The price you've paid for silence (in dollars)

[Le_Gritche]

CPU:
25 Euro for a socketA ventirad with a 80mm fan
4,5 Euro for a soldering iron
1,5 Euro for a 100 ohm potentiometer, a 68ohm resistor and some wires to be able to reduce and control the CPU fan speed according to the load (my mobo doesnt allow that feature in the BIOS)

GPU:
2 Euro for a 4 pin Molex extension
0 Euro for some wires and Molex connector from a dead CD drive
1 Euro for a 3 position switch to feed the GPU fan 0v, 5v or 12v depending on the load (my graphic card doesnt allow to control the fan speed)

PSU:
0 Euro to move the fan thermistor farther from the heatsink
0 Euro to cut the metal protection of the fan in order to improve the airflow
1 Euro for some sticky past, to reduce the air turbulences by making smoother the transition from the fan casing to the PSU casing.
0 Euro to put the PSU out and on top of the case to have a cool air intake

CASE:
0 Euro for some cardboard to put a fan in the now-free PSU bay (the case had no opening for a fan on the rear panel)
15 Euro for a Noiseblocker S2 fan (80mm) with potentiometer
5 Euro for an Akasa 80mm fan quiet at 5 volts, to replace the noisy and vibrating S2 fan after 6 months

HDD:
0 Euro to remove the power connector of my storage HDD I use every 6 months.
0 Euro to use the dead CD-drive and some free mouse pads for a DIY HDD-enclosure for my whinning WD 80Go
55 Euro to buy a silent Seagate 7200.7 80Go PATA, after the DIY enclosure on the case floor shorted the motherboard, killing the WD HDD

Total : 110 Euros

110 Euros is more than I thought, but on the other hand, puting silence on top of performance, I'm happy to keep using my quiet old computer (1GHz athlon and GF4 MX440). So in a way, I saved the price of a top of the line rig.
The real total is maybe that I saved 500 Euros thanks to silent computing.

What...lying to myself ? noooooo
I just bought some heatsinks to connect the CPU to the case and use it as a giant heatsink, that will save me money on the house heating.
See, I save money I'm telling you...

[NapalmDeath]

Here are my costs:

1 Zalman heatsink/fan: $50 (great buy, re-used twice)
1 Zalman fan controller hub: $30 (great buy, re-used twice)
1 crappy fan controller hub: $20 (turned into an LED oohh ahh)

3 Arctic cooling VGA silencer: $90 (love these guys, so effective)
Fan grommets and isolators: $20 (basics)

1 120mm Nexus Quiet fan: $20 (love this fan, and I undervolt it)
4 80mm Vantec Stealth fans: $60 (early quiet attempt, meh fan)
4 80mm Silencer PC Power & Cooling Fans: $60 (gee if its way undervolted it's quieter, but has a really low CFM)

1 Zalman APF400 PSU: $150 (great PSU, but a bit dated without SATA or PCI-E connectors)
1 Antec Phantom 350 PSU: $140 (look ma, no fans!)
1 Antec Sonata Case: $100 (my last mid tower case, SFF or bust now)

total $740

the truly great products have been used in several PC's [Zalman anything, Nexus fans, Artic Cooling VGA], while the crappy, die quickly in one implementation.


.

[El Doug]

Phantom 350: $150
Reserator: $250
L1A's: $20
2.5'' SATA: $180

Putting off the vacation another year (total): $600

Satisfaction once ive killed all of you for getting me into this: Priceless

[arenbi23]

Wow impressive guys, you all make me feel a lot better about what I have spent aswell.

My silent quest cost me quite a bit aswell but more importantly is the money lost/wasted in replacing loud equipment. I put the blame on myself for buying thermaltake equipment and focusing too much on performance.

Write offs/ losses in Australian Dollars. I got some of this on discount as I had a friend who used to work at a computer store.

Thermaltake Tsunami Case $189
Western Digital 200GB HDDs x2 $380 at the time
Thermaltake Total Wattage Viewer PSU $145
Abit NF7-S, had a northbridge fan - too loud $120
Thermaltake Silent Boost Fan bought in 2002 (ye right) $50

And the cost to make things silent , well I am a little too tired to go through the entire list of parts, but all up it cost me almost $750, inlcuding 2 new HDD's and a motherboard.

But it was worth it. My friends all thought I was nuts, but they understood when they heard my PC afterwards.

