Simple Steps to a Quieter PC

[Garritan]

Computer noise can have an adverse affect on recording and music-making in a studio. I ran across this article that you may find informative and helpful. Big Bruin/Geeks.com sponsored some Tech Tips on reducing noise in PCs in their article: "5 Simple Steps to a Quieter PC". (http://www.bigbruin.com/techtips/techtip009.html)

Although there are costly solutions, this collection of tips offers advice on reducing the noise from your PC on a minimal budget. The author suggests "Before starting on any sound reduction upgrades, analyzing a system to pinpoint the areas in need of the most attention will help determine the best course of action and the best way to spend any money." The author discusses reducing noise in Cooling Fans, Cases, Fan Controllers, Power supplies, and Noise / Vibration Isolators.

If anyone has tany thoughts, ideas or suggestion on reducing computer noise, please list them on this thread. Also, if you know of any products to combat noise please let us know. Perhaps we can gather many of these tips and make a tutorial.

Gary Garritan

[JonFairhurst]

My favorite resource is http://www.silentpcreview.com

I'm currently running...

1) No case fans. (I cracked my case open to help let the hot air out.)

2) No fan on my video card. (ATI Radeon 9200 SE)

3) No fan on my motherboard. (Asus A8V-Deluxe)

4) A power supply with a fan that barely moves. (Seasonic 400W SuperSilencer. If it moved more air, I probably wouldn't need to crack the case open. But it's the quietest PC PS I've ever heard.)

5) The most efficient heatsink I could get. (Thermalright XP-120 heatsink and Vantec Stealth 120mm fan at 8 volts.)

6) Quiet hard drives. (Seagate 7200 RPM jobs.)

I'd like to plumb a tube from the top of the heatsink fan to the outside of the case as a free exhaust fan. Then I could close the case again.

If I had more money, I'd have gone for the Zalman Reserator. That looks like a killer way to get the heat out of the PC with almost no noise.

-JF

[LFO]

I've got an Antec Sonata computer case. It is highly recommended by Toms Hardware and based on their recommendation I bought it. Good prices can be found on eBay. It has all the bells and whistles for a quiet PC. Rubber feet/gaskets, quiet power supply fan, etc. I've seen many others on the Cubase forum who love the case also.

I added a few Zalmann fans (ultra quiet) to keep the system cool and they are quiet. However, I want to go for near silent, so I'm considering a few water cooled systems and some of the Artic Cooling solutions. This is probably overkill, but what the heck. :) I can say this with the current box. When I record vocals, I get no background computer noise, its that quiet. But I'd like silent.

The quietpc.com site is addictive, so be careful. :) No two machines are the same, so you have to be thorough on verifying that a cooler is compatible with your CPU, etc. It is great fun and for relatively little cost you can get a very, very quiet PC.

Or.... you can build your own silencer box. It will take time, but I've seen plans on the Web for doing so. I'm just to lazy to do it. :)

That SilentMaxx Fanless power supply unit is so tempting it hurts. No matter what, I've found the power supply to always be the number one source for sound. Internal fans? Easy. Get Zallmans and put some isolation foam in the box. Done. Hard drives. Rubber feet and quiet drives will do the job. CPU fan? There are many, many alternatives. The PSU is the stickler.

Sorry if this rambles, I've sat down three times to finish this. :)

-LFO

[JonFairhurst]

Nice info LFO.

Regarding hard drives, Seagate has been the leader for low noise for some time. Recently Western Digital has started down the quiet path. Check this out:

http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/20050217/index.html

-JF

[FredProgGH]

I bought a Antec quiet case and supply at best Buy for $80. It's quieter than the Roland VS-2480 DAW that's the main recorder in the studio. All in all the overall background noise level in the studio is all you could ask for without getting into BIG buck solutions.

[Scott Cairns]

Definetely some good suggestions here and on the website.

A couple of things Ive done;

- all my slave daws are in another room and are accessed via remote desktop over the network.

- my host machine is in my studio it has;

a matrox P650 video card (no fan)
Seagate hard drives (generally quieter than other brands)
Vantec stealth case fans (80% quieter than a normal fan)
Antec quiet True power supply

I also has some acoustic foam panels at the back of the daw, buffering the sound coming out there. (I left a gap at the top for the heat to rise.)

[Thud]

Anybody running a WD Raptor drive? How's the noise?
I have one at work but I can't tell how quiet it is because the office environment is noisier than my home studio.

I'm going to be getting a Raptor as my dedicated audio drive, I need the fastest performance I can get for all the GPO sample loading and synth freezing.

Right now I only have 1 drive, a 160GB Hitachi, which is very quiet but I don't want to use my OS drive for audio work.

[Styxx]

Currently, I'm in the process of upgrading or even getting another PC. Hard drive is one main concern. Any of you use and external HD for back up or dedicate to your samples? Anyone use Glyph Externals?

