My desktop computer of roughly four years in age is awesome, except it's obnoxiously loud which interferes with my amazing musical experience of the intarwebs. I'm somewhat a noob at this sort of thing, so can anyone recommend steps I can take to dampen the noise? I've already dusted it. I imagine I'll be buying fans. Any fan recommendations? Any other thoughts?
Thanks.
I am self-declared silent PC enthusiast. >_>
And there luckily happens to be a well named website for people like you and I! //www.silentpcreview.com
Without knowing anything about your situation, I can give a few blind recommendations. If you have an active fan on your chipset, that's probably the loudest thing in your system right now, and it can be replaced with a passive heatsink. The next loudest is likely your graphics card fan, and that can be replaced with a passive cooler, or a specially built cooler with a quieter fan. After that, it's usually a tie across your CPU fan, your case fans, and your PSU fan. There's basically nothing stopping you from replacing those with quieter models, and that site will have all the information you'll need.
Usually, just moving to quieter fans is enough, but if you are really serious about it, that site will also have further suggestions on how to do things like dampen the case, quiet your harddrives and their vibrations, run items in low power, etc.
I have had great luck with fans from the following company.
http://www.silenx.com/index.asp
You do need to be aware of introducing lower rpm fans though as they obviously move less air and the system temp can get a bit higher. I swapped a few of these in though and had no negative affects.
While I'm sure you would have checked this for your own rig by now, I once had a problem where a PC I had just purchased had a loose wire near the fan, so they would tap everytime they went by and made a god awful noise. It was a quick fix once I opened the box.
Get headphones.
It depends on WHAT is making hte noise.
Is it a whirring, a humming, a clicking?
If you can see the fans, try placing your finger on the center of them (Don't keep it stopped for long, that is BAD) You should notice right away if that is the source!
You can easily replace that fan with another one, they are cheap and you can get a nice, silent fan for like 10-35$.
If it's the hard drives or disc drives, Some models can be obnoxiously loud. The only real option for these is to replace them, or get a really nice case that can drown out the sound.
It's a combination of several sounds. Sometimes it's a whirring or vibration, and sometimes it's a humming. Never a clicking. Earlier I did stick my finger in some fans and found some that were loud, but it turns out there are several of those.
Oddly enough, my desktop only gets loud when playing NWN. It's quiet during most other activities.
Anyway, this isn't an immediate project, but I really appreciate the links! I've bookmarked them, will check them out later, and when the time comes I'll let you guys know how it went.
Thanks again.
If it only gets loud while doing a graphically intensive task, then it's probably the GPU's fan! Try check out what speed and temperature everything is running at with a program like this Speed Fan. (http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php) You might even be able to lower the speeds, though they are loud for a reason.
Dab some good quality thermal paste between the chip and fan, that helps lower temps (and thus fan RPM) a little, otherwise you need to invest in some more expensive stuff.
QuoteI've bookmarked them, will check them out later, and when the time comes I'll let you guys know how it went.
Pure fiction. It'll never happen.
Quote from: Kotenku;114170Pure fiction. It'll never happen.
You shall be shown incorrect, sir!
(I'll read it after my exam this Thursday, gawd! Procrastination ftw?)
I just downloaded that Speed Fan program, Monkey! It couldn't tell me the RPMs of my fan, but it did show that my GPU has the highest temperature in my computer, reaching 120 C when running NWN while everything else is around 60! Wow!
When I get around to it, I'll replace that fan first. Great insight, thanks.
Hey guys, I was looking at fans and video cards. I figured a good quality fan from Zalman would cost me roughly $40 + shipping, so I started to look instead to new graphic cards. I stumbled upon the NVIDIA 8600 GT going for $50 w/ free shipping. Link is here:
http://www.ascendtech.us/itemdesc.asp?ic=VC512PNYG8600GT
The picture depicts what appears to be both a fan and heatsink on the card, which suggests it may be quieter than my current 6800 GT.
What do you guys think? Good deal? Any thoughts on whether it will be quieter than what I have now?
