Quiet Computing

Laptop stuff

Misc stuff

This page started out as a reply to a posting on the Motley Fool UK website, but while typing the response kept growing, so I decided to put the information on a website instead. It also allows me to update the page as I continue to experiment with new ways to supposedly minimise the noise my computer makes.

Why bother?

Computers are for checking email and occasionally browsing the web, so why bother trying to make it less noisy? After all, a little bit of noise doesn't harm anyone.

Well, in my case that's not strictly true - I'm a programmer, so I spend a lot of time in front of a computer, plus I'm one of these weird people who don't own a TV. Instead, my main computer doubles as both a TV and DVD player on top of all its other duties.

On a more serious note, noise has been associated with increased stress levels for a long time, plus I find that a quiet environment makes it easier to concentrate. If you're working in any kind of creative environment (one that you have control over, obviously) you probably want to make sure that you can arrange it in such a way that you can get the best out of it...

Where's all that noise coming from?

The main sources of noise from your computer are all the parts that rotate - the faster they rotate, the more noise they tend to generate. Some of this rotation may also lead to further vibration like the sides of the case vibrating.

In recent years it has become easier for the hobbyist to buy components that have been specifically designed to not make as much noise as possible. Much of the noise comes from the fact that PC makers are trying to cram ever more powerful parts into the same size case, thus necessitating ever more powerful cooling solutions. components in a PC are generally using aircooling and as more powerful components usually produce more heat, you need to increase airflow to keep them anywhere near their acceptable operating temperatures.

In my experience, the main sources of noise are:

The above are roughly ordered from loud to quiet(ish), although some CPU fans these days can outdrone a PSU, as can a GPU fan.

For all the above, you can find suppliers who will sell you a quieter component, with the noise level ranging from considerably reduced to inaudible; usually the noise level a component makes is inversely proportional to the depth of your wallet. As an example, a cheap&nasty 350W PSU that makes more noise than my hoover may sell for 15-20 quid, if that. The 'quiet' 350W PSU I've got in my computer costs more than twice as much, but is almost inaudible during normal operation.

Anyway, back to the 'carefully crafted' bit I mentioned above. You've basically got two choices when it comes to making your computer more quiet - invest in soundproofing material or put components together that don't make a racket in the first place. I prefer the latter, although I'll probably end up with a combination of both in the longer run. Cost generally rises in line with performance requirements, not to mention that it's sometimes not feasible or even possible to reduce the noise sufficiently.

The options - upgrade or buy a new computer?

Once you've arrived at the conclusion that you need or want to do something about the noise your computer makes, you've got two choices - you can either try to upgrade components in your current computer in order to quieten them down, or you can buy another computer.

How do you figure out which of the two options is the better or easier one to take?

The most important question in this context is - does your current computer already do everything you want it to? In contrast to the spotty yoof behind the counter of the computer store (not to mention all the suggestive adverts), you don't really need a 2GHz+ machine with a gig of RAM and mirrored 10k harddrives to use a word processor, browse the web and use Microsoft Money or similar. So, if your computer already does all you want, you could consider the upgrade route. That is, if your computer is built from standard components. Most are as long as they follow the standard beige box format, but with laptops and any kind of slimline desktop you're normally out of luck. So, if you've got a standard size beige/grey/silver/black/graffiti'd box sitting right next to your desk and you're sure it'll take standard, off-the-shelf components, you're a candidate for an upgrade.

If, on the other hand, your computer was bought by Methusalem's grandfather and it won't even run Netscape 2, let alone anything newer than WinWord 2, you may want to consider buying another computer instead.

