Today’s speed systems make a racket. With all the high-speed hardware, good cooling is a necessity. Well, that cooling means a lot of noise. You’ve got the power supply grinding away and the CPU and case fans sounding like aircraft. A lot of times, even the more mundane systems make more noise than you would want. So, after getting an email from a user asking about ways to silence his system, I decided to address it.

Tweaking a system’s noise is a fine-tuned process. You can spend a lot of money on it and can do a lot of work just to shave a few decibels off the overall sound. It is impossible to make a completely silent PC. No matter what we do, there are mechanical parts in a PC, such as a hard drive, CPU fan, and power supply. Even on the older systems without a CPU fan, there is still noise. The goal, though, is to bring the PC’s sound down to or below the standard level of noise of your household. If it is below the regular noise levels, it will not be audible. In specialized environments, though, such as a recording studio, more specialized methods may need to be used. Of course, where real quiet is needed, one may want to just consider a laptop. Laptops are quieter and are, mostly, just as powerful as their desktop counterparts.

Let’s look at some common methods of tackling this:

Power Supply:

The best method to go about this is to get a power supply that is perfectly balanced to power your system. The more wattage your supply will deliver, the more cooling would be necessary, and thus more noise. So, there is no point in putting a heavy-duty supply in a PC with minimal harwdare within. Secondly, you can invest some extra money and get a high-quality supply that produces little noise. You need to check out the user claims on the supplies you look at. Some companies market supplies for lower noise levels, but really they are like a train going by.

Cooling:

The fans in a Pc make quite a bit of the noise. The marketing claims above also apply to CPU fans as well. The claims don’t always mean the truth. For less noise, get a fan that has variable speeds. These types of fans will slow down when the temperature is lower and speed up only when the Pc needs it. Also, a case fan that sucks out of the case from the front is usually louder than one that blows. So, for example, mounting a rear-mounted case fan that blew air out the back would probably help out in noise reduction. On the CPU, one could also consider purchasing a highly efficient and huge heat sink. This coupled with a well-run CPU could alleviate the need for a CPU fan. Another possibility would be to place the CPU right under the power supply with a large heat sink. This way, the air flow from the power supply’s own fans, coupled with the heat sink, could adequately cool the CPU. Of course this method requires the motherboard to position the CPU in such a location.

Hard Drive: Bottom line, the newer the
drive, the quiter it usually is. As time goes on, hard drive manufacturers are
beginning to get more noise-conscious. As you would expect, the higher rotation
speed drives make a bit more noise. This is really a noise vs. performance issue
you must decide on. There are also drives out there that boast newer
technologies. Fujitsu is beginning to use a fluid dynamic bearing in some of
their drives. This replaces the old mechanical ball bearing with a liquid
equivalent. Another technology is the “Silent Drive” or “Soft Seek”. On newer
drives that have this, you can choose in your BIOs between a more silent
operation or a full-speed drive.

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