Question PC Build - sound & silence

[Lamp]

Need a new PC. I know roughly the build I want.

Two questions

1. What do I need to ensure a quieter machine?

Does choosing the right case make a lot of difference? How noisy are modern-day fans? Not bought a new PC for years, so no idea how noisy modern day cases / fan set-ups are. If I pick a machine with, say, 4 large fans, am I going to be hearing them from downstairs? What also adds to noise? Graphics card?

2. What would you recommend for excellent sound?
Looking for 5+ surround sound. Fancy getting a new speaker set-up and don't mind investing in a decent sound card. What would you recommend? Going to be for movies / TV / music rather than games.

Ta

 

[soze]

You can spend a fortune on silent PC equipment. At the end of the day if you want truly silent you need to go Water-cooled which is something I have never had the bottle for. I have installed "silent" fans in the machine I am going to sell but the Graphics Card makes a hell of a lot of noise. You can buy after market coolers for the Graphics Card which reduce the noise. So you can buy quieter case fans but imo the CPU cooler and the GFX cooler are the nosiest parts of the machine. http://www.silentpcreview.com/ offer a lot of advice on "silent" components.

I am not a audio head so i will not try to answer number 2

 

[Embattle]

The way to view noise is the higher performance something is the noisier it generally is because generally it requires more cooling or has some other effect that creates noise. You want to get a case that can take sound proofing materials, that can use a larger fan if required and has some sort of dampening for hard drives etc. On the components front get a graphics can that comes with a passive cooler or can have a passive cooler used, get quiet hard drives and check if they've got the ability to change the settings of the drive to improve the acoustic characteristics. Check http://www.quietpc.com/gb-en-gbp/home for various ideas on what you can do.

 

[Scouse]

Graphics cards are always the loudest component for me. You can get some reasonably decent spec ones that focus on keeping things quiet tho - and as they're all either Nvidia or AMD then there's not much difference in terms of performance.

As for sound - I'm not sure sound requires so much processing that most of it isn't handled really well by most decent motherboards nowadays without the need for a separate sound card.

 

[caLLous]

Watercooling (with CPU and GPU block) and a batch of RAIDed SSD's and the only sound you hear will be the PSU (you must be able to get fanless or watercooled PSU's I would imagine).

As for sound, the liverpudlian one is correct; for day-to-day stuff you don't need to venture away from onboard. I have a ASUS mobo with a Realtek audio chip on it and it runs a decent (for PC speakers) 5.1 setup. Works and sounds great for everything.

 

[Scouse]

MMMMMmmm. A batch of raided SSD's.

If money was no object I'd have about ten of 'em in RAID5.

I'd be swapping one of them out every other month, like, but it'd be worth it.

 

[caLLous]

Haha, knowing your luck they would all implode because of the awesomeness of it all.

 

[Embattle]

MMMMMmmm. A batch of raided SSD's.

If money was no object I'd have about ten of 'em in RAID5.

I'd be swapping one of them out every other month, like, but it'd be worth it.

http://www.ocztechnology.com/ocz-revodrive-x2-pci-express-ssd.html

 

[Mabs]

mine is watercooled CPU
and, 3 frontal fans, one top fan, one side fan, 2 rear fans

you can tell its there but its certainly not noisy

large slow fans > smaller faster/noisy ones anyway

 

[Cyradix]

It really is the graphics card that makes a lot of noise.
Build a HTPC for the living room with a fanless PSU and video card and you can only hear the case + cpu fans if you stand closer than 1 meter...
My "game machine" has whisper quiet fans, silent cooler master case with all the rubber mouting stuff to absorb HD vibrations etc etc, but that's all kinda wasted when you stick a decent graphics card in there...
Most custom air cooling based coolers for video cards are only slighty better than stock coolers imo and can still go up to 30dB on heavy usage.
Watercoolers are the way to go if you want a real quiet computer, but don't mistake watercoolers for absolute quiet. The cooling block of the watercooler system is located outside the pc and is still cooled by a big fan

That beeing said. I have an asus GTX560 and when idle you can't hear it in another room of the house, so if that is your only concern just stick to the default cooler it comes with
And if you are only going to use it for movies/music and won't play games on it you can even go for a fanless GT520 or AMD5570

 

[Zenith.UK]

MMMMMmmm. A batch of raided SSD's.

