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building a silent computer

B

BrianP

Member
I need to build a computer that is almost completely silent from 6 or 7 feet away. I've never had a concern for noise level before so I'm not sure where to start. It won't quite be top of the line, but the best bang for your buck components. Most likely AMD. What would be a good motherboard and 80mm fans for this application? Is the video card going to be a problem as well?
 
Most motherboards are pretty silent, with passive NB heatsinks. Video cards don't create very much noise at all either, and you can also get Zalman heatpipes for passive cooling. The Zalman CNPS is a good quiet HSF for your CPU. The 80mm case fans is where most of your noise is going to come from. Stay away from Delta and TT Tornado fans, they are frickin loud. Panaflos are quieter and still deliver good CFM, as well as Zalman fans. A good case will help with noise levels also.
 
Long as you're not putting in any traditional technology hard drives or removable media devices, you can get pretty close.

Your only real problem at that point will be the power supply, imho.


I live in a studio apartment, and try to make my computers pretty quiet. Thing is, fan noise is generally white noise, long as it isn't really loud, it fades into the background once you're used to it. Hard disk access noise and cd/dvd spin up noise, on the other hand is intermittant and can drive you crazy.

I was waking up at 3am every morning and couldn't figure out why, until I realized that was when my daily full antivirus scan kicked off. Those drives churning away were enough to wake me up every time. I just leave my pc on pretty much 24x7 nowadays and just have it do the av scan when I'm at work, not when I'm at home using the pc, or at home sleeping.
 
Case - Antec Sonata or Overture w/stock cooling (don't add fans, just use the included fans on fan-only)
CPU HSF - SLK-800/900 w/80mm Panaflo L1A
Mobo - Search newegg.com for NForce2 Ultra 400 boards and pick one with passive cooling and the features you need, all the brands they have there are pretty good
Hard drive - Samsung
Video - MSI 5900XT or ATI 9600/9800 with vga silencer (stock coolers on the newer ATI cards are kinda loud)

That does it for noisy components.
 
SilenX/Panaflo Case fans, Zalman CNPS 7000A series CPU cooler, Arctic Cooling VGA Silencer, maybe an Enermax or SilenX PSU, Seagate or the 74GB Raptors for harddrives, and maybe an Antec Sonata for a case 🙂
 
SPCR is indeed a great place to go. I have over $500 into silencing alone... And I'm still not there yet. 😀
 
Originally posted by: jhurst
Most motherboards are pretty silent, with passive NB heatsinks. Video cards don't create very much noise at all either, and you can also get Zalman heatpipes for passive cooling. The Zalman CNPS is a good quiet HSF for your CPU. The 80mm case fans is where most of your noise is going to come from. Stay away from Delta and TT Tornado fans, they are frickin loud. Panaflos are quieter and still deliver good CFM, as well as Zalman fans. A good case will help with noise levels also.
Click to expand...

Video cards are actually quite loud. Usually 35-45 db. My Radeon 8500's retail fan is the loudest component of my case followed by the NB fan on ABIT NF7-S ver.2.

Other than that, Ive had pretty good luck with Antec TrueBlue 480 being really quiet.

If you dont mind noise while your HDD is seeking, but just want quiet during idle, Maxtor, Samsung, Seagate.

Low RPM 120mm fans should keep noise to around 28-30 db.

Any less than 28-30db you might want to consider alternative cooling.
 
Hard drive- Samsung spinpoint seems to be the choice right now, unless you dont need much storage in which case a Seagate Barracuda IV 40gb.

CPU cooler- Thermalright heatsinks with a nice quiet Panaflo or NMB fan; alternately a Zalman.

Motherboard- like jhurst says, most motherboards have a passive northbridge, but just to add most that dont can have the stock heatsinkfan replaced with a passive one for example Zalman's NB47J.

Video Card- depends how much performance you need here. If you only need enogh for generals windows stuff then a relatively low performance card with a passive heatsink would be ample. If you want something more of a gamer's card, then there are also quietening solutions - for a 9800pro for example there is Zalman's heatpipe VGA cooler (a big passive heatsink) or the Arctic Cooling VGA Silencer, which is a big heatsink with a fairly quiet fan (two modes: fast which is about the same noise as a standard 9800pro cooler but cools a lot better, or slow which cools about the same as stock but is significantly quieter) that has the added bonus of pushing the hot air out the rear of the case. From experience I'm liking my VGA silencer, havent tried the Zalman cooler.

Case - check out the Antec Sonata and Antec SLK3700BQE (black quiet edition). Both have quiet PSUs, grommets to reduce hard drive vibration noise and 120mm case fans. The large 120mm fans are good for noise reduction because theyre so large each time they turn they move quite a lot of air, so they can turn a lot slower than the 80mm case fans while pushing the same air, and hence make less noise.
 
I do not have much expirience with different components, but I recently got Samsung SP1213C. Very fast, very quiet. I've chosen after reading HD article on the xbitlabs. Article only looked at the performance so I expected it to be fast, but it also is very quiet. To be able to tell that hard drive is being accessed I have to look at the light. My other compoenents seems to be a bit noisy with open case, but I did not try to build quiet system..
 
As mentioned before look into the zalman stuff. For my "silent PC" here is what I used

Zalman ZM-NB47J replaced the loud stock northbridge fan
panaflo L1A for heatsink and case fans, at 7v it extremely silent
seagate CUDA IV 80gb for hard drive

and I got a ATI AIW 16mb (old school) and it doesn't have a fan since it came passively cooled
or you could look into the zalman heat pipe video card cooler which i also have and it
works pretty good.

the next thing is getting a super quiet PSU. I have the antec true 430, it's ok but I can still hear the fans blowing air.
 
Any normal Shuttle XPC small form factor pc. Get a passive video card and "silentX" shuttle Power supply. Then, cut out the exhaust grill and replace the exhaust fan with that 92mm Panaflo (30dB rating) fan. It works WONDERS and you won't hear it from 6-7 feet away. This way you only have 2 fans in your entire system and it is EXTREMELY quiet, from that distance I'd say "silent." No annoynig hiss/buzz or vibrations.

92mm Fan mod in My shuttle 12nd pic!the 3rd pic wahoo!
 
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