ok so this is the story, i lost the right side panel to my pc case and i cant get a new one seeing as how its an old stock case...i dotn have enough money to buy a new case altogether...and my pc in general is very very loud...like the fans are humming non stop n its very loud and annoying. does anyone have any suggestions to help with silencing my pc? thanx.
turn you music up ??? you could simply turn down the case fans, and stick a large desk fan in there... it worked for my PC over the summer.
k so....i do that with the music but i dont knw how to turn down the fans...its the psu and the cpu fans...dont actually have any case fans anymore...lol weird experiment with my last ones...n the desk fan...u mean a normal standing fan?
The best move I made when silencing my PC was buying a Tagan power supply. It was extremely quiet. If you already have a decent CPU cooler (I recommend Zalman's offerings if you don't) a new quiet PSU will probably make the most difference. What graphics card do you have? The fans on those can be pretty noisey. I also had a Zalman GPU cooler which was very quiet. If you replace CPU heatsink/fan, VGA heatsink/fan and PSU you should notice a considerable difference. After spending £150 or so on silencing my PC you honestly couldn't tell if it was on or not sitting right beside it (until you looked at the screen that is )
Some motherboards allow you to control fan speed from the BIOS or through specific windows programs, by the sounds of it you don't have that capability. If you can goto some computer stores they sell fan voltage reducers for a few quid, these just put a resistor inline, you can do this yourself if you want. Otherwise, make sure your fans are tight, unplug ones which are unnecessary (i.e. top fans), put washers between the fans and the case.
Fan controller Quiet Fans Akasa Pax Mate or similar Harddisk silencers Without investment there's no quick fix.
in reply to this...thanx adam 4 the advice but the problem is that i am based in south africa and hardware here is much more expensive than in the U.K....so my problem is that i dont have the money to frok over something like 1000 bucks or more even for decent fans, psus, gpu coolers and all that hardware...i need some type of material i can use to insulate the sound or atleast minimize it a little bit...i can still hear the sound of it through the music (which i play relatively loud through a 5.1 system so...) like the noise itself isnt that terrible but i have very keen ears and can pick it up quickly and its more annoying than anything...
If the temps. aren't a problem you coould just put the fan's onto 5 or 7v. That made a world of difference on my old pc.
Ok. Here's how we roll. 1. Warrenties? who needs those. Unplug the pc from the wall when it's running to discharge the caps inside the PSU. Open the PSU, swap the fans with good silent ball bearing fans like Panaflo L1A's 2. CPU cooling: Try a good low noise heatsink. Tower heatsinks work well. 3. Cut out all the fan grilles in your case. Less restriction = less noise 4. Case fans, a good sleeve bearing fan in the front and the back make for good fun and silence 5. That's the basic guide.
Basicly, you cannot do this cheap. Expect to spend at least £100/$150/€130 on stuff if you want a truly quiet case, double that if you catch the bug and end up wanting to silence everything. Basicly BBq.of.DooM has it covered. Pana's aren't quite as good as they used to be, Nexus' fans tend to be better but apart from that I'd agree with it.
The only reason I chose Panaflo's (not NMB-pana's or Chiflow's) was because they're ball bearing. Sleeve bearings aren't exactly suitable for high heat like in your power supply, nor are they too good for vertical mounting like the 120mm fan in a psu. On the cheap though, try Yate Loon D12SL12's. They're cheap ($4 at jab-tech.com), they're very silent, well balanced, and sleeve bearing.
Damping should be a final concern. Good damping and no other sound reduction techniques, will not yield a big improvement. Whereas, no damping and good sound reduction, will net you a huge improvement. I recommend using Linoleum Floor tiles on the sidepanels so instead of a metallic clink when you tap it, it gives it a dull thud.
16 Gauge steel/aluminum panel ($10), duck tape($5), sound dampening foam (look online or at a hardware store if possible, should only be $10-20 to cover your makeshift metal panel. Apply foam to metal panel, make loops of tape and attach panel to case. There you go, the dampening may not help too much so the metal panel at least will help. Trying to go and get silent coolers is way more expensive that just keeping sound in with a new panel...
