Ever made something too quiet? I just moved my hard drive to sit in a hdd tray from a Antec Solo with silicon cushions & now I can hear the fans rotate slowly. Before the Samsung hdd was held in a box in the chassis, screwed in place with 4 hard small rubber grommets. The noise the hard drive made was a deeper sound covering the high notes of the fans.

Antec SLK3000B mid-tower case
MK MSI 760GM-E51 DDR3 Socket AM3, 760G, mATX
HD500GB Samsung SP SATA2 7200RPM Spinpoint F3
Corsair 2gb x2 DDR3 1333MHz VS-10600 Value Select
AMD Sempron 140 2,7Ghz, 1MB, 45W, AM3
Alpine 64 Pro - CPU fan
Seasonic S12 PSU 330W, 120mm
Nexus 120mm Real Silent Case Fan Orange
Windows XP.

Other cases Antec Solo & Antec P183 with
CPU AMD Athlon2 X2 255 3,1Ghz, 2MB, 65W, AM3
Zalman CNPS7000C-CU

Isn't that what always happens? I've been playing a game of acoustic whack-a-mole for years now.

Well it happens until you get down to no moving parts, with a non-buzzing TFT and non-whiny AC-adapter. But then you are somewhat limited performance-wise and need another system altogether for stuff like gaming.. *sigh*

+1

There's always another noise to deal with isn't there.

Regarding hard drive and fan noise, it's usually the other way around for me. As I undervolt my fans, the noise from the hard drive/s becomes more noticeable, even when they're suspended with elastic cord... Better to speed the fans up just a tiny bit to try and smooth out the overall noise.

I'm not as anal about PC noise anymore, but I think I've managed to find a happy medium in my modded SG07 rig:

• 2x 120mm case fans at ~600RPM
• 3x 80mm GPU fans at 1000RPM
• Seasonic PSU, so very quiet at idle and quiet under load, and the whole case is raised off the desk a bit to improve airflow and keep the fan speed at a minimum
• 3.5" HDD in a GUP Smart Drive enclosure, and wedged into place with foam, so about the best I can do to reduce both airborne and structure borne HDD noise

Not bad considering the rig is only about 60cm from me, and on top of the desk. If these parts were under my desk and in my old P182, they'd all be completely inaudible to me.

You're on the right path Justin Case, it's a normal process of hell on the road to Nirvana.

My system is almost too quiet, in the sense that I've stopped thinking about what could make it even quieter. Just yesterday while browsing a stores products I thought; "wonder what they have on sound dampening materials", "- oh wait, I have no need for that anymore". So yeah, it's almost too quiet.

I'd expect you'd also need to get the room quiet, and soundproofing a room is even more involved and expensive than a super-duper fanless system.

Well, the kids outside (and their parents) can be a bother sometimes, but it's nice to have the sounds of life around. :) The nights are silent at least. For the most part.