How I collected a silent computer
Many years ago, I could easily sleep half a meter from the droning computer, but over time it became obvious that extraneous noise greatly interfered with productive work. Since then, I began my experiments to collect a silent computer.
Sources of noise in the computer are:
1) fans of the power supply, processor heatsink, video card at least. As a maximum, fans can still stand in addition for blowing and blowing air, on HDD and other devices;
2) hard drives;
3) the vibration of the housing elements due to the mechanical operation of the fans and hard drives;
4) paranoids can add to this list the high-frequency squeak of various components - computer power supplies and peripherals, the motherboard, and so on.
To eliminate all the listed noise sources in my computer, I did the following:
')
Everything is simple - passive air or water cooling. I chose the first option.
For the processor - it is effectively heat dissipation radiators from companies such as Scythe , Nofan , Noctua and others, there are a lot of them. One of the characteristics of the radiator is the power dissipation of the processor, so it is easy to choose the right variant for your processor. Often the minus of such radiators is their large size, which may cause problems with the overlapping of the proximal pci-e slot. The second feature - as a rule, Intel processors are colder than AMD processors, which somewhat limits the choice. Acceleration also strongly affects heat dissipation, alas.
Such radiators usually look something like this:
Or so (I have just this):
Video card - for my tasks the integrated video is enough, so the problem with the video card was the easiest one. If you need a powerful silent video card, then there are two options - a moderately powerful video card with passive cooling, for example, ASUS HD7750-DCSL-1GD5 , or a more powerful card with a water block.
Power supply . Previously, the problem of the noise of the power supply, I just solved - turned off the fan. 2 broken power supply with an interval of one and a half years each forced to reconsider the approach to the problem. In the end, I bought a passively cooled PSU Nofan P-400A Silent 400W Fanless Power Supply Unit . It looks like this:
There is also a fully passive version of the Chieftec GPS-500C 500W ATX. In addition, there are many variants of power supply units with thermal sensors, which automatically change the rotational speed of the fan, with an external panel with manual control of the fan speed and options with semi-passive cooling when the fan starts to work only at a certain level of load.
If the options with a passive power supply do not suit you (most likely for financial reasons because of their high cost), you can reduce the noise by replacing the fan with a less noisy one. Very quiet fans produce all the same firms - Scythe, Noctua, Acousti, Nanoxia. The disadvantages of such fans may be higher price and low flow.
In addition, the fan can be connected not to the PSU, but to the motherboard, which will allow to control its speed. The only problem is most likely the loss of warranty.
Hard drives produce noise and vibration, which, in turn, makes the case noise. The radical decision is to replace all HDD with SSD. It will be silent, energy efficient, vibration resistant, but too expensive. I solved this problem as follows: SSD for the system and 2 2.5 inch HDD green-series 5400 RPM in special vibration and sound insulating boxes. They are called HDD silencer or silentbox. The principle of operation is simple - a steel box into which the HDD is placed, and gaskets on the top and bottom for vibration damping, sound insulation and heat dissipation. In such silent boxes, the hard disk is not audible at all. At least 2.5 inch for sure. As usual, the price is sad - about 100 euros for 3.5 inch disks and 1,100 rubles for 2.5 inch disks. But the thing, in my opinion, is definitely worth the money.
It looks like this:
I used to think that a good case for a silent computer is such a case that doesn’t release any noise from inside the system unit. Subsequently, it turned out that this is not entirely true. The body must exclude vibrations and take into account small nuances:
1) the location of the PSU, which does not interfere with the natural circulation of air. As a rule, it is at the bottom of the back panel with a direct connection of the power supply. There are also options for the location of the power supply unit on top in the area where conventional cases have drives with indirect power supply connections (for example, Nanoxia has such cases);
2) the presence of holes in the upper part of the case with passive air cooling and openings for hoses with water;
3) a more durable design, eliminating the occurrence of any vibrations;
4) often in such cases hard drives are mounted in special vibration damping baskets.
Such cases are in the lineup from Antec, Nanoxia, Fractal Design, Cooler Master, Silver Stone and many other manufacturers.
Personally, I have the good old Antec Mini P180 form factor mATX. The case suits absolutely everyone, but not without jambs - the lower position of the power supply unit does not allow reaching the additional power connector on the motherboard without an extension cord, and the hard disk baskets are not good friends with installing silentblocks.
The second drawback of the lower position of the power supply unit is the orientation of the case to the power supply unit with active cooling, since the partition between the PS compartment and the compartment with PC components prevents effective heat removal.
