Silent Cases

[gammaray]

Hello,

Besides fractal design R4 and R5, are there any other cases that offers similar quietness?

 

[UsandThem]

http://www.corsair.com/en-us/cases/popular-cases/quiet-cases

Many different companies have 'quiet' cases in their product line-up.

I think Newegg has a filter to see what models are as well.

 

[gammaray]

cool, thanks!
3 years ago when i bought my fractal R4, it was the only one i found that was available.

 

[UsandThem]

Plenty of choices out there to choose from, but I have the R5 and I love it. Great case.

You can read some reviews on quiet cases here:

http://www.silentpcreview.com/section9.html

 

[JeffMD]

Keep in mind cases are always silent. It is the fans that make noise. Just find the case you like.. buy the whisper quiet fans, a hsf with a big and slow fan on it, and a nvidia video card. If you want the extra work to make the video card quieter, add a water block, your 2 radiator fans shouldn't need to spin as fast as the video card ones would.

 

[nerp]

Yes, any case can be made near silent with some effort, primarily on finding super quiet PSU, big, quiet fans. Even a thin-panel Lian-Li with lots of air vents can be silent.

Another culprit: hard drives. Get a NAS, throw it in a closet. Keep your main box SSD only.

 

[lehtv]

Keep in mind cases are always silent. It is the fans that make noise. Just find the case you like.. buy the whisper quiet fans, a hsf with a big and slow fan on it, and a nvidia video card.

Please. That guarantees nothing. There are quiet AMD cards and loud NVIDIA cards, and vice versa.

 

[JeffMD]

Yea yea w\e. Nothing of amd`s I have owned was ever quiet. amd runs hot. 480 seems fine I guess, but video card is up to personal pref really.

 

[lehtv]

Yea yea w\e. Nothing of amd`s I have owned was ever quiet. amd runs hot. 480 seems fine I guess

Well, that just proves that personal experience with a limited set of video cards can't be used to make sweeping statements like "NVIDIA is quieter". Sorry you haven't had a quiet AMD card, I've had two different Sapphire 7950 (Dual-X and Vapor-X) which were very quiet by standards back then (zero RPM idle wasn't a thing).

"AMD runs hot" is also a silly overgeneralization, it is simply not true unless you only compare similar cooling solutions of competing GPUs (e.g. RX 480 vs GTX 1060). As an example of why this is silly, there are plenty of GTX 970 models which have inferior cooling solutions and lose to Sapphire R9 390 Nitro or even PowerColor R9 390 PCS+ in terms of noise and temperatures, despite the fact that those cards are similarly priced and consume much more power.

but video card is up to personal pref really.

Not necessarily. Video cards can be objectively compared and purchase decisions can be made in an unbiased way based on those comparisons. It's not a personal preference in the same sense as blonde vs brunette is a personal preference.

 

[lehtv]

To avoid derailing too much -

Nanoxia cases tend to offer extremely good construction quality and good set of features at prices lower than Fractal Design Define series cases. E.g. Nanoxia DS4 (microATX) vs Fractal Design Define Mini. Unfortunately, availability in North America is pretty bad.

Then there's Corsair 400Q. Excellent choice for those who want a more compact ATX case, it's much smaller than Define S, for instance, even though both cases lack 5.25" slots.

edit: Phanteks Eclipse P400S. Cheap and quiet and offering a nice set of modern features like PSU shroud, good radiator support, unobstructed front-to-back airflow, good dust filters, integrated fan controller.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I've never thought of choosing a case for being "quiet," and as JeffMD noted, it's not a major factor.

It is a major factor for the vent and fan options it offers, and a calculated "optimization" strategy either for air-cooling or water-cooling may include blocking off unused vent holes. This depends on whether you're a stickler for directed airflow in that strategy. Alternatively, you could build a case out of perf-steel (and we've seen a few sold on the market), provide no pressurization, and make it "breezy."

About 20 years ago, I picked up a stethoscope in an auto-parts store which was marketed for an auto-mechanic's use. I keep it in my toolbox of computer resources. You quickly discover, probing different surfaces, the level of motor noise being generated from particular points (fans in particular, and "unisolated" HDDs. Many times, people who complain about "noisy HDDs" of a particular manufacture may be correct about a drive model, but they wouldn't have noticed it if they'd taken installation pains for installing them in a case.

A "good" case will have drive cages with rubber isolators, separating the HDDs from case-metal. For the fans, the use of metal screws to secure the fans will transmit motor noise of the fan to case metal. You would hear that noise easily with a stethoscope simply by probing the fan hub on the non-moveable frame side of a fan. Then, touching the case metal around the fan mounts, you can see how it's transmitted to the case, and possibly echo or propagate.

So you can buy rubber fan isolators of various sizes:

http://www.sidewindercomputers.com/setof4fanrid.html

If you can't use them for a particular fan or mounting point, then exchange the metal screws for nylon machine-screws and nuts. But hard plastic or nylon still transmits sound. Go to the auto-parts store, and look for a roll of self-adhesive rubber hose bandage. Take a small rectangle of the hose bandage -- just enough to wrap around the nylon screw without appreciably increasing its thickness -- and neatly wrap the screw threads. You can also purchase those little "rubber-donuts" used to fill electronic chassis holes passing wires through which eliminate "wire-chaffing." You can even cut them down the center groove, and use either the entire donut or its half on either end of the screw as an isolating washer.

Another thing you can do involves purchasing an $8 box of this:

http://www.coolerguys.com/840556014003.html

You can cut the material with scissors for any number of applications. Small 1.5" right-triangles will fit the corners of your fans which don't have a rubber corner (the better ones do these days). Use an office single-hole punch to make the hole for a mounting screw or strap matching the fan mounting holes.

This proves out with the stethoscope if you probe "before and after."

Nobody but an OCD DYI'er will want to eagerly embrace these things with time and attention, but they don't take a lot of time.

Since fan noise consists of "white-noise" from air-turbulence and motor noise, your efforts will go a long way in muffling the latter.

YOu can even use the Spire material to construct a circular rubber "nose" to stick on the fixed side of the fan hub. If you build a duct for a fan, you can build it with several layers of Spire to further reduce transmitted noise.

 

[gammaray]

the point tho of buying a silent case, like the fractal design, is to not have to build one myself!

but thanks for sharing!

 

[BonzaiDuck]

It all depends on how Fractal ships their product. The fans would certainly be quiet, because they don't push a lot of air or conversely -- they run at modest RPM.

But this is by no means a topic that case-makers will bury too quickly. I see people whining about noisy hard disks, noisy fans. And I can say the rubber isolators and "corner-pads" for fans almost eliminate the noise you hear from the motor of any fan -- with a stethoscope.