The air conditioner anti-noise phenomenon.

[-=Ambush=-]

Well, I finally moved into my new place. It needs some work to be my "pimp pad" but I only have 2 classes this summer so that shouldn't be a problem.

But I did notice something intresting. My room has a simple 5000btu window air conditioner. I like it cold so I usually keep it on the coldest setting and on "low cool". Obviously this lowered the temps on my computer about 4c which is great, but I noticed something else beneficial that the AC does.

I have 6 intake fans and a 120mm hole (no fan yet, it just arrived today) 2 being SF2 and a 92mm tornado on an sp-97. When the AC is either "cooling" or just circulating air, it seems to totally cancel the noise of all of my fans.

Now anyone with a tornado and/or SP2 know how shrill the sound can be. I have to crank the thing to max speed to hear it over the AC. Mind you, the AC is not terribly loud at all, even when it's cooling. It is simply a whirrr or whoosh noise, extreamly acceptable as white noise.


Anyway I though I'd bring this up since I though it is intresting since my rig was super-friggen loud in my old place. And in the end I lost an extra 3c due to I was able to turn my fans up with no marginal sound to a load(folding) temp of 34c with my XP-M 2500+ 1.85v @ 220x12.

So now I can finally sleep soundly (or soundless it seems ) again.

 

[archilochus]

That A/C unit is providing white noise to cancel the fan noise, and removing the heat from the room to keep you comfortable..Kewl

 

[wannaoc]

I have seen where people have taken a tube like a clothes dryer exhaust tube and ran it fro ma part of the a/c unit to the intake of their pc. It gave them a real cool inside but I'm not sure about condensation though. You might give it a shot.

 

[Ven0m]

No risk of condensation in my opinion.
Condensation appears, when you have much water in air and temperature difference (object < ambient). With AC, air is usually direr and there's no great temp difference, as whole system is chilled.

 

[Fire58Mech]

I may havce a reason to explain this but don't quate me on it.
They use this technology on mufflers on cars today and on sound items that can't have noise at all. What happens is sound is vibration, either moving through the air or through a solid object. Diffrent sound are diffrent amounts of vribrations. like treble for exsamble is really small tightly compact vibrations while a base is long spaced out vibrations. All sounds have thier own certain vibration to them. here's the neet part. you can send sound back at those vibrations to cancel them out. The two opsosing sound waves some how interact with each other to canclel each other out and eliminate vibration altogether on those two sounds. hence no vibration no noise.

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/muffler2.htm here's something that ought to explain it a bit better. It's a few pages into it so you'll have to go to the home page in auto stuff and click on mufflers to get to the beggining.

Anyway I'm just taking a shot in the dark here. It sounds like this could be what it is but I don't know for sure.

 

[infinity9]

If you live in the southeast US its always humid, inside or out. On 100F (38C) days you simply cant cool your house enough especially with big screen TV's and computers creating heat. Having AC being pumped inside the case will greatly reduce the temp vs. outside temp.

 

[TheWesson]

It's just a perceptual thing. For some reason your brain takes background white noise (like AC or wind or...) and assigns that "zero" on the loudness scale. Then normal sounds seem very quiet.

You ever been driving along with the music playing at what seems a normal volume ... get out of the car ... turn it on the next day and the music is BLASTING you? That's because you perceived the music while you were driving as relative to the road noise (which is 40 DB or something like that.)

A woman's bedroom was next door to time and I liked to type on my very loud electric typewriter at night. Every key would make a ker-WHACK sound, like a shot going off. Well, that bothered her. So the next night I turned my radio on loud while typing - left it between stations, tuned to static - and we were both happy.

the wesson

 

[AFIsoldier]

how could you stand static playing loudly over your radio?!?!

But anyways, I have become used to my computer fans wirring, and that is now white noise to me. Everyone who enters my room says "what the hell is in your computer that's so loud?" while it is always on, I am "immuned" to it by now, and it takes me a second to realize that they are talkin about the fans.

 

[PiSan314159]

I don't mind fans, until I try to sleep. Then the constant noise is annoying.

 

[Miralcos]

When I built my house two years ago, I insulated every wall around my bedroom with Cellulose insulation. With the door closed, it's like standing in a sound proof room. I turn on my computer and it is very loud, even though I have gone through many dollars and fans trying to make it quiet. When I move my computer into the dining room with the kids moving about and wife in the kitchen with a little chatter going on and the TV in the background, my computer is totally silent.

The reason I made my room almost sound proof was because I worked nights at the time and it was very hard for me to sleep. I think I may have caused the extra computer noise by doing so because the computer didn't seem so loud in the place I lived at before while running in my bedroom.

White noise is a must in my opinion to make a computer very quiet. I've used many different makes of fans and they all seem loud in my quiet bedroom.

Another example of this was when my mother bought a Dell desktop PC. I went to her house and sat down at it and it was completely inaudible. I had to get down on the floor with it to hear it at all. She let me take it home to test it and I hooked it up in my bedroom. When I did so , I was amazed that it wasn't any quieter than my PC if not a tad louder.

So, if you want a very quiet computer, I believe you HAVE to have some noise in the room it will be running in. I could be way off base on the way sound works but this has been my experience on the matter. Hope it helps someone fighting the sound as I did.

Mir

 

[Daewood]

cool you just killed two birds with one stone or for you animal lovers two stones with one bird (think about it...)!!!

 

[galois427]

true. once you get your pc to lower and lower dbs, the noise that may seem faint before will sound much louder. thats why, i have 1 or 2 120mm fans in my case at low rpms. they create a very faint hum that blocks out all the other high pitch sound. the sound is actually pretty soothing in my opinion. also, i would want some noise from my pc. it can get pretty creepy at night if you're working alone on the pc. the fan noise helps to drown out all the wierd and creepy sounds. i rather hear my drives spinning than listen to crickets and crockroaches running around.

 

[Como]

i hate sound....i have a torin blower at 24V, and while most people here who do say its quiet, i find it louder than i can stand. i can hear my computer running in the kithen, and thats the fathest room in our house from my room...we have a 45X25 split level house, that had elec. heating, so EVERY wall has insulation in it...its just not right.


all its running is that blower, and 4 fans...which were rated the same as pannaflow h1a's, so they arent that much louder than them.

soon as i have a job i'll probly end up with a variant of watercooling, because i just cant take the noise...someday, passive will be mine.


untill then, well, i deal with it. no white noise will help, because i'm constantly in and out of my room. if i have the music loud enough ot hear over the computer, when i leave the room i feel bad for disturbing everyone else...and when i go back in its too loud.