Other silencing Techniques
Other techniques can be used to silence other parts of the case. For example one of the noisiest parts of a computer case can be the heatsink, the PSU and the graphics card fan. There are several options for the heatsink including silent coolers and the trusty 7volt mod trick. I have used an ALPHA PAL8045 cooler in combination with a Papst low noise fan. This provides enough cooling for my AMP XP 2000+ with limited noise.Next up is the graphics card fan. These are generally 40mm fans and are very noisy. I 7volted the blue orb on my geforce 3. This didn't cause and instability and was a great improvement noise-wise.
Finally the psu, this can be a real pain to address as taking apart a PSU is HIGHLY DANGEROUS, and only for people who know what they are doing or in my case idiots.
My PSU is an enermax 550W one. It has two fans one 92mm and an 80mm fan. I left the 92mm fan as it was but replaced the rear 80mm fan.
I removed the psu cover and took out the existing fan cut off the connectors and soldered in a new quiet 80mm papst fan.
Take great care when playing with a PSU if you are not sure what you are doing DO NOT attempt this.
While I was playing inside the psu I took the opportunity to replace
the fan grill and to heatshrink all the cables. This makes the cables
look a lot tidier and improves airflow slightly much like rounded IDE
cables. Heatshrinking the cables takes a long time and requires lots of
soldering to do but I feel was worth the effort.
At the time of the pictures I was unable to source an new fan grill in the 92mm size I now have and it completes the look nicely.
Next for further silencing I thought I would try out some sound insulation. The product I chose was Akasa Pax.mate
You get 4 pieces of insulating material and instructions on how to install the panels.
The four panel are in two sizes, two small pieces for the top and bottom of the case, two for either side panel.
Insulation was very simple just a matter of lining it up pulling off the backing material and sticking it down. Note that its very sticky so be careful about placement as there is no easy way of going back. I installed just two panels due to the window I was planning on putting in the case.
The results of the insulation were slightly disappointing, the general case temperature rose by a couple of degrees, and I didn't notice too much difference in noise levels. This is in part due to the already quiet nature of the setup and the fact sound insulation works better with different frequencies of noise such as those from a Delta fan.