Incidentally my brother took all that other equipment off my hands, and apart from his room now being as loud as an airport, there is too much turbulence that not even flys enter his room when one gets in to the house.

Big thanks to Mike and the rest of the guys, your advice helped me to avoid buying a lot of dud equipment.

[jaganath]

apart from his room now being as loud as an airport, there is too much turbulence that not even flys enter his room when one gets in to the house.

That's what brothers are for!!

[epiphane]

Interesting thread

I wasn't going to count up the costs on my twin Lian Li project,

http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewtopic.php?t=28987

because I didn't want to see the total. It was easier just buying the supplies over a few months...my Spousal Unit pays the VISA bill so I didn't have to deal w/ the hard truth. On the other hand, the points made by the above posters is a good one, i.e., controlling PC noise, only costs u that amount that is over & above what u would have spent for non-quiet components.

Though mine was a major rebuilding of 2 computers, I think I would have spent the majority of that money anyway, even w/o considering the noise issue.

The title of my above linked thread is "Twin Lian Li's, all SCSI, Priority-quiet,looks & wire management" So...let's say I never heard of noise control for puters. In that case, the Title would have been, "Twin Lian Li's, all SCSI, Priority- looks & wire management". I wanted to do the project because of several equally important reasons, not even mentioning that one of the puters needed some substantial hardware upgrades.

Let's review my expenses. These figures aren't exact, just doing a quick glance through the receipts (I'm including shipping & tax if they were charged):

2 LL Cases = $ 370.
these r the silent
versions of other LL
models. I bet they only cost me
at most, $150 more than
regular versions. So quiet cases cost me = $ 150.

A Zalman CPU cooler $31.

AcoustiPack Deluxe v2 $80.

Various noise control items from McMaster-Carr $70.

misc. items-such as ducts etc $30.

let's throw in an amount to cover things I $50.
forgot about

The total is $ 411, & I believe that's probably more than I really spent. Frankly, I'm surprised it's that low. I thought my biggest expense for this project was due to my quest for quiet computing. I can see I spent more just to have good looking cases with neat insides. These cases (along w/ their silent components) will last me at least 5 yrs. That's not a lot of money over that time.

Even if u consider the man hours involved, I spent more time on wire management & other HW issues than noise control.

Cheers
Peter

[Chris Chan]

Let's see....
Zalman CNPS7000B-AlCu LED $32
Zalman Fanmate2: free with HSF
JMC Panther 8cm: $0 - free sample
NMB 3110GL-B4W-B24: $1 used
THat's all I really can think of ATM.

Planned:
2 more Fanmates: 2@$6 each so $12

Spent now: $33
Planned: $45

*COUGHcheapieCOUGH*

[theyangster]

don't worry, it'll get worse

[Tamas]

Thermalright XP-90 50$
Noiseblocker SE2 92mm fan 15$
Panaflo 80mm fan 15$
2*Zalman ZM-2HC2 50$ (passive hdd cooler)
Zalman ZM-80C-HP 25$ (passive vga cooler)
Asus K8N + Athlon 64 3000+ 250$ (C&Q compatible and RPM adjusting, passive chipset motherboard, undervoltable low power CPU)
old FSP 350W PSU with silent Yate Loon D12SM-12 fan 60$

[Svartberg]

Way too much, i reckon over 300$ for sure.
I think it would actually cost me less to get it all watercooled with the best parts - plus it's all too noisy in my current comp so i need to spend another ~150$ soon. (i recently bought a new comp and replaced much of it)

I wonder how it would look like if i'd spend the time around watercooling instead ...

[qviri]

I wonder how it would look like if i'd spend the time around watercooling instead ...

... or reading the recommended lists and not buying Enermaxes and Zalman 7700s...

[Svartberg]

I wonder how it would look like if i'd spend the time around watercooling instead ...

... or reading the recommended lists and not buying Enermaxes and Zalman 7700s...

My current rig i got a month ago is temporary until i get the scythe ninja and a few yate loons.
And what's wrong with this enermax psu ? it's true this one is discontinued and all the new enermax psu are far from quiet, but this one is quite decent ...

[cmthomson]

I mean, who would buy a ninja if they weren't looking for silence?

Anyone with a Pentium D. The stock cooler is as loud as a vacuum cleaner. And doesn't cool worth a @#&%.