It looks like this:
High frequency squeak / noise of components
This unpleasant squeak, as a rule, is characteristic of cheap components and BP peripherals. My knowledge does not allow me to say anything either about the causes or about the ways of dealing with such negative moments. The forums are actively discussing various options for the collective farm with filling something there with a special varnish, replacing parts and other things. I can only give one piece of advice - as a rule, the components of products from the lower price category peep and crack.
I believe that a silent computer is great when you determine that the computer is turned on not by the noise from it, but by the burning lights. Not all, of course, so rosy. I need a computer for standard office programs, heavy applications with a constant 100% CPU usage I use very rarely and for short periods. Another problem for many is a weak video. Someone needs it. I also have the third hero enough embedded video.
An important aspect in the question of a silent computer is the question of the price of the necessary components. If we talk roundly, then a suitable case costs 5-8 thousand rubles, a radiator per processor - 1.5-4 tr., Silent boxes for HDD - 1-3 tr. apiece, BP - 4-6 tr, fan - 500-800 p., there are restrictions in the choice and use of processors and video cards, but for me personally, they are all insignificant compared to the fact that my computer is not at all noisy.
Everything is simple - unnecessary rear and top fans with speed controls are removed from the case, the radiator is Nofan CR-95C Pearl Black IcePipe 95W Fanless CPU Cooler, 77 W TDP processor, the top basket is removed as unnecessary, in the middle there are 2 2.5 inch HDD in silent boxes, in the bottom basket all the wires, built-in video card, one slot used by the sound card, everything.
Office tasks, surfing
100% CPU load
This is my first post. I hope he is not completely terrible and will be interesting to someone. Thanks for attention.
UPDATE1 : in the comments offered to write the price of the equipment I use, correcting. I have:
radiator CR-95C Pearl Black IcePipe 95W Fanless CPU Cooler (4000 rub) + shipment from England
BP Nofan P-400A Silent 400W Fanless PSU (5500) + shipment from England
Antec mini P180 (not sold for a long time, 5 years ago I bought it for about 7,000, if I do not confuse anything). Housing without power supply
processor - Intel i7-3770
UPDATE2: even in the comments suggested to make a table of silent or quiet components, I alone, most likely, in time will not pull it, but if someone agrees to help. then, I think everything will turn out, so I will be glad if someone responds
Some obvious facts
Sources of noise in the computer are:
1) fans of the power supply, processor heatsink, video card at least. As a maximum, fans can still stand in addition for blowing and blowing air, on HDD and other devices;
2) hard drives;
3) the vibration of the housing elements due to the mechanical operation of the fans and hard drives;
4) paranoids can add to this list the high-frequency squeak of various components - computer power supplies and peripherals, the motherboard, and so on.
How I beat the noise
To eliminate all the listed noise sources in my computer, I did the following:
')
Fans
Everything is simple - passive air or water cooling. I chose the first option.
For the processor - it is effectively heat dissipation radiators from companies such as Scythe , Nofan , Noctua and others, there are a lot of them. One of the characteristics of the radiator is the power dissipation of the processor, so it is easy to choose the right variant for your processor. Often the minus of such radiators is their large size, which may cause problems with the overlapping of the proximal pci-e slot. The second feature - as a rule, Intel processors are colder than AMD processors, which somewhat limits the choice. Acceleration also strongly affects heat dissipation, alas.
Such radiators usually look something like this:
Or so (I have just this):
Video card - for my tasks the integrated video is enough, so the problem with the video card was the easiest one. If you need a powerful silent video card, then there are two options - a moderately powerful video card with passive cooling, for example, ASUS HD7750-DCSL-1GD5 , or a more powerful card with a water block.
Power supply . Previously, the problem of the noise of the power supply, I just solved - turned off the fan. 2 broken power supply with an interval of one and a half years each forced to reconsider the approach to the problem. In the end, I bought a passively cooled PSU Nofan P-400A Silent 400W Fanless Power Supply Unit . It looks like this:
There is also a fully passive version of the Chieftec GPS-500C 500W ATX. In addition, there are many variants of power supply units with thermal sensors, which automatically change the rotational speed of the fan, with an external panel with manual control of the fan speed and options with semi-passive cooling when the fan starts to work only at a certain level of load.
If the options with a passive power supply do not suit you (most likely for financial reasons because of their high cost), you can reduce the noise by replacing the fan with a less noisy one. Very quiet fans produce all the same firms - Scythe, Noctua, Acousti, Nanoxia. The disadvantages of such fans may be higher price and low flow.
In addition, the fan can be connected not to the PSU, but to the motherboard, which will allow to control its speed. The only problem is most likely the loss of warranty.
