears and a look at temperature in speedfan.

http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php

Speedfan is also well for checking, that further actions do not heat your PC or components too much.... :
It shows 3 temperatures ( and speed/Hz of CPU-fan):

T of 80 GB Festplatte (HDD)  Seagate Barracude IV (quite silent)
T of Mainboards
T of CPU



2. How to slow down the 80x80x25 mm Standard_PSU_tower-case__Fan :

Build a power-potentiometer into plus-connection-cable (cost 5 €) of fan.
Immediately you can slow down the fan.
(If you need, for MPC/MP3 or SVCD/DivX encoding, you can increase speed,  cooling ability and noise...)

Example:

given fan: 12 V, 0.15 A

-> P = U x I = 12 x 0.15 = 1.8 W
-> R = U / I = 12 / 0.15 = 80 Ohm

These computed P and R gives you knowledge about the kind of power-potentiometer you need:

Here one for 5 €, more important: 100 Ohm, at least 1 W.
This works well for me.
In slowest possible tuning: the fan starts rotating from zero, safe !
It rotates slow and silent !
In max, fastest rotation you have a Jumbo Jet in your room, again..........

But it is not too easy:

For the aim to transport even in silent/slow mode enough hot air out of tower and PSU:

You have take the PSU, take the case of PSU and make a lot of holes (10 mm diameter eg.) into the PSU-case.

So the flowing air is not handicapped by resistances.

According to above written reason, you have to cut off the metal grid (which was very likely before our action in front of the PSU_fan...).
Previously the fan blowed against that grid, additionally the chaotic flow of air (, caused by that grid,)  will have caused additional noise, too !

BTW, making holes into case of PSU is the hardest work ........


Control:

In the beginning you should have an eye to the temperatures in speedfan. The feeling of your hand helps, too, wether there should come too hot air out of PSU.
Be careful with your fingers, you have removed the grid from PSU-fan ....



3. CD Brake

http://www.cd-bremse.de/

To slow down noisy DVD/CD drives during music- or Home-Cinema fun !





Passive isolation against noise, sounds:


As you have read above, there is always the  antagonism between optimizing heat-transport and minimizing noise.

Do not forget one of those two aspects !



My 2 HDDs and both CD-burner and DVD/CD-drive (4 drives) were placed since beginning in that way, so that:
between one drive and the next is always space for a theoretical drive.

This enables passive heat-transport / conduction by natural convection.



My passive action against noise:


Conrad Electronics (Germany) , 21 € (plus mail fee)
841129 Product no.

Description taken from catalogue/website:
Increase driving comfort by isolation against noise in your car. For noise absorption, isolation of temparature ( !!) and optical increasement. 
Useful for motor area, luggage-doors, and doors.
The grey Polyurethan- soft- pads are self-sticky and so very easy to work with.
Stable against: Water, sody water, motor-oil, fuel, and solving-agent. Stable against temperature from -30 °C up to +80 °C ( 1 hour at +180 °C ) (remark by user: 100 °C is boiling water, 0°C is ice-water).
Size: 1000 x 500 x 11 mm , 2 pads of this large in one packet, costs: 21 €

That was more than enough for my big tower.

These 11 mm thick pads ( soft PU material) are smelling a little bit during the first 2 days. (every 2 hours open the windows for 5 minutes, at first day), after that: no smelling. Could be the glue, or the "soft-maker", probably the glue.
Because  they write for these pads, that they can be used for doors, (that is in the car), they cannot be dangerous for your health.
http://www.beepworld3.de/members23/maschinenbauer/
In that link above the guy has used Bitumina pads. I did not take those, as maybe out of bitumina there could evaporate Policyclic Aromatic Carbonhydrates (PAC) in the long run.
And I assume, that 11 mm soft PU material isolates better against noise than 2.6 mm bitumina.
BTW, For those bitumina pads there is recommandation to use them in doors, only for motor area, outdoors.

This isolation helps against noise, even if your PSU/tower-case_fan should still produce noise !
BTW, these PSU / tower-case - fans are a main source for noise out of your PC.
To do something against this noise: Read above, 5 € !


