[iSleipnir]

Because my computer IS my dedicated source, and because a quiet listening environment is always nice, in building my computer I have done everything I can to keep it as quiet as possible. I'm interested to see what components people are using and how they're using them/modding them to get the quietest case they can. Please list your parts and maybe an explanation of some of them or any upgrades you want. NOTE: I realize there are other forums for quiet computes like my guidebook SPCR but I want to see what people around here are using.

Here are the componets in my comp that make noise (or really help to supress it):
Lian-li PC-6070 case
2.8ghz processor w/ Thermaltake XP-120 heatsink and modded Nexus 120mm fan
80mm Nexus exhaust fan
Nexus 40xx 400watt PSU
2x Samsung Spinpoint HDD
Pioneer DVR-110D

The case is very quiet and dampened well. THere are betters like the Antec P180 but I like the look of mine. The heatsink I just got for christmas and I love! I can't even hear it running anymore. I had to mod the Nexus fan to fit but it was easy and worth it. The only thing I hear is the PSU which is in line to be replaced next with a lower watt psu probably from Seasonic.

I folded and routed all of my ide ribbon cables for best airflow (much better than rounded cabes. This is a fact not opinion. I'll post pictures if asked) And I plan to suspend the hdd with the operting system on it to get rid of an excess vibrations.

So: what is everyone else doing?

 

[Chri5peed]

I have a new PC, I won't post all of its components. I have a CoolerMaster WaveMaster case. I think my system has about 7 fans? I was told it'd be really noisy but I honestly can't hear it unless I put my ear against the case.

When I first turned it on, I couldn't believe it was so quiet.

 

[Kwisatz]

Lian-Li PC-2100B w/2 Nexus 120mm fans
AMD X2 4800+ w/ Scythe Ninja w/ Nexus 120mm
nVidia GeForce 7800GTX
3 Samsung Spinpoints (200GB)
Seasonic S12-500

That pretty much covers all the noise making bases. Optical drives matter little to me as far as noise goes since I don't use them while doing any real listening, and if its a DVD movie the volume more than drowns them out. Things on my list to do (which have now been delayed due to speaker expenses) include:

1) Either putting an aftermarket HSF on the vid card, or just going all water.
2) Eventually completely decoupling the HDDs from the chassis with a suspension mount, but how I do that depends heavily on whether I go to water cooling.
3) The last thing, but certainly not least is the mobo ironically. Its a fanless mobo - which I had to augment with another heatsink due to its upside-down nature, but I can hear the power filtering/mosfets/whatever section around the CPU.

I'd actually consider the mobo the most annoying part of the whole thing with its high pitch noise that is just ever so faintly heard through the 7800's fan. After the vid card's noise there is the low vibrational hum from the HDDs to axe. Assuming I nail those problem areas, I'll probably look into putting the already very quiet Nexus' on a fan controller. Even in the computer's current state though, it is very acceptable to me noise wise considering whats in it.

Picture of internals: here. (1600X1200, 452KB)

 

[iSleipnir]

In truth my comp had 5 fans, two intake fans by the hdd's but I used a fan controller to tue them so low, they don't make any noise at all, but provide jsut enough air to keep my hdd's cool.

Kwisatz: I too have this humming that goes humm...humm...humm............and then repeats in threes. I narrowed it to my hdd's but man is it annoying! I have some silicone gromets but they don't ft. When I have some more time, I'm going to dremel out the brackets for teh hdd screws so they do fit. We'll see if that helps.

