View Full Version : Silence Experiments
I thought it might be an idea if people could go through the things they have done to quieten their computer. Some of us are only able to buy so called "quiet" components and hope for the best, some of us are handy enough - and willing - to tear their comp. apart to give it some quiet mods. I'll start with mine and I fall into the first category!
Current status - Computer too loud. I exclude from this, intermittent operation of DVD Drives and Hard Drive accesses. I'm sitting here just now with my case on the desk and it is too loud.
Current set-up
2 x Antec blue LED fans in case intake, controlled by Pyramid V fan controller. Fan speeds are approximately 1,500 to 1,650rpm
Two exhaust fans are Papst silent fans (rated at less than 12dB), uncontrolled. Speed is approx. 1,700rpm.
PSU is Zalman quiet unit, 300w.
Video card has Zalman ZM-80-MP cooler, so it's silent.
CPU fan is Cooler Master Fujiyama which is supposed to be quiet and it runs at 2,600rpm
Current noise has two components - the deeper humming noise which is a little too intrusive and a higher pitched metallic ring noise. I haven't been able to identify the sources yet but I'm going to Fan mate the CPU cooler, and one by one, switch off case fans to try and identify the strongest sources. In addition there is an "undulating" background noise like two fans nearly identical in noise but "out of phase"
You get this when tuning a guitar when one string is slightly out of tune with another.
I'll come back to this thread once I've done some of these "tests".
When I took the side panel off, the deepness of the hum reduced a bit which suggests some vibration in the panel.
I disconnected the front intake fans and the deep hum disappeared almost totally. The "undulating sound" (the "wow" in "wow and flutter") is still there, as is the metallic ringy noise.
This only leaves the two Papst fans, the CPU and PSU fans.
I'm going to re-boot but first disconnect one of the Papst fans
Originally posted by Alan
PSU is Zalman quiet unit, 300w.
it's gonna be tight getting one of those in my shuttle though :D
/me flees
PJ Matthews
20-01-2003, 23:26
Quickest way to find the noise and avoid all the junk above. Place hand on both side panels, noise stops. Place heavy items on top of case noise lessons. Vibration cleaqrly coming from panels.
Soloutions -
Masking tape. Line contact areas with this, a couple of layers if needed so good firm contact is made between panels. If done correctly all case rattling will disapear. Vibration is usually caused by the turbulance of the CPU fan.
Rear Papst switched off. "Undulating" sound now substantially gone. Hum reduced more. Metallic noise is now the loudest. Temperatures not too bad.
Next is Fan mate on CPU fan.
Thanks for the vibration tip PJ.
Oh, if anyone is getting fed up with this thread, just say and I'll scrap this junk.
PJ Matthews
20-01-2003, 23:34
Thanks for the vibration tip PJ.
NP - Anytime.
O.K. Top blowhole fan disconnected.All that's left is the CPU and PSU fans.
I've fan mated the CPU fan and it's now running at 1,700rpm. The high pitched metallic noise is still there so it must be the Zalman Quiet PSU.
Drastic times. I stopped the PSU fan - and the noise did not go away.
This only leaves the hard drives!
Current setup:
5x 80mm YS-TECH intake fans
1x 80mm SHE delta fan on cpu cooler
1x 120mm Delta 191CFM exhaust fan
Silence?? What's that?
I have a 10,000 rpm IBM SCSI drive which whines. Any sane suggestions?
Incidentally, I unplugged both my SCSI hard drives and booted the machine. It takes about a minute to get to the point where it realises it has no hard drives. This only left the Zalman PSU fan and the Cooler Master Fujiyama fan on. I could NOT hear either fan from a distance of less than a foot!! Superb! If it wasn't for the damned hard drive the machine would be silent!!
My conclusion is that the quiet PC stuff works just fine - it's the rest that screws you:D
Hit it with a hammer until it stops making noise :D
I've seen a HDD enclosure which is meant to deaden sound, but IMO it would just increase temps.
AlastairM
21-01-2003, 10:07
I have a 10,000 rpm IBM SCSI drive which whines. Any sane suggestions?
Nope, only that I got two last week and they started a harmonic vibration in the case (PC-50), a sort of undulating hum which built up over time. It'd even start when they were outside the case sittinng on the desk :eek:
Maybe some rubber washers or something between the drive and the case (if there room to fit them)
cheers
alastair
Originally posted by Alan
I have a 10,000 rpm IBM SCSI drive which whines. Any sane suggestions? ... My conclusion is that the quiet PC stuff works just fine - it's the rest that screws you:D
Getting rid of that last 10% of noise is usually the most challenging part! Often it's the low frequency noise from the hard drive(s) which is what spoils it, as you have found Alan. Here are a few random ideas...
