how do you keep the pc quiet

[pingu]

HI guys, whats the best way to do this.


Should i just buy multiple extensions and get it as far away as i can.


What about iso boxs

[quincyg]

i put mine in the closet.

kvm multipliers/extenders :$15(ebay)
heavy duty 50' vga cable $30(ebay)
keyboard./mouse 50' cable $30(ebay)
gefen firewire repeater and fw cables $140 for my firewire interface.

so it's a couple hundred bucks to go 50'. works great. video monitors are a tiny bit degraded.

this is with my interface remote from computer. pci or usb interface might create additional problems.

[aussie_techie]

good case with quiet psu and a zalman cpu fan go along way

[stag]

The same as Quincy or get a laptop.

[drmmrboy]

Originally Posted by pingu

how do you keep the pc quiet

Put it out by the curb..??
Wait, what am I saying? I use PC.

Anyway, you can get it out of the room if you have another spot for it. Or like aussie said, try some quiet fans. For a while we had a Dell that was silent. It can be done.

[amino]

Wireless keyboard and mouse is also an option. Most of them are USB-connected. If they're out of range, use an active repeater.

If you have an LCD monitor, get a fiber DVI cable if you want the computer a long way from the studio. Expensive, but excellent transmission.

Another option is to get a cheap fanless laptop and put that one in the studio. With a wireless network you can control your main PC with Remote Desktop. All you need then is a cable for your soundcard.

[JazzYoda]

Since I have one of the "wind tunnel" mac G4's, I have had many issues with noise. I finally got it down to a decent level by switching out most of the fans. I think Verax makes the best stuff, but it is not cheap! It helps if you know a bit about working on the inside of computers, but if you go slowly, you can learn as you go without wrecking your machine. I recommend a CPU/PSU temperature monitor (on at all times) so you can see if your new fans are doing the job.

[pingu]

Thanks guys

[True North]

The best absolute advice is Quincy's - get some cable extenders and get it out of the room.

If you are set on having it within arms reach than the costs for keeping things quiet are expensive. I decided to have my computer close by and spent about a $600 to $700 USD premium on quiet components.

This included
Quiet power supply (quite often the biggest culprit)( I used Seasonic)
Specialized Quiet Case Fans
2 Ultra Quiet CPU Fans (Thermaltake)
1 Zalman quiet VGA Fan
4 Hard drive enclosures (Quietpc.ca or com)
Lian Li make some of the best cases on the planet (Check out the Lian Li PC-73SLB)
I didn't use it on mine, but the Zalman liquid cooling is pretty cool but you will probably need two units if you have two CPU's.

When all is said and done you are looking at a lot of scratch but it does make a significant difference.

Check out these sites for more info;
www.silentpcreview.com
www.quietpc.com
www.endpcnoise.com

do some google searches as there are other sites, hope that helps.

[FS0420]

Move it further away. Do Not Get An IsoBox
Get some resistors and attach them to your fans. If your fans are very annoying sounding still, get some quieter fans. Acoustifans were the best when I had a bunch of fans to try out, Panaflo,Acoustifan,SilenX,Zalman,Nexxus and some others.
Anyhow, if you check your temps after lowering fan speeds and they are too high you can take out the crappy heatsink on the processor. Thermalright is where its at. They make a heatsink that will fit a 92 or 120 cm fans. Thats what you want running nice and slow, a huge fan. It will cool better than stock unit at full blast.
Its also best to have a solid case, steel is best, but there are solid aluminum builds as well. Aluminum transfers heat better than steal also. You should have 120 or 92cm fans on the case rubber mounted to absorb vibration.
The harddrives should all be seagate anyway already, but the maxtor and WD drives are about 10 times louder than a seagate. The drives can sit in a cage with rubber mountsd or can be suspended with elastic chord.
Vinyl and or acoustipak foam can be applied to the inside of a case that is not so sturdy. It will also further dampen a solid case and the foam will reduce reverberations inside the case. Rubber feet will reduce vibrations transmitted by the computer.
foods here im gona eat

[quincyg]

for a while i had an enclosure the size of a refrigerator that i custom built. i used a turbine fan inside that vented through the exterior wall. it worked pretty well, but heat built up a little too much at times. i had two computers and 5 or 6 hard drives in there. a bigger and cheaper option than the iso cases that only fit one computer. there was still i little low frequency hum from the box. if i were to build a new one i would probably probably build it using quiet rock and spend some time with the fan baffling.

[FS0420]

again I forgot one of the main points to a post.
You need a very efficient power supply to have a quite PSU. It also needs a quiet fan, you can mod it yourself and decouple the fan from the chasis with rubber. You can also isolate the psu from the case with a rubber pad.
Antec makes a fanless psu that is about 90% efficient wich means it generates almost no extra heat. I hear its good mounted in the bottom of a case or a seperate thermal chamber from the rest of the system but I have never tried one.
I use a Seasonic PSU that I modded myself with an Acoustifan, its silent as is my entire system. Except when I run Digicheck, I hear a whine noise. Thats an other story though since Digicheck is not working with my Fireface800. It shows validty bit errors in the bit and noise function and RME has not been able too fix the problem.