HDD
Hard drives produce noise and vibration, which, in turn, makes the case noise. The radical decision is to replace all HDD with SSD. It will be silent, energy efficient, vibration resistant, but too expensive. I solved this problem as follows: SSD for the system and 2 2.5 inch HDD green-series 5400 RPM in special vibration and sound insulating boxes. They are called HDD silencer or silentbox. The principle of operation is simple - a steel box into which the HDD is placed, and gaskets on the top and bottom for vibration damping, sound insulation and heat dissipation. In such silent boxes, the hard disk is not audible at all. At least 2.5 inch for sure. As usual, the price is sad - about 100 euros for 3.5 inch disks and 1,100 rubles for 2.5 inch disks. But the thing, in my opinion, is definitely worth the money.
It looks like this:
Housing
I used to think that a good case for a silent computer is such a case that doesn’t release any noise from inside the system unit. Subsequently, it turned out that this is not entirely true. The body must exclude vibrations and take into account small nuances:
1) the location of the PSU, which does not interfere with the natural circulation of air. As a rule, it is at the bottom of the back panel with a direct connection of the power supply. There are also options for the location of the power supply unit on top in the area where conventional cases have drives with indirect power supply connections (for example, Nanoxia has such cases);
2) the presence of holes in the upper part of the case with passive air cooling and openings for hoses with water;
3) a more durable design, eliminating the occurrence of any vibrations;
4) often in such cases hard drives are mounted in special vibration damping baskets.
Such cases are in the lineup from Antec, Nanoxia, Fractal Design, Cooler Master, Silver Stone and many other manufacturers.
Personally, I have the good old Antec Mini P180 form factor mATX. The case suits absolutely everyone, but not without jambs - the lower position of the power supply unit does not allow reaching the additional power connector on the motherboard without an extension cord, and the hard disk baskets are not good friends with installing silentblocks.
The second drawback of the lower position of the power supply unit is the orientation of the case to the power supply unit with active cooling, since the partition between the PS compartment and the compartment with PC components prevents effective heat removal.
It looks like this:
High frequency squeak / noise of components
This unpleasant squeak, as a rule, is characteristic of cheap components and BP peripherals. My knowledge does not allow me to say anything either about the causes or about the ways of dealing with such negative moments. The forums are actively discussing various options for the collective farm with filling something there with a special varnish, replacing parts and other things. I can only give one piece of advice - as a rule, the components of products from the lower price category peep and crack.
Personal impressions
I believe that a silent computer is great when you determine that the computer is turned on not by the noise from it, but by the burning lights. Not all, of course, so rosy. I need a computer for standard office programs, heavy applications with a constant 100% CPU usage I use very rarely and for short periods. Another problem for many is a weak video. Someone needs it. I also have the third hero enough embedded video.
An important aspect in the question of a silent computer is the question of the price of the necessary components. If we talk roundly, then a suitable case costs 5-8 thousand rubles, a radiator per processor - 1.5-4 tr., Silent boxes for HDD - 1-3 tr. apiece, BP - 4-6 tr, fan - 500-800 p., there are restrictions in the choice and use of processors and video cards, but for me personally, they are all insignificant compared to the fact that my computer is not at all noisy.
Finally, a picture of my system engineer and screenshots of sensor readings
Everything is simple - unnecessary rear and top fans with speed controls are removed from the case, the radiator is Nofan CR-95C Pearl Black IcePipe 95W Fanless CPU Cooler, 77 W TDP processor, the top basket is removed as unnecessary, in the middle there are 2 2.5 inch HDD in silent boxes, in the bottom basket all the wires, built-in video card, one slot used by the sound card, everything.
But the indicators of the sensors with normal computer use and at 100% CPU usage
Office tasks, surfing
100% CPU load
This is my first post. I hope he is not completely terrible and will be interesting to someone. Thanks for attention.
UPDATE1 : in the comments offered to write the price of the equipment I use, correcting. I have:
radiator CR-95C Pearl Black IcePipe 95W Fanless CPU Cooler (4000 rub) + shipment from England
BP Nofan P-400A Silent 400W Fanless PSU (5500) + shipment from England
Antec mini P180 (not sold for a long time, 5 years ago I bought it for about 7,000, if I do not confuse anything). Housing without power supply
processor - Intel i7-3770
UPDATE2: even in the comments suggested to make a table of silent or quiet components, I alone, most likely, in time will not pull it, but if someone agrees to help. then, I think everything will turn out, so I will be glad if someone responds
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/188446/
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