How to build a silent PC

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junjun
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How to build a silent PC

Post by junjun »

Hi Guys/Gals

This is my first attempt at writing an article on the readers reviews, i hope you enjoy it as much as i enjoyed writing it.

“HOW TO BUILD A SILENT PC”

Today I am going to help you build a silent Computer, step by step, with the latest products and methods available.

We all know the feeling; you just built or purchased the most AWESOME, latest cutting edge computer. With the latest and fastest graphics card & CPU , with a blazingly fast hard-drive and the latest from SoundBlaster and a gig of ram, not to mention your optical drives, modem, TV tuner card, and a dozen of case fans….but…..the….noise!!!

As it stands, your computer is probably pushing out enough noise to wake up the neighbor’s. The good news is that you don't have to sacrifice power for the sake of having a silent computer. Products aimed at quieting down your PC exist, from employing 3rd party CPU & VGA coolers, silent fans and even a silent power supply to bring your pc down to legal audible limits and a few upgrades can make a world of difference in your computing area. We managed to silence our monster without the slightest drop in performance, and here's how…


Where to Start?

The first thing you need to look at is, what is creating all the noise in your PC. Once you got that worked out, we can go about tackling each part separately, to create an extremely silent PC.

These are the main components in noise creation in most high end PC's;

CPU
VGA
CASE FANS
POWER SUPPLY
Which make up 95% of the noise in your computer, the other 5% is the hard drive and cd-roms which are less noisy.

Here are the specs of the computer I am going to silence today

Case Standard Midi Tower
Motherboard Asrock P4vm800
Memory 512MB
Graphics Card Gigabyte fx5700 gpu
Hard Drive 2x 80 gig SATA 7200rpm drives (Maxtor)
CD-ROM Drive ASUS DVD ROM
Case Fans 80mm 3400RPM fans x4 & 1x 12cm FAN & 2x 9cmfan3400rpm
CPU Fan Intel reference fan


As it stands, our computer pushed out some decent benchmarks, and some serious noise.
We tried our luck with a number of approaches and, in the end; we wound up with a whispering pc that packed all of the power of the original pc. Since nobody really focuses on silent CPU coolers anymore as seriously as Zalman does, and after reading this article you will realize that Zalman is a pioneer in many areas when it comes to Silent PC cooling. I tried to use as many Zalman products as i could.

The CPU

The most important step in creating a quiet PC is without a doubt installing a silent CPU cooler. By far the loudest component in most PC's is the CPU fan.
With faster and faster CPU’s, comes the need for some hefty cooling to get the air moving.

The biggest problems with OEM coolers are the size & performance; and will have to fit in the majority of PC user’s cases and have to perform well at the same time, the only solution is to use smaller fans 60mm or 70mm in diameter, unfortunately they have to spin much faster to move enough air, the faster they spin the louder it becomes.

So what’s the solution?
There are a few options available, depending on your needs and goals in building your silent PC.

Silent CPU coolers

If you are looking to go for a totally noiseless pc, you could go for an entirely fanless CPU cooler. Another option for a totally silent pc is to use a FANLESS WATER COOLER. Yip……..Leave it up to Zalman to come up with something like this.

For all CPU’s

I recommend the Zalman CNPS7000B-Cu LED or even the Zalman CNPS7700-Cu CPU Cooler. Both coolers are extremely well designed providing silent, to near silent cooling.
Well since then Zalman has introduced a new line of coolers, The Zalman CNP9500 LED CPU cooler, it sports 3heat pipes, which have been aerodynamically designed with ultra slim heatsink fins to optimize performance, which in turn minimizes airflow resistance and weight resulting in one of the best CPU coolers from Zalman. Best of all… it supports almost all CPU sockets out there.

Zalman CNPS7000B-CU LED Image

Zalman CNPS7700-CU Image

Zalman CNP9500 LED Image

Now that we have taken care of the CPU lets move on to the video card. These can be among the loudest components of all in your PC, after your CPU that is!


The GPU

Believe it or not! Your graphics card is one of the noisiest components in your case. So let’s keep it quiet.

As the need for more powerful GPU’s arise, so does the need to cool them, which in most cases can be very noisy at times. So how can we silence and cool down our graphics cards? If you already have a good video card and want to quieten it down, there are some solutions from, guess who? Zalman which will help you out, if you are in the market for a new graphics card then you’ll be pleased to know the manufacturers like GIGABYTE and ASUS have released cards that are silent and still perform the same.

If you already have a decent graphics card and looking to change that noisy dual fan cooler, then I have just what you’re looking for.

The Zalman ZM80D-HP VGA Cooler Image

If you have a radeon x300/600 or a geforce 6600 or lower graphics card, you’ll definitely want to go with this cooler. Its design is flawless and performance excellent and it boasts Dual heatpipes for improved heat dissipation and a totally fanless design for complete silence and amazing cooling, and it will fit on virtually all types of VGA cards.

