You could make your computer quieter by making it less powerful.
But that's basically just giving up part of your computer to get rid of
part of its noise. Instead of bothering you a little by making noise as
it works, your computer could bother you a lot by making you wait for
it to work. Here's how to build a computer that is both very quiet and
very fast.
Steps
Understand a few principles of computer cooling
[1]
- Moving parts get much noisier as they move a little faster. Two big,
slow fans will be quieter than and move as much air as a big
medium-speed fan, or one or more small or medium-size medium-speed or
fast fans.
- Air flows more easily thorough a large continuous space than through
a series of narrow spaces with the same total cross-section. A heatsink
with very-closely-spaced fins is for maximum performance with a
powerful fan, to make sure most of the air molecules bump into it and
carry away heat before they're blown out and away. It's not better with a
slow fan, but moderately-spaced, thin, smooth fins as most heatsinks
are usually fine.[2]
A given amount of energy (and noise) will much more easily suck in cool
air or blow out hot air through a big fan and open grate than a lot of
little fans and little holes.
- Heat needs to be removed from components, and from the case.
Exhausting it to the outside directly avoids unnecessary work and noise
removing it with a separate fan.
- Don't rely on the power-supply fan for removing much heat from the
inside of the computer. The power supply needs to be kept cool too. If
most of the rest of the computer's heat has to flow through the power
supply, the power supply's life will simply be shortened and/or its
not-easily-replaceable and not-necessarily-very-quiet fan will
automatically increase speed.
- Most components need at least a little cooling. One or more case
fans for a flow pattern eliminating dead spots is best. If you have
multiple expansion cards and some produce much heat (see if they have
heatsinks on them, or if they feel hot after use), direct a fan to cool
them directly. As usual, a big quiet fan, mountable directly on some
cases, is preferable.
- Mechanical components such as fans and hard drives should be
soft-mounted so that they cannot transfer their vibration to the wide
case panels, which efficiently transfer it to large amounts of air and
make noise. Isolated, these components dissipate vibration mostly as
negligible amounts of heat within themselves.
- A fan sucks air in from all directions toward one side, then blows
it out the other in a narrow stream. So, it's more effective to blow air
toward something to be cooled a distance away, or to create an overall
draft. If the fan is directly against something, such as a heatsink, the
direction is not very important and should be chosen to assist rather
than fight overall air flow. Sometimes fans can be noisy when one side
or another is obstructed due to the fan pushing against its bearings.
Using wire fan grills, rather than grates, can reduce the unwanted back
pressure.
Mid-tower case, with room for air to circulate around a medium number of components.
Choose a case.[3]
The "tower" type is best because it can go under a desk, distancing the
computer from the ears, while allowing the removable-disk drives to be
reached easily and not consuming much floor space. Look for the
following features:
- Large vents to let air in toward the front (often holes around the
sides of a plastic bezel and a perforated steel plate behind it) and
preferably a front fan mount. Big exhaust fans at the back won't do much
good unless air can easily flow into and throughout the computer before
blowing out.
- All-120mm fan mounts. This is the standard "big" fan size. Fans
bundled with cases might be quiet enough, particularly if their speed is
adjustable, but don't count on it.
- Unobstructed fan openings. Grids of little round holes are bad; large perforations making an open mesh is good.
- Plenty of width, so a big CPU cooler protruding off the motherboard will fit. Most mid-size and full towers are pretty wide.
- Long video card compatibility, at least 10.5 inches.
- Plenty of 5.25 inch hard drive bays, if you will use hard-drive
enclosures. Otherwise, built-in 3.5 inch bay hard-drive soft mounts,
such as those Antec provides, are nice.
- A ventilation hole and fan mount arrangement to cool the expansion cards.
- Aluminum cases, possibly due as much to being fancy overall, with
little vibration-damping plastic and also with fancy loose rattle-prone
tool-less connectors rather than screws, tend to be noisy. (Gaps that
tend to rattle against each other can be muffled by applying cloth tape
or even foam weatherstrip to the mating surfaces.) Steel is quieter.
Almost all computer cooling is done by fans, not conduction through the
case, so a steel case will keep cool just as well.
- "Acoustic damping foam" can absorb (not just seal in) noise from
interior components. It is applied to inside surfaces of a computer. If
you choose to use it, check that it does not interfere with interior
components such as case hard-drive racks or a big heatsink.
- One author likes Antec cases with 120mm fans.
Full ATX motherboard, with plenty of room to space out expansion cards.
Choose a motherboard.[4]
Full ATX is best for a quiet PC because it lets expansion cards be
spaced out for better cooling. These boards also happen to more often
have features making them better for other reasons, too.
