Any tips on how to reduce computer (fan) noise?

JLondon

JLondon

Cat Herder
I have a pretty noisy fan on my computer. Anyone get any low noise fans or put their computer behind a sound deadening box? Curious to see if anyone has tried anything to do anything about a noisy computer fan in their recording room. My dynamic mics don't pic it up but the condenser does. I have a small room and can't get very far away from it.

I am using a condenser mic (AT 2035) on an acoustic guitar, AKG D5 for vocals. I am a beginner so if this mic choice is off let me know. I was thinking maybe I should go with SM 57's (maybe 2 for a full sound, so far my guitar sound is thin.) They probably wouldnt pic up the computer fan as much as the condenser does. Ideas?
 
My case came with a device for altering the fan speed. You need to be wary of overheating, test the temperature is ok at a quiet setting.
 
I custom built my own recording computer with only one fan. That single fan runs so slowly that you have to be within one foot of it to even hear it at all. From six feet away, it sounds completely silent. If it wouldn't be for the computer monitor being lit up, I couldn't even tell the machine is on.

It takes a combination of tricks and efforts to make it work...

1. I started with a rack-mount computer case that lives in a tall equipment rack with nothing mounted above it. The computer case itself always has the lid removed so the heat can escape by gravity/convection. (?) The front of the equipment rack is enclosed to block sound from the room. The rear is open to ventilate.

2. I removed the fan from the video card and replaced it with a special "fin" type cooler.

3. I used stick-on cooling fins for the north and south bridge chips.

4. I purchased a silent power supply with no fan. (SeaSonic makes some good fanless ones.)

5. I found a giant cpu cooler that has a 120 mm super slow-speed, silent fan. (You've got to read the fan rpm and dB specs when shopping.) I oriented the fan so that it draws air upward, hence why the case lid stays off.

6. I use only SSD drives so there is no "whine" from hard drives. (I do have a huge spindle drive for backing up sessions, but I use a removable drive bay so I can remove it during recording sessions.)

7. I have installed temperature sensors in a few critical places on the motherboard to monitor and learn when the machine is being overworked. The read-out fills one drive bay in the front of the case.

Hope this helps. ;)
 
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Thanks, this all helps...I will look into modding my computer then. I think I will start with one noiseless fan and see how quiet it gets and go from there. Appreciate the ideas.
 
I've got a Cooler Master Silencio 550 sound proofed case with a Zalman CNPS9900 CPU cooler. The Silencio case has got sound proofing material (foam) inside the case and and also on the front door with two intake fans that sit on the bottom front of the case behind the door. The air gets pulled in via vents on the side of the case on the front and gets pulled through the chassis. Of course, the sound proofing material insulates the heat as well so it presents cooling issues.

I also installed a Cooler Master Turbine Master 120mm silent extraction fan that pulls additional air through the CPU cooler and out the back. I used to have a Geforce 8400GS silent edition GPU (no fan, heatsink only) but I took it out because after some research, the HD Graphics 2000 integrated graphics in my i7-2600 actually turned out to perform better. So I got better graphics performance with dual monitor support without the card, plus the added bonus of less power consumption.

The name of the game in keeping your case cool with the minimum amount of fans is to replace all existing fans with silent types (like the Turbine Master) and making sure the air is flowing over all components and out of the back. If you do this right your computer will operate as silent as it can while, most importantly, keeping cool.

My PC currently idles between 30 and 35 degrees C and has a very low self noise. Sometimes I have to check if it's on when I press the power button!

Cheers :)
 
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