But if you’re looking for something to cool your Geforce 6800GT or X850 then the
Zalman VF700-Cu LED VGA Cooler is for you, retailing at around R300, This monster is worth every penny, but don’t let the price fool you, this baby is capable of cooling even the Geforce 7800, with its pure copper base to help ensure excellent heat dissipation and a 1350-2650 RPM fan, even on silent mode this cooler worked better that the stock on the Geforce 6800GT, and it should handle anything you throw at it.

Zalman VF700-Cu LED Image

We’re halfway! Now that our graphics card has been taken care of let move on to our case fans, an almost giving–up fan can be really noisy.

The Case Fan

There are many different models of case fans, with different speeds, air flow and noise rating, a large percent of noise is due to the fact that most cases which have adequate cooling have more than 3 or even 5 fans, which is quite noisy. In general larger fans generate more airflow at lower speed (rpm) and are quieter compared to smaller fans with the similar airflow rating. Try to keep the airflow reasonably balanced (air in = air out). This will maintain a positive case pressure and help keep dust out.
That been said the approach you should take is to use multiple “silent fans”, again Zalman does have the ZM-OP1 80mm Slim Fan w/Grille, which is silent and will provide more than enough airflow in the case, but for those who don’t want to get rid of there newly bought UV led blue case fan, there is another solution, this is another product of Zalman called the ZM-MFC1 Fan Controller, this little baby is guaranteed to quieten down even the most loudest fans, fitting elegantly in a 5.25” inch bay and can control up to 6 fans.

Zalman ZM-OP1 case fans Image

Zalman ZM-MFC1 fan controller Image

Now that we’ve got that sorted out, its time to move on to our power supply.

The Power Supply

Most power supplies aren’t that noisy, but if you have 2 or more fans on your psu, it does tend to get a bit loud, and if you feel that it needs replacing then I have the perfect unit for you. Welcome the Zalman ZM400B-APS Power Supply - 400W, Yes another silent product from Zalman, it boasts features to numerous to mention, But if you feel R700 is a bit too much on a PSU, you could always replace your PSU fans with silent ones.

Zalman ZM400B-APS power supply Image

And finally we move over to our hard drive & cd-rom, not as noisy as one would think, but again if you feel that you need complete silence then there are a couple of solutions for you.

The Hard Drive & CD-Rom

For anyone looking to replace your old hard drive. Maxtor has a range of near silent HDD's (www.Maxtor.com),The DiamondMaxPlus D740x. This Hard drive is an 80GIG, 7200RPM, ATA/133 drive with liquid bearings for almost-silent operation is the way to go, but if you don’t want to replace your drive you could get a HDD cooler(yes this one is from Zalman), the Zalman ZM-2HC2 HDD Cooler is guaranteed to cool your drive and reduce noise and vibrations. As for optical drives visit (www.samsung.com) for the latest in near silent drives

Zalman ZM-2HC2 HDD cooler Image

THE END RESULT

We’ve come this far, we decided to see exactly how quiet we could make this computer run. The results were more than pleasing, it was excellent. Our computer performed well and stayed cool, even under load the Zalman products came out tops, its as loud as a whisper a meter away.
Congratulations you have just built your first silent computer.
Last edited by junjun on 17 Oct 2005, 12:06, edited 2 times in total.
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Iceblade
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Post by Iceblade »

really good :wink:
nice very nice :!:
now for the second readers review 8)
junjun
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Post by junjun »

Thanks IceBlade!

Hopefully the next one should be up by end of the week.if i get any time.
Sojourn
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Post by Sojourn »

u a zalman rep ??
qwiksilva666
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Post by qwiksilva666 »

lol @ soj...i was thinking the same thing. :D
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Post by HdB »

I am looking to replace my motherboard's chipset fan with the Zalman ZM-NB47J.

Do you think it will work/fit?
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junjun
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Post by junjun »

Im not a zalman rep.lol
Hdb im not sure if its going to work,search on google. or go the the the zalman website
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Post by Bobendren »

Geez, i thought i was obsessed with zalman products :roll: .

I currently have the 7000AL-Cu, NB47J NB Cooler and ZM80C Gfx Cooler, and thinking about getting the harddrive cooler.

However there are other products available that do outperfrom zalman's offering's and run queiter.

www.silentpcreview.com is probably one of the best websites/forums for learning how to silence one's pc and buying the quiestest products in the first place. They've also got some nice tut's on silencing your harddrives by means of cable suspension.

Probably the most recommened stuff for a quiet pc would be an Antec P180 case, Syche Ninja CPU Heatsink, Nexus 120mm undervolted case fans and a Seasonic S12/Antec NeoHE PSU. For active gfx card coolers, zalman's VF700 series is awesome but is marginally outperfromed by Thermalright's V-1. Going passive: Thermaltake's Schooner, AeroCool's VM-102 and Zalmans ZM80 all perform equally well. Samsung's Spinpoint HDD's (i think that's the name) are the quietest hard drives available only out done by smaller and slower 2.5" notebook drives. Seagate Barracuda IV's are also really quiet but can't compete with the newer sata drives when it comes to raw speed.
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Post by ryanrich »

Very nice read junjun!
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