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"Building a Quieter Computer: Power supplies are not always to blame!"
by Rick LoBrutto
Computers are always getting faster and faster. With this speed, comes more requirements for power consumption and greater cooling efficiency. Power supplies come in higher wattages, and must be cooled efficiently as well. Many manufacturers, such as Intel, must create bigger heatsinks and fans that can dissipate the heat caused by these power-hungry savages. However, the fan noise that can be generated by both the power supply and the CPUs heatsink/fan is not always taken into consideration by the manufacturers.
About two years ago I built my first computer. It has a 1GHz Pentium III processor. I purchased PC Power & Cooling's case and power supply. PC Power also offered their own fan/heatsink that they claimed was more efficient than Intel's standard heatsink/fan at dissipating heat. I purchased it to find out that this did not hold true: PC Power's fan/heatsink nearly caused the CPU to go into meltdown at temperatures exceeding 70°C. For those not familiar with CPU temperatures, a 1GHz CPU (or similar) should generally not operate past 50° C. If you are playing an intensive video game though, this could increase slightly. With Intel's own heatsink and fan, the CPU temp normally stays below 40°C and when idle around 30°C.
After a year, I started noticing more and more noise coming from my computer. At first I thought that maybe the power supply was getting noisy, so I actually tried swapping it with the power supply on my mother's computer (which was whisper-quiet). No change. I went out and purchased an Enermax EG365P-VE Power Supply that had many good reviews on the web for being very quiet. This still did not have an effect, but read on here if you think your power supply is to blame.
Call me crazy, but my next suspect was the computer case because the other culprits would have been a noisy hard drive (which isn't the case) or extra cooling fans (none in my pc). So I got a different computer case (an Antec) because it's the same case that housed my mother's quiet-pc. This made a slight difference, but not a great one.
I never really thought to look at the CPUs heatsink/fan because of my bad experience from before, and also when listening for noise I didn't notice any noise coming from it. So to make a long story short, I stopped the CPU fan for a few seconds to see if that was causing the noise, and found my problem. My solution was Quiet PC USA's Radial Fin Cooler. The installation was simple, and it cools as effectively as Intel's standard PIII heatsink/fan but with much less noise. Since I've had good luck with them, the next product I'm going to try is their PowerSnooze Silencing Material since they claim it is odorless or my money back.
I hope this was informational for those that are interested in reducing the noise caused by their computer. None of these companies have come to me and asked me to try out their products.
Power Supplies:
Many manufacturers, like Dell and Gateway have been known to use loud power supplies. If you are certain that the noise caused by your computer is the power supply, then I'd consider checking out the after-market power supplies out there like the Enermax. Antec also makes a decent power supply (but not case - at least not the way they used to). Any brand-x case/ps you buy off eBay for a deal will most likely come with a not-so-quiet power-supply; so beware.
Quick-check guide for determing the cause of PC-noise:
Tip: Many hardware components can cause noise with age, so you should treat these as the primary suspects.
1. Power supply - fan noise is usually the culprit of a bad power supply.
2. CPU fan - can cause fan noise, but the way to tell is to stop the cpu fan for a second (do not hold it for long) and listen to see if the noise goes away. The aftermarket QuietPC CPU heatsink/fan I mentioned above worked for me.
3. Additional fans in the computer case - If you're a typical pc-user, then chances are you don't even need them. One manufacturer that makes great fans but noisy ones, is Delta.
4. Hard drive - sometimes causes a metal-on-metal sound. Also high-pitched noise can be the hard disks rubbing up against each other. Generally after a few years, they can start having problems. My personal favorites for quiet hard drives are Western Digital and IBM.
5. Graphics card - usually just applies to extreme gamers, or if you have the latest and greatest GeForce or Radeon card that generates lots of heat; they can have their own heatsinks/fans to dissipate the heat. There are after-market manufacturers that make quieter cooling products for these.
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