ale wrote:
any tips to reduce the mechanical noise coming from a pc?

1 - put foam inside the left panel of the PC. This reduces fan noise
from the CPU fan; You can also do that on the right side, but
the benifice is likely to be less.

2 - if your graphics card has a fan, consider getting one without a fan;

3 - replace the power supply by a "silent" power supply with a 12 cm
fan instead of the usual 8 cm fan. This fan rotates slower (less
noise) and is also on the inside (near the CPU) side of the power
supply instead of facing out.

There are even power supplies without fans (passive heatsinks
protruding from the rear face). Those are expensive and I have
read that their reliability is not very good.

4 - a counter-intuitive suggestion: add a case fan. We had a case
here in which the PCs were quite silent with the case open,
and noisy with the case closed. The reason is that, with the
case closed the CPU fan is just circulating the air inside the
case. After some seconds the CPU heated up and the fan increased
speed (and noise). With the case fan the hot air was pushed out,
the temperature of the CPU decreased, the fan slowed down, and so
did the noise (2 slow fans are quiter than 1 fast fan).

BTW, make sure all fans are controlled by the temperature
(3-wires fans), otherwise they are always at maximum speed,
even when not necessary.

5 - since usually the cases and the motherboards are not designed together,
the CPU fan doesn't push the air out. Some brand PCs are better
designed. For instance, I have seen Fujitsu-Siemens in which
the power supply fan also worked as a CPU fan. In others there
was a funnel sending the hot air out.

Recently I have seen cases with a similar device: a telescopic tube
from the left panel to the CPU area to direct the air to the outside.

I tried out low noise fans but still not enough.
Noise is coming from hard drives too.

You could try getting a different hard drive. But I think a silent case,
which has, for instance, foam around the disk area, is a better bet.

--
http://www.mat.uc.pt/~rps/

..pt is Portugal| `Whom the gods love die young'-Menander (342-292 BC)
Europe | Villeneuve 50-82, Toivonen 56-86, Senna 60-94

I just drilled a hole through the wall. stuck a small piece of PVC pipe
in, put the computer in the next room and ran the cabling through the
pipe. It's both the cheapest and quietest solution, and the hole is
small enough that it can easily be patched over when you move
residence.
Cheers, Rick.

Bingo! The best and cheapest suggestion.
My CPU's in the room on the other side of the wall from where I
record.
And I didn't even have to buy any extension cables!




On 24 Mar 2005 11:47:48 -0800, "rickymix"
wrote:

I just drilled a hole through the wall. stuck a small piece of PVC pipe
in, put the computer in the next room and ran the cabling through the
pipe. It's both the cheapest and quietest solution, and the hole is
small enough that it can easily be patched over when you move
residence.
Cheers, Rick.

Mike Cleaver Broadcast Services
Voice-overs, Newscaster, Engineering and Consulting
Vancouver, BC, Canada