I always seem to be obsessed with the noise that my pc produces and right from the word go I have always ripped the noisy standard fans out of my systems and put something a little kinder on the ears in.

Only now its got worse... I got my hands on some foam blocks and now look whats happened!

LOL!

I wouldn't know where to start.

I can bearly hear myself think when mine is on.

I know nothing about computers really, got it for £70.

A PC I built at work looks like that. The case was a special quiet one, and with all the foam and dynamat it weighs a ton...

Our old one had a HDD almsot louder than the fan. That didn't last long and was fixed uder warranty.

Hopefully you have some fan cooling your hard drive(s) though :eek:

Hopefully you have some fan cooling your hard drive(s) though :eek:

No... don't need it... it is tucked away in an enclosure and its sat at a lovely cool 30 degrees at the moment and I can barely here it (pretty quiet samsung F1 anyway).

And yes this one weighs a tonne too!!!

Things could go nasty if a fan failed... that hard stuff burns really well.

I have alarms set-up etc and the pc would shut down long before it got hot enough to start a fire...

Having seen PSUs and processor fans fail and melt the mobo, I dont trust these alarms and self shut down as these systems didnt.

A dual core chip can melt pretty quick with no cooling.

A dual core chip can melt pretty quick with no cooling.

Good job I don't have a dual core then... its a Quad!

A dual core chip can melt pretty quick with no cooling.

I thought the Intel chips had thermal protection.. as in you could remove the heatsink & fan and it'll be fine.

you missed a bit

Things could go nasty if a fan failed... that hard stuff burns really well.

The 'fire' thought went through my mind too. Warm foam might well give off a selection of noxious chemicals too.

I'd have a look at www.quietpc.com and replace the packing foam with something a bit more suited.

Warm foam might well give off a selection of noxious chemicals too.

I'd have a look at www.quietpc.com and replace the packing foam with something a bit more suited.

TBH none of the foam gets even warm as the only bit that is near any real heat producing source is the bit above the heatsink but that never really gets even warm.

The Intel chips are pretty good in that respect... very little heat dissipation and no you probably wouldn't be able to take the heatsink off... well you would but would get hot withing seconds probably and shut down!

Have been on quietpc lots of time before. Just did this as a little money saving too as the foam was free and to do the same with some proper stuff would cost around £20!

It has made a difference it has taken a low reverberating hum away from the system.

Although having said all of this... my pc will probably catch fire now while being raped by GTA 4!!! lol

Having seen PSUs and processor fans fail and melt the mobo, I dont trust these alarms and self shut down as these systems didnt.

A dual core chip can melt pretty quick with no cooling.

If it's proper foam designed for that then it should be flame retardant.

Normal packing foam usually isn't something I'd trust to work in the same way.

Do you have a cut out below the graphics card for air as otherwise it's going to get damn hot.

The best CPU melt down I've seen was as follows with a now old AMD CPU that supposedly had the thermal even shut down when combined with the correct motherboard. Quite a few systems went in a similar way, this was the worst of the lot, but all were systems of the same type:

- CPU fan failure.

- Heatsink gets too hot and so warms the spring clips that hold the heatsink into the socket.

- Socket gets hot enough to go soft around the clips, allowing springs to force their way off and the heatsink drops off the CPU.

- CPU gets too hot and catches fire.

- PSU above the CPU got burnt and bits catch fire and char, but go out.

- Socket and CPU are toast

- Luckily the system went out.

This was from taking apart a dead PC, but you have to say that's not something you'd want a load of foam around.

Yeah some K6 ones had this problem, most BIOS versions did not actually work properly for the thermal shutdown. I've only had 2 'burning' problems so far - both at the office.

One was a hard drive chip blasting out (burnt out the chip only). That PC was toast after as it shorted a few critical things on the IDE bus. Another was a PSU catching fire. good thing is was in a 'safe' area (metal racking, shelf above empty).

At home, never had a problem as I got shot of sh*te cheap PSUs.

The Intel chips do have a working thermal protection though and you can remove the heatsink from a P4 and the system doesn't even crash, just slows down. I can only assume that modern Intel chips still have this.

In terms of the graphics card... as you can see I've got an aftermarket cooler on it so it doesn't vent air out of the back of the system anymore. There is also fressh cool air being blown onto it by the front fan.

The card only gets to about 60 degrees under load (which is A LOT cooler than the stock cooler ever managed!) and these cards (8800gtx) are designed to run up to 90 degrees IIRC.

