Silencing my current case

[Beerlake]

Howdy.

I have had this Compucase box for about a year now, and it came equipped with some generic 12 cm fans on both front and back of the case. Lately I've been thinking about switching them to something more silent and hopefully a bit more effective as well. Any suggestions? I hear Noctua is good, and some reviews of NF-S12-800 for example say that it doesn't make a peep and does the job well.

In addition to that, I'm looking for a way to silence my hard drives a bit. I read about NoiseBlocker CoolSwing Silver things that are screwed on the sides of HD and slide into a 5.25" slot. Supposedly cools down the HD and eliminates some of the resonance. Any opinions of products like that? I'm pretty clueless about these, didn't even know stuff like that excisted before yesterday.

I'm also wondering about the AMD stock cooler. I'm satisfied with the performance of it (non-overclocker) but is it loud? Because I can't tell. Having used the same case for my earlier system and current X2 5600+, the fan is possibly drowned in the other noise. But if I silence the case with new fans etc, will the stock cpu cooler stand out after that? Any ideas? Is the Noctua NH-U12F any good, for example? I looked into Zalman's CNPS9500-AM2 as well, and a little mixed reviews as far as the noise goes. Other reviews say it's silent, but others disagree.

And finally, any general hints to silence the case would be greatly appreciated.

 

[boomhower]

For fans any of these would work.
1.
2.
3.
Add this to your side panels. even going a step further you can do with some rubber fan mounts. You could try these to quiet you HD's. I was looking for some silicon mounts but couldn't find any this mourning. For you CPU I would go with a tower cooler that takes a 120mm fan. Since you not overclocking it doesnt matter as much which one, I would suggest this..It is cheap and would be perfect for your application. The Thermalright 120 Extreme is the best you can get your hands on. If you cant fit a tower in you case go with a ultima 90, it can still take a 120 fan. Just use one of the previously linked fans for whatever you choose. Now you loudest component is going to be your video card. What are you running there?

As for the Noctua, I am not familar with them. I have also stuck with yates as the value for performance just cannot be beat.

 

[Beerlake]

Now you loudest component is going to be your video card. What are you running there?

Currently old Club 3D GF 7600GT. It's pretty loud under load, but I'm going to upgrade that as well. I was looking at the Sapphire Radeon X1950 Pro Ultimate, with that premounted Zalman it seems like a perfect for my current budget and needs. Apparently silent as well, and performs a bit better than regular X1950 Pro.

Thanks for the suggestions so far.

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: Beerlake
I have had this Compucase box

Haha, I used to have that exact case with the same silver/black front.

I'll add/edit what boomhower said:

"2."
This cheaper Yate Loon would be good. You'll want to undervolt it a bit, either by using a fan controller or going cheap and modding it... you can easily get these fans to work on 7v or 5v by a quick re-wiring.

"Add this to your side panels."
I would say no to this. Those dampening sheets are just some foam, and are not worth the effort IMO. The easiest thing to do is to reduce the noise emitted by fans instead of trying to absorb or dampen them. With the Compucase case (is that redundant?) the metal is pretty thick, but the fit on my particular case was not perfect. The side panels would sometimes rattle a slight bit. A quick fix would be to put something (really thin weatherstripping?) where the side panel meets the chassis to stop the rattle. After that, the next best thing would be to glue something really heavy to the side panel.

"even going a step further you can do with some rubber fan mounts."
That's a very good idea and normally I'd be all over that... but the Compucase doesn't use regular screw holes, but instead a fan holder. The holder is screwed into the case and the fan clips into the holder. The holes on the case do not match up to the fan, so you can't bypass the holder.

"You could try these to quiet you HD's."
The case already comes with HDD rubber grommets. Unless someone comes up with a source for those really soft ones like the newer Antec cases have, then there's no reason to replace these.

"For you CPU I would go with a tower cooler that takes a 120mm fan. Since you not overclocking it doesnt matter as much which one, I would suggest this.."
Another excellent idea. Indeed I've been running my own dual core A64 3800+ overclocked to 2.4GHz since December 2005 with one of these Scythe Ninjas with no fan on it.

Beerlake, if you want to try modding the case, the single best thing you can do to it is to cut out the stock fan grills as they don't let too much air through. Once you do that, then you will get better airflow (important with quiet fans) as well as less noise (from air turbulence).

After you do these things and swap out your video card (or get a silent cooler for it) then you'll start to hear your hard drives. :Q At that point you either decide "good enough" or you leave here (temporarily) and head to the SilentPCReview.com forums.


EDIT:

BTW, I dug out an old picture of mine from January 2006 (date on pic is wrong, LOL). You can see that same Compucase, with a Yate Loon fan and the passive Ninja, and a passive cooler on my unlocked Radeon x800GTO.

Picture here

 

[RallyMaster]

I would get a bunch of cheap but good Yate Loon D12SL-12s and call it a day. Get them and never mess with your cooling ever again.