Does your PC sound like a jet engine? Here's how to turn down the volume.
Shush your case
Tame drive noise
Hush your video card
Remember—you'll probably only need to perform some of these tweaks. Most PCs will be significantly quieter if you just turn down the noise on their loudest components.
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| Thermaltake's XController |
If you turn on your PC and it sounds like a 737 getting ready for takeoff, don't despair. Depending on how quiet you want your computer, there's a range of solutions—from easy software tweaks to replacing noisy components—that can help. Before embarking on your anti-noise crusade, however, open your PC's case, power up, and try to determine which components are making the most racket. We'll take you through a five-step process that begins with the most likely noisemakers and ends with the least obvious candidates. If you're lucky, your PC will soon be as quiet as you want it to be.
If your fans won't listen to software telling them to slow down, you can control them with a fan-controller module like Thermaltake's XController. It fits in a 5.25-inch drive bay and lets you connect up to four fans and control them individually with a small dial. More-sophisticated (and more-expensive) controllers can automatically vary your fan speed.
Another solution is to simply replace your computer's fans with quieter models. At prices ranging from $5 to $25, new fans won't break the bank. If your case accommodates multiple fan sizes, be aware that a 120mm fan can move as much air as an 80mm fan—while spinning at a slower, quieter speed. Look for fans that promise quiet operation. Two of our favorites are the Arctic Cooling Arctic Fan, which includes rubber shock absorbers to minimize vibration, and the Scythe S-Flex, which uses fluid-dynamic bearings to decrease noise.
Stock CPU coolers are often a major source of noise, particularly on hotter processors such as older Pentium 4s and early Intel Core 2 Quad/Extreme chips. Few coolers let you replace the fan, but you can replace the entire cooler with a larger, quieter setup. Thermaltake's V1 offers quiet operation and easy installation. One of the quietest options is Thermalright's massive IFX-14, which requires you to remove your motherboard for installation. It won't fit in every system, but it has such a huge cooling surface that you can use an ultra-quiet 140mm fan with it.
Using a water cooler for your CPU and video card is an expensive and complicated—but effective—way to reduce fan noise. Check the noise level of the cooler you're considering, however; most water-cooling solutions include fans of their own, and coolers designed for maximum cooling while overclocking can be just as loud as a stock CPU fan.
Power-supply fans can be a significant source of noise, and they aren't user-replaceable. (Trust us: You don't want to poke around inside a power supply.) If you determine that it's a major source of noise, replace it with a quieter one. Antec's NeoPower 650, for example, includes a very quiet internal fan that automatically ramps down to near-silent operation when your PC isn't drawing a lot of power.
Shush your case
Inexpensive cases can let out a lot of noise. They're often built from thin aluminum, which doesn't insulate noise well and is susceptible to vibration from fans and hard drives. Replacing your fan screws with silicon or rubber fan mounts, and mounting your drives using screws with rubber washers, can reduce this vibration somewhat.
A better method involves adding sound-insulating foam to quiet a noisy case. AcoustiPack offers a variety of foam packages for PCs, including easy-to-install, precut kits for Antec's Sonata cases. The foam can be very effective, particularly on small-form-factor PCs, though it requires completely disassembling your PC (and the patience to trim and install the foam).
At that point, you might instead consider buying a case designed for quiet operation. One of the most popular cases among quiet-PC enthusiasts is the Antec P182. It has an excellent combination of good airflow, solid construction, vibration resistance, and sound insulation, and it includes quiet, speed-adjustable 120mm fans.
Tame drive noise
If the rest of your case is relatively quiet, you may notice a steady whine or chirping sound from your hard drive. Some drives have an acoustic management mode that can sacrifice some performance to enable quieter operation. Check your hard drive manufacturer's Web site for utilities such as Hitachi's Feature Tool, which can put Hitachi and IBM drives in quiet-seek mode.
Many older hard drives are dramatically louder than today's models. If you have one of these, then buying a new drive—particularly one with acoustic-management features such as Hitachi's Deskstar line—can significantly quiet your system. For the ultimate in quiet drive operation, though, consider Western Digital's Caviar GP. Not only does this GreenPower drive save on energy, but it was also designed with noise reduction in mind. Spinning at just 5,400rpm, it's not the fastest drive around, but its slower speed and muffled seeks make it one of the quietest desktop drives we've ever encountered. Available at capacities up to 1TB, a single Caviar GP can replace multiple noisy smaller drives.
Optical drives can get really loud when running at full speed. Listening to a CD of MP3 tunes is no fun if the drive spins like a whirring jet engine every time you load a new song. You can use Nero DriveSpeed (part of Nero 8 Ultra Edition but also available as a free download.) to slow your drive to 8x CD-reading speed—still plenty fast to load music, but dramatically quieter.
Hush your video card
Though it's not typically the loudest component in a PC, the fan on your graphics card can become more noticeable when you've quieted the rest of your system. If you have an nVidia video card, you can use the nVidia Control Panel and nTune software to manually slow the card's fan. You'll want to be sure, however, to set it back to automatic speed control before using any 3D-intensive software, or your card might get too hot for stable operation.
You can completely silence your video card by replacing it with one that has a fanless design, such as some models of the inexpensive ATI Radeon HD 3450. This solution is best if you're not a gamer, though, as fanless models tend to fall in the low-end to midrange of performance. If you already have a speedy but noisy video card, you can replace its fan and heat sink. In our testing, replacing the stock cooler on an older nVidia GeForce 8800 GTX card with an Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme 8800 aftermarket cooler dropped its noise level during gaming from an annoying whine to an insignificant whisper.
Remember—you'll probably only need to perform some of these tweaks. Most PCs will be significantly quieter if you just turn down the noise on their loudest components.
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