PC Acoustics and the Mechanical Keyboard User

[Cake_Eater]

I recently built a new computer for myself and put a fair bit of effort into quieting it only to, a few weeks after completion, pair it with the very loud ABS M1. It got me thinking about the type of people who use mechanical keyboards and post here on geekhack:

Do you care about silencing (or at least quieting) the computers you use, or do you not care about the noise level?

[cmr]

i prefer to keep my computers quiet so i can record musical instruments in the same room.

and so i can hear my keyboards better.

[erricrice]

I couldn't really care less if my PC is loud.  I've got 7  120mm Antec Tricool fans all running at medium to push the air through my case and HS.  I've got a wall-mount air-conditioner as well, so my computer is often drowned out anyway.

For recording, the best thing I've found to do is actually have the tower in a different room.  If you're into it major, it's just not worth the effort to try to get it quiet and then have to worry about it overheating.

[Rajagra]

You get used to any level of noise. In fact at one time the sound of my noisy bedroom PC actually helped me get to sleep.

I prefer quieter ones now though. My network switch is louder than my PC, I must replace it one day.

[Cake_Eater]

You get used to any level of noise.

I disagree with that, at least personally. My biggest problem with my computer has been the hard drive's spin frequency. The sound of moving air is quiet enough for me to use comfortably with headphones, but the hard drive is grating to the point where I'm considering dropping $70 on an enclosure to shut it up.

Unrelated: It's kind of interesting that this latest computer build has introduced me to a ton of new topics. Before building my latest system I had nary a care in the world about mechanical keyboards, overclocking, or sound dampening but now they're prime concerns. Google is an amazing (and potentially wallet-damaging) tool when stumbled about correctly.

EDIT:

I couldn't really care less if my PC is loud.  I've got 7  120mm Antec Tricool fans all running at medium to push the air through my case and HS.  I've got a wall-mount air-conditioner as well, so my computer is often drowned out anyway.

I actually just helped out a friend who had an Antec Nine Hundred and the Tri Cool's drowned out the window AC. I had to re-wire the system (hid the cables behind the motherboard) and switched the fans to low.

[Cake_Eater]

SilentPCReview is the place to hang out for all this stuff.

I use StretchMagic 1.8mm bungee cord for the hard drives.  You'd be amazed at the difference.  Do a search there on their forums.

My main problem is that if I want to quiet my computer down I have to get a new case. I, foolishly, put my stuff in a semi-Small Form Factor Case (the NZXT Rogue) and that makes everything impossible to work with. I'm probably going to toss it in lieu of a Silverstone TJ08 for the easily accessible 5.25" drive bay for said hard drive mounting.

Also, does the bungee cord help with the hard drive spinning idle noise, because I have little to no problem with my seeks (though they are annoying, the case acts like a giant aluminum amplifier), because I'd heard it doesn't. I have the not-so-quiet Caviar Black 640 GB.

[rdjack21]

I tend to like a quite computer to. On my last build I used Antec P180 tower case and really did not have to do much to it to make it very silent. For my next build I'm looking at the new version the P183 or the Mini P180. It is a great case if you are looking for a quite PC.

[timw4mail]

Noise, meh...I don't find it to be a big deal.

[Cake_Eater]

Not to derail this thread from its intended purpose any further, but I have two additional questions:

1) Does anyone know of a solid 3.5" fan controller? If I can't find one I'm going to have to stick a few Zalman Fanmate's in my computer and I'd rather keep everything nicely accessible from the face.

2) How does the bungee-mount fare with travel? Every few months or so I'll end up either hosting or attending a LAN party with some friends so this case is going to end up moving (and seeing as my car is quite possibly the least stable platform I know of, it's going to be moving about quite violently).

[Cake_Eater]

I was thinking of getting the NoVibes III as SPCR rated it highly for ability to silence drives and because it can hold them pretty tightly (if memory serves).

You said that you'd used linoleum tiles on the sides of your case and while I don't have any handy (nor would I like to go through the trouble of affixing it) I was considering applying a little AcoustiPak to the case sides which tend to ping a bit of tapped.

[erricrice]

I actually just helped out a friend who had an Antec Nine Hundred and the Tri Cool's drowned out the window AC. I had to re-wire the system (hid the cables behind the motherboard) and switched the fans to low.

LOL!

I love these fans, very efficient while keeping the noise down.  I don't really worry about noise as it is, but especially with the AC running it's totally a non-issue.

