How can I reduce noise in my PC?

If it is the stock cooler the get an aftermarket one. cheap but good would be the coolermaster 212 evo. Depending on the case you could replace stock fans with better/quieter fans.

Without knowing anything about your system its hard to say what would help quiet it down.

The CPU heatsink fan is noisy. Check www.frostytech.com for reviews and noise levels of heatsinks before you purchase.

The video card can also be noisy if you have a gaming card. You can use liquid cooling for a video card if you want absolute minimum noise.

Also look at the case. Some cases have better sound proofing. And look for cases with larger and silent fans. The larger the fan the quieter it is. Also some cases have speed controllers for the fans to make them quiet.

It's probably the case design and fans plus the CPU heatsink fan. Gaming cases usually come with 120mm+ fans now that are quiet.

The first step is to identify where the noise is coming from. You can do this by disconnecting all of your case fans and even removing the fans from your GPU and booting the system up. It should be able to run idle with only the CPU fan running for you to judge the noise level. If things are still too loud, then you know the issue is your CPU cooler.

After that , you can add the GPU fan shroud back to the card and boot again. Again judge the noise level to see if its too loud for you or not.

Lastly add the case fans back into the mix one at a time.

Doing this will allow you to pinpoint exactly where the issue(s) are. Then you can evaluate the best way to tackle them...

If the issue is with CPU cooler, replace it with a non-stock cooler. A good air cooler or all-in-one water cooler unit will reduce noise dramatically. Especially if you can use 140mm fans instead of 120mm fans. While it doesn't seem like much, 140mm fans can push the same amount of air at a fraction of the RPMs and significantly reduce fan noise.

If the issue is with the GPU fans, you are limited as to what you can do. You can replace the GPU or consider switching to water cooling. Either one is going to cost some $$.

If the issue is the case fans, those are generally easy to replace and inexpensive. If your case allows for 140mm fans, I recommend you use those. Also if your motherboard has PWM headers, using PWM fans can reduce noise by varying the fan speed based upon temperatures. So at idle, things run really quiet.

The other option, if nothing else, is to look to buy a new case with good sound dampening materials. Fractal Designs has some cases that do a REALLY good job of containing noisy components as long as you don't want a side window to see into your case.

I'm currently in the process of this right now. I agree withe wbingham and suggest pinpointing the noise that is most offending and eventually you will get a silent PC. Looking at the Hyper212 Evo I see several issues that wouldn't make sense with your goals.

When going to cooling the least effective method is tube/fin construction. It is easily 40% less effective than stacked plate design (looks like a radiator). If you are going to liquid, get a stacked plate radiator and make sure your case will accept at least 120mm fan sized unit, which will end up being a couple inches thick.

Another issue for me was my hard drive. I replaced spin disks with SSD and significantly reduced noise. Now I only use HDD for archive, backup, and storage.

For fans, having a motherboard that can alter the voltage or using PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) to allow fan speed adjustment is key. Reducing rpm will reduce noise. Going with a ball-bearing or a hydraulic dynamic bearing in your fan over the much more common sleeve bearing will make things much more quiet. Couple a bearing with adjustable speed based on monitored temperatures can create a very silent PC except when pushed.

If you don't have the hardware to accomplish fan profile settings, you can purchase stand alone controllers or manual controllers that occupy 5.25" bay slots.

Another thing not considered a lot is the number of fans you have. As wbingham has already mentioned, a 140mm at the same cfm will be turning a lower rpm and comparatively less noise. But, if I have two fans instead of one I can also run a similar cfm flow with both fans running roughly half the rpm compared to one running full. Instead of running one 1202mm at 100% you can run two 140mm at half speed and move significantly more air while making fan noise a non-issue.

If you decide to go with a stacked plate radiator design the fan you use for your cooler should be rated for high static pressure. Where volume is how much air the fan moves, static pressure is how hard it can push the air against resistance. Since pushing the air through a radiator is harder than unobstructed into a case, the fan needs to produce pressure somewhere in the 2.1 to 2.4 (mm h2o), where the normal case fan is usually 1.5 to 1.7 for the good fans and down to .7 or .5 for the cheap garbage.

All that said, fan manufacturer specifications can sometimes read more like a storybook than a data sheet. As everyone knows... advertising is all about not telling the truth without being a liar. Without standardized testing methodology the claims are highly incomparable.

There is a wide variety of noise levels on fans as well. Common cheap case fans are usuall 30db and up. Better can get down to the low 20's and the best will get into the low teens. For each 10 increase a sound will be twice as loud. You can imagine how happy I will be when my stock cheap fans rated at 32 db will be replaced by bearing fans making 19db at max, but I'll be running them at 40% most of the time making about 12-14db,

There are many ways to spend cash on your computer....

If the only fan in the entire system is the CPU fan...then with your computer running use your finger and stop the CPU fan for 2-3 seconds and see if the noise stops. If so, then you need to look into replacing that CPU cooler with another option.

As has been mentioned, replacing the CPU cooler has many different options from air cooling to water cooling. the All-In-One water coolers are generally the lowest noise options, but your case must be able to support at least a 120mm radiator + 25mm Fan. There are also some very good quality air coolers that are available that run relatively quietly.

If stopping the CPU fan doesn't stop the noise, then the issue is most likely coming either from the power supply or hard drives (if you have spindle drives and not SSDs). Mechanical HDDs can at times be annoyingly loud but usually not when a computer is sitting idle (unless AV is doing a background scan). SSDs are completely silent as there are no moving parts in them.

So it sounds like the issue is either loud CPU cooler fan, loud spindle HDDs, or loud power supplies. Most power supplies also have a fan in them, and just like case fans, they are susceptible to being loud. The higher quality the PSU, generally the better the fan, but even the quietest fan can become noisy over time if they loose lubrication or the bearings shift out of center.

Regardless of the culprit, the same steps of testing each fan and/or component individually is how to identify the problem and know what you need to replace or repair.

use water cooling instead of air cooling