- Look for a motherboard with multiple-GPU technology, such as AMD
"Crossfire" or nVidia "SLI", compatible with your type of video card if
you think you might want to upgrade.[5] SLI compatibility is more restricted.[6]
- It's often easiest to mount the CPU cooler before installing the
motherboard in the case. If the cooler does not clip to the CPU socket
or a bracket around it as most do but uses screws extending through the
motherboard (tighten only firmly, don't break something), you must have
access to the back of the motherboard to mount it.
Big heatsink with widely-spaced fins for quiet heat transfer
Choose a CPU cooler.[7]
This will generally be a heatsink with an attached fan, also known as a
"HSF" or simply a "heatsink". Look for standard 120mm fan
compatibility. As with a case, a bundled fan may be quiet enough, but
don't count on it. A "tower" style heatsink is generally quietest; check
that the case will be wide enough to accommodate it hanging off the
motherboard. Generally avoid all-copper heatsinks because they cool only
very slightly better than copper-and-aluminum ones, and are so heavy
they risk damaging the motherboard when the computer is moved.
- The CPU cooler will need a mount compatible with your particular
kind of CPU. Many are compatible with many kinds of CPUs, but check.
- A CPU cooler's fins are often thin metal with sharp edges. Take care
not to drag fingers against them or hold them by the edges of only a
few fins. It would be best to hold the cooler with a glove or small
towel if force, such as pressure on a clip, is needed to mount it (be
careful not to break anything). CPU coolers with only a few thin, sharp
fins placed a significant distance apart could increase the risk of
cuts.
- Be sure to remove any plastic film from over the CPU and heatsink, and Apply Thermal Paste,
also known as thermal compound, when installing a heatsink. Modern CPUs
generally have a large metal protective "heat spreader" permanently
installed. The recommended small blob of thermal paste in the middle to
be spread by pressure is fine; bear in mind that the actual CPU is a
small chip under the middle of the plate so perfect edge-to-edge
coverage is unneeded, and trying to achieve it by spreading the compound
risks more-problematic bubbles. If the heatsink base has crevices in
it, such as those around heatpipes that touch the CPU directly, fill
them with thermal compound (scrape it in with an unneeded plastic card).
The thermal paste that comes with a cooler is generally fine, but check
reviews if you like.
- One author likes Arctic Alumina. It's no more effective than other
good thermal pastes, but it's relatively easy to clean up and
non-conductive so an errant bit won't cause problems.
- The cooler supplied very cheaply by the CPU manufacturer would be
effective, but they are, with some exceptions, loud (check reviews of
the kind supplied with your specific model of CPU). Generally, you won't
want to use it. You may as well not try it because the single-use
thermal pad (rather than thermal paste) it comes with is hard to clean
off when you remove the cooler.
- One author likes the Sunbeam Core-Contact Freezer. It's effective,
cheap, and not very heavy, but the mounting clip requires considerable
pressure. The bundled fan is fairly quiet; the cooler is a bargain even
if another fan is used.
- Some heatsinks such as Thermalrights are available with matching
ducts to exhaust hot air directly. You'll need a case fan hole straight
behind the heatsink. These can be inconvenient to install.
Big, slow, quiet fan with unrestrictive grill
Choose fans.[8]Slow-moving
120mm fans are best. Bigger, slower fans are available, but not in many
varieties. Ball bearings are very durable but noisy. Sleeve bearings
are less durable, particularly in high-temperature environments (which
should not be a problem if the case is ventilated by multiple 120mm
fans). Fluid bearings (FDB) are quiet and durable but cost a little
more. Some fans have special blade designs to reduce turbulence noise,
but that isn't much of a problem with slow fans anyway. Retail stores
tend to have high markups on fans and other small accessories.
- One author likes the Scythe S-Flex 800rpm, which has fluid bearings.
- Check the CPU temperature with monitoring software to make sure it
isn't too high. 60 degrees Centigrade or below under sustained load is
fine (extreme cooling isn't necessary except for overclocking).
Mount and arrange fans.
Use soft mounts instead of screws. Arrange the fans so air flows
through the case in an orderly manner. For instance, in at the lower
front and by the expansion cards, through the CPU cooler, and out the
back. There should be a case exhaust fan, but air can also be pushed out
by the power supply fan, a duct from the CPU cooler, and a video card
integrated heatsink.
Dual-slot video card with big heatsink and big, quiet ducted blower
Choose video cards.[9]
Look for something that has a dual-slot cooler (which has room for a
much bigger, slower, quieter fan) and exhausts hot air out of the case
directly. Multiple video cards would generally be better than dual-GPU
cards, because less air must be forced through the little heatsinks to
cool them. Look for a relatively inexpensive current card that has the
same kind of cooler the manufacturer supplies on its most powerful card.
These will generally be almost as capable as, but significantly less
power-hungry and noisy than, the best if they have almost as many
parallel processing units running at a slightly lower speed and voltage.
