Silent PC - part 1
Written by andy on Sunday, March 26th, 2006 in Hardware.
Have you ever turned off your PC? Did you ever think to yourself; “Wow! It sure got quiet in here.” I have lost count how many times I have said or thought that. Since, I am now starting to get into podcasting it would seem that after doing a few sessions. I could hear the humming of my gaming rig in the background and that is what has prompted this little Saturday project.
I didn’t see the need to build a box to go around my case to completely silence it nor did I want to drop a couple thousand dollars into getting some ultra quiet padding along with a special case either. I instead, took the some what more economical approach and focused on major areas of a PC that cause noise.
For this project we had two different cases, not so much the same, but they were both made by Coolermaster
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| (left to right: Coolermaster act-201, Coolermaster act-110) |
| Area: The Power Supply | ||
| I do believe that this little item was the number one noise maker for my (act-201) machine. It was a good power supply [Silverstone 650W] , but it wasn’t made for stealth. After doing some research we went with the Sea Sonic S12 600W. On the act-110 it turned out that the CPU cooling fan (which sounded like a small lawn mower) needed to be replaced outside this project. | ||
Advise: Most likely the number one thing you will want to do it unplug the PC from the power. (right?) Then from the point on, it depends on your internal wiring and case fans arrangements. On the act-201 the power supply could be slipped out the backside, but on the act-110 we had to remove the top case case before removing the power supply. Since replacing the power supply was part of the project, that is what we started out with first.
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| (left to right: Sea Sonic S12 600W, Silverstone 650W for the act-201) |
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| (left to right: Sea Sonic S12 600W, Enermax EG465P-FCA for the act-110) |
