Small guide to a silent computer

You just bought a Atlhon 1.4 and with an F-16-like HSF ? Got 5 case fans howling at night to keep your disks and motherboard cool ? Cant sleep at night because of it ? Read this, it might help… :

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been trying to get my computer as silent as possible. My baseline was my portable, I wanted my desktop to be equally silent, and I think I’ve achieved it. Since this might be of interest to some other users, I thought I’d post my findings here.

Here are the relevant (potentialy noisy) specs I started with:
AMD Duron 600@933 Mhz (1.7v)
2x 7200 rpm 20 GB harddisks (RAID O)
Geforce2 MX
256 Mb PC 133
MSI K7T Turbo RAID
CDRW, DVD, IDE ZIP,
10/100 Nic
PCI USB controller
Kong fai something full tower


Without doubt, the two largest sources of noise where the cpu cooler and the PSU. I replaced both with the most silent (but still effective) alternatives I could find, being:
· noisecontrol Silverado HSF
· Enermax 350 W PSU
The Silverado is HIGHLY recommended. Its incredibly silent, and does a very good job cooling your cpu. Contrary to popular believe, its not limited to 1.3 or 1.4 Ghz. The HSF comes with 3 cables: 6v, 8v and 10v. Even with 10v the HSF is rated up to 1.5+ Ghz, without cable (12v) its in ‘ultra’ mode for any “future” cpu’s. My little Duron (even though overclocked by 50%) doesn’t run that hot, so I used the 6v cable, making the HSF absolutely impossible to hear. Even on 10 or 12v its remarkably silent (also, see Toms HSF comparison)

The Enermax was less convincing at first. I had the model that has auto fan speed, depending on the temperature. It would be very quiet for a few minutes, but after 15 minutes it would make more noise than my previous no-name psu.. almost as much as a hairdryer. I searched through some newsgroups, and apparently I was not the only one. Enermax then confirmed this was an issue (the temperature sensor was misaligned), and will supply a new case shortly to alleviate the problem. I am still waiting though.

I was too impatience to wait for the ‘hotfix’, so I opened the psu, and disconnected the second (exhaust) fan, hooked it to a spare 6v cable from my Silverado, and connected it to a spare fan header. That was MUCH better.

Next step was the case fans. The general idea was: many fans, big fans and slow fans. I got a few 120 and 80 mm Pabst fans that I supplied with 8v. Hardly a whisper. Well.. to tell you the truth, with all these fans making a bit of noise, the combination of all was still more then I wanted.. after all there where no less than 9 (!) fans in my computer (2x PSU, 2x CPU, 2x case, 1x HD/case, 1x video, 1x chipset)

How do hell do you connect 9 fans when you only have 2 fan headers on your motherboard ? Well, get a DigiDoc5. A nifty little gadget that slides into a free 5,25” bay (and can still hold a 3,5” disk). It has 8 fan headers, up to 8 temperature sensors and a nice orange display that allows you to monitor and setup everything. The idea behind the digidoc is simple. Install a sensor, configure a threshold temperature, and attach a fan. Once the temperature rises to or above the threshold, the fan will be activated..

I connected ALL my fans (except 1 of both silverado fans) to the digidoc. The enermax usually requires only 1 silent fan (bottom) to keep below 40°. 1 case fan (big 120mm exhaust fan) is always on. Additional intake fans, HD fans, etc are only activated when required. The digidoc does exactly what its supposed to do, however, there are some things that could be improved. If you put the sensor too close to the fan, the fans will be ‘confused’. Lets say you set a threshold at 35°. At 35.1° the fan will activate, immediately reducing the temp to 35.0, killing the fan again. The digidoc is real fast, but this means the fan will spin up and down all the time. It takes a bit of trying out where to put the sensor, and how to configure the thresholds to make it work properly. Im gonna try to mod the digidoc with a capacitor to make sure the fans stay on for a at least 10 seconds and then slowly spin down. Another cave-at is the number of cables ! Of course, that’s inavoidable.. but just image 8 fan cables (most of them with a thermosistor cable inbetween) and 8 sensor cables on top of all the cables already in there ! Not a pretty sight.. A last item for my whish list, is fan speed control. It would be much more usefull to be able to set 2 temps. Temp 1 meaning 6v and scale to temp 2 being full 12v. Now that would be nice.

Anyway, all these measures already ensured I had a very silent machine. Not as silent as my portable however, so I tried one more thing: cork. I went out and bought a few square meters of thin (3mm) cork. I glued the cork to the inside of the case side panels, the inside of the front panel, and I completely encapsulated the hard disk cage (with just enough room for the HD fan to blow in, and a big enough hole for the hot air to escape). I also glued cork on my psu (everything but the fan holes) and to the back plate of the case. I assure you, it looks cool when I open up my computer !

But it does wonders ! My computer sits under my desk, only 1 meter away from where I sit. I seriously have to look to see if its on or not. If there is the faintest background noise, I cant hear it at all. Only when there is disk access (which is still too noisy to my liking.. like with a laptop) or when the room is completely silent I can hear it its actually on. But its still so quiet, my laser printer is likely to make more noise when its in standy. Even when I press the “panic” button on the digidoc (all fans on), its still hardly more noisy as your average portable computer.

And my temps, you wonder ? Just fine thank you. Of course my case gets warmer than it did before, the focus was on noise reduction, not on polar temps. But even so, my motherboard temps are never more than 30°. CPU maxes out at 44° under full load. The PSU usually stays around 35° with just one slow fan. Only when I copy from one CD to another while running genome@home, the second fan sometimes kicks in to keep it well under 40°.

The surface of the harddisks is kept under 35°, only my Geforce gets too hot to my liking.. It didn’t have a heatsink, let alone a fan, and it got upto 70° ! While waiting for my blue orb, I glued an old 486 fan right next to it (in an unused PCI slot). Don’t worry, its this special ‘hot’ glue, that you can remove easily. Now the geforce is kept around 50° max.. still hot I think, but much better anyway.

All in all , I am very happy with the result. Although the inside of the case is a nightmare, I really hope im not going to have to replace my motherboard anytime soon (as this would now become full day of work), but I can leave my pc running full blast, and sleep right next to it without really being aware its on at all. Sure, it costed me something.. about $100 for the Silverado, $80 for the Enermax and another $80 for the Digidoc. I could also have spent this on a Athlon 1.4 and/or a GF2 Ultra… but these will come later anyway.

When I find some time, I’ll make some pics and post them somewhere to give you an idea.

For now, any comments, tips or questions are welcome.

---- Owner of the only Dell computer with an AMD chip