Please note that I said 'another computer', not a 'new computer'. There are a couple of computers out there which are relatively quiet by design and can be picked up for very little money. My favourite one amongst them are the Compaq Small Form Factor (SFF) Deskpros. I've got a few of these in various configurations, from a 200MHz Pentium to a 650MHz PIII. Due to their unique design, all cooling is done by a single fan that sucks in air from the front of the case, with the airflow going through a heatsink sitting on top of the CPU (which is mounted horizontally in the case) and then gets blown through the PSU out the back. The ones I mentioned above are all quiet enough to serve as a desktop machine without further modifications. They're all audible, but the noise isn't too intrusive. Their downside is that they take special CD-ROM drives - modified laptop drives - and a lot of these are ex-corporate without CD-Drives. The drives themselves are very expensive compared to the value of the computer, so make sure you're buying one with a CD-ROM drive. Later models take standard-size CD/DVD drives, but I can't comment on their noise levels as I haven't got one. I'm planning to get one fairly soon though, and will report back.

No used computer for you then? There are two other alternatives. One is a laptop. Battery life is an important consideration on a laptop, so modern laptops are designed to use as little power as possible. A side effect is that the CPUs are usually running at a lower voltage (thus slightly cooler) and their speed can be varied depending on the load, again making it run cooler and to prolong battery life. Fans are switched on only if necessary, so with a bit of luck they're off most of the time. With my laptop - a Toshiba Satellite Pro 4600 - the fan only comes on during when I put a rather high load on the CPU. Plus, most laptops spin the harddisk down if it's not needed, which makes it even more quiet. Downsides in my opinion are the restricted screen size, well, unless you hook them up to an external monitor, and the keyboard. Nothing stops you from hooking up an external keyboard though, either.

Last but not least, there's the Mini-ITX format. Invented by chipset and CPU manufacturer VIA the mainboards are small an not quite as extensible as a Mini-ATX or ATX board, but they have all the major components on integrated anyway. CPUs are usually one of the VIA Intel-compatible CPUs which are specifically designed for low power consumption. The less powerful CPUs don't even need a fan as passive cooling is entirely sufficient.

Due to their low noise and small form factor, these are ideal for both 'hidden' PCs and PVRs/living room PCs. I have no experience with any of them yet, but lots of information about them, plus photos of people's Mini-ITX based projects and an online store can be found at the UK-based mini-itx.com Website. Several of the systems on offer there - especially the HUSH ATX media PC are completely passively cooled and yet rather powerful desktop machines. I do advise however, that you sit down before checking the price of any of the Hush systems.

Unless you've got some experience in building PCs yourself or have a friend who does and is willing to lend a hand, I wouldn't recommend the upgrade route. Yes, you can actually buy "Building a PC for Dummies" from Amazon, sit down and learn how to take on apart and put it back together. If you want to do this, fine, just don't blame me for any fried components, OK? If you don't want to build your own PC or don't have the time, have a look around the Mini-ITX website mentioned above or have a nose around ebay for Compaq SFF system - you'll usually find a couple on there.

Now that we've discussed the alternatives, let's have a closer look at the components which influence a PC's noise level.

Choosing 'quiet' components

Motherboards

I basically don't buy mainboards with Northbridge fans anymore as I've seen too many fail at the most inopportune moments, mainly due to dust buildup. Also, these fans tend to be rather small and thus have to spin fast to generate the necessary airflow, high fan speed equals more noise. So get a mainboard without a NB fan, that's one less component that can fail, and a passive heatsink doesn't make noise. Well OK, the heatsink doesn't but you need to make sure you've got enough airflow through the case. Also, some mainboards offer the ability to control the fan speed based on case and CPU temparature; this is a feature worth having, although if your mainboard of choice doesn't offer this feature, it's not a big loss as you can get case fans that have their own temperature sensors.

Personally, I like ASUS mainboards. This is just a personal preference, but ASUS is one of the manufacturers I've mostly got good experience with, plus I can walk to my supplier's office in case I need/want another one. My current A7V333 motherboard has both a passively cooled Northbridge and the ability to control and monitor fan speeds.