So, every action has lowered the level of noise independent from the other suggested actions.
I recommend all.
They do not require much work or costs.

BTW, I haven't needed a fan by that famous company Pabst... (well, with 15 € it would have been not expensive, if you have the choice during buying a new PC, then take fan by Pabst. Probably I would add the power-potentiometer to the Pabst-fan, too, to have always the possibility to lower or increase the air flow (and the noise) manually.

I cutted those 1 mm soft-PU-pads with a knife (for cutting carpets). For long linear edges I used an old water scales. A piece of wood , to cut not in the real carpet...........

These pads I have sticked at every surface.
But think before sticking !
Think about the flow of air in your tower !


Because my PSU is located nearly in top of tower and at the back side, and sucks warm air out of the tower,  cold air from outside should get into the tower from the bottom.

For this aim, I have removed the piece of metal of a free slot at the back bottom.
This is now nearly the only not noise-isolated part of tower and the only opening, where air can breeze in. 

The other usually existing grids/slots, small holes at the front side and left and right side of tower ,  I have locked by that 11 mm thick soft-PU-pad-material from inside.





My inspirations:

The silent PC
http://www.beepworld3.de/members23/maschinenbauer/
sorry, German, but browse through the sites, there are very interesting pictures, how he carried it out  !

49 Ideas of Silence
http://www.12ghosts.com/silence/    Conclusion in English
http://www.12ghosts.com/de/silence/index.htm  German: 49 ideas very detailed with pictures...


Passive noise isolation :
new case for your PC
Advantage: you can use it again with every new or old PC tower, if you get a new PC in some time eg., if you have planned your new case big enough at the start...
http://www.carsten-buschmann.de/schallschutz/
Sorry, German, but it contains detailed plans, how he carried it out !


Additional links: (thanks to Waldomonster)

Silent PC projects:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/index.php
http://home.swipnet.se/tr/silence.html
http://staff.washington.edu/gray/silentpc.html
http://www.signum-data.de/english/index_eng.htm (Pentium IV 2.2 GHz withouth a fan!)

My silent PC

Reply #1 –
That's silent and slow... I prefer silent and fast... Powerful system + watercooling + peltier = unbeatable...

My silent PC

Reply #2 –
Hehe, I am content with my watercooled XP1800. Only my Geforce4Ti is disturbing my well deserved silence. But there is no real solution except a watercooling-element for the graphics card I guess.

Peltier is a little bit too dangerous for my taste 

My silent PC

Reply #3 –
I thought you could now adequately cool a fast PC without resorting to the expense of water cooling?  I'm finally getting my Athlon 1800 with GF4 next week, it comes with a couple of big but slow fans in the case, same in the PSU.  That's apparently enough to keep it cool and stay at a "quiet" level.  If not I'll be slapping the mate who built it!
< w o g o n e . c o m / l o l >

My silent PC

Reply #4 –
MY ultra cheap version of a silent PC (well, it's not really the PC being silent):
I took a 30mm drill and ran through my bedroom wall into a wardrobe (big for being wardobe, like a little room). I bought extension cables for mouse, keyboard, screen and USB ports. I guess you can figure out the rest for your self. If you're a lazy asshole there's one little catch, you need to walk like 2 meters to change CD, but at least I can live with that. Everything costed me about $30, and I can't hear the damn thing (well, I could, if I really concentrated).

P.S. looks neat too, the cable clutter is in the wardrobe and there's only a screen in my room D.S. 

My silent PC

Reply #5 –
Hey, 12345 that's really cool!  I wish i could do that.  [span style='font-size:8pt;line-height:100%'](can't, room, appartment arrangement doesn't allow)[/span]

My silent PC

Reply #6 –
Quote
I thought you could now adequately cool a fast PC without resorting to the expense of water cooling?  I'm finally getting my Athlon 1800 with GF4 next week, it comes with a couple of big but slow fans in the case, same in the PSU.  That's apparently enough to keep it cool and stay at a "quiet" level.  If not I'll be slapping the mate who built it!

At the time I bought/upgraded my system there was no good air-cooling alternative. All those big heatsinks appeared later on I think (like the SK800 or how it is called).