Everything runs suprisingly cool and has been set up like this more some months without issue.

Phil

Have seen both AMD and Intel systems go up. A fault Intel dual core chip on a laptop made the user think twice about using it on a lap.

An AMD where the PSU failed and pumped too much voltage to the CPU , blowing the heatsink from the chip and putting a nice dent in the case's side panel and toasting the mobo. This was my mates gaming rig, and didnt use standard cooling.

A dell, unknown chip but dual core, in a similar fashion to above. Heatsink ended up falling off the chip after the fan failed. Should have shut down, or reduce load, but actually did the oposite. System slowed, so Windows punished the chip to work harder. It cooked, and caused mobo to make the PSU go bang with nice flame effects I'm told from the rear fan.

I never leave my computers on unattended for this very reason. In an office/data centre with fire supression's a bit different.

As said, if that's packing foam then get rid. A firm that makes stuff like that went up near me a few years back, and the fumes were very toxic. Even a slightly warm carrier bag on a rad can give off deadly fumes. Doesnt have to actually be melting or on fire.

:eek:Jebus h ******* chrisp what are you doing?

£70 and I'll make it SILENT or your money back.

:eek:Jebus h ******* chrisp what are you doing?

£70 and I'll make it SILENT or your money back.

And how would you achieve that?

Although I would like it to be totally silent I have to be realistic and make a compromise. At the moment its pretty god damn quiet but runs fast (memory slightly overclocked and GFX card overclocked while playing gmaes) but still runs very cool.

Wouldn't want to then lower to the cooling capabilities to make it really quiet and cause it to run hotter.

Might look into getting some proper black foam stuff (the black bumpy kinda stuff) if nothing else it will look nicer!

Will also be buying one of these at some point:

SilverStone Technology Co., Ltd - Designing Inspiration

I have tried putting something over the PSU exhaust before and it deadens the sounds quite a lot... at the moment most of the sound I can here is from the back PSU exhaust and rear fan (not a noisy PSU or fan just how the air/sound comes out the back really)

If you want to quiet the PSU exhaust use a suitably designed fan exhaust cowl instead of just the basic fan guard.

Also blocking the airflow with blocks in the case can significantly reduce cooling anyway so the best way to achieve silence is to use fans/PSU's with quiet fans that get a good airflow for a low noise.

There is no fan guard on the back of the psu its just like mesh as there is just one 12cm fan on the bottom and it just disperses out of the back.

Putting the foam blocks in hasn't affected temps really... i've noticed about a 1c diff at idle and about 3c at load which is nothing and have some decent fans that push quite a lot if air at low RPM and are very quiet.

Phil

And how would you achieve that?[/Quote]

Well, if everyone could do it, it wouldn't be clever, would it? Basically I would take out all the fans and cool the hot spots with passive water cooling.

Although I would like it to be totally silent I have to be realistic and make a compromise. At the moment its pretty god damn quiet but runs fast (memory slightly overclocked and GFX card overclocked while playing gmaes) but still runs very cool.[/Quote]

You have at least 4 fans in there. And it would run cooler if you took all the insulation out. As well as trapping sound, you are trapping heat. Rather than covering up the noise, take it away. Other than the HDD, which are cool enough in their coffins, the only heat generators are the CPU, the graphics card and the Northbridge cooler.

Wouldn't want to then lower to the cooling capabilities to make it really quiet and cause it to run hotter.[/Quote]

You appear to have an Abit IN9-650i motherboard, with OCZ Reaper RAM (probably PC6400 if you say it's overclocked) and an 8800GTX with an HR-03 on it? I doubt the Quad is overclocked much as the 650i chipset (and that board in particular) didn't like clocking quads much if I recall correctly.

None of that stuff needs to be super-cool to run efficiently. It just needs to run within tolerance.

Might look into getting some proper black foam stuff (the black bumpy kinda stuff) if nothing else it will look nicer!

Will also be buying one of these at some point:

SilverStone Technology Co., Ltd - Designing Inspiration

I have tried putting something over the PSU exhaust before and it deadens the sounds quite a lot... at the moment most of the sound I can here is from the back PSU exhaust and rear fan (not a noisy PSU or fan just how the air/sound comes out the back really)

And again, why cover up noise when you could just eliminate it to begin with? What is the PSU?

I was wondering the same Phil - if you're properly obsessed, you'd be choosing your components for a water-cooled rig

Steve