[Hak Foo]

At one point, I had two of the loudest 120mm fans you can get (within normal channels) - Delta AFB1212VHE-- in my Athlon 1200+ECS K7S5A rig.  It lived in an AT tower modded to ATX.

Now, I have Scythe S-Flex 'M' fans (not the quietest, but sufficent to vent the box, in a very sturdy EATX tower.  (I dumped the Lian-Li since the mobo tray was warping from the cables.  Damn cheap case)

Odd thing:  A $30 Xigmatek does 95% of the cooling of a $75 Zalman (often more) or a $80 Noctua or Thermalright.  Why bother if you're at stock?

[Cake_Eater]

LOL!

I love these fans, very efficient while keeping the noise down.  I don't really worry about noise as it is, but especially with the AC running it's totally a non-issue.

Honestly, for him it was absolutely imperative that the fans move a large volume of air if necessary. He's re-doing his house and there is sheet-rock dust EVERYWHERE. The tri-cools performed fantastically (ambient temps varied between 18C and 30C, with the CPU coming in at ~36C idle with a Xigmatek Dark Knight).

Odd thing:  A $30 Xigmatek does 95% of the cooling of a $75 Zalman (often more) or a $80 Noctua or Thermalright.  Why bother if you're at stock?

I got the Thermalright before I was planning on silencing (or at least quieting my system) and as such it was designed to overclock my processor. I ebay'd a D0 i7 and with the right tweaks expect to get 4.6 Ghz on air. Unfortunately that generates quite a high temperature so I had to go with the best rated heatsink I could find.

I was also a little intimidated by a friend's setup. He kept the i7 (C0) at stock and it loaded up to just over 70C.

[Cake_Eater]

The linoleum tiles are just the cheapo $1 a square ones with the self  adhesive.  Peel and stick.  If they fall off grab some carpet tape and stick em back on.  I've tried AcoustiPak and didn't really notice a difference - it's mass that dampens pinginess.

Thanks, I'll look into it.

Unrelated, but I noticed that you use Nexus in your system. Which side do you take in the great "sleeve vs ball" bearing debate? Have you had to swap the Nexus's out at all, or have they held up well?

EDIT: I'd just remembered, I'm quite fond of the Thermalright because it's the only heatsink that's let me run the i7 without a fan. I wasn't able to do extensive tests, but playing TF2 put me around 55C (a solid 10 C above what I have with the Noctua), which is quite good considering I hadn't adjusted airflow for fan-less cooling.

[Cake_Eater]

I used to use Nexus and then got cheap and just use Yate Loons for the case fans and Nexus on the CPU heatsinks.  Haven't had a failure yet and my Media PC has been running 24/7 for like 8 years.  

I haven't hung around SilentPCReview in a long time so don't keep up on the fan stuff.

Holy crap, I hadn't realized how little the Yate Loon's cost. At $3.99 apiece I'll try them out and put them in another system where acoustics isn't as high a requirement if need be.

[keyb_gr]

Concerning the original question: Acoustics are quite important for me as my main system is also used for music listening. The keyboard is the only exception - it only makes noise when I am interacting with the computer after all.
I get along with only two 80 mm fans in that box, since it is quite low power (in both senses; IIRC it's between 85 and 110 W from mains, monitor included) - there's a YS-Tech FD1281253B-2A that I installed in the 110 W (no typo) Astec PSU, and the other one is an Arctic Cooling Fan Pro TC, earlier series with lower rpm, drawing air out. The YS-Techs were semi-popular around 2004/2005 or so (when I installed this one), reasonably quiet and long-lasting ball-bearing fans.

For harddrive decoupling I've been using the layered packing foam (not styrofoam, but the slightly flexible stuff) that you may get with more upscale Korean consumer electronics for example. Excellent stuff, far better than styrofoam.

[huha]

Ah, the YS Techs. I've got a couple of them in my PC as well. I also happen to have a Delta AFB1212VHE I bought one time for using as a small, yet powerful fan when the weather's getting too hot; it's a fantastic little beast, the first fan for wich I bought fan guards because I was slightly afraid hurting myself. If you can get your hands on this fan, I highly recommend it.

