Now, with extra noise!

[c9]

I hate that I get what I pay for.

I bought this:


But I should have bought this:


The new case works just fine, and is better than the old one, but it's not quiet by any stretch of the imagination. Damnit. I specifically wanted a quiet case, but the cheap ass in me chose to believe that the case I chose was quiet and cheap. Parts of it are quiet, but the insane cooling power it has makes it noisy in other ways. The huge vent in the side lets lots of cool air in for the CPU, but it lets lots of whirring out. The shinier one is only $50 more expensive too. Oh well.

Someday I'll learn.

Comments

[lifein2x3.livejournal.com]

"I hate that I get what I pay for."

The perils and pitfalls of capitalism.

Just ask vorpal.

[c9.livejournal.com]

I think Sebs may be defriending us, through our previous successes with the Swedish store that dares not speak its name. :)

[lifein2x3.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Dan and I will probably be re-doing our apartment once we both have Real Jobs™, there's a You Know What about 80 miles up the interstate outside of DC.

Sebby should realize that everybody loves lutefisk.

[simplisticton.livejournal.com]

I can't see what you bought or should have bought (the pictures aren't showing up), but after buying what is largely considered to be the quietest case around for under $200CDN*, I can say that you'd probably be $50 more upset if you'd bought the Sonata (assuming that's what you should have bought). It's *quieter* than a lot of mid-tower cases, but it's not *silent* (and it's touted as being so).

The problem with a computer is that between all the fans and other spinny bits like CD-ROMs and hard drives, as soon as you quiet the loudest component, you can hear the second loudest and so on. You get obsessive about quieting your machine and it ends up costing you a bunch of money.

My advice? Put the computer as close to the floor/as far away as possible. A closet is a good choice. It's nice and quiet and free!



*you can get insanely quiet cases for insanely large sums of money

[c9.livejournal.com]

Not sure why the pics aren't showing up for you, they show up for me in various browsers and so forth.

I suppose. I don't really want *silent* (well I do, but not seriously as that's too expensive). I just want "significantly quieter" rather than "slightly quieter."

As it is, I haven't changed which component is loudest yet, which would be a nice change of pace. :)

[simplisticton.livejournal.com]

It breaks down into "easy to fix", "moderately difficult to fix" and "hard to fix"...

Easy to fix: PSU, case fans. Get a better PSU with a temperature-sensitive fan (you already did this! Go you!). Replace case fans with low-rotation (under 2000rpm) larger (120mm) fans, use rubber grommets or rubber "screws" to affix them to the case.

Moderately difficult to fix: CPU, GPU, chipset fans. These are tricky because a) they cost for quality, b) they usually involve removing the stock heatsink, which usually involves mucking around with thermal compound (not fun), c) there are physical space problems with some fans/heatsinks. If you can get by with just a heatsink on your GPU and chipset, go for it.

Hard to fix: hard drives. There's not a lot you can do about a noisy hard drive. Rubber grommets can help reduce the "clicking" sound from disk accesses but don't do much for rotational noise (except vibration issues). Quiet hard drives are frequently more expensive than less quiet models and are a pain to replace because you've got to move data around.

I had an excellent CPU cooler (Nexus brand, great big honking green thing) that was perfectly silent in my old machine... I bought a cheap cooler with a 92mm fan for my new machine and it totally sucks... I should learn your lesson too.

[simplisticton.livejournal.com]

PS: the pictures are showing up now