The CPU fan - keeping you CPU cool enough

With very few exceptions - mainly the VIA low power CPUs often found on the Mini-ITX boards I mentioned above - a modern CPU needs a heatsink/fan combination to keep it from overheating. The more power a CPU consumes (and power consumption increases with the frequency the CPU runs at as well), the more heat it produces. The heatsink's job is to dissipate the heat to keep the CPU from overheating. In the days of 386s and 486s a heatsink was enough to keep the CPU cool, but newer mainstream CPUs require the additional airflow produced by a fan.

CPU fan noise tends to have two causes. On cheap heatsinks, the manufacturer tends to use cheap fans which already make a fair racket. Combine this with cheaper, less thermally efficient materials used to manufacture the actual heatsink and you end up with a noisy heatsink fan that has to generate more airflow, thus spin faster, to make up for the lack of thermal efficiency. The result of course is that your neighbours two houses down the road can check if your computer is on or not.

There are several different approaches from different manufacturers trying to reduce the noise of the CPU HSF, but they can be roughly split into two categories:

Improved standard HSF units

There are quite a lot of different units about, but they all work on similar principles: Use a more efficient heatsink and combine it with a more efficient, preferably slower-spinning fan. A typical example is the Zalman flower cooler, which combines a heatsink sporting a very large surface area with a large 90mm fan. The fan obviously doesn't have to spin quite as fast due to its larger size, plus the more efficient heatsink does mean that slightly less airflow is required to achieve the same cooling effect.

HSF units like this are a good starting point if you've identified your HSF as a/the main source of noise, as they tend to be fairly simple upgrades that yield a lot of benefits. One thing the aren't, however, is completely silent. Another issue you need to keep in mind is that a lot of these improved coolers are very heavy, especially the solid copper ones, and may not really be suitable for fitment into a tower case due to the force the exert onto the CPU socket. This is less of a problem with coolers and mount to the motherboard by means other than a simple clamp.

If you have a look at the technical specifications for the Zalman flower cooler it actually turns out that the fan itself isn't that quiet when run at full speed (33 dBa) and is obviously designed to be run with the fan controller installed to keep the noise down. Unfortunately the fan controller breaks fan speed monitoring on my mainboard, plus the nifty ASUS fan speed control doesn't work with it either. Put all that together and it makes for a fairly noise HSF - exactly what the kit is supposed to prevent. As the 90mm fan on my machine was slowly giving up the ghost anyway, I replaced it with a YS-Tech "SILENT" 80mm fan. This fan doesn't produce the same kind of airflow as the Zalman 90mm, but it's a lot more quiet and the airflow is sufficient to keep my CPU (AMD Athlon-XP 2400) within its operating temperature limits. However, experiment at your own risk and don't blame me if your CPU catches fire.

Actually, I'm somewhat tempted by this new cooler QuietPC now offers. A noise level of 20dB(A) is pretty good, plus this cooler is a lot lighter than the all-copper flower cooler I've currently got in my system.

Alternative cooling methods

As mentioned above, this covers several different types of cooling, namely watercooling in all its different guises and systems like the Vapochill which use a principle similar to your fridge to keep the CPU cool. Systems like the latter are generally targetted at the extreme overclocking crowd; given teh noise my fridge makes, I seriously doubt that I want a similar compressor in my computer case.

I don't have any experience with watercooling yet, but the Zalman Reserator watercooling kit has piqued my interest, despite its appearance. Watch this space.

The PSU

One of the main sources of noise. With ever more powerful CPUs and GPUs, the days of the 230W ATX power supply have been long gone. Modern computers usually require 350W or more, depending on the CPU and graphics card. Again, the old equation more power = more heat holds and PSUs, especially cheap ones, make a fair old racket. In fact, when I started my quest to make my computer less noisy, I couldn't hear the CPU fan over the racket that the PSU made. After swapping the PSU, I was able to hear the CPU fan for the first time.