- Non-standard dual-slot heatsinks are often not as quietly effective
as the chip manufacturer's reference heatsink, which is generally the
most common kind. But they are usually better than single-slot coolers.
- Unlike CPUs, video cards are not designed for a variety of coolers.
Aftermarket coolers generally occupy multiple slots and are difficult
and somewhat risky to install.
- If you use multiple video cards, try to space them out. Try to avoid covering one's air intake with an adjacent card.
Solid-state drive
Choose hard drives. A solid-state drive[10]
is extremely fast, cool-running, and completely silent, but expensive
in large capacities. If you need a lot of storage, 5400 RPM or slightly
faster hard drives[11]
with fluid bearings (which most of them have now) are best. They are
cheap, nearly silent, and only a little slower than the common faster
7200 RPM drives. A more complicated approach would be to use the 5400
RPM drives for data storage, and the SSD for programs, where its fast
random access is particularly advantageous.
- You can reduce the latency of a slower-spinning hard drive with
"short-stroking" to reduce seek time at the expense of capacity. You can
do this with a special drive-configuration program,[12] or simply by making only a single small partition of perhaps 25% of the drive's capacity.[13]
This partition should be at the "beginning" of the drive, customarily
mapped to the higher-linear-speed, higher-data-rate outer tracks. (A
very small partition is wasteful because rotational latency is constant
at a given RPM.)
- Like fans, hard drives should be soft-mounted to keep them from
transferring vibration to the case. The kind of soft mount for a hard
drive is different from the kind for a fan. Some Antec cases come with
soft mounts. They may also come with "suspension" mounts, but moving the
computer with those in place risks serious damage.
- Do not wrap hard drives in insulating material. The best way to
quiet them is a padded enclosure with special heat-conducting parts. One
author likes the "Smart Drive" from Grow Up Japan.
Computer power supply with big, quiet fan
Choose a power supply.[14]
A power supply converts alternating current from the mains into direct
current at various voltages your computer can use. Power supplies vary
in capacity, efficiency (which affects quietness because waste energy
becomes heat which needs to be removed by airflow), noise, and
consistency of power output. They include fans and heatsinks, which are
not practical to change. Look for a well-recognized brand name or
favorable reviews specific to the particular model, a 120mm or larger
fan, sufficient connectors for all your components (extras can be added
for items that consume little power, like CD drives), and good ratings
for quietness ("silent" in the description means little). As a rule of
thumb, choose one with a capacity rating of about twice the total
maximum power consumption of the major system components (CPU and video
cards) for long life and quiet operation, and one with "80 Plus"
efficiency certification.
- "80 Plus" bronze, silver, gold, and platinum are successively higher levels of efficiency certification.[15]
- Fanless power supplies are not great for high-power computers. They
would need cooling from external fans, which would be a less efficient,
louder use of air flow.
- Power supplies with "modular" cables can give a neater appearance,
but add a set of power-supply-to-cable connections to potentially have
problems. If your concern is simply quietness, just neatly bundle excess
cables to reduce airflow obstructions.
- One author likes Antec (economical but good), Enermax (high capacity) and Nexus (super quiet) power supplies.
Tips
- If you don't play fancy games, process videos, or often do the
relatively few other kinds of computation-intensive tasks, a
less-powerful computer would be fine. In that event:
- Consider a well-ventilated case, a low-power CPU (whose model
numbers one manufacturer, AMD, ends with "e"), a motherboard with a good
integrated graphics chip (check reviews because the abilities of these
vary widely, but all consume little power and produce little heat), a
5400 RPM hard drive, a high-quality, modest-capacity power supply with a
120mm or larger fan, a large CPU heatsink with a quiet 120mm fan, and a
120mm case fan.
-
Ready-made computer with just-right cooling
Or, consider a low-end preassembled computer from a major manufacturer:
they often have air ducts arranged and power supplies, heatsinks and
fans selected to do just enough for the particular components they use,
very quietly. (Get a tower-style case, not an extra-small one, which
could have small loud fans.) These are often not cheap to upgrade when
purchasing, or easy to upgrade later, so get one whose basic
configuration is adequate and expect to simply replace it in a few
years.
- Consider water cooling
with a large, relatively quiet multi-fan radiator if you must have a
very high-powered, well-cooled computer (for instance, highly
overclocked) or one so filled with parts that air does not easily
circulate (for instance, multiple video cards). A quiet case fan is
still helpful to cool secondary components--which will produce more heat
than usual if you overclock!
This would be very expensive, though maybe not disproportionately to a
system that not in relation to a system that would require it, and also
require more maintenance.
Warnings
- CPU warranties generally do not cover problems caused by aftermarket coolers.
Source : www.wikihow.com
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