3.5" fan controller: That's tough. Most cheap 3.5" fan controllers use badly designed PWM circuitry, which leads to noisy fans (PWM frequency is too low, so the coils in the connected fans start vibrating at audible frequencies, which will drive you absolutely insane), so you probably don't want this. Linear Voltage regulators aren't as efficient, but they're noise-free, so I'd recommend getting a fan controller using them; the only problem being I'm not quite sure if there's anything on the 3.5" market that fits this description.
So, how can you tell?

PWM circuitry:

(Although that one seems to be okay judging from the large filter capacitors used; you often won't find them on cheap PWM regulators)

PWM circuitry can supply large amounts of power for the size. 10 W per channel are no problem at all. PWM doesn't even need heatsinks for that.

Voltage regulators:


Large heatsinks for the linear regulators. Power per channel largely scales with heatsink size, but it's usually about 5-10 W for standard fan controllers.


I haven't been into this for years (and when I was, I bought an incredibly fancy programmable PWM fan controller with adjustable PWM frequency), but Zalman ZM-MFC1 is still quite popular as a fan controller. It's a 5.25" version, though and uses voltage regulators instead of PWM.


As for ball vs. sleeve bearing:
Ball bearings are loud. It's just a limitation of the technology, you can't create a ball bearing that doesn't make a lot of noise. But on the other hand, they're durable as hell; if they reach the end of their lifetime, they'll just get louder and louder, with only slight decreases of fan speed, so although they'll become incredibly annoying, the fan will still work.
Sleeve bearings can be made virtually silent, but they aren't as durable and when they fail, they fail fast. At first, the fan will get louder and drop rotation speed considerably, and after a few while it will stop alltogether.

So, in conclusion: Use ball bearings for applications where reliability is paramount, use sleeve bearings for everything else. The only place where ball bearings are really justified in a modern PC would be the PSU, as their mode of failure will most likely be quite nasty. CPUs, graphics cards, case fans--sleeve bearing. They do have over-temperature protection and large heatsinks which can keep them on high, but acceptable temperatures under medium to low load even without a fan.

-huha

[InSanCen]

I run Delta's... lots of 120x120x76mm Delta's... noise is not an issue.

Losing a finger if you are forgetful however, is...

[timw4mail]

I don't like sleeve bearing fans. All my fans are either ball bearing, rifle bearing, or something else that has a high reliability. Of course, I'm that crazy person who doesn't want to buy new hard drives, yet has a quad-core desktop and a high-end GPU. So, take that as you will.

[Cake_Eater]

Up until last month I was running off of a system with an overclocked Core 2 Duo, HD4830, 4 GB of RAM and an 80 GB IDE drive. I got a 640 GB Caviar black just because it was ridiculously fast while not being VelociRaptor priced and I don't know what to do with all of the storage.

(To juxtapose my situation, a friend has a home-server with several 2 TB HDDs and he keeps complaining about a lack of storage. :eyeroll: ).

[InSanCen]

He still has his tail... just a little bald spot on the end of it. He was lucky... those things can, (and have) break fingers.

These are worse than you "normal" delta's, they are twin rotor's an over 210 Cubic Feet per Minute...

Ouch indeed.

[Rajagra]

At one point, I had two of the loudest 120mm fans you can get (within normal channels) - Delta AFB1212VHE-- in my Athlon 1200+ECS K7S5A rig.  It lived in an AT tower modded to ATX.

Haha, I had some 12cm Deltas in one of my towers. It was on castors, so I drilled a 12cm hole in the bottom near the floor and fitted a Delta fan there. It gave incredible airflow, but did sound like it was taking off. I swear it levitated on full power. I prefer quieter PCs now.

One idea I keep meaning to try out is to have a fan inside the PC just to circulate air inside the case. This would cool all those passively-cooled components normally in dead-zones, and would only need a low power fan as the airflow would loop without any obstructions. At the same time the case exhaust fans could also be low power, because they wouldn't face the impossible task of trying to force airflow to the dead zones.

Another brilliant/mad (you decide) idea I had was to point an ultrasonic transducer at the CPU heatsink. It would push/pull air molecules around the fins giving more even heat transfer to the air, and make it more likely for hot air molecules to be swept away by the fan. I should really copyright that idea. I submit this post as proof of concept!

[Cake_Eater]

Just wanted to field one last question on hard drive mounting: In reading around SPCR and other forums, it seems like decoupling the hard drive from the case won't really affect the high frequency "hum" of general operation. I did a basic test by suspending my drive from bits of string outside the case and found that it sounded more or less the same as it did when screwed in. Any advice?