Fortunately you can get a pretty good selection of quiet and semi-quiet PSUs these days. 'Quiet' PSUs are employing passive cooling only, in other words, they have no fans. This of course eliminates the main source of noise in the PSU, but it has two potential drawbacks - first, there's usually a rather big heatsink sticking out the back of the PSU, second, the PSU fan doesn't act as an extractor fan for the case. The latter can be a problem if the computer was relying on the PSU fan to keep airflow going through the case, so you may need to beef up the other case fans to make up for the missing PSU fan.

Semi-quiet PSUs do have fans, but they're using higher-quality, low noise fans so in normal operation the fans are hardly audible. Usually, the fans are thermostatically controlled as well so they are running at the minimum speed required to keep the PSU from meltdown. From my own experience, the QTechnology PSUs with 120mm fans are very quiet - I've got the 350W model and its fan noise is not noticeable over the fan noise from the flower cooler and the two (quiet) case fans.

The Graphics Card

With ever more demanding 3D games, the performance requirements for GPUs have increased considerably over the last couple of years, to the extent that certain GPUs these days sport higher transitor counts than the CPU in the same machine. As with the CPU, this means that GPUs tend to generate a lot of heat, which in turn requires active cooling. Due to the space constraints associated with Graphics cards (it has to fit into an AGP slot after all), it's also not that easy to employ efficient heat sink designs. The result of course is another fan whirring away in your computer, only this time it's a lot smaller and spinning even faster.

Again, there are several ways to circumvent this problem. First, you could try to find a graphics card that uses passive cooling on the GPU, aka a heatsink but no fan. There are still some around, usually more towards the low end of the performance scale. The latter does Additional fans maybe required depending on n't really matter if you're not playing any 3D games or only very rarely, but it's not an option for avid gamers.

The second option is to replace the cooling solution employed by your graphics card manufacturer with something a bit more quiet. Unfortunately this is not quite as easy as changing the HSF for the CPU, plus of course the warranty of your card goes straight out of the window as well. Nevertheless, Zalman (yes, them again) do offer a heatpipe-based heatsink that can be augmented with a large fan if necessary. If you need that kind of GPU power, this is a possible way to rid yourself of the screeching noise coming from your GPU fan.

Me? I bought a mid- to low-end ATI Radoen 9600 based card that uses passive cooling. Additional fans maybe required depending on I don't play that many 3D games anyway so 3D-performance is not that important to me, at least not compared to getting the noise level down. The card has very high picture quality - nearly as good as the Matrox cards I used to have - and better than the NVidia MXwhatever card I used before.

The case fans

Essential for airflow through the case, most computers these days do have at least one, more likely two case fans; One at the back below the PSU and another one at the front of the case. They're necessary to create airflow through the case and thus evacuate the air heated up by the components inside the computer and replace it with cooler air from the outside. Of course, the main problem with these components again is that most manufacturers are using the cheapest fan they can get away with, and cheap fans usually aren't very quiet.

The usual setup would be one fan at the front of the case blowing air into the case (hopefully through a filter, otherwise it'll suck in a lot of dust as well), plus a second one at the back again either blowing air into the case and let the PSU act as an extractor, or sucking air out of the case, thus increasing the airflow around the CPU HSF. If you're running CPUs/GPUs that are producing a lot of heat you may need to use more than two fans just to keep the inside of the case within operating temperature limits. Several cases - usually aimed at the enthusiast and modder markets - can take more or larger diameter fans and that might just be enough to keep the system cool.

With case fans, it's normally a case of bigger being better, as a bigger fan will shift the same amount of air at lower rpm, thus potentially producing less noise. In my opinion, temperature controlled fans - either controlled by their own sensor or by the motherboard - are the way to go, again in order to get the minimum amount of noise required to keep the computer cool enough.

