A few questions on cooling and reducing loudness.

[Pope Mobile]

Hi all, this is my first post here. It looks like a nice forum indeed.

Anyways, I just built my first system. I have a 3.2 GHz P4 northwood with the stock fan, this case, and this power supply. For those who don't want to look, it's a Maxtop case with one exhaust and one...other kind of fan. The power supply is an Allied 500 watt. In my past experience, and from initial snooping around, the main source of noise seems to be my heatsink. This P4 uses the following heatsink design: P4 3.2 heatsink and is, at least in my case, quite loud. I'm a bit at a loss now for what to do, so any suggestions would help. This thing is really too loud for me to listen to music with comfortably, and is just a general pain in the toosh to deal with.

One other question: My computer desk, specifically the hutch, restricts the airflow in the back a bit. I'm considering drilling a hole to improve the airflow. When I give the power supply fan about two inches of space, the air being put out is not too warm, but it still worries me. Would cutting a hole be appropriate in this situation?

Thanks.

 

[knuckle50]

i would never, ever put a computer in the hutch of one of those desks.

you can get resistors to restrict the current to the fan but a 3.2 ghz northwood probably needs all that airflow... unless you want to get like a silent zalman cpu cooler id leave it as is

 

[Pope Mobile]

Thanks for the reply. I guess placing it on the floor or on the top of the desk itself would be more ideal?

One thing I thought of since my last post: OEM computers i've purchased in the past (Dell, for example) have fit in hutches quite ok, and have been real quiet to boot. They also had no case fans...i'm wondering how they pulled that off.

And yeah, I have the GeForce FX5200 - the PCI model! You can imagine how much i'm rocking the games - 5700 in 3DMark2001SE. Yeah, i'll be upgrading to a Radeon 9600 XT most likely.

 

[Pope Mobile]

Hey knuckle50,

I took your advice and removed the computer from its hutch. Less fan noise and better temps now - a lesson learned for future computers...

 

[umybiatch2k6]

dell pulled that off by not putting in anything that wuold be as performant as a 3.2 would be. of course you could try to remove all your case fans, but you couldn't compare it to wat the design teams come up in the sense of air flow inside such a pc. that's how they do it. and most do actually have a case fan, up front.

 

[Gl\l0m!$h]

dude dell = crap the way they dont have to put any fans in there is cuz they have nothing in there that even needs cooling!

 

[knuckle50]

No, the reason is because they are a corporation and therefore have the money and resources to put time and effort into designing a case that runs completely silent but still allows adequate airflow. The average computer user does not want his computer to sound like a vaccum cleaner, so computer sold by retailers such as dell are generally silent.

 

[Kangaroo]

I have to say that Dell don't use high performance components like us computer builders use, they also use Silent PSU's with a poor 250W supply.

As for reducing noise you could remove that silver fan cover, it could help and certainly did when I removed the grill of my ThermalTake Volcano Xaser 11+

My computer is in a hutch with the door closed, has less noise. Fortunately for me the hutch is designed for a PC and has no back to it and the door isn't air-tight.

 

[compy]

cool hutch, lol my dads was in on with the door shut and no air ventelation...it fryed the damn thing lol, if only i had a temp watcher then, i would have loved to see that thing burn up and see it's hightest temp before it cooked, lol.

 

[knuckle50]

haha wow, I thought you were gonna say you wish you had a temp watcher so you could save it, you must really like your dad