Building a quiet PC..Please help.

[coreduoo]

Hello,

I am new to the forum and have a few questions concerning
building a quiet PC.

My PC is eMachines and I installed Zalman CPU cooler(1350RPM),
Zalman Power Supply, and fanless graphic card.
These investement greatly reduced noise levels coming
from my PC.
Right now Hard drive is the only component that makes loud humming noises.
However, my hard drives are new products from Seagate and Samsung
which are known for high quality products.

(1)
Would the computer case be the culprit in my case?
I purchased a fanless hard drive cooler but it was not helpful at all
as far as noise level goes.

Please give me some insights choosing computer cases
among
THERMALTAKE SOPRANO CASE
APEVIA X-Cruiser Metal Case w
THERMALTAKE ALUMINUM TSUNAMI CASE

(2)
I noticed that both HP and Dell Desktop are extremely
silent. I cannot even tell whether it's on or not.
How could that be possible? As far as I know, they use relatively inexpensive products compared to mine.

Their low-end or mainstream PCs come with relatively simple
metal case and do not postition drives on fancy
rubber-mounted mechanisms to reduce noise and vibration.
But they are still dead silent...

This remains mystery to me..

What would be their tricks?

I was so frustareted so I am thinking about getting a new HP desktop.


Thanks for your help in advance.

[/code]

[Torajirou]

1) Not all of Samsung and Seagate products are quiet. You should check on a model-per-model basis (and even check the motor type in some cases). Enabling AAM (if supported) could help a little. You can also enclose your drives in silent enclosures (Scythe makes some, take a look at the SmartDrive 2002C as well...). Using a case that's designed to isolate the disk from the case is also a good idea. Take a look at the Antec Solo, or P182.

2) As far as I understand it, you can indeed find decently quiet desktops in Dell and HP products; however, there is no guarantee that all of them (even in the same series) WILL be quiet. It depends on the components they use (they are not always the same). To be on the safe side, design and build your own quiet system (and it's so much fun ).

[laguz1]

Would the computer case be the culprit in my case?

nice pun you got going there

As for your case options...i would have to agree with torajirou about the antec solo. For $99, you get a great case thats silent and cools well.

The samsung spinpoint T series is quiet, a bit quieter than seagate barracudas. I have a 400 gb spinpoint and i can't hear it most of the time.

Dell pc's quiet? haha, my inspiron is quiet if its idle, but when uncompressing winrar files, or bf2, that thing is loud. There's always a slight variance in hardware quality, but really..the reason why dells/hps are quiet is due to their minimalist component list. Integrated graphics and non OC'd cpus are quiet enough, but once you push the system hard enough, you'll see the wonders of a DIY system...

[Longbow]

(2)
I noticed that both HP and Dell Desktop are extremely
silent. I cannot even tell whether it's on or not.
How could that be possible? As far as I know, they use relatively inexpensive products compared to mine.
Their low-end or mainstream PCs come with relatively simple
metal case and do not postition drives on fancy
rubber-mounted mechanisms to reduce noise and vibration.
But they are still dead silent...
This remains mystery to me..
What would be their tricks?
I was so frustareted so I am thinking about getting a new HP desktop.

as far as i can tell (with a few rooms load of HP pcs), (some) HP low/mid range desktops and some other well designed desktops use "less powerful" cpu/video components and the heat they generated do not demand much cooling in the first place.

then they usually have just a few decent fans, sometimes use wind tunnels, to cool the important parts (mostly just cpu). their cases are usually well designed provide just enough air flow and do not vibrate/shatter like some cheapos do. they r usually deisigned for longivity (within warranty time) and profit, "quietness" is a blessing but not necessarily their fist intention.

in the end you might get a not so fast computer with not so much noise. they might be called quiet in a office environment during day time with ambient noise. but if you want a reasonably fast computer, and demand "near silence" in a very quiet room, these computers would fail. you would have to hand pick the high performance, low noise (or better, silent) parts and assemble one yourself.


afaik, thermaltake is not liked by some ppl.