The case of my computer unfortunately only takes 80mm fans, so fitting bigger fans wasn't possible and I had to find alternative ways of keeping the noise down. My first try involved two 'quiet' YS-Tech fans, which already improved matters. Part due to my cases design, I used the clip-in cage at the front of the case with the result that the fan was rattling inside its clip-on cage. The noise wasn't loud, but noticeable.

Fan gelmounts

Front case fan with gel mounts installed.

In a second attempt, I replaced the two case fans with 'Acoustifans'. These come with their own temperature sensors and used to include neat gel mounts that allow you to bolt them into the case without them or the screws touching the actual case. These mounts thus suppress the transfer of vibration from the fan to the case and make the whole thing even quieter.

Hard disks, CD&DVD drives

Unsurprisingly, we're still in the land of the rotating components here. Hard disks can be a major source of noise, especially high-performance drives that spin at 10,000rpm or faster. For normal desktop use, a 7200rpm harddisk should be sufficient.

With both CD and DVD drives, the rule again is that they create more noise if they spin faster. This is especially noticeable if the disc in the drive is slightly out of balance, as this adds more vibration and can lead to a really annoying droning noise. On top of all that, most CD and DVD writers have a built-in fan. The fan's small and has to shift some air, with predictable results.

Cheap modifications that can make a difference

Obviously, assembling a computer from carefully selected, quiet parts can yield very good results, but sometimes it's just not possible to justify spending comparatively large amounts of money on quieter components. Never mind, there are some cheap modifications you can make to reduce the noise level, and some of them are even free!

I've mentioned a few times that good airflow is crucial to for cooling the components, so making sure that air can flow through the case easily is important. Most computers with a fan at the front of the case suck air in at the front, usually through the bottom of the case front. If you've got a mini tower case, chances are the case stands on the floor and the fan is sucking in lots of dust. If you can raise the computer a little bit off the floor, you can actually improve airflow somewhat and lessen the amount of dust building up. Same goes for the back fans, you'd want to position the case somewhat away from the wall so there's enough room for the air to escape.

That you probably shouldn't place the computer near the raditator and not in plain sunlight either goes without saying.

Case rattle on a desktop computer can usually be cured by placing something heavy on top of it. That's when the old-fashion CRT monitors come in handy.

Cheap modifications that can yield an audible benefit are the various types of fan speed controllers available. In their simplest incarnation, you get a resistor (either fixed or variable) that reduces the voltage for the fan. As a result, it spins slower which hopefully makes it somewhat more quiet. Actually, they are a fairly effective remedy for fan noise, but if your motherboard supports fan speed monitoring you'll lose this functionality when using inline resistors.

Also, if the case fans are clipped into the case and not screwed down, they may be making more noise than necessary as they may have a little bit of play inside the frame that holds them against the case. Simply screwing them on instead of clipping them in can reduce the noise. This is especially noticeable when you're also using gel mounts for the fans. All in all, £20-£30 spent on resistors and fan mounts can make a very noticeable difference.

Where to start?

Obviously, replacing all the parts mentioned above in one go will see you with a computer that makes a lot less noise than it used to, but it's not necessarily the most cost-effective approach either. Instead, I would try to identify the component that makes the most noticeable noise and start from there. This may be a small fan rotating at high speed, making an irritating high pitched noise, or it may be the PSU, the CPU fan or any other component. Find the component, then swap it for a quieter one and check the results before you move on.

Summary

As I've tried to show using my own computer as an example, it's possible these days to build a system which doesn't make a lot of noise and still performs in a very satisfactory manner. I'm still not at the point I want to be at as I still consider the fan noise from the computer as too loud, so I'll continue experimenting. That said, the noise made by the keyboard is now louder than the noise coming from the computer itself.

Parts sources

Most of the components mentioned above can be purchased from QuietPC.com. A lot of the parts are also available from Overclockers UK. I've bought parts from both. In my experience, Overclockers is better a delivering quickly and has slightly keener prices, but for some of the more specialist parts, QuietPC is the only source.