[huha]

Just wanted to field one last question on hard drive mounting: In reading around SPCR and other forums, it seems like decoupling the hard drive from the case won't really affect the high frequency "hum" of general operation. I did a basic test by suspending my drive from bits of string outside the case and found that it sounded more or less the same as it did when screwed in. Any advice?

If you don't need the best access times nor capacity, use laptop drives. Of course, they're more expensive and slower as well, but they're virtually silent when used in normal desktop PCs (they aren't particularly loud in laptops to start with). For everday use, they should be fine and their price is somewhat competitive, given you don't need anything extra to make them silent.
If you do need access time and capacity or have a bunch of old HDDs you'd like to silence, you have to buy a noise-isolation case. The good ones aren't cheap, and they'll warm up your HDD considerably, so good ventilation is paramount (I'd also recommend regular backups).
Honestly, I don't quite see the point nowadays with cheap laptop HDDs. Their angular velocity is lower, but the platters are smaller, so speed isn't that much worse. You also don't really need the speed desktop HDDs can deliver for most tasks. It all depends on your requirements, though, so maybe you do.
As a totally silent, high-speed, low-capacity version, you can use SSDs, but they're still quite expensive.

-huha

[Rajagra]

Why don't they make heavy metal drive cases that isolate sound while acting as heatsinks?

[huha]

Why don't they make heavy metal drive cases that isolate sound while acting as heatsinks?

It's not that easy; metal doesn't isolate sound, as it tends to vibrate. You'll need a very soft material to isolate vibrations, so rubber or bitumen is used. Then, metal is quite expensive, so you'll want to skimp on that if possible. Third, HDDs have multiple heat sources; they're not designed to be put in a containment, so heat management relies on air circulation; not much is needed, but if you stop it alltogether and clad the drive with soft, noise-isolating material, it can get problematic.

That's precisely why it's better to avoid noisy HDDs than to silence them afterwards. I'd probably go for a system SSD or 2.5" HDD plus external USB HDDs or a NAS for heavy data storage if I was to build a new system.

-huha

[D-EJ915]

My desktop had 7 80mm fans going at full speed at one point and one was a vantec tornado.  So no noise really doesn't bother me too much and I have a sun V480 which is 75dB.  Nowadays I'm more into keeping things quieter but meh if something is loud I won't get rid of it.

An easy way to silence hard drive vibrations is to use string to hang them in the 5¼ bays.  Laptop drives are quiet too and western digital has 1tb and 750gb models coming out soon.

[Rajagra]

It takes more energy to vibrate a bulky metal case than the thin metal mounting points of a standard PC case.

Fixed energy output + more mass = lower amplitude of vibration. Simple physics. That's what I mean.
Ideally you'd still need to isolate from the case too.

Usually most HD heat is lost by conduction to the mounting points on the sides. It takes a lot of airflow to compensate for that when using rubber mounts etc.

I'm convinced my idea would work well. You are right about the cost though.

[lal]

To give a short answer to the original question: Yes, I always put quite a bit effort and money into silencing my machines.  So I can better hear my keyboards clicking

[huha]

It takes more energy to vibrate a bulky metal case than the thin metal mounting points of a standard PC case.

Fixed energy output + more mass = lower amplitude of vibration. Simple physics. That's what I mean.
Ideally you'd still need to isolate from the case too.

Usually most HD heat is lost by conduction to the mounting points on the sides. It takes a lot of airflow to compensate for that when using rubber mounts etc.

I'm convinced my idea would work well. You are right about the cost though.

Your idea would semi-work: Part of the vibration comes from parts not directly fixed to the HDD case, so you can't increase their mass by screwing the HDD to a large metal block. As stiff, large-area metal-to-metal joints will conduct sound rather well, you won't get a reduction of sound coming from this particular source.
You really need sound dampening, but this will make cooling problematic. Usually, a HDD has a controller board. They don't need a lot of cooling, but some minimal airflow should be ensured. If you stuff sound-dampening foam all around your HDD, no airflow will happen, so the controller will run hotter, which could lead to decreased reliability.

-huha

[JBert]

Older PC's I've used were quite noisy, but my latest build is quite a lot better. After some research on SPCR, I bought a rather silent Samsung spinpoint drive and put it in my Antec P183 with the rubber gromets. I don't really noticed the hard drive, although that could be because I've added some extra fans to increase internal air flow.