But the real challenge is the graphics card. Tell me, if you find a solution to that. (side note: there is this zalman heatpipe but I don't know how powerful it is and it costs a damn lot of money, so a watercooling element would be the better choice then)

My silent PC

Reply #7 –
IM running dual athloxp 1900+ with thermalright slk800 cobber profile end som genre fans at 1200-1400rpm
seagate barracuda disk.

however my radeon 9700 pro is making noise :-(


for my multimedie center PC IM using a cheaper titan profile Duron 1ghz and a 1200rpm fan.
matrox gfx (superior tv-out) which are passive coolede.

many monitors have more noise then my 2 pc's that why i bought me a 20" inc tft monitor


both psu's have ben striped from the protective cap and replaced the fans with some genrefin fans at 7v (1400rpm)
Sven Bent - Denmark

My silent PC

Reply #8 –
Quote
Hey, 12345 that's really cool!  I wish i could do that.  [span style='font-size:8pt;line-height:100%'](can't, room, appartment arrangement doesn't allow)[/span]

Maybe this is something for you:

Extend your Mouse Keyboard and VGA trough a twisted pair cable!
http://www.azio.co.uk/productframe.htm
http://www.magenta-research.com/cat5_utp_e...utp_pclink.html

To bad it is more expensive than the $30. 
Someone has experiences with this kind of equipment or knows an other brand?

My silent PC

Reply #9 –
My computer is in my living room in a desk enclosure.

I went to a carpet store and bought a few meters of underlay and used it to soundproof the enclosure.

A bit of sound escapes through the front of the computer tower, but its just a whisper and quite tolerable.

Took about a half hour and cost 10 dollars.

My silent PC

Reply #10 –
Quote
But the real challenge is the graphics card. Tell me, if you find a solution to that. (side note: there is this zalman heatpipe but I don't know how powerful it is and it costs a damn lot of money, so a watercooling element would be the better choice then)

I found a cheap solution to that.

My grf adapter is a geeforce3 from Asus. It has a big head sink covering both gpu and ram. It also had a 3 cm fan - extremely noisy.

The card also got extremely hot. Around 72-82 °C was normal.

First you need to install some temperature monitoring software for the gfx adapter.
Then stress the card by running 3dmark or playing a game for some time.
Read the temperature.

Then:
- Remove fan on grx adapter.
- Remove (if present) PCI card next to AGP and/or remove the metal bracket covering the hole to the rear
- Find two brackets - preferable in soft bendable metal. Glue them together according to illustration.
- Mount a 8x8 cm lownoise fan on the metal thing with "strips" - those plastic things used to holding cables together, and as an alternative to handcuffs. I recommend Pabst 12 dB - around €20.
- Mount the metal thing + fan over the PCI slot next to the AGP. GPU naturally present outside fan.
- Check tempetature
- It is not the most stable solution, so don't move the computer around too much.

You can probably buy a similar product "card cooler" if you can find it and afford it.
The point is, that a 8x8 cm fan should be able to move a lot more air than a smaller.
You it is too hot, install another pabst fan in the fan hole just above the gfx adapter. This might not be perfectly silent.

My silent PC

Reply #11 –
I will experiment with this construction. I have some 80x80 fans here, maybe I have success.

I once built a fanduct for the graphics card but it wasnt too efficient unfortunately. At least it looked very sophisticated 

My silent PC

Reply #12 –
Quote
Hehe, I am content with my watercooled XP1800. Only my Geforce4Ti is disturbing my well deserved silence. But there is no real solution except a watercooling-element for the graphics card I guess.

Peltier is a little bit too dangerous for my taste  


I have a Asus 3400 TNT videocard.
Removed the small cooler with fan and replaced it with a Pentium II cooler.
Leave out one bracket for the airflow.

My pentium III 550 Mhz has now extra fan.
But a AMD oversized aluminium cooler.
The extra airflow comes from the powersupply.
The cooler from the power supply exchanged for a Papst 8412MGMLV (with NTC speed control).

http://members.home.nl/waldomonster/share/pc01.jpg

Silent PC projects:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/index.php
http://home.swipnet.se/tr/silence.html
http://staff.washington.edu/gray/silentpc.html
http://www.signum-data.de/english/index_eng.htm (Pentium IV 2.2 GHz withouth a fan!)

