Silent PC Case on a Budget

might I suggest an Antec sonata? it should be fine unless this is for a gaming rig

Quote from dayv : i know if i run a fan at 80% it literally makes 1/2 the noise. my friend has this and it is really nice. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Pro...6811129177

i've been trying to figure out how to do that, get the fan plugged in to a lower voltage rail. but on my moduar psu (ocz 600w) i don't know where to plug in the cable that i plug the fan cable in to. any advice or should i just buy a cheap fan controller?

Quote from ydbe : i've been trying to figure out how to do that, get the fan plugged in to a lower voltage rail. but on my moduar psu (ocz 600w) i don't know where to plug in the cable that i plug the fan cable in to. any advice or should i just buy a cheap fan controller?

"high" on a fan is 12V, you can add a resistor in series with the fan, or put the fan on a 5v rail to slow it down (from a molex connector, the red is 12v, black is ground, and yellow is 5v)

Quote from dayv : i know if i run a fan at 80% it literally makes 1/2 the noise. my friend has this and it is really nice. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Pro...6811129177

If that's all you wanted to accomplish then you could just do this:

Quote from slapshot136 : "high" on a fan is 12V, you can add a resistor in series with the fan, or put the fan on a 5v rail to slow it down (from a molex connector, the red is 12v, black is ground, and yellow is 5v)

The reason I said it's like putting a bandaid on a gaping wound is because you're not solving the problem, which is mass air flow through the system. Reducing the speed of the fan will work until your system needs to cool itself down under load. Then your case fans will either ramp up to 100% or your CPU fan will ramp up to 100%. In either case you've just lost your noise reduction. And that's assuming you can get the noise down to where you want it in the first place.

So you can step up to a larger fan size, moves more air while spinning slower, you can get a rheostat or wire in a resistor, slows fan speed down and moves less air, get a better designed fan, makes less noise per amount of air moved, put in sound dampening material and on and on. In all cases you will likely see slightly better results from these upgrades, but in a system that is solely air cooled it is very very difficult to hit a level that I would consider truly quiet.

If the goal is to reduce overall noise you can do that pretty easily. If the goal is to make a silent PC, that's going to be damn hard to pull off unless we start talking more exotic cooling strategies.

Quote from brbubba : If that's all you wanted to accomplish then you could just do this: The reason I said it's like putting a bandaid on a gaping wound is because you're not solving the problem, which is mass air flow through the system. Reducing the speed of the fan will work until your system needs to cool itself down under load. Then your case fans will either ramp up to 100% or your CPU fan will ramp up to 100%. In either case you've just lost your noise reduction. And that's assuming you can get the noise down to where you want it in the first place. So you can step up to a larger fan size, moves more air while spinning slower, you can get a rheostat or wire in a resistor, slows fan speed down and moves less air, get a better designed fan, makes less noise per amount of air moved, put in sound dampening material and on and on. In all cases you will likely see slightly better results from these upgrades, but in a system that is solely air cooled it is very very difficult to hit a level that I would consider truly quiet. If the goal is to reduce overall noise you can do that pretty easily. If the goal is to make a silent PC, that's going to be damn hard to pull off unless we start talking more exotic cooling strategies.

I know the silence stuff doesn't work as well as its advertised, but its still better than nothing.

for a more quiet setup, can always do mineral oil.

I think you need to look at how quiet a desktop you can buy in the store actually is. I have Optiplex minitowers 390 and 790s at work they have Video card with heat sinks and you can barely hear them running I am not quite sure how quiet you are trying for the new iX systems with sandybridge are pretty power efficient .

Just what are you going to use the system for?