[FS0420]

Originally Posted by quincyg

for a while i had an enclosure the size of a refrigerator that i custom built. i used a turbine fan inside that vented through the exterior wall. it worked pretty well, but heat built up a little too much at times. i had two computers and 5 or 6 hard drives in there. a bigger and cheaper option than the iso cases that only fit one computer. there was still i little low frequency hum from the box. if i were to build a new one i would probably probably build it using quiet rock and spend some time with the fan baffling.

Thats funny stuff....
My pc with huge vents and side open are quieter than my laptop (Toshiba, dont get one of these, im selling and buying a macbook) when I have my head inside the computer case. It sits right next to me under a desk and cant be heard by anyone in the room. Oh yea the computer is alot cooler than the laptop also.
toshiba

[BlueBird]

I've got one those super loud G4s as well.
I need an upgrade so Im looking to get a refurb Imac G5.
Any one have any experiance using an IMac G5?
Are they quiet?

[FS0420]

G4

[doctah]

IMO...

The biggest noise maker = the smallest fans
(read: Northbridge, vga, etc...)

The sucky thing to me about the 'quiet pc' journey...it makes you start acting like a tech...not a musician (or whatever you use the computer for). You start worrying about temps, then you worry if your temps really mean anything. Once you CPU fan is quiet, the harddrive drives you nuts. You get that straight - then play a CD/DVD and have a fit. "I swear I can hear the capacitors on my motherboard making noise!!!"

...or maybe that's just me

[seagull]

I don't think its just you!! I feel that I spent way more time researching quiet components (Nexus fans, Zalman cpu coolers, Seasonic psu etc) than I did anything else on my computer. Heck, I'm still struggling to off-set the time I spent researching and building with actual time recording (mine's a corner of the room home hobby studio) and making music. It was my first build so that had alot to do with it, but I definately tossed my musicians hat in the corner for way too long. Anyhow, time to get back to the music!! Chao

[AlexLakis]

I use a combination of longer cables, 120mm slow-spinning fans (and a quiet PSU,) and some 703 (covered in burlap) spaced an inch or two away from the case. Works well, defeats most of the noise.

[dj_who]

i took my dremel tool and made a nice hole in the wall. put the pc in the next room and got a bunch of svga,usb,ps/2 extension cables.

ahhhhhh the silence.

[MattiMattMatt]

I use Gefen extension cables (they make all kinds) and also have an IsoBox.

Both are good.

[Improv]

Get a new computer.

Mine are over 2 years old each now and I just built one at a modest price for a friend and was so jealous how quiet it ran. New CPUs run cooler, new fans run quieter, new cases are built better... it all just gets better with each generation. I wouldn't put more than $100 into modifying an old computer for noise issues without scoping out current options first.

[Aeonian]

Well if you have the budget you can get a nice noiseless pc case like the zalman ones..

http://www.zalman.co.kr/
http://www.tomshardware.com/2004/01/...ing/index.html

expensive but nice..
Otherwise some simple things like choosing a motherboard without a chipset fan, and vga card also without a fan, and low noise power supplies and cpu fans make a big difference..

[FS0420]

When the P4 came out, I turned it on and couldnt hear the music I was playing anymore. Stock cooling,as well as power consumption on those things is ridiculous.
My dads X64 AMD stock cooling seems decent. I didnt bother checking out the stock cooling on my X2, just slapped a Thermalright on it.
Matrox makes very good inexpensive fanless dual monitor AGP GPU's,good for saving PCI slots for DSP cards. Ive always used matrox never had a problem.

[theother]

Get it out of the room.

Cable extensions are cheap and easily available these days.

It will be dead quiet in your control room and your computer will never run hot.

I never had a computer in the same room for the last 15 years.

Actually I don't have any fan in the control room.

[theblue1]

The notion of adding resistors the the fan circuitry (to drop voltage supplied to them to slow them down) could be risky for obvious reasons -- but it should also be noted that to some perhaps small extent the resistors will be a further source of heat, as well.

[JazzYoda]

I have to admit, my computer may be noisy even after the mods, but it's not as loud as the tape machine! My old studio had amplifiers with fans too

[TheMissileSilo]

I have a kk-audio 20 space quiet isolation rack, works very well, especially becuase i'm running two wd raptor 10k rpm s/ata's (those are a bit noisey). Aside from my G5, the rack also houses 3 96 i/o's and a few other items, pretty much anything that generates noise from fans. It does make a big difference.

They make smaller versions, based on your needs, they are a bit on the expensive side, but if you are looking for something clean and professional it is a great option.

http://kkaudio.com/quietrack.html

Hope this helps.

[oudplayer]

It's gotten pretty easy to greatly cut down on the noise of PCs:
Antec P160 or P180 case
Seasonic ps [380-500 watts, depending on how much yer running]
Zalman CPU cooler [make sure it's compatible with yer mobo]
Fanless VGA card [newegg now indicates on their product lists which have fans and which don't] or Zalman VGA cooler

Even if you don't have the fans totally optimized, you will still have a reasonably quiet PC. Mine [with the older, noisier P160] is quieter than the Protools 96IO interface, and roughly equivalent to the level of the lowest fan noise on a Powerbook G4. I've heard (or rather, not heard) dead-silent P180s that had no water cooling or anything fancy...

(thanks to the reviews and forums at silentpcreview.com - they're the most objective and informative place for researching this info)

[xemexe]

turn it off.