Silence is golden...or at least the cost is

[miliambar]

So I'm trying to get my home built system to be quiter. Its not terribly loud, but I can tell its running from across the apartment. Bassically I'm trying to get it to be as quite as the dell computers we have at work, when its idling at least. I was thinking about going with water cooling since that would reduce the number of moving components in the system, I have two case fans and a cpu fan and a video card fan. I was looking at the Koolance systems since thoes would require the least work (theoritecally (sp)). The other option I was looking at was going with was a fan controller, right now with the way the system is set up, my processor doesn't exceed 34C and thats while running WOW, it gets down as low as 23 when its idling. Its an AMD 64 system with an Ultra X Connect power supply(yea I know, not the most stable supply...but they sure are pretty). So any suggestions? Is there any sound damping solution for hard drives?

 

[fishmahn]

There are several solutions.

Fans make noise so replace them with bigger fans that spin slower - 120mm if possible. Panaflow makes good quiet ones, but there are many mfgs.

For hard drives get some rubber or plastic/silicone insulators to insulate the drive from the cage and/or replace the drive with quieter drives. Fans are usually louder than drives.

You can get sound deadening insulation for your system and as long as you dont' cover airholes it won't change cooling much.

Turn on Cool & Quiet and it should slow down the CPU fan when its idle. Maybe get a fan controller for the other fans so you can turn them down when not needed.

Mike.