1. Try to use 1 hard drive not 2 or more (one really big hard drive is quieter than lots of smaller ones!)
2. Decouple the hard drive from the chassis using something soft and squidgy like foam or rubber or acoustic matting. It might make your drive run a bit hotter though. If you have a 10,000 rpm drive this might not be a good idea as you'll need all the cooling you can get but on slower drives it's fine.
3. Use a heavy noise blocking material kit on the inside of the PC. To cure low-frequency humming you need *weight* of material. Density is everything!
3. Don't use a 10,000 rpm hard drive ;)
4. Lift the PC off the desk/floor to see if the vibration stops. It could be that the noise is being transmitted through the chassis into the surface under the PC. Solution: Put the PC on something soft and squidgy like acoustic matting, or some old foam or carpet.
5. Errrr......that's it.
Good luck
Glenn
Welcome Glenn, nice to see another specialist on the boards. :)
Originally posted by Kynoch
Welcome Glenn, nice to see another specialist on the boards. :)
Thanks Kynoch, I got a nice invitation to be here ;) I wish I had more time to participate in forums like this. I'm sure I'll be doing a lot of lurking around at the very least though .....!
Thanks for your comments Glenn.
It is a high frequency sound from the hard drive and the 2nd one (also 10,000rpm) doesn't make the same noise, nor do they interfere with each other.
I'm going to try a couple of your suggestions, particulary isolation.
It isn't a dreadfully loud noise, just about any other source of noise will drown my PC out entirely. It's when I'm sitting late at night and the house is silent - you cannot miss it then!
Graeme*Kustom*
22-01-2003, 00:03
*sneakily hands Glenn a big wad of cash* :)
Hey Buddy . Glad you could make it !
The Silent section is still new, but as you'll see from the other modding / sff sections, these parts of the forum are pretty busy , and the same should happen in here pretty soon !
IMHO Deflex.co.uk provides damping materials used in the audiophile hifi world, We are speaking about a high tech product not your usual sticky back foam or bitumen pads.
Sorbothane case feet if your case is resonating with the desk (Any good Hi-Fi shop)
Your SCSI 10k drive (you bought a 10k and expected quiet?)
It's SCSI, find it a home in its own case where you can put as much damping as you like.
I used to keep mine in my old motorcycle helmet when I was at college. (Keeps road noise out Hard Drive noise in) Yes I'm serious it was on an Amiga at the time.
The IDE Seagate Barracuda's are very quiet and they are fine in a silent drive case. Other than that I have an Antec case with 4 papse 80mm case fans and also one in the PSU, And a Zalman flower and northbridge. Nice and Quiet.
My computer spent it's early life in my work where noise wasn't a problem but it's home for good now - and it is.
I intend to get a Barricuda drive once I know I can make an image of the old C drive 'cos I can't be bothered re-installing Windows and all the applications.
Of course, I've been slagged for even thinking of replacing SCSI 3 drives with an IDE drive.
I am a little concerned about performance issues but I suspect that I won't actually notice.
I built, bought and look after 40 intel servers , and if you think the 10k drives are loud then you want to hear the whine from the 15k ones (although fujitsu with fluid dynamic bearing drives are reasonable)
Drive image will clone your drive across no problem, I have used it lots. The 7200 ide's are a little slower than current 10k drives but probably on a par with 3 year old 10k drives due to greater density per platter leading to lower seek times. The 120gig Barracuda which has 8meg cache is also more than your average scsi drive.
The scsi advantage comes from the controller being more intelligent and being able to better order the sweep of the heads to maximise data retrieval by getting multiple bits of data on the same sweep. This is of obvious use in a multi user system, server or database server but of little advantage to a single user pc.
a set of stripped barracudas will easily out perform the 10k scsi and be substantially quieter, with a minimal increase of failure due to two physical drives. Seagate have good reliability record however. The WD Drives with 8meg cache are a faster at reading data but slower at writing with a speed fall off at the end of the disk, also nosier. I would go seagate for quite, reliability and good performance mix.
Feel free to mail me on anything,
regards
Eric
I've bought and built quite a few servers over the years myself, mostly SMP systems with hardware Raid 5 and SCSI drives.
I had totally forgotten the SCSI difference - all I could remember is that reads and writes can take place at the same time - hence Raid 5 writing had no particular overhead associated with it.
Given that the SCSI drives access time is half that of the IDE drives I'm doubtful that a pair of striped IDE disks would be faster - certainly not in all applications. I would rather use the IDE drives mirrored - since one IDE drive can't swamp the bandwidth available, writing to two doesn't attract particular overhead.
I'm severely tempted by your last suggestion - thanks.
