[Halbyrd]

I'm in the process of inching my way towards a decent general purpose compy, with an emphasis on gaming and music. Towards that end, I've purchased ThermalTake's Tsunami Dream case, windowed variant (mirror-black finish, *drool*), and I immediately noticed how noisy the fans are.

I'll be purchasing a quiet PSU soon, but I was wondering if anyone here could offer suggestions on ways to further quiet this beast? Suggestions on things like fan-controller rheostats and noise-dampening materials? Recommended quiet 90mm and 120mm fans? I've considered watercooling, but as often as I'm going to be moving this around (active LAN gamer), the fittings would likely get jarred loose. Not to mention the ungodly noise the pump would likely put out.

 

[Flagger]

you could replace the fans with 120mm low noise fans, that is if their is 120mm mounting holes...

for my Lanning purposes, i got myself a antec super lanboy without the psu, and put in a antec truepower (2 fan) 430W. the lanboy has 2 120mm fans and its whisper quiet...not truley quiet, but quiet enough.

 

[breadnbutter]

Oh, I was planing to buy the Tsunami case as well for my new computer (which will be my audio source as well). From some reviews I had the impression that the fans are relatively quiet. Is there a way of slowing them down (i.e. with a pot)?
I would really like this case, just the right amount of geeknes but not over the top. Maybe they should change the name though

 

[EasyRaider]

Definitely reduce the speed of the fans, that should go a long way. Any simple fan controller should do. Suspending the hard drive is also a good idea. You can find more info about suspension at SilentPCReview.

I only recommend noise dampening materials as a last touch on an already quiet system, and of course, it would look ugly with a window.

 

[jpr703]

Panaflow 120s are nice and quiet.

 

[AdamWill]

Panaflo fans = super plus good. Definitely get those if at all possible. If not, second best is Vantec Stealth. I'm not familiar with this case in particular, but see how many fans you can completely disable without killing the airflow. No sane computer needs more than two fans, and hardly any need more than one (though if you're building a P4EE beast with a top-end graphics card and overclocked everything, you might). Finally, ditch whatever hard disk you have and buy either a Seagate or a Samsung instead. Both very quiet; Samsung are even quieter than Seagate, but a little slower and don't come in massive capacities.

 

[individual6891]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jpr703 Panaflow 120s are nice and quiet.

Panaflo's are nice and expensive =)

Fan controller = nice and can control speed exactly for multiple fans. Home made ones based on LM317 aren't hard to knock up.. but there are plenty of cheap fan controllers from wide range of online stores everywhere.

 

[Magsy]

SilenX if you can get them, don't push much air but very very quiet here.

Also do you need any of the fans in the case? I have a P4 2.6@3.2 on air, with a 9700 pro, two 15k scsi disks, a 60gb 7.2k IDE, two dvd-rw's and the emu. I can make do with just the PSU fans (Antec Truepower 430 + Antec 1080amg case)

Sure its cooler with the case fans on, but I don't really need em. I run one just because its not too noisy...

 

[Mevunky]

Depends how into comptuers you are but, comming from an overclocker I think you have a few good options.

You dont need any case fans if you run a tidy case+decent psu.

Watercooling is very very quite, as you can get high quality pumps and a passive radiator so you literally have no fans...high cost, but its very quite

A decent PSU will almost be silent, brands such as Enermax etc.

Buy a large overclockers heatsink such as a thermalright for your CPU and put a silent fan such as the ones mentioned above on it and slow it down etc. The heatsink will cost you but it will work very well and let you run a fan at very low speeds and still get better temps than the stock cooler.

 

[Edwood]

My current favorite PSU is the Antec Phantom.

-Ed

 

[1UP]

Papst 92mm are dead quiet. Better than Panaflos by a little bit; cheaper in Europe.

Try www.noisecontrol.de

 

[AdamWill]

1up: yeah, Papst are decent, but they're expensive outside Europe, and they also have long-running problems with build quality (which is odd for the price they charge). Outside Europe I wouldn't get Papst (and inside Europe, I'd only buy 'em from a dealer with a good return policy).

 

[Snoodge]

buy a fanless power supply for about $100 off of newegg... Take the side panel off your case and leave it off... Remove all of the fans that are currently installed in your computer... Buy a Zalman 7000 series cpu cooler and their new flower shaped vga cooler. Run both in low speed modes. Buy a liquid bearing S-ATA hard drive, I think the samsung spinpoint drives are liquid bearing. If the motherboards northbridge is actively cooled, buy a larger passive northbridge cooler, Zalman makes one of those too...

My two computers only have 2 fans in them... The low rpm cpu fan, and the low rpm vga fan. btw, just incase you think that only having two fans would limit your performance, Im running a 3000+ A64 @ 2.6ghz (FX55 speed) and using an nvidia 6800GT flashed to a 6800Ultra. No heat issues here and its nearly silent.

 

[schapman]

What I ended up doing is:

Antec Sonata Case. It comes with a 380 watt truepower psu. Auto controls the psu fan based on temp. Also uses 1 120mm fan on the back which connects to a "fan only" connector off the psu. All your drives sit on rails that have rubber washers to reduce the vibration noises from the case. It's also a sexy piano black (though be careful because it can scratch easily). There is also a spot just behind the hard drive rack for another 120mm fan though it seems unneeded. I'm running this with a arctic cooling vga silencer on my 9700pro, and the stock amd hsf on my amd64 3000+. The only noise I here from the case now is the cdroms spinning up, or the odd click from the harddrive.

 

[AdamWill]

"Take the side panel off your case and leave it off"

No. Don't. This is bad. It makes the noise generated internally more audible, it's bad for the components to run like this for extended periods, and in a well-designed case it actually reduces airflow. (Ask any Shuttle owner - running with the cover off increases temperatures). It might help hack job cases, but if you're trying to build a really quiet system you're never going to get it out of a hack job case anyway, you need to get a proper setup...and once you have one of those, taking off the side panel achieves nothing.