 

[Razoramus]

Asus P4C800-E Deluxe (passive northbridge cooling)
Enermax Whisper 433W with 80mm exhaust fan on lowest setting (~1850rpm)
Thermalright XP-90 with 92mm T&T fan at less than 1500rpm on a P4 2.4C (60-70w)
80mm Enermax temperature sensing exhaust case fan at a stable ~1850rpm
Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 PATA 8mb cache 160gb hard drive
GeForce2 GTS-V with passive cooling

 

[saturnine]

Thermaltake Tsunami with sound deadening foam
150mm EBM (Papst's industrial line) exhaust
120mm TT fan @ 5V intake
92mm Zalman fan @ 5V side intake
Arctic Cooling Silencer on 6800GT
Swiftech MCX-159p on northbridge, fanless
Zalman 7000AlCu @ 5v (set to 12v when gaming)
Rubber grommets on both drives, and a silicone PSU silencer

Specs:
ABIT IC7-G
P4 3.0@3.6
1gb Adata PC4000 + 1gb Corsair Pro (Coming back from RMA soon)
PCP&C 510 Deluxe (Will be swapped out for a more quiet Seasonic)
160gb Seagate
74gb WD Raptor
EMU 1212m + X-Fi
BFG 6800GT
Plextor 712SA

It's still too loud for low volume headphone listening due to the 80mm fan in the PCP&C 510d.

 

[jerb]

Thermaltake Xaser III (blue)
Abit NF-7S (replaced chipset fan with HS)
Thermalright Big Typhoon HS (this thing is amazing!!!)
WD 160 gb Pata 7200rpm drive (soon to be upgraded with a samsung 250 gb SATA)
Seasonic 330 Watt PSU with temp controlled 120 mm fan
6600 GT with stock cooling (loudest part of whole system!)

two silent thermaltake fans for case intake

 

[bitsoffish]

lets see...

athlon 64 3500+ with arctic freezer 64 pro
abit av8 with passive chipset heatsink
2x512 cosair valueselect
prolink pixelview 6600gt 128mb agp with zalman vf700-alcu
emu0404+audigy2
antec sonata + thermaltake silent cat 120mm @ 8v
antec truepower 380w silent version
western digital 80gb pata + seagate barracuda 7200.7 80gb

when idling or listening to music, it is silent... only the occasional hdd seeking sound... sometimes producing a very very soft low hum most likely caused by the air moving within the case... even when gaming the hum is barely audible... and guess wat.. the noisiest component is the PSU... temps are well within limits max cpu temp is abt 55C max gpu temp is 80C(is still within limits)... quite an incredible job... haha

 

[Zorander]

System #1:
AMD Athlon64 X2 3800+ (Scythe Ninja - fanless)
ASUS A8V Deluxe (passive NorthBridge)
2x512MB Kingston HyperX DDR-RAM
ATI Radeon 9800Pro 128MB (Arctic Cooling Rev. 3 - low speed)
M-Audio Revolution 7.1
250GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 (P180 cage)
Antec P180 ATX case (1x120mm Glacialtech fan at rear upper chamber)
Antec TruePower 330
Very quiet against the ambient noise of the bedroom it is in

System #2:
Intel Pentium III 1GHz (passive cooling)
Intel motherboard (can't remember model - Northbridge needs no cooling)
2X256MB generic SD-RAM
ATI Radeon 8500 (passive cooling)
AudioTrak Prodigy 7.1
80GB Seagate Barracuda IV (foam suspension)
Half-height generic ATX case
Generic 400W+ PSU (stock 120mm fan replaced with low-speed Glacialtech - the only fan in whole system)
Truly silent! The fridge across the lounge room is humming louder!

 

[L01]

athlon mobile@800MHz with passive huge noname cooler
etasys passsive psu
passive soltek mainboard
seagate 200gb (the only making noise)
rme digi 96pad

There is no fan installed in the coolermaster atc-desktop-case, so the PC itself is pretty quiet.

cheers
Andreas

 

[Razoramus]

Quote:

Originally Posted by iSleipnir 2.8ghz processor w/ Thermaltake XP-120 heatsink and modded Nexus 120mm fan

you mean Thermalright? right?

