Noisy media PC

[MadMike]

Some of you may remember that I built some media PCs not too long ago, for playing movies and recording TV.

The only problem I've been having is that these things are noisy. I replaced the video card in one of them with a fanless one, and while it did cut the noise down, there's still quite a bit of noise from the processor fan.

Processor is an Intel Pentium 4 640 Prescott 3.2GHz.

If anyone has any ideas, I'd appreciate it.

[rvdammit]

Best I can do is suggest looking at http://www.quietpc.com/gb-en-gbp/products and seeing if you can find something locally. Otherwise use "quiet cooling" as the base for searches at your usual supplier websites.

[Shabo]

Do they have 80 mm fans or 120 mm fans? That really makes a huge difference. Is it possible to swap the 80mm for 120mm? If not, I recommend saving up a little bit and buying new cases.

[Dreamstalker]

Is the fan sitting directly on the heatsink? The noise could be caused by vibration. My heatsink came with two thin silicone strips that were applied to the edges that supported the fan and stopped it from transmitting vibrations to the fins (and thus buzzing).

[MadMike]

It doesn't start out noisy now that I replaced the video card with a fanless one. I guess it starts heating up, and then the fan has to spin harder to keep up. Don't know if that helps at all.

[Shabo]

That would be a sign of poor airflow, then. If you are running your hardware with hot temps, you decrease the life span dramatically. I recommend looking into getting some extra cool air flow through there. Setting up a quiet fan that blows onto an intake spot on the case will help, but it's more noise.