How much will sound insulation help?

[kami]

I have an Enlight 7237 using an Enlight 250w power supply and the following stuff is making the noise:

-PSU
-80mm fan in front
-80mm exhaust fan below PSU
-golden orb
-the little whiney fan on my geforce2
-two 7200rpm hard drives

how much would insulation (dynamat?? or what else could i pick up at home depot or something?) help with my little noise problem?

thanks

 

[GiZzO]

dynamat will do nothing but dampen resonant frequncey, what dynamat does is add mass/wieght to a certain area to reduce its vibration, this is whats called mass loading. Its a asphalt based material, thats were it gets its annoying smell from everyone talks about. But this is not a sound absorber, its a vibration absorber soo many ppl here use the wrong stuff, and of course unhappy with there results.

 

[kami]

what's a sound absorber then?

 

[mechBgon]

Kami, I've tried a bunch of stuff, including actual studio soundproofing mat, carpet, a dynamat-type product, sound-absorbing ceiling tile, egg-crate foam.... In my experience, nothing helps much. The solution I found to work is to use low-rpm, low-noise fans. My computers are rather loud but I wanted to make my sister's new computer really quiet (in hopes she would leave it on overnight and get more RC5 output, mind you ). I got a load of Panaflo 80mm fans from TeamAwe and used them on the CPU heatsink, in the power supply, in the rear, and one hanging below the hard drive facing up. The loudest fan in the computer was the video card fan, and I replaced it. Very pleasant sound level now... and the best part is that the fans were pretty darn cheap compared to special sound-absorbing materials.

Just my 2 cents' worth.

 

[kami]

hmm, thanks...now to find some panaflo fans.

 

[Tonec]

Replace everything with 80mm Panaflos and rubber grommets. Avoid any kind of grill/filter/cutout if you can. The one place that vibration dampeners really help out is behind the motherboard plate where most of the vibration originates. The enlight cases in particular benefit from dampeners because their cases are built with loose tolerances and tend to vibrate a bit more than average.

The gorb produces an annoying high pitched whine. I found that the taisol733092+panaflo60mm is the quiest combo possible if your cpu doesn't produce much heat. The alpha 6035+panaflo is close, fop32 is imho the loudest of the three regardless of which fan you use.

The enlight power supply needs a lot of work. I used sheet metal cutters to remove the metal cut out and put a panaflo with no grill. This provided the greatest noise reduction.

 

[GiZzO]

Open cell - closed cell acoustic foam is great for absorbing sound, thicker is it the higher sound reduction there is. To getthe most out of it...any straight pathway to outside of the case must somehow be ducted or draped with a sound absorber.

 

[heng1028]

will the dynamat keep the warm air inside the chasis??

 

[Usul]

Dynmat happends to be a goor thermal insulator, so it will prevent the heat to be dissipated by the case.