Quieting down your PC *56k warning*

Just installed a Zalman flower and BOY what a difference!  The comp now makes about 1/3 the noise of my Xbox and 1/2 of the PS2, the loudest thing being a 40gig WD harddrive.  Next up, a HD enclosure!


Case is a D-Vine 4 series which looks like it keeps noise out but it doesn\'t.. sound seeps under the front air inlet on the bottom and even through the 5.25" bay door.  Needed this style as it\'s an HTPC, sitting in the home theater.


Stock HSF with noiseless heatpipe VGA cooler and a small 80mm custom fan mount.


Zalman ships their noiseless fans with a little adapter which is just a resistor to limit power intake to the fan, reducing noise and RPMs dramatically.  I just couldn\'t get enough airflow with an 80mm and luckiy found that a 92mm fits and is whisper quiet with the resistor spinning at 1600rpm.  Placement here needed a small angle iron, this area is great because it also keeps the HD\'s relatively cool.  The 120gb Maxtor heats up very fast and is almost too hot to touch at times. :rpissed:


The pure copper version of this flower is heeeavy, but that\'s good since copper is denser and dissapates heat better than aluminum. (note the bigger 92mm fan up top right)


Used the paste that came with it to grease up the p2.4b, the clips were relatively easy to snap into place.


Used the supplied fan speed controller to keep the fan hovering around 1500rpms, just about where I couldn\'t hear it.  Although people say they got hotter temperatures with this quiet setup I got the opposite.  I get cooler and more stable temperatures when playing games & DV encoding than the stock Intel HSF. (more pics here)

Cost:
Zalman Copper Flower kit: $36 shipped from BBC.
Zalman Heatpipe cooler: $24 shipped refurb from Newegg
Zalman ZM-F2 noiseless 92mm fan: $14 shipped
Total = $74

A little more than I\'d like but worth it in the end, still cheaper and easier to setup than water cooling.  We spend a lot of time next to our puters.. it\'s nice to have a quiet environment for thinking, listening to music, reading, and even playing stealthy games.  :nerd:

[Kurt Angle]

I quite like the "fanny" sound my PC makes.

When quietung down a PC, Overclocking is one thing you give up. Also I do not recommend a HD enlcosure to dampen the sound as today\'s 72,000 rpm drives generate alot heat and heat is a killer for harddrives life span/performance. But if none of the above apply\'s to you, all the way.

Good point Nvid, of my 2 HDs, the smaller 40gb WD makes much more noise (120gb Maxtor is dead quiet when idle, but loud when it writes).  I might just skip the enclsoure and go for a new more quiet HD.  This WD makes an annoing high-pitched wheeeee at idle.

My computer overall is extremely quiet unless your face is right next to it. While writing its also very quiet. I have a 40 gig maxtor. I moded the computer a long while ago and for being such an old computer it runs great and sounds nice even overclocked by around 300 MHz.

[§ôµÏG®ïñD]

all my  fans run at 2200rpm or lower.. only fast fan in my machine is the stock sink fan. which runs at around 4800rpm. But it\'s only a 4cm fan. My cpu sits at 45c now. Pretty good for a stock sink on a Athlon xp cpu.

Imo, more fans at a lower speed = better then few at higher speeds. More quite, more airflow normally, but more expensive. :/

Yes and No Souly. The more  fans you cram in there the higher the potential is that you disturb the air circulation flow.

For instance, I\'m sure you have seen those pics of people with 5 fans on the side ,4 in the back, 4 in the front. All that does is add more air-pressure. What is important is a laid out air circulation path, cold air in hot air out. You don’t want the air going in multiple circles or paths. The amount of fans in a case, and how they are place all depends on the size and design of the case being used.  Obviously I don’t know the case and layout you have Souly, but take me for example, I have the Lian-Li PC-70 Full Tower ATX. Inside is 2 80mm Sunon front fans(for HDD), a 92mm Panaflo for my Thermalight 900u heatsink, 2 60mm rear side-mid level and another 2 Sunon 80mm on top back-where heat sink is. Beautiful air-flow and with my fan controller I can crank it up on those really humid days we have over here in Canada.

On a side note, I think people whom use those DELTA\'s or Tornado\'s are crazy those fans are louder than my commercial hairdryer. How can anyone compute or game with that shit on. Yes they are usually hooked up to fan controllers, but still why crank them up=why buy.

[§ôµÏG®ïñD]

There\'s a simple rule for fans, for every fan pushing air in, there should be the same pushing it out. Only time u get air circulation problems is when you have negitive gearing on your air flow.
I\'ve seen people have 4 fans pulling air in, and only 1 pushing air out, if they had 4 fans pushing air in at a very low rpm, and the 1 fan pushing air out at the highest rpm setting. They wouldn\'t get as much trouble.
When u have a lot of fans, it is better to run them at a lower rpm setting then it is to have them at a higher setting. You won\'t really get much difference, a few degrees. I\'ve got mates with 5 Tt smartfans running at there highest rpms.. Their cpu heat is above mine, I’ve got 1 Tt smartfan 2 at 2800rpm on the back of my machine, a justcooler fan running at 2400rpm running at the front, a trilight fan running at 2200rpm on the side. Whats even worse is the front and side fan have fan filters, i\'ve replaced the fabric with flywire. Does a great job from keeping out dust.
Theres also the stock gear, cpu sink/fan, co-pro sink/fan, 2 fans on my gfx card, and the fan in my psu. My cpu runs at 47c under load, 42-45 idle, my co pro always sits at around 35c
I have my ti4400 card at ti4600 speeds and no problems what so ever.  Everything is stock, no new sink, no water cooling. Just the plain crap that came with the mb and cpu.
In my experience, lower rpms and more fans = better then fewer fans and higher rpms.

My modded overclocking case has a total of 8 fans, all with knobs on the front for speed selection (it\'s pretty damn loud if I crank up the CPU/GPU and run it hot for processing).  However, you get used to everything... in fact, when I moved recently, I slept poorly the first night BECAUSE I didn\'t have the fan sound in my room.  It\'s like a gentle rain, it lulls you right to sleep.

Although once in a while it\'s nice to go camping and actually be somewhere with no sound at all.

EDIT:
no, wait.  13 fans.  I forgot about the 3 HDD fans and extra CPU double I put in there.

Freaks.. I have 3 fans total, including the PSU fan.   Over 6 fans in a consumer PC is a joke!  Anything more seems like you\'re running prehistoric hardware. :banghead:

[§ôµÏG®ïñD]

Don\'t worry THX, soon enough even fans won\'t be enough for cooling pcs.. Looks to me water cooling or some other form of cooling (refrigeration maybe) will be the future of computing.
I have 3 case fans, the rest of just stock fans.  A total of 8 fans including the psu fan.

Yea I was seriously looking at some water coolers but the ones I wanted hovered around $300 total.  Ehhh.. maybe later!

Who said I was running a stock case?

I dunno, it as it turns out, I probably would have been better springing for a watercooled system, cause I spend about 20 hours modding up my case, and about 850 bucks for case+PS+fans+cables.

I don\'t see watercooling the future nor refrid, cause that shit is way to complicated fir the average user, and expensive.

oh c\'mon.. you don\'t see Dells in the future shipping with bulletproof water coolers?  I think all they\'d need is an annual check up?  Or is there more upkeep to it?