I've got an 8600 GT, made by XFX. The loudest thing in my PC is the new power supply I had to get to run it, which is still pretty quiet, but I've gotten used to it.
Sternhund: Not a big enough upgrade for the price. I think you'd be getting fleeced. Shop newegg, for goodness sake.
Superior 9 series graphics cards are going for the same price, or less (or only slightly more).
Kotenku, I did some more searching. Couldn't find anything on NewEgg, but I found a NVIDIA 9500 GT going for $31.88 after rebate.
http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?p=MSI-95G512&c=pw
What're your thoughts on this?
Also, I'm a complete noob at power supplies. How do I know if I'll need to purchase a new power supply unit to support this? Also again, it says it supports DirectX 10, but I use Windows XP, which has DirectX 9. Will it be compatible?
Thanks guys.
Generally x500 cards from Nvidia are pretty dodgy, you should stay clear. x600 are average, and x800 are the best. Sometimes a newer version card can be worse than an older one because of this. Eg: A 6600 is better than a 8500. So if you could get an 9600 that would be good! But it would probably be expensive, so the 8600 would be ok for you. Just google some reviews and see! Try this place! (http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/)
Anyway, 120 degrees C is insanely hot, and is probably damaging the card and maybe other stuff. Something must be wrong, are you sure the fan is set properly and not clogged up with dust? Take it off and clip it back on.
And you can have a DirectX 10 card on XP, it just can't natively take advantage of the features of DX10 (Which won't make a different on a lower end card anyway.)
:( I sound like I know a lot about cards, when I have a GeForce 4. But I read a lot! You should just google everything. Grab as many reviews as you can before you make a decision.
It's not exactly pertinant to the discussion, but GPUs can run just fine at much higher temperatures. If you are not getting graphical defects (artifacting) then the card is working within tolerable limits.
I really must say that something's wrong if it's running at a whopping 120 degrees C, though. That's 248F! He shouldn't be persuaded to think that's normal.
The 6800 is not meant to get any hotter than around 80C at full load, so you really should check the fan setting and thermal paste. But if you're not having graphical glitches (like ES says, you should be if it's too hot,) then it could also just be that the temperature probe is broken. So does your case feel really hot?
I haven't had a really in depth look at the case while it's running, so I'll have to check how hot it is. All I know is that when it hits 120 C, the fan goes crazy, and you can even hear it from several rooms away.
When I get back in town this weekend I'll take out my video card, pull off the fan and examine it. Maybe I can grease up the fan some? There's probably a fancy way of doing that, but I might just use good ol' WD-40 unless that's a stupid notion to pursue. (Call me a hardware noob, if you must!)
Other than that, no graphics glitches. Sometimes I can tell it processes some graphics slower, as in I feel lag, but beside that no actual glitching. Might look into thermal paste as well, but I read that paste usually decreases the temp by 5-10 C, so if I can't find an error in the fan, I'll just go with the NVIDIA 9500 GT I linked earlier, and maybe spend that rebate money buying a better fan for it.
Will let you know. Thanks!
Sternhund, i'll go ahead and say, don't spray wd-40 into your computer.
Yeah, that -will- be BAD.
You can put wd-40, or any other general-use household oil, into the barrings of a PC fan...
Come on guys. It's not a conductor.
I guess I should add though, that wd-40 does get a little gunky after awhile. There are better lubricating oils you can use.
I'd suggest just buying a new fan or two from //www.silenx.com to replace your existing case fans and your cpu fan. Just be careful to get a high enough RPM fan for the CPU. Those suckers can get hot.
Back home so I checked out all the possibilities. Touching the card proved it was extremely hot, and seeing as it's running over 135 C under load, it's my understanding it's bad to put the system under that much stress. The card's five years old, and I think that's the average lifespan of a video card. So, I'll just replace it with a cheap 9500. Not optimal, but I don't need anything fancy.
Thanks for the help folks. Really appreciate it!
Also, I was kidding about the WD-40.