[Cake_Eater]

Why don't they make heavy metal drive cases that isolate sound while acting as heatsinks?

They do, Grow Up (Japanese company) makes an enclosure called the Smart Drive that acts as a sound dampener and it can siphon off heat fairly well.

Scythe also makes a similar product (Quiet Drive) that's cheaper (Smart Drive is $70) at around $40.

[microsoft windows]

I never really put any effort into making my computers quiet. With a 9-year-old hunk of junk with a noisy 10gb hard disk and many loud fans and a clicky keyboard, I'm in no position to talk about how to make a computer quiet besides shutting it off.

[Cake_Eater]

Just wanted to update my progress with silencing an extremely hard-to-work-with case and very noisy hard drive. On Ripster's (excellent) advice, I got the stretch magic and mounted my 640 GB with it and the results are phenomenal. What was once the loudest component in my case, drowning out the 1500 RPM cpu fan and three 1200 RPM case fans is now so quiet that my video card (Sapphire's Vapor-X, lauded for being near silent) is becoming annoyingly loud. Just wanted to say thanks to Ripster, both for the Stretch Magic idea and for mentioning Yate Loon fans (which I promptly looked up and purchased a few to swap out the case fans with).

EDIT: Computer hasn't been on THAT long yet, but the hard drive temps don't seem to be pushing 50 C which, considering the severe lack of airflow in this case, is phenomenal.

[timw4mail]

but the hard drive temps don't seem to be pushing 50 C

I wouldn't push a hard drive over 40C if you can help it...

I'm one of those people who keeps their 250GB hard drive around for 5 years, though, so maybe I'm just too preserving or something....

[Cake_Eater]

I wouldn't push a hard drive over 40C if you can help it...

I'm one of those people who keeps their 250GB hard drive around for 5 years, though, so maybe I'm just too preserving or something....

55C is the max recommended operating temp from the manufacturer (i.e. It's still under warranty at or below that temp) so I'm fairly safe. Also since decoupled mounting is supposed to increase temperatures and I'm seeing a temperature drop (used to be around 46C) I'm very, very happy with this.

[Hak Foo]

Older PC's I've used were quite noisy, but my latest build is quite a lot better. After some research on SPCR, I bought a rather silent Samsung spinpoint drive and put it in my Antec P183 with the rubber gromets. I don't really noticed the hard drive, although that could be because I've added some extra fans to increase internal air flow.

The quietest PC I've known was my first Athlon 64 build when I first got it-- quiet stock cooler, Antec SLK1650 case of moderate quietness, fanless video card, fanless northbridge, one hard disc,

[InSanCen]

The quietest PC I've known was my first Athlon 64 build when I first got it-- quiet stock cooler, Antec SLK1650 case of moderate quietness, fanless video card, fanless northbridge, one hard disc,

This PC is also the quietest that I have... If I swap out the 6 Delta's on the Radiator (it's watercooled), for my Noctua's. The loudest thing by far is the 1TB Samsung HD.

[erricrice]

Nahhh, just run the cables into a nearby closet, problem solved.  Or if your desk is near a door to another room, just throw it under a table somewhere and you'll forget about it.  I personally like to keep mine right next to me so I can hear if things start to fail(did this for my last 3 hard drives....I have horrible luck)

[D-EJ915]

PS/2 can go pretty far, same with analog video.  SGI made super long cables for their bigger workstations (desksides) back in the day so you could have them in another room from the users.

[slowfreight]

Im new to these forums.  First post...sup guys!  My latest build is extremely loud.  It is water cooled, but my radiator, a thermochill PA120.3, is cooled by three Sanyo Denki 109R1212H1011, 120mm x 38mm fans.  These guys can get pretty loud especially running at full power.  I have the ability to under volt them, but I dont.  By the way my Filco FKBN104M/EB should arrive some time tomorrow.  My rubber membrane keyboards have all sucked.  So here I am.  Avid gamer and music aficionado.

[itlnstln]

Welcome to Geekhack!
 
You will love your new 'board, and with that rig, it'll will be completely silent to boot.

[microsoft windows]

I'd have to say that my main computer would be the loudest of all. I can hear it from upstairs when the door is open. And it's not that great of a computer (it's 9 years old).

[kode]

Ideally I'd probably want quieter computers. My current workstation is actually not too loud, but that is easily undermined by my radical decision to also have a sun ultra10 running. I might put some money into swapping the fans, I guess.