Anyway, on topic, I spent a ton of $$$ while having my ton of fun. Some examples: extra for the case (P180), extra for the PS (Phantom 500), extra for the disks (SP2004), extra for a passive video card (Gigabyte GV-RX80L256V), extra for the foam (AcoustiPack), extra for a vent (Kama Bay), extra for fans (AcoustiFan and then Nexus), extra for fan controllers (NMT-3), extra for VRM heat sinks (SwiftTech RAMsinks), extra for meters, microphone, preamp, cables, tools, styrene, glue, ......

Many hundreds total. But when a hobby becomes an obsession, this is to be expected.

[JVM]

How much? I don't even want to think about it. But I do have to say being on the computer is now a pleasure since finding this great site.

My thanks to MikeC for providing the absolute best forum to discuss and find information to build a quiet computer system, although my wife would surely disagree

[nici]

Right... I think i´ve posted earlier, but how on earth am i supposed to know this? I mean finding the FanMate of my cnps 6000(i think, the one with the 92mm fan bracket thing) inside my new computer about three years ago started an avalanche really... Problem is, now i know a lot about computers but when i was buying the first one i had no idea if i should go for intel or amd. This was when AXP 3200+ was top of the range, i went with AMD because it was cheaper. A P4 northwood wouldnt have been bad either. My point being that before i actually understood how the damn thing works i couldnt judge a product like i can now, so there was a lot of trial and error before finding SPCR. At wich point i already had several cases, coolers, and the reserator. Then the few blown mobos and PSUs sacrificed in the name of silence and learning the hard way.

Ok thats a long post, considering it could be answered with a few numbers and a currency mark. Oh well, i hope someone gets a laugh out of it

[wwenze]

Sometimes I kinda hate being involved in this PC silencing business... threshold for noise keep dropping, the upgrading never stops...

Add Ninja Plus and Seasonic S12-430
+ $123.54 ($152.68 retail price)

$200 in my local currency isn't a small sum, can buy a new Sempron CPU + mainboard or a gfx card or hdd or good speakers or 2 mp3 players which are what I really need, and I spent it on something that does nothing on its own and doesn't give any performance boost...

...but makes the com almost inaudible while downloading overnight. If anyone asks me whether spending so much money and time for near-silence is worth it, I say yes.

On the plus side, these stuff lose value very slowly. And I haven't bought a P180. Going for something more extreme if I were to do so anyway. And listening to music/watching videos without the noise, and bragging rights.

[Cerb]

Nidec Gamma 28: $10
Enermax variable speed fans, 120mm and 92mm: $25? (35)
SK-7: $15
-- (I find SPCR)
AX-7: $15 (65)
Fortron 300W: $40
ZM80C: $35
NV Silencer: $25 (125)
Seasonic 380W: $70 (235)
Nexus 120mm and Panaflo L 80mm: $25
Yate Loon 120mm: $0
Fan controller parts used so far: $15* (275)

So, that's about $275 (all values have been rounded to nearest $5 based on memory), not counting bits of foam, mouse pads, cable management parts (I honestly don't know how much all that stuff has been!), various costs for parts not directly related to silencing (such as my case), and I know I've some other things before I found SPCR that I've forgotten about. I'd venture $300 is still a slightly conservative estimate.

Also, I'm not including parts like my motherboard (came w/ heatsink instead of HSF on chipset) or HDD, since the cost would be about the same for the louder parts, and I was getting them anyway.

I fully plan to spend as much or more during upgrades in the future. At least $150 of what I've spent so far has been amazingly effective, and much of the rest offered good experiences to learn from.

* none have yet made it into permanent operation, and some I ruined

[defaultluser]

For my latest system:

Antec Sonata II: (~$50 more than an SLK1650)
Zalman vf900-Cu: $50
2 Scythe 120mm S-FLEX Fluid Dynamic Bearing fans: $30
Zalman ZM-NB47J (blue) northbridge cooler: $6

I voided the warranty on my Asus A8N5X, but I don't care, because the board cost $75

I voided the warranty on my XFX 7900 GT. THIS I actually WOULD care if it broke, so I'm crossing my fingers.

So, that's about $136, with the potential for more if one of the above breaks. Not too bad for a powerful quiet system. I kept the 450w stock powersupply because the fan is silent at the loads I run the system at. I even use the AMD stock heatsink and fan + Q-fan, and it is silent at idle, and barely audible at load.