If money was no object I'd have about ten of 'em in RAID5.

I'd be swapping one of them out every other month, like, but it'd be worth it.

You mean like this...


View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96dWOEa4Djs

 

[Yaka]

water cooling is the way to go, tho if you are going that way buy a case that more or less desined for it. atm i am rebuilding my old i7 gaming rig in the same old antec p190 case its a very tight squeeze but i had 2loops 1 for cpu and 1 for both my 580gtxs very very quite compared to when it was on air.
end of the year i am hoping http://www.caselabs-store.com/magnum-th10-case/ will be sitting below my desk and almost everything will be water cooled

 

[Lamp]

I'm not spending $500 on a PC case lol

 

[Yaka]

not saying spend £500 on a case but between £70 to £150 there are cases good for air cooling and others more suited too water cooling

 

[Scouse]

You mean like this...

Yeah. Seen that vid before (you probably posted it). It's rather amusing ain't it

 

[Tuthmes]

Need a new PC. I know roughly the build I want.

Two questions

1. What do I need to ensure a quieter machine?

Does choosing the right case make a lot of difference? How noisy are modern-day fans? Not bought a new PC for years, so no idea how noisy modern day cases / fan set-ups are. If I pick a machine with, say, 4 large fans, am I going to be hearing them from downstairs? What also adds to noise? Graphics card?

2. What would you recommend for excellent sound?
Looking for 5+ surround sound. Fancy getting a new speaker set-up and don't mind investing in a decent sound card. What would you recommend? Going to be for movies / TV / music rather than games.

Ta

1. Choosing the right case makes all the difference. Not just the placing of the fans, but also the quality of the case itself. Fibration of fans and HD's can and will be transfered to the case. Also good cable management is important. Good airflow means, lower temperatures, lower rpm on your fans. Gfx cards tend to have small fans which turn at high rpm.



Foto of the inside of my computer (to show you how it's not done). The case itself is over 10 years old (spray painted it with the wrong kind of paint :<) and I made a hole in the top for airflow (also added fan and grill). All 120mm fans (Scythe) and a Scythe Musashi on the gfx card. Cable management isnt one of my strong points (I tend to add and remove stuff alot), but I really don't have much to go around with in this case anyway. For those interrested it's an ASUS PC-DL, 2x Xeon 2,4, 3GB of mem and a Radeon HD4670 AGP. It's surprisingly quiet.

2. I know little about soundcards these days. Back in the days Creative was the only one, but they fucked it up royaly (sp?) with their driver support for Vista/Windows 7. Unless you want to game with it aswell, I'd stay clear of Creative.

 

[dysfunction]

View attachment 8625

It looks like your PC is rusted...

 

[Tuthmes]

I hade a left over gold coloured spray can (the right kind) but it was empty quick. so I went out and bought a new can without paying much attention to it. Needles to say I bought the wrong kind and prolly didnt clean it too well either. It's so bad that it rather wants to stick to your fingers then stay on the case (still after atleast 4 years). I cba to clean it and do it properly though, so it's bin like this for years. It was a dumb idea in the first place, but i'm starting to like the getto/rusty look of it.

 

[Yaka]

prolly didnt do the prepwork properly then, back 1999 i had a lovelet inwin q500 ( i thinks thats the model number) after seeing a clan members case sprayed black inside and out i whent and out side was ok inside was like you said paint would come off when you thouched it, i gave it away in the after a couple of years the guys did a great job doing it right

 

[Access Denied]

On the fan front, look for a case that has one or two big fans with turbine style blades on them. As someone has already said, bigger fans don't need to turn as fast and the turbine fans pull more air at slower rpms anyway.