PC in a bedroom studio

S

StevenLindsey

New member
I'm having a heck of a time figuring out where to place the components of my new PC. I want the tower out of the room to get rid of the fan/drive noise. ( Got wireless mouse and keyboard. ) Probably going to get the Tascam 1884 or the Yamaha 01X. So - I've ordered a 14' firewire cable and bought a 10' extension cable for my 17" LCD. I want to run the cables through my closet into a room next door. However, the monitor got ghosty with the extension on it. I might be able to get away with just putting it in the closet and padding the walls a bit. It's pretty quiet in there with the fans on low. But I'd rather just get it completely away. Questions:

Will the PC overheat if I leave the fans on low position? ( It hasn't so far but I haven't really taxed the CPU and drives yet. )
How long can a cable be for a flatscreen LCD before it fuzzes up? Or does a device exist that can boost the monitor signal over longer cable runs?
Will a 14' firewire cable slow it down?
Anybody else here successfully done something like this?
Should I just give up and take up another hobby? :D

Any thoughts will be greatly appreciated!
 
Before I went thru all that trouble I would be looking for a insulted cover to go over the tower. Hell, you can make one pretty easy.
 
dude, get rid of your case fans, get a Panaflo fan (or any other 80mm fan) for your heatsink, and swap your psu for a quiet one like the Fortron 300w job w/ the 120mm fan.

that will cost you like $50 tops.
 
i agree with stealth....just build an insulation box for the tower....if your running the cables through the wall...bring the tower closer to the wall (natural buffer and you dont have to run the cables so far) as for the monitor....i think anything past 10 feet and it starts to lose luster. 14' of firewire shouldnt slow it down too much unless there are other programs running or a bad connection. normally try not to run mass info cables (firewire, usb, ide, cat5) from too far away or things could slow down....it may not be too noticeable but sometimes miliseconds count during recording lol. LATENCY SUCKS!
 
Thanks! I assumed that a box over the tower would cause some serious overheating after a while so I ditched that idea but..... I'm not sure which fan is which on this thing. Not even really sure what the heat sink is yet. :D ( Yes I'm ignorant ) There are two small fans inside the case, I think, on the processor and one on the chip. It has a 400 watt fortron power supply but it looks like a small fan in there. There's a fan underneath it that's a bit larger. If I turn both fan switches to low, the noise is greatly reduced but still audible. Maybe in a box it wouldn't be. hmm..if I had a box over the tower, I couldn't get to the CD drives. I just don't want to hear ANY noise in that room. Maybe I'm paranoid but I've been fighting noisy recorder problems for a few years now. Guess I need to do some more research. I've heard of folks getting almost zero noise with certain kinds of fans. And yeah, latency would be even worse than noise, I imagine. I bought the PC thinking I'd be able to separate myself from the noise, but apparently it's not that easy. Thanks for the ideas.
 
why are desktops so loud?

I record like 5 feet away from my laptop with a condensor mic and it is not noticable on my tracks. If the noise is very faint would noise reduction plug ins work? Sometime noise reduction plugins make my tracks sound digitized but sometimes they work pretty well.

Why not just sound proof half of your room and install a huge studio window with an intercom? that would be a cool bedroom.
 
I tried recording some stereo guitar tracks with the fans on high with an NTK and a 441, about 10 feet away, mics pointed away from the tower....sounded like a train. Well, not really, but I have fought to get silent recordings and almost had it with my Korg D8 except for a little bit of drive click. Now I'm back to square one with this PC. I can definitely hear the fans in the background and that just won't do. I'm going to do whatever is necessary to get silence.
 
Well, I've found, I think, the main culprit in my story here. I took the side panel off this weekend and cranked her up. It's mostly the CPU fan. The power supply is almost noiseless..just a small buzz when I put my ear up to it. The case fan makes a low pitched quiet whoosh. But the CPU fan whines like crazy. So I guess I'll start there if I can work up the nerve. I'll probably pull out the CPU or something. Then I'll replace the Northbridge fan. Then the graphics card fan. May attach some foam or something around the case. Then line one side of my closet with some thick foam and then run through the wall. If that don't kill it, I may as well give up. Thanks for getting me started in the right direction!
 
What CPU do you have?

If it's an Intel, those are pretty quiet to start with, at least they used to be.

If it's and Athlon/Duron, you can pick up 'noiseless' solutions on the cheap - ok, not too cheap. The Zalman CNPS series are meant for low-noise applications, almost as low noise levels as the case fans, even quieter. Their flowers are pretty quiet.

On case fans, you should move to Vantec Stealth, Thermatake Smartfans, or Panaflo L1a which will reduce the overall noise levels from case fans. If you cut out the grills at the back, case fans with low output should be enough to keep the internal temperature down.

There are three other sources of noise: PS fans, Optical drives and hard disks. If you feel that the PS fan is silent enough that's OK, or you can replace that fan as well. Opticals generate noise when spinning up and down - should not be a problem during recording. Hard disk clicks can sometimes come through the PCI bus and into soundcards, but fast drives also have seek noise and spinning noise.

Not much you can do except move to quiet hard drives. Seagate Barracudas are really silent. I mean, really, really silent, I have to put my ear to it (I have one on an external enclosure) to figure out if it is actually working or not.

And there's the chassis resonance, which none of us pay attention to but is a big source of noise - can be effective to put dynamat or other lining material to beef up the case and reduce the nasty resonances inside the case. There are sites on the web that cater to ultra low-noise PCs. Temps are usually higher than stock configuration, but you can run Athlons and Intels up to 60 C without issues if you don't tax them too heavily. I have seen temps of 68-70C on my Athlon XPs diode without any ill-effects.
 
Sangram.....thanks. The CPU is an Intel P4 in a 478? socket. The little fan on it whines like crazy. 865 chipset with a little fan on it too...may get a fanless heat sink for it. The Radeon 9600 card has a fan on it. Got two Seagate Baracudas...pretty quiet indeed. I found a couple of web sites dedicated to quietening PCs. I think I can get it done. I'm going to start with some carpet padding to line the case.....then see if I can replace the CPU fan. I'm hoping just these things will get it quiet enough if I run my cables through the wall into my closet, which I plan to pad with some foam. Just going to try one thing at a time until I get ....quiet. Thanks for all the ideas everybody!
 
865 chipset does not need fan. A good passive HS will do fine for it. Zalman makes some. Actually you'll get everything you need from Zalman

1. Chipset cooler - for the northbridge
2. ZM80-A (or similar) - passive cooling for your 9600 Pro
3. CNPS-7000 - for your P4. You can move from noisy to quiet within $100 (or so).
 
StevenLindsey said:
I'm having a heck of a time figuring out where to place the components of my new PC. I want the tower out of the room to get rid of the fan/drive noise. ( Got wireless mouse and keyboard. ) Probably going to get the Tascam 1884 or the Yamaha 01X. So - I've ordered a 14' firewire cable and bought a 10' extension cable for my 17" LCD. I want to run the cables through my closet into a room next door. However, the monitor got ghosty with the extension on it. I might be able to get away with just putting it in the closet and padding the walls a bit. It's pretty quiet in there with the fans on low. But I'd rather just get it completely away. Questions:
Click to expand...

That's too bad the monitor isn't working out with the extension. I'm curently running a 15" LCD with an extension cable running from the PC that I have in a closet and it works fine. The PC I'm currently using is much quieter than my AMD box that uses an Antec case. But the AMD box when put in the closet worked fine and my condenser mic never picked it up. You might not need to pad the walls, give it a try.
 
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