Remember that seek time is affected not only by rpm but by platter density and the seagate has 60 gig platters and posts a seek time of 8.5 ms according to the seagate web site, and after the initial 8.5 milliseconds you will be getting data transfer rate of about 55 - 60 meg per second depending on raid controller, as the standard driver transfers about 35 ish and allowing for losses.
As long as you defrag your disks on a fairly regualr basis data transfer is generally more important than seek time unless bad fragmentation of disks.
You will not swamp bandwidth as ata100 is 100 meg per sec and you will be lucky to reach about 60 in the real world with striping. Mirroring should give you almost that read speed but half the write speed. Also lose half capacity which makes it expensive but ultra reliable.
never said it was cheap though, hehe
regards
Eric
Two little IDE drives are a damn sight cheaper than an Ultra 3 SCSI hard drive and controller:)
To get back to the original thread, the PC is as noisy as ever. Ever increasing temperatures have forced me back to running the front two antec fans on the Pyramid 5 controller. Despite restricting these fans to about 1,700rpm, they have added to the noise of the hard drive - in fact, they are more intrusive. What's worse, the temperaturea aren't that much better!
The Zalman heatsink on the graphics card has certainly boosted the inside case temperature significantly.
Sigh...
Silence doesn't beget low temperatures. Unfortunately. :(
I have an Antec tower case, first thing I did was bin the loud antec fans and replace them with 5 papst 80cm fans at 12dba.
£75 quid but 12dba, I have never seen or heard a quieter fan.
http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/product.php?view=2528
I also just fitted a connect 3d ati 9500 from Kustom (the one that you can make into a 9700, and it works) and its extremely quiet? was yours noisy.
Then you will be back to the loud hard drives! Did you give any thought to my suggestion of mounting the SCSI 3 drives in an external enclosure which would lower your main case temp and let you apply acousric damping for HD enclosure.
all the best
Eric
I tired of trying to quiet my system. It just got worse and worse. In the end I bought a Suntek aluminium case, a Via Epia ME6000 mainboard (no fan on cpu), a 2.5" HDD from a laptop and a quiet PSU. Now I have a system that runs almost silently (working on the PSU issue and resonance through feet will soon be cured). The HDD is mounted in acoustic foam, wedged into a 3.5" slot so it's held firm but not in contact with the case. It's near silent.
I had to ask myself why, when all I do id surf, email and use Office type software, I needed an Athlon XP2700, a Geforce VGA card and 4 case fans to try and keep it any where near cool enough (they didn't unless at max volume).
Obviously, some people need such a powerful PC but I bet most people just build them because they are cool. Mine is a 667Mhz with 512Mb of DDR ram and it's plenty fast enough for everyday computing. Let's face it, 2 years ago it would have been a monster!
No, I don't want an external enclosure for the SCSI drives. If they were next to the computer I would still get the whine but thanks for the suggestion.
It is my dream to get a black CM111 once Graeme gets them in, and put my quiet kit in it, plus 4 Papst fans controlled by a Pyramid 5, and use a Barricuda IV hard drive.
I at first, had a 9500 then Graeme exchanged it for the 9500 Pro which I had originally ordered. The fan and heatsink in both looked identical. The 9500 fan wasn't bad but the 9500 Pro was never used with a fan - it got the Zalman heatsink right from the off.
Just now after doing atwo backups, one to DVD-RW and one to DVD-R, running a few applications, and web browsing, temperatures are stabble under 40°C but I'll get 50 the minute I have a little play on MotoGP.
Yep, it did. But wuth the intake fans now running again, northbridge and chassis temperatures weren't as high.
Alan, have you looked into the airflow paths and anything that might be causing turbulence in your case?
For example, the 'drilled' fanholes on most cases are a major culprit of noise and restricted airflow - dremelling out my drilled fanholes reduced noise and increased airflow siginificantly - my case temperature also dropped several degrees. What case do you have?
Also, you could replace your double sets of 80mm fans for a single 120mm. They generally have a better CFM to noise ratio.
Finally, do you use rounded cables (even the SCSI ones)? These should cut down on turbulence within the case.
ZStation
25-02-2003, 17:05
I seem to remember someone doing a review on the net of the recent Dell machines, which are generally very quiet.
But, I'm sitting here in work waiting for Office to install on a PC, so I'll throw in the main points that review made, and some points I've noticed myself.
Dell use temperature controlled PSU fans, typically Panaflo or NMB. These generally run very slowly, as case temps are low, and the PSUs have huge heatsinks.
The mid-tower cases have a low RPM temperature controlled 92mm fan mounted in a plastic housing to reduce transmission of vibrations to the case. There is a plastic cowl from that fan down to a huge passive heatsink on the processor. No CPU fan - no noise.
