Silence is Golden – How to make your PC quieter

WHEN THE FANS FADE AWAY

Once the whirring of all those fans has been dealt with, you might start to notice various other annoying noises that were previously masked.

The clacking of hard disks is a tricky problem to resolve – you have very little control over how a hard disk operates. However, the low-frequency hum of a hard disk is linked to its spin speed, and slower disks tend to produce less noise. 7,200rpm is the standard spin speed for a modern hard disk. 5,400rpm disks are available but they’re generally limited to smaller capacities. The exception is Eco or Green disks, which are designed for low power consumption, and that generally means slower spin speeds and less noise. They perform slower than 7,200rpm disks, though, so can make your PC feel sluggish, and the noise differences aren’t huge.

A better option may be to stick with your existing hard disk but muffle its noise. The Nexus DTW 2300B DiskTwin is a cheap way to do this. It comprises two bars of metal heatsink with rubber fittings to absorb noise before it resonates around the case. These bars screw into the sides of the disk, and the whole assembly fits in 5.25in drive bay. We didn’t find it to be particularly effective in our tests, though.

A pricier but more effective option is the Grow Up Japan Smart Drive Neo, which costs £80. It’s essentially a large metal box that you install in a 5.25in drive bay, with padding inside to protect your hard disk and absorb its noise; the lid is lined with a thick layer of rubber, and there are heatpads to attach to your hard disk to ensure that it doesn’t overheat inside this sound-tight box. It works very well, making even the clackiest of hard disks very quiet.

For absolute silence and an incredibly responsive PC, consider a solid-state drive (SSD). These are essentially super-fast flash drives, and the best ones are significantly faster than the fastest hard disk. Prices have dropped significantly of late, though they still aren’t cheap at about £1.50 per GB (compared to 5p per GB for traditional hard disks). However, with no moving parts they’re totally silent.

Our favourite SSD at present is the OCZ Vertex 2E 120GB for around £135 inc VAT

There’s also such a thing as a quiet optical drive – the LG CH08LS10 – which emits only a faint whir instead of the grating whoosh of an ordinary optical drive. It’s not cheap at around £70, but it is a Blu-ray reader as well as DVD writer. If you don’t want to spend any money, software such as Nero Drive Speed can throttle the speed of your drive, but bear in mind that it’ll affect performance as well as noise levels.

Reducing rattles and vibrations resonating around the case is often just a matter of tightening screws, but there are further steps you can take if the screwdriver fails to eliminate the problem. Try padding fixings with something like pieces of rubber band – place the rubber between the two pieces of rattling metal and screw them back together. If the gap between the metal is two small, try some cloth.

Alternatively, the Fractal Design Anti-Vibration Kit costs £13 and includes various rubber fixings to dampen vibrations from hard disks and case fans, as well as replacement rubber feet for the case itself.

CASE STUDIES

Over the next three pages we look at free, affordable and custom-build options for a quieter PC.