Howdy, My new rig is a lot quieter than the old one, largely thanks to the beQuiet PSU, however I'd like to get things as close to silent as possible. I'm running an Akasa Nero as on the CPU (virtually silent from what I can tell), a Xilence red wing fan blowing over the hard discs, and the stock two Antec exhaust fans on the Antec 300 case. GPU is the 8800GT "wind cooler" edition from Inno, again it hardly makes a peep. Has anyone tried acoustic damping materials, like the Acoustipack from QuietPC? If it works well it'll be worth it, however if it makes a nominal difference it's £35 wasted... Any other recommendations for quiet but effective mods/products more than welcome. I generally use the PC for gaming, email and browsing, it's not overclocked. Muchos gratis! Cleggy.
:hehe. I do not know how it is in Spanish but in Italian gratis means for free, without charge/paying, in this context: Thank you for nothing!
I have never used any sound proofing material myself so I can't help with that aspect but I feel I must add that putting anything like that in your case can increase temperatures somewhat; so if its already quiet it might be worth leaving it as it is.
I've used the AcoustiPack LITE Multi-Layered Material Kit on a TJ09. The side panels on that case are thin and suffer from resonance and it does help to eliminate it. However if you experience resonance from the hard disks through the chassis it cut's it down but doesn't eliminate it. It does nothing to reduce the sound of external fans. On that particular case most of the noise apart from resonance was transmitted through the top grille (same with the TJ07). Sticking vinyl floor tiles to the case sides also helps reduce resonance but doesn't 'deaden' it like the acoustic foam.
Mousemats No, I'm not kidding, people in project logs have been known to cut up free foam mousemats and put it between their sidepanels and chassis frame to reduce vibration (also done between drives and cages a few times)
There's two types of foam you can use for this purpose; a dense type used to stop vibrations, and a lighter foam which absorbs high frequency sounds. If you have rattling case panels or hard drive cages, the dense type (think Dynamat) will eliminate that. Fan noise and hard drive noise are hard to block out with either type of foam, because the lighter kind is really only effective on very high frequencies. In a computer case, there's not enough space to put lots of foam to absorb lots of sound. Acoustipack is made of both of these types of foam stuck together. It will help make your case quieter, but don't expect miracles - a better way to make things quieter is to get quieter fans, suspend your hard drives, and use intelligent airflow. Also, sound can still escape through open fan holes (which is where most of the sound escapes anyways) and sound damping foam is most effective if you cover every square inch on the inside of your case. Before going for Acoustipack (which is overpriced, by the way - you can buy its individual component sheets from a hardware store and do it all yourself), try to eliminate as much noise as you can by treating the source.