Northbridges are always passive. No fan, no noise.
Only the highest spec video cards have fans. Even the GF4MX they use has a big passive heatsink.
Hard-drives are typically quiet units, they favor Seagate Barracuda IV, Seagate U6 in slower machines, and occasionally Maxtor drives. Drive are mounted on plastic rails, again to combat noise transmission. Acoustic mode is always in Quiet mode.
Finally, the cases are metal framed with plastic sides. Plastic sides soak up noise and vibration.
I have an old Dell Dimension case here with a new P3 board in it. It's almost silent. Plenty of vents and a slow fan mean case temps are low.
Hope this helps. :)
No room for a 120mm intake fan. Intake fans are unobstructed. The rear extract fan could have a clearer exit on the back of the case. Case is tidy - all cables are round:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/alan.mcgeagh/Img_0057.jpg
Next plan to take place this weekend is to replace the Antec LED fans with the original CM fans 'cos they are quieter at full tilt. The Pyramid V will control them. The other two case fans are already Papst 12dBA fans.
A Barricuda IV will replace both SCSI drives and a 92mm fan on a Zalman bracket will cool the Video card. It will be controlled by a Potentiometer circuit fitted to a PCI bracket for control from outside the case. When not playing games it will be cranked right down to silence.
If it fits OK, I might get Kustom's special 120mm Papst fan which turns at 900rpm but still flows more air than most standard 80mm fans at full tilt.
Thanks for all the comments and suggestions. :D
Does this forum not accept image files?
Just click on the link, it'll get you there.
Wait a minute, it's my forum! I can fix that...
Thanks G...
SILENCE IS ACHIEVED
Changed my hard drives for a Barricuda IV - 'tis true what they say, - you can't hear them!
I was worried about the heat of my video card so I added a Zalman bracket and stuck on one of Kustom's aluminium 80mm fans. I turfed the Antec blue LED fans from the front and replaced them with the original CM case fans and controlled them AND the aluminium fan with the Pyramid V controller. See here for photos. (http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=5771)
At this point there was still a little continuous clicking noise which irritated and I thought it sounded like one of the YS-Tech fans at the front. I switched them off - it was still there. Much to my surpise it was the 12dBA silent Papst fan on the top blow hole - so I switched it off too.
Temperatures are being maintained and I have a virtually silent machine!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I've just discovered that, when my expensive Zalman PSU reacts to increased temperature by increasing the speed of it's fan, - it WHINES!!!
And, having increased it's speed and started to whine, when you stop playing games and go back to idle, and the temperature drops, the Zalman keeps on whining!! Doh!! (This should possibly be in the Rant forum).
No matter how long the computer idles, it doesn't go back to it's original setting and though the whine does reduce in intensity, it doesn't go away. Only when you swith the PC off and switch it back on again, does it return to its customary quietness.
Is this a fault in the PSU, or is it a result of my particular setup - who knows?
Update for the very few still interested. It wasn't the PSU whining, but an aluminium Titan fan I had bought to give a little cooling to the Zalman ZM80 on the graphics card.
It's speed was being controlled by the Pyramid V fan controller and after game playing, the Pyramid was increasing the speed of the Titan a bit, but it resulted in a backgroud whine - the kind that once you finally notice, you keep on hearing.
I disconnected the fan and returned to silent bliss. Then I connected the fan back up direct to the motherboard to see if the whine remained. There was now no whine at all but the overall noise level of the fan was a bit high for a quiet sytem.
I've since replaced the Titan with a Kustom blue LED fan (fitted with a blue acrylic atomic grille) which has its own three stage temperature sensor. So rather than using a Fan Mate or the Pyramid I thought I'd try it out.
It starts off reasonably but after half an hour (no game playing), the speed picks up and it is too loud, so I'm either switching it off or trying a Fan Mate on it so that it runs at low rpm all the time. - And I'll keep an ear out for whines.
But without that fan on, I have to say that the computer is almost silent. You really have to strain to hear it and any sort of ambient background noise makes it inaudible.
I've also replaced the Cooler Master Fujiyama CPU cooler with a Zalman 7000 copper cooler. It is fractionally louder than the Fujiyama but the 92mm fan makes a lower pitched hum which is, when you can hear it, less obstrusive.
Interesting thread mate, I like the scientific approach
ZStation
10-06-2003, 14:00
I've been working at the noise output of my machine. Apart from the graphics card and the northbridge fan, the machine is deathly silent.
Once I clear my creditcard debt (oooh er) I'll be replacing those with Zalman passives.
I'll take photos in the next few days, with a bit of a writeup on what I did, if anyone's interested. :)
Yes - I'm interested. I'm trying to silence my pc too.
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