Quietest fans/PSUs
 

So...I'm a recording/mix engineer, and my computer's noise is bugging the hell out of me.

Currently, I have the Zalman Flower cooler with quiet fan, 400w power supply, and 1 other 80mm fan. Also included are two little shitty fans, one for the Northbridge and one for the video card. The video card is a cheapo GeForce 4, so I'm just going to use a heatsink for it, and one specially designed for the Northbridge as well.

All parts so far have come from www.quietpc.com

I'm less than thrilled with it...I mean, it's LOTS quieter than it was, but I think I can do better.

Water cooling is not a viable option. Too many hard drives, plus my sound card needs cooling...it's just easier to use air.

I'm looking at a few products from SilenX. Anyone have any opinions on them? Everything I've read sounds good...

Specifically, I'm looking at this for the power supply, and 2 of these fans (one for the case, one for the CPU. They don't offer any real specs on the fans...which makes me a little nervous, I guess. But, if they're the same fans that are in the power supply, they're pretty damn quiet.

So, advice?

MPEDrummer

Instead of making your computer quiet, you may consider moving the computer into another room. You can use a Cat5 extender with or without a KVM to do this over Cat5 UTP cable.

http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProdu...oduct_Id=87618

or

http://www.magenta-research.com/cat5_utp_extend/

Yeah...I've thought of it...at the moment, though, the studio doesn't HAVE another room...I can't put it in the live room, because it needs to be quiet there for recording...someday, however, I will have another room, and RULE THE WORLD!!!

Oh wait...maybe just the other room.

Any other suggestions?

I had pretty good luck reducing fan noise by mounting the case fans with hunks of rubber. I started with noisy high speed fans though, quieter ones probably wouldn't benefit as much.

A friend of mine swears by <A HREF="http://www.quietpcusa.com/acb/showdetl.cfm?&DID=8&User_ID=151777&st=6455&st2=44427327&st3=79691370&Product_ID=47&CATID=6">
these things </A> but I wonder if it would increase heat build-up?

Thanks, tony...the fans I ordered come with silicone gel mounts instead of screws...same concept, I think.

Portwineboy...I have the same reservations about those...my rig is rackmounted, aluminium, and I gained 10¢ª just by switching from the same design case, made of steel. At this point, almost all the noise comes out the back, from the case fan and the power supply fan, so the batting wouldn't really help much there...might help with the drive noise, but since I'm probably lowering the CFM with these quieter fans, I don't want to take chances with heat buildup.

I talked to the guy at SilenX...I think this must be a pretty small company, because the customer service rep was on a cell phone :). Also, my order confirmation was order #96. Anyway, he says that the fans are capable of about 14dBa! That's incredibly quiet, for those of you who don't know A-weighting for th decibel system. He said that with his fans, you get about 1 CFM per decibel, and it's variable from 14 to about 28. So, I guss this means I'll be able to get a good balance of sound/performance.

MPEDrummer

Check this out, it's in swedish but I think oyu'll get the idea by looking at the pics.
http://www.musikcentralen.se/reporta...e.html~Content

PS. "Nästa sida" means "next page"

I've always had good results with the Stealth series made by Vantec.

Even the larger fans are super quiet.