, quality stuff

Thermaltake on the other hand is sub par

 

[hekoman]

Gigabyte K8NS socket 754
Sempron 2800+ 1.6 GHz (o/ced to 2.2GHz) w/Stock cooling
512MB Mushkin 3200DDR 2-2-2
Radeon 9500pro (@300/300) w/Vantec Iceberg 4 cooling and ramsinks
M-Audio Revolution 7.1
Enermax 350w noisetaker PSU
Western Digital Raptor 36GB 10,000rpm
Western Digital 80GB 7,200rpm
Lite-On 16x DVD-RW

Fans:
front 1 120mm intake fan
Side 1 80mm intake to video card
Top 1 80mm intake
Rear 2 80mm exhaust

Also on the front I have a 4 way fan controller to control the fan on the fans on the front, top, and rear. The fan controller is set to just barely audible levels and all of the rest of the fans in my PC are throttled to almost inaudible levels.

The only thing that is loud at all in the computer is the raptor HDD, but it is not any worse than what HDD used to sound like so it really does not bother me. My computer can be silent when i want it to be or it can be loud as hell, and it runs awesome so I really can't ask for any more from a PC.

 

[Gabe Logan]

Thermaltake 112 Tower Heatsink on top of Athlon 64 3000+
90mm SilenX Fan for Heatsink to push the hot air and a 80mm Nexus to exhaust it.
120mm Nexux inlet fan (soon to get an exhaust one as well)
160GB Seagate HDD with Smart Drive hard drive enclosure
Zalamn fan and heatsink for video card.
Thernaltake 350 watt PSU

PC case lined with 1lb vinyl blocking material and on top of that a sheet of melamine sound absorbing foam.

As you can see in the pic it aint finished and the wireing is out of control.Crappy pic by the way.

 

[rimmer]

I find it futile to throw money away for supercool fans and stuff when you can just buy manual fan RPM regulators and mod the case with sound-attenuating material. Two afternoons, few bucks and the machine is quiter than most laptops.

 

[Bones13]

True Rimmer, but unless you have a big enough diffusion surface, simply turning down the fan speeds will not suffice, especially if your CPU or video card burns up because you turned down the fan speed.

I look at reviews on silentpcreview.com for actual data for making choices. Watching the opinions expressed on their forums is about like listening to folks using their listening preferences as facts to be stated here. The reviews done are however factual and the methods well stated.

I also have an upside down LianLi Case (V1000B), which I did adhere some soundproofing material to. I was uncomfortable going with the "fanless" Mobo though, and the only noise I hear is from the mobo northbridge fan. I cant put a silent cooler there as the large fins from my quiet video card is already in the space over the chip and its factory cooler. I do slow it with software control however which helps.

I chose the AMD 4400+ CPU, but at this point am not convinced the dual core helps, but then my ripping is pretty fast, even if I am doing a few other things. I wish I could find some software meter which would show both the core usage at the same time. I have installed an LCD display for the front of the machine which shows the CPU and mobo temps to help me dial in the fan speeds on the software, and hardware fan controls. It shows one core speed, it seems to change randomly (basically whichever core is used during the start up sequence) and seems to be frequently at 0, seeing the non used core.

I love the Seasonic S12 PSU - very quiet. It sits in the bottom of my case, and only has to cool itself. The fan is never heard.

I use the Zahlman 9500 CPU cooler, and the fan speed controller for it. I cant hear this fan either unless I get close.

Nexus 120 fan venting the case near the CPU.
Nexus drive cage for my noisy main drive Hitachi Deskstar
I dont need a cage for my silent 250g Samsung Spinpoint (my new "reference" drive)
Sapphire X800XL (has pre-intalled zalman video cooler)

The Plextor 716SA drive I chose for the SATA connector, and the ability to put a black face on it. This is noisy in fast speed mode, when EAC turns is slower to read it can get quiet.

If I could redo anything on my 5 month old system, it would be to choose a non-mesh, rightside up Case, which would also allow me to choose a fanless mobo. A right side up system might also allow use of one of the fanless PSUs, but since I do gaming on it occasionally, I might not have enough heat dissappation. I do love to listen to nice music on the cans playing WoW.