[Scott Cairns]

Actually for samaples Im running a 200gb Seagate IDE drive. It outperforms SATA in benchmarks tests and is not far off a raptor either.

[bosone]

my do-it-yourself solution:

http://www.alchemystudio.it/SilentPC/SilentPCIndex_en.htm

[imagegod]

If you have the room, just move your computer!...get an extension for your monitor and keyboard, cordon off your monster (preferebly to a cool/dry/dust free space) and your rockin' in the free world! :D

[EverlastingMan]

Anybody running a WD Raptor drive? How's the noise?
I have one at work but I can't tell how quiet it is because the office environment is noisier than my home studio.

I'm going to be getting a Raptor as my dedicated audio drive, I need the fastest performance I can get for all the GPO sample loading and synth freezing.

Right now I only have 1 drive, a 160GB Hitachi, which is very quiet but I don't want to use my OS drive for audio work.

Raptors are loud. I would compare the noise level to a 10k RPM SCSI drive. This might not mean anything to you, but at the very least, they are much louder than Seagates.

If you want the (very slight) performance premium associated with Raptor drives and you do audio work, I'd recommend picking up a pair of Seagates and running them in RAID 0 instead. You will get higher performance that you would with a single Raptor, and they will be quieter.

The Seagate in my current audio rig is all but inaudible.

[LFO]

I also use Seagates for their low noise. I've not found either IDE or SATA to cause performance problems, so I've never considered using a RAID or purchasing Raptor drives.

The trick is to keep the right data on the right drives. I learned this from the folks over at the Cubase forum and it really changed my system performance. I have my hard drives set up as follows:

Drive C: Contains Windows and applications (Cubase, VSTis, Sibelius, GPO, etc.)
Drive D: Contains Samples
Drive E: Contains all MIDI and Audio files for Cubase, Sibelius, etc.
Drive F: Contains all of my `other' data. This includes backups, program updates, downloaded trial software, etc.

Each Drive is a seperate physical hard drive and they are all the same size. (Someone had a post about the merits of using the same drives to improve performance. I don't really buy into it. At the time the drives I chose were on sale, so I went ahead with them.)

Finally, I have found using the exact motherboard drivers for your drive type is crucial. In other words, don't ignore your 4-in-1 drivers (or whatever flavor your board comes with) if you have them! You'll find that reads and writes become more efficient and that means better performance and less noise.

-LFO

[Thud]

The raptor that I have at work is very quiet, I can't hear it idle, at least not over the fans in the case.

The drive seeks are louder than other drives though.

I can use the Raptor as my boot and application drive, and also to store my sample libraries. I don't care about HD noise while I'm loading libraries.

My quieter Hitachi would still be for audio then, since the process of mixing down and bouncing tracks is bound by CPU speed rather than hard drive speed anyway.

[robgb]

I live with fan noise when I'm doing internal digital work with samplers, etc. But for guitar and vocals, I've turned my garage into an isolation studio and put in a monitor and controls connected to my box, which remains inside the house.

No computer noise at all....

[Michael_uk]

Computer noise can have an adverse affect on recording and music-making in a studio.

If anyone has any thoughts, ideas or suggestion on reducing computer noise, please list them on this thread. Also, if you know of any products to combat noise please let us know. Perhaps we can gather many of these tips and make a tutorial.

Gary Garritan

I built a new computer based on the intel 875 chipset with a P4 3.4G and 1G of Crucial Ballistix RAM. My Gigabyte 8ANXP mainboard has a fan cooled Northbridge heatsink also my PCI-E graphics card is fan cooled. I was taken aback at the noise and vibration from the kit. Listening to and recording music simply was not feasible.

Then I read a review of the Zalman Reserator and the add-ons available. I have only just bought it and installed it. I have to say the difference is staggering - unbelievable. At the moment I have only the CPU block so I disabled the GPU fan and the Northbridge fan to test for noise. I had to double check my computer was switched on .. it was virtually silent. I have now ordered the Zalman GPU cooler (water block add-on) and the Zalman Northbridge cooler (Large heatsink).

Regarding the PSU fan noise. I removed the power supply that came with my case and installed a Jantec 'quiet' PSU with a large horizontally bottom mounted (120mm) fan. Due to it's size, this fan also rotates more slowly and is situated so it draws warm air from inside the case as well as cooling the PSU. This negates the need for an internal case fan.

The hard drive I fitted originally was a Maxtor with traditional ball bearings. This was noisy so I had already replaced this with the fantastic Samsung SP oil damped drive. These new breed of drives are quieter and run cooler.

I know that this is a costly solution but, for me, it works and works superbly. You can see a few photos of my installation here. (http://www.hannahmusical.btinternet.co.uk/resirator_photos.htm)