How well does foam cut down noise?

[Emericana]

my pc is too noisy for me and am looking into some foam sound dampening stuff that you can get at guitar shops around where i live. Does anybdoy have any experience with foam in their case? how about with carpet? Does the stuff raise the temp alot? is it worth it? any answer would be appreciated thanks.

 

[stool]

I have used styrofoam, acoustic foam panels(audio sound deadeners), cardboard, Dynamat(and similar products). They all work to some degree. Dynamat(expensive), and B-Quiet work especially well, but add quite a bit of weight to the case, and do lead to some heat retention, but with adequate ventilation not enough to cause a problem. Foam panels also work well, but the effective ones seem to take up a lot of internal space, and planning in necessary to make sure you can get your pieces back together. Acoustic ceiling tiles work well, but are heavy. Anecdotally, cardboard and styrofoam work to a degree, but IMO are the least effective, but also the cheapest. Haven't used carpet, but I can't see any reason rubberbacked wouldn't work well.

 

[WyrmMaster]

I used carpet pad in my case. Not a huge difference, but its noticible.

 

[Emericana]

i am going to buy some magic fleece from plycon.com . I know i know, it is $60 dollars but i would definetly pay that much money to have a case that is dead silent. I saw a video review of it on 3dgameman.com and they said they put it in a case w/ a 44cfm delta and they could barely even here it. I just need something to tone down the volume of my 9 Fans I have running in my case... if that is guarenteed to do the job, then why not?

 

[Kato]

actually, you said you have 9 fans, right? the openings of all the case fans is going to leak out some noise. those mat work best by absorbing the sound wave produced by your cpu fans, hd, etc, by not allowing them to bounce off the hard surfaces. so if you have like 2 intakes, 2 exhausts and a blowhole, its not going to do a wonderful job.

 

[Emericana]

here is what i got in my case as of now... one 80 mm intake over Videocard... rated at 35 DBA and is 35CFM. A 50CFM Sunon on AlphaPal 8045. Two 80mm Adjustable ADDA fans in the bottom front bezel of my case (its a lianli)... at full speed they are each 40CFM and 38DBA.. however, there are slow medium and high speeds and they do significantly reduce the volume... on the top i have a 55CFM 92mm Panaflow Blow Hole which is rated at 35DBA and is VERY SILENT. I also have the PSU exhaust which is prolly like 30cfm and 30dba... on top of that i have a northbridge fan which is 6CFM and 25DBA. Also my vid card fan but i dont know about that (gainward ti200)... that makes for 8 fans (i made a mistake before w/ 9)....
I do not have an extra exhaust fan to the left of my cpu like most lianlis cause i took it out to add a CPU Exhaust Fan Duct. I was planning on adding some of that magic fleece inside fan duct as well... Hopefully that will not raise CPU temps...


Anybody have comments?

 

[Robbiem01]

did you say cardboard works? hmm ... i'll have to give it a try ... got tons of that stuff. Would two layers of cardboard work twice as well?

 

[nodoze]

I haven't tried it yet, but after reading this review: http://www.ocprices.com/index.php?command=view&GroupID=2&ID=1086, I think I'll give it a try. The review has 2 mp3 recordings, 1 with the noise dampening material & 1 without. It sounds like this stuff really does a good job cutting the noise.

 

[Robbiem01]

woops your link got messed up because of that comma you added to the end. Heres the right one.

http://www.ocprices.com/index.php?command=view&GroupID=2&ID=1086

 

[robertm]

I had a soft mouse pade that i never us and I placed it so that the delta 60 on my ALPHA PAL blows onto this pad that is glued to the side of my case it reduced noise a good bit no more high pitched whine. Now most the noise is from my case fans.

 

[Emericana]

yeah what i am going to try is to make a exhaust duct for my alpha, and put some magic fleece in the duct... once i get the stuff (probably on friday) i will post results.

 

[Copyright]

My friends dad repairs turbo charger insulators on big ships.. he had some of the padding laying around so I lined my case with it.. made a good size difference.. I didnt realize how much until I bought a new case and had them side by side. I wonder if you could find the padding for those online cheep?