I sympathise, many PC's these days are unbearably noisy. I got one that was unacceptably noisy and simply took it back to OTA the next day and asked for a quieter fan. They obliged. That's the easiest and simplest solution. Incidentally, a larger fan is quieter for the same volume of air because the fan blades can rotate more slowly. If a quiet fan isn't an option, there are ways to quiet the device. Basically, you have to put it in a sturdy enclosure with a labyrinth (a duct with bends in it) for the cooling air to pass through. The labyrinth is lined with absorbing material that absorbs the sound. You may have noticed a generator wagon on film shoots. The thing is generating thousands of watts of electricity from a diesel generator, there is a plum of exaust gas coming out the top, and it can hardly be heard at all. So it is absolutely possible to quiet a PC. If you like, I can provide more details, I used to do consulting in acoustics and noise reduction. Peter On Mon, Dec 08, 2003 at 07:07:15PM -0500, 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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-- Peter D. Hiscocks Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Ryerson University, 350 Victoria Street, Toronto, Ontario, M5B 2K3, Canada Phone: (416) 979-5000 Ext 6109 Fax: (416) 979-5280 Email: phiscock-g851W1bGYuGnS0EtXVNi6w at public.gmane.org URL: http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~phiscock -- The Toronto Linux Users Group. Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml