In the computer case, what part makes the most noise?

[AirForceElite]

I was debating with myself and the next cheap C2D build i was going to build and tried to understand if i really need a video card. Well i dont plan to play any games and i dont run any special 3D apps, so i didnt know if i need a video card because i want to LEAST noise possible.
I thought that getting some fanless video cardsso that Vista runs decent without hiccups would be the best way, but now i doubt myself....does video card fan really make much difference?

So for a person who has a small sister sleeping in the next room and tries to get the most silent computer, what would you suggest guys?
Out of all the fans that are present in a case (GPU/CPU/PSU/Case) what gives the most noise and what gives the least noise?

 

[natto fire]

Electric motors are the ONLY thing that make any noticeable noise (on a healthy system anyways). Fans, HDD, optical drives. 😛

Seriously though, since video cards usually have small fans and need to move lots of air when rendering 3D, they are usually quite noisy. I know the fan on my 7900GS is much louder than my 2 120 mm case fans, as well as a 92 and 80 in the PSU, and the Zalman 7000 on my CPU. It gets very quiet during desktop use, but once it kicks in 3D, the fan becomes quite loud. This can be alleviated by fairly cheap after market cooling, but since I usually have the sound up, or my headphones on when playing a game, it is not really a problem. What kind of gaming do you do, because last I checked, the passive cooled cards were not that great...

Check out Silentpcreview for more tips and quiet products.

 

[fyleow]

..

 

[Icepick]

The video card fan gives the most noise by far. When idle, my 7950GT is very quiet. When gaming the fan kicks in and it's quite noisy. As Captain Howdy said, this isn't normally a problem because you usually have speakers turned up or headphones on while gaming. If the noise bothers you the Zalman vf900 is a good video card heatsink/fan that will keep it near silent while gaming too.

 

[Bat123Man]

Passive cooling video cards are a bit of an oxymoron. You end up spending more for the cooling than you do for the card. None of the midrange cards are even offered with passive cooling, you end up getting an old obsolete card they have added a lot of copper to making it much more expensive than it should be.

Fans are what make noise. Since your system needs fans to create airflow, you need to get the biggest ones possible (larger fans means more airflow at slower revolutions, slower revolutions means less noise). If your computer had all 120 mm fans, you would have a system more silent than ambient noise (ie. you wouldn't hear it even at night). The worst culprit of any system is always the chipset fan. Motherboard manufacturers went as cheap as they could on those tiny 40mm fans spinning at God-awful rates, creating an incessant whine after only a few months. Fortunately, virtually all more recent mobos now employ a simple passive heatsync on the chipset. Next up are Power Supply fans. Simply put, you need one, and probably 2. There are fanless PSUs, but they are very big, very heavy, and very expensive. Plus they have an Achilles heel in that you need airflow in your case to properly disipate the heat from their heatsyncs, and guess what creates airflow? Fans! So don't bother with them, but instead make sure your heatsync features the biggest fan you can find. SilentPCReview (see previous poster for link) has some excellent and affordable recommendations for quiet PSUs). Vid Card fans are next. They are required for all cards, unless you get something from the last Ice Age. But most these days are configurable. You can set them for whisper mode, and the fan will spin more slowly. You may heat up your system after 6 straight hours of DOOM3, but since you don't play games, no worries. Finally, case fans. That is the easiest to deal with, just get 120 mm case fans. They will spin slowly enough that you can't hear them.

If you do all that, you will have a nice quiet machine. Couple it with a good case (like the Antec Sonata II), and you can have a very quiet affordable system no one will know is on.

BM.

 

[Puffnstuff]

Fans make the most noise in the case. Get a case that has 120mm fans that move lots of air quietly.

 

[corkyg]

Which fan is the loudest - dunno. I can hear them all - but the case fans are the most prominent. If I need quiet, I'll go for a liquid cooled system.

 

[Oyeve]

The loudest thing in my system is the fan on my X1950XTX, but with all the other stuff in my system I overlook it. I can lower the fan speed but my system makes so much noise its barely worth it.

 

[jondl]

This is what i did to my system to make it DEAD silent.

1. 120mm Yate Loon fans modified to 7v.
2. X1900XT heatsink replaced with VF900 on lowest fan setting.
3. Chipset fan replaced with thermalright HR-05 passive heatsink.
4. Seasonic power supply!

Number 1 made the most difference in my system.

 

[Oyeve]

One thing I plan to do soon to make my case silent is to buy 2 1tb drives and get rid of my existing 5 HDs. That alone should silence my system by half. 🙂

 

[eplebnista]

In my system it is the motherboard chipset fan.

 

[pkrush]

In the system I'm using at the moment, the power supply fan is the loudest. In my main rig, though, the title of loudest keeps passing to different components as I replace the noisier ones.
In the beginning, the northbridge cooler was the loudest, so I replaced it with a passive heatsink. Then, the CPU fan got annoying and I found a Thermalright XP-120 for 20 bucks so I replaced that. Next, my video card fan started to die, and I bought a 7900gt to replace it because I needed the extra power anyway. Then my power supply becomes the obviously most noisy thing, so I replaced it with an 120mm fanned Seasonic. Then the fan on the 7900gt got annoying enough that I replaced it with a Zalman VF700. Finally, the case fans were the loudest thing and so I wired them to run on 7 volts. Now the system is quiet enough that it's extremely hard to tell if it's on without your ear pressed against it.
If you really care about how quiet your computer is, avoid tiny fans! They make far too much noise for the air they push, and after a few months become even noisier as the ball bearings start failing. Get a fanless motherboard and video card, a PSU with a low speed 120mm fan, and a case that accepts 120mm fans (even though you should replace the stock ones, probably with Yate Loons). Regarding hard drives, I've noticed that newer Western Digitals tend to be quieter than most other brands. For the CPU cooling, you'll want a large tower-style heatsink that takes a 120mm fan.