After finally getting around to building a new PC, I’ve become something of a fetishist – a quiet PC fetishist. There are any number of sites dedicated to reducing the hurricane of noise that is a modern-day PC, and I have delved into the depths of most of them before beginning my silencing crusade.

I’ve started down the path with a fairly well selected case and CPU cooler, but I have a long way to go. I’ll be documenting my travels under a dedicated category on this site, so feel free to bookmark that.

On the list of things to do are:

• Swap out the stock graphics card cooler for something a little quieter. Done. Worked a treat.
• Work out why my power supply fan seems to run at full speed all the time, and probably tone it down a bit by reducing input voltage.
• Do the same thing for the additional case fan that is currently unplugged.
• Isolate the hard drive a bit better from the case, probably using grommets where the screw mounts are.
• Add some form of sound damping to the sides of the case.

Of course through all this I still want to run the system at a standard performance level. A common approach for hardcore silent PC enthusiasts is to under-clock or under-volt their systems, but that’s not an option as far as I’m concerned. With the CPU currently running at around 25°C at idle and never above 40°C under load, I’m happy that I have a good amount of headroom to reduce airflow and noise before I have to start worrying about things running too hot (> 60°C).

Tonight I’ll be pulling out the soldering iron for the first time in a long while….

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