Hands on Performance: Quick fixes to make your PC quieter

Get your system to behave in a more civilised fashion with these quiet cooling tips

Modern PCs are capable of generating a shocking amount of noise, and I’m not referring to any audio or loudspeaker capabilities.

It’s the combination of cooling fans and high-speed drives which can cause a racket and become a greater issue than performance.

The only reason a PC makes a lot of noise is because it’s been fitted with the cheapest solutions to keep it cool. By upgrading these to better designed solutions, you can keep your PC as cool without generating as much noise.

We regularly review quiet cooling products in PCW, but this month we thought we’d go over the basics of getting your PC to run in a more civilised fashion. You may find it more worthwhile than a faster processor.

Quiet cooling: the theory
Modern PC components generate a lot of heat and demand adequate cooling to keep them running. For processors and graphics chipsets, this traditionally means a heatsink to act like a radiator and a fan to blow or suck the heat away.

Quiet cooling solutions tackle noise in two ways. The first involves using a more efficient heatsink to better dissipate heat. The second is to use a quieter fan.

While superior bearings can greatly reduce fan noise, the greatest difference involves running the fan at a slower speed. To compensate for reduced airflow at lower speeds, physically larger fans are used.

So that’s the simple theory behind quiet cooling: a more efficient heatsink with a larger fan, spinning slowly on top. All the cooling solutions we’ll mention here are available from Quiet PC.

Processor
The first step to building a quiet PC is to upgrade the heatsink and fan that cools the main processor. The heatsinks supplied as standard are often the cheapest solutions available, with little or no consideration for noise levels.

Zalman is one of the best-known manufacturers of quiet heatsinks, and its CNPS7000 series is a great choice for cooling most processors; it costs from £28.

If you’re after the ultimate air-cooling solution, Zalman’s CNPS9500 (pictured) can outperform many water-cooling systems; it costs £46.

Graphics
Once your processor is being cooled quietly, you’ll immediately notice the noise generated by your other components. Some of the worst culprits are graphics cards, which are normally cooled by tiny, but fast, fans.

Believe it or not, it may be possible to cool a graphics card by a larger heatsink alone. Cards based on chipsets up to the ATI X700 and Nvidia Geforce 6600 can be silently cooled by Zalman’s ZM80D-HP heatsink (£27), which fits on both sides of the card.

Anything faster will need a fan of some description, although larger units, often fitted from above, can be used instead of tiny whining models.

Power supply
The third major generator of noise in a PC is the power supply. Since these involve mains electricity, it’s not safe to open them up and change fans.

Instead you’re looking at removing your existing power supply and swapping it for a quieter model.

Most quiet power supplies use larger fans, spinning more slowly to generate less noise. Some can spin them up and down, depending on the requirements.

Elan’s Vital Greenerger is a good choice at £93 for the 400w model.

Drives
With the fans taken care of, the noisiest components will be the drives. Noisy hard disks can be fitted into noise-absorbing enclosures, but you may wish upgrade to an inherently quieter model.

In our tests we’ve found Seagate’s 7200.8 Barracuda range runs very quietly.

Finally, just when you thought your PC was running as peacefully as could be, you insert a CD or DVD and your optical drive sounds like a plane preparing for take-off.

While there’s no solution for quietening a drive spinning at full whack, it’s possible to use software tools to slow it down and greatly reduce the noise.

Nero Drivespeed, which comes with Nero Burning Rom, can set your drive to run at any speed, and it’s amazing the difference it can make.

While you’d still want it at top speed for the fastest ripping or application installations, it’s great to reduce the speed for playing CDs or DVDs, and is therefore ideal for media PCs.