Hi, May I make a few suggestions? I build (and have been building) systems for some time now and to be honest the current crazy to stick a fan on everything (which I admit to being swpet up in a few years ago) is a waste for almost all applications. The hard drive cooling fan can almost certainly go. Even the Seagates, which I love and get notoriously hot, are fine without auxiliary cooling. Now I assume by chassis you mean the fan built into the power supply. Am I right or is there a seperate auxiliary case fan? At any rate, Antec Inc. makes an 80mm cooling fan with a hub-mounted thermistor that only raises the speed of the blades (and thereby the sound levels) when a certain thresh hold temperature is exceeded (lowest thresh hold is 20oC where it start to climb from 1630rpm @ 21dBA pushing 28CFM and climb up through to 50oC where it hits 2900rpm @ 34.5dba pushing 45CFM). Replacing the PSU fan with this one would require a little monkey work and would have to be comfortable working IN a power supply but if you know how to be safe around capacitors then it is a relatively easy hack. On the more expensive but easier front I would recommend the Antec VAR series SX1000 II mid tower chassis with an Antec TruePower 330 power supply. I build alot of boxes around that chassis and power supply and it is about as quiet as they get. In fact, if Micheal Galea here on the list is willing, he has one of my boxes with that chassis and PSU. It has two auxiliary 80mm fans that are powered by a variable speed circuit built into the PSU. It also has two more 80mm variable speed fans built into the PSU exhausting the chassis air in series. All this translaets to a chassis that exhausts plenty of air without producing virtually any noise. In fact, the CD-ROM spinning up usually doubles the audio pressure leaving the chassis :D. Madison Chris Aitken wrote:
I have a need for my PC to be quiet. This is for three reasons:
I have tintinitus several times a day, and when I don't the PC reminds me what it's like - it's like tintinitus-on-demand. : /
I am starting a business for which recording acoustic instruments will play a large part.
My PC is exceptionally loud - so titinuitus or not, acoustic recording or not, it's damned loud.
Has anyone had luck shutting their computer up? I have a lot of start up expenses - weighted 88-key keyboard, clarinet, etc. so I'll go to great lengths to quiet this one before I'll buy a new one.
In the last home studio I had, I had the PC in a closet - but I'm tired of positioning my recording/PC station to the lowest common denominator (the short leash of mouse, keyboard, etc.) - it's just silly.
I guess this is a rhetorical question: Is the fan the only thing that makes noise? I have three fans - CPU, chassis and removeable drive bay.
I suspected it was the removeable drive bay, so I replaced it with another, identical bay. No improvement - of course that doesn't prove that the bay is not the culprit - this brand might just have a noisy fan assembly. And to be completely honest, the unwanted sounds were different (but not less) with the second bay than with the first.
So, I guess my next step is to remove the bay and just install the hard drive the old-fashioned way (?). If that doesn't help it must be one of the other two fans (?). Or chip creep? What else is there?
Also, I'll be in Toronto over Christmas and I could take the PC back to Honson - they built it for me. I hope they will work hard on it without soaking me as they built it.
Chris Aitken
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