Silence your PC

Posted at: Friday 7th October 2005 by James Morris

A powerful PC doesn't necessarily have to sound like a jet engine. James Morris investigates how to make a high-end PC more acoustically demure

Water palaver

If you really want to hear yourself think, however, getting rid of as many fans as possible is the only way to achieve a truly serene computing experience. The best way to accomplish this is by using water to draw out the heat from a number of key components to an external radiator with a large, low-speed fan. An even better method would be to use a radiator large enough not to require a fan at all. This is the philosophy behind Zalman's amazing Reserator 1, which has rapidly become one of the most desirable cooling systems around. Although this wasn't originally capable of coping with the most thermally demanding components, it has recently been upgraded to the Plus version, and can now cool a CPU, GPU and Northbridge at the same time. According to Quiet PC, the GPU waterblock will now even cool GeForce 6800 and 7800-series GPUs, including the 6800 Ultra in our test system.

However, in our water-cooling Labs test, we didn't find that it was capable of cooling a massively overclocked Pentium 4, and it's only officially rated for a 3.4GHz processor. Not everyone wants the hassle of fitting a water-cooling kit , and the procedure isn't for the faint-hearted either. Considering the high price tag (£186.83 from www.quietpc.co.uk) of the Reserator 1 Plus, it isn't the best value option but it's the only way you'll achieve a really significant reduction in noise. Unless you're an ardent overclocker, the Zalman Reserator 1 Plus has to be your primary choice if you're serious about quiet computing on a powerful system.

All together now

This is precisely why we chose the Reserator to form the cooling headquarters of our quiet PC test system. This system also featured a Samsung P120S hard drive, a Tagan TG480-U01 PSU and two quiet SilenX iXtrema 120mm blue LED fans, all of which combined to turn a roaring lion of a system into a purring puma.

The results were a joy to the ears, and only the profoundly deaf would fail to notice the difference. The noise levels dropped by 12.7dBA, measured from the front, and an even greater 15.2dBA measured from the side. Most significantly of all, the system now made just 7.25dBA more noise than the room itself, which is quieter than the sound of somebody breathing from 3m away. In a noisier environment, the PC would be virtually inaudible.

We also tested the system with and without the Reserator's GPU waterblock. Replacing the noisy GeForce card's cooler with the passive waterblock took around 6dB off several of the higher frequencies between 2 KHz and 4KHz. The treble-heavy frequencies are often the most annoying, so this is a great result too.

We turned an annoyingly noisy PC into one you'd hardly notice was there, without having to compromise on its performance components. It may have cost a few hundred quid , but if you build your PC from scratch with low noise in mind, you can have a hotrod system that's so quiet you'll be able to hear the milkman arrive when you're surfing at 3am.