Silencing but still maintaining proper cooling.

[Qualtran]

I have a pretty good cooling system, but the noise is annoying. I am wondering if there is any way to add insulation or an enclosure on a case and still maintain proper cooling. I was thinking of building some sort of wooden structure with an air intake on the front and an exaust on the back, and lining the inside with insulation. Any one tried anything like this before, or have any good silencing ideas?

[foxmulder]

Water cooling works great! Since I assume you don't want that I'd say get ahold of a whole buch of 80mm Papst fans (they're REALLY quiet but don't move as much air as others, hence a whole bunch) and drill your case full of holes. One thing that really worked for me was putting my hard drive in a 51/4 inch drive bay and padding it with foam. That helps more than you'd think especially if you have a 7200 rpm drive. Just be sure that air can still freely flow around it. Another nice effect is that this mod is practically free.

[Qualtran]

its mainly the cpu fan that makes all the noise. all my other fans are very quiet

[Owenator]

You could also try the panaflo 80mm L fans I got them from allelectronics.com for $4 a piece. 24cfm at 21 dBA. Go to 7volts.com and check out some of their quieting ideas too. I use rubber gromets on all my fans and HD mountings. I also put some car audio sound deadening material on the inside of the doors.

O

[o¢r*Aiwa]

I am running watercooled with 6 Delta High Speed plus 2 Papst High Speed fans on the 3 radiators. Additionally some Peltier PSU and PC PSU coolers. The noise on 12V is *immense*, I'd rate it somewhere around 70dB, I can hardly understand my friends calling on the phone when running the machine on full cooling :D

So I dremeled a hole in the front of my case, built in a dip-switch. Some cable and soldering work later it was done.

Now I can switch all my coolers between 7V and 12V. The sound on 7V is really okay, just some "airflow" sound from the radiators, but no noise or high frequency sounds.

I'd recommond such an installation for all supercoolers out there.