Maximum PC

I'm interested in making my computer completely silent, if this is possible, and of course, at an affordable price.

What are some quick suggestions of things I can do (cheap!).

Also, I should be upgrading soon. Which CPU would be recommended for this purpose?

-removeing the fan guard on the intake fan can cut down on some noise

- use larger intake/exhaust fans...a 120mm fan can move alot of air at less RPMs

- a fan buss to lower the RPMs of the fans you already have

Some interesting things in this article:
http://www.overclockers.com/tips1193/

Cheap? Disconnect all your fans. Viola! You have a completely silent PC.

I would go with the Athlon XP 2500+ on an Nforce2 -400 motherboard, because you can bump the FSB up to 200 MHz for the 3200+ rating easily. This is cheap horsepower. Now use the Thermalright SI-97 CPU cooler, with a 92mm Panaflow quiet CPU fan (low RPM fan). Add in 1 GB (2 X 512 MB sticks) of Corsair XMS PC3200 CL2 RAM, and you have yourself an excellent system that runs around 37C with the low RPM fan. Unless you can get a power supply that has no fans, you won't be able to eliminate noise entirely. If you want some level of performance, and you have the money, you may have to go for watercooling. This big step still requires some fans, or one of those Zalman external cooling towers.

COMPLETELY quite. That means he's going to have to remove every stinky fan from the PC...and amen to that!

The obvious thing to start with is water cooling. With either a P4 or Athlon64, about any watercooling type will cool it at least as effeciently has a HS and a fan. I haven't seen a passive HS for either of these, nor would I put much faith in one.

The next is a look around the case for other fans. Does your board have a fan on the Northbridge? If so, consider a water block for that as well. My newer Asus boards have large passive HS's on the North and South bridges, so I've left them alone for the time being. But I'll bet you can skip the Waterblock and get one of these massive HS's it a fanned-HS's place.

Then you have the video card's fan. While some are not loud, it still makes a noticable noise. If you want to make it silent and are interested in water, then get a block for that as well. But again, there's a couple passive coolers out there that you can install and avoid water.

Then you have the fans in the PS. Antec has a PS that's fanless called the Phantom350. Coolmax (?) also has one, but Antec is a trusted name in powersupplies.

Now, in normal watercooling rigs aimed at performance, there's usually a radiator with a fan on it. But with the soul aim at silence and not OC'ing to the hills, you can run pretty well without this on all the time. In the Viperlair's review of the WACC reservoir, they ran their rig for a while with the radiator's fan off. Give that a read! I'd still install a radiator with a 120mm Panaflo for when it gets hot, but it's nice to know that you can "rig for silence" a PC.

Now all that's left is the case fans. But...do you really need them? I suppose you just about have to have one at least to get air moving over the HD (even if you put a passive cooler on, it still needs air moving). SO, perhaps leaving the fan on the radiator on isn't a bad idea.

I have one 120mm fan on a radiator, and one on the HDD cage (panaflo's) that run slow and quiet, but still have great flow at the standard speed. I have also added a 3-way switch so I can knock them down to half-flank or completely off. I intended this in the design to enable the water to circulate and cool even when the PC is off (half-speed if it's ever off or prior to a long shutdown) but it's come in handy when I found out that the half-speed setting is just fine while it's sitting there in an idle state (not folding@home yet with it, so the system cools down at an actual idle).

I can't run it with the fans completely off like I could if I had a passive rad/res like the WACC...but it's a nice thought. But at 32db (that's what THEY say), it's hardly noticable even on full tilt. This is why I swear by slower speed 120mm fans. They're just normally quiet.

My dad told me about some cases that have a special cooling unit that requires no fans what so ever.

Ive heard water cooling could be loader than fans, but ive never seen a case cooled with water before, so i cant speak form xperiance

i know it can be done tho,a completly silent pc, but im not too sure how

You guys are all missing a large noismaker! The HDDS! And you're right, there is a case that is COMPLETLEY fanless, Voodoo uses it for one of their PC's (reveiwed in MPC), though I can't remember the name right now. It was a really cool case (no pun intended) the entire thing was a heatsink. The case is available on a few sites, but its pretty expensive.

ChEEp wAy: Put your PC in another room, then run a USB optical drive and everything to your desk though, using an extension monitor cable degrades picture quality, so you may just want to set it on the other side of the wall

Nothing cheeper than drilling a hole in your wall.

completely silent case ... not cheap tho.

LINK

EXACTLY, I knew you'd see things my way!

Nor in stock.

noiseless? not happening, unless you can get the hdd to stop working?

im sure u could find 1 in stock somewhere else, i just remember seeing it there, but was too lazy to look anywhere else for 1 in stock.

get like 5 or 6 vantec tornados, repace all the fans u got with em, if u have too many mount 1 on top of another makes it even queter

Ummmm...tornadoes are the loudest fan line I've ever witnessed. Wrong way IMO...

Stealths are the quiet ones.

.......Which is why he posted the little evil guy, to denote that he was kidding.



You can get drive enclosures which make them damn near it though.