My silent PC

Reply #13 –
Quote
I have a Asus 3400 TNT videocard.
Removed the small cooler with fan and replaced it with a Pentium II cooler.
Leave out one bracket for the airflow.

I dont have any CPU coolers suitable for my 'project' so I would have to buy one. i.e. the slk800 would be a no-go, it would take down my agp slot in no time    Dunno how much load I can put on the graphics card. A PII cooler or similar is a nice option since it is rather quiet. But I dont have one.

Gonna try the cooling method mentioned by Annuka. If it doesnt work I can still buy something new.

and thx for the linx 

My silent PC

Reply #14 –
I have the Thermalright SK7 with a 80x25mm 2600rpm dual ball bearing fan and it has made my computer much more bearable. I used to have the Thermaltake Volcano 5 w/4550rpm 60x25 fan and it was noiser.

My silent PC

Reply #15 –
How to make your HD silent?
Take a look here: http://www.xs4all.nl/~pmbartel/ > Harddisk project
Don't forget to hold the whole aluminum box in foam or hang it in a rubber belt.

My silent PC

Reply #16 –
Quote
Take a look here: http://www.xs4all.nl/~pmbartel/ > Harddisk project

For the lazy ones (like me), you can buy a similar thing: http://www.dirkvader.de/page/hdd-entkopplung.html
(scroll down a little, "InnoVibe")

19.95 € a piece, i bought two. BTW, i also have two of the "NoVibes" from above, since InnoVibes weren't available back then. I now use them for my second PC. I think that the DOY/InnoVibe solution is a bit better, since it's more "firm" on the drives. By no means would i enclose my drives in foam! That is guaranteed to cause heat problems.

My silent PC

Reply #17 –
" That's silent and slow... I prefer silent and fast... Powerful system + watercooling + peltier = unbeatable...  "


I want to reply to above comment and add some own comments/ideas:


In fact my PC is now complete silent, but still fast (fast for what ?), if I want it.

When do you want a silent PC ?

For HiFi
mpc, mp3 in high quality, living room.

or movies, mpeg, SVCD, DivX

So, how many ressources do you need for playing mp3, mpc, DivX ?

Yeah, not much. So you can switch for these applications your PC to "slow mode (800 MHz are more than enough, the CPU has not 100% load, it cools enough, if fans are rotating slowly)" = ultra-silent mode.

And for working with my PC (writing docs, powerpoint, computing with excel) I don't need the 800 MHz as well, even 800 MHz are overkill.
I can work the whole day in silent mode (slow mode of  fans).


So, what do I do, if I need power ?

(btw, for which applications do I need the power ?)

- a little bit encoding of mpc, mp3, mp2
- replaygaining
- video encoding in mpeg2 or DivX

For these applications I turn 1 or 2 knobs (i.e. increasing the speed of fans, CPU fan (and only sometimes: PSU-fan)) and immediately I have fully cooling again, and 100% load of CPU for hours does not matter anymore.

So, that way, I have done it, I am very variable.

Of course I would like to have a 2 GHz CPU for encoding, but it is even more complicated / expensive , to get a today's high performance PC really silent.

It has been written:
"Powerful system + watercooling + peltier"
silent and powerful, yes, but a question of money.



The point is, as HTPC (Home-Theatre-PC), a PC with passive cooled graphics card, medium CPU power(around 1 GHz) , is really sufficient.

Decoding does not take much power.

Encoding is another story.
But with my 800 MHz I would only like a faster system for video encoding, for audio I won't remark higher speed in practice.
So, even for video encoding, my 800 MHz are quite well, it runs over night for example, then I don't mind, if then my fans are rotating faster with more noise..........




And I think, there are thousands of PCs out there , like mine, which are still way to noisy.
I wanted to encourage people to do something nice to their ears....
If friends come now visiting me, and we are listening music, and I tell them, music is played from PC, they don't believe me...
They knew that i had an ordinary noisy PC, and that I preferred listening mp3, CD-Audio, DVD from my player or DAT, with PC switched off.
That little tuning described above , has caused a (little) wonder.