And still needs more work to make it quiet!
Well, after all that work, I'm still finding the noise of the CPU fan to be annoying. It's not massively loud, but it is enough to get on my nerves. So I decided to go one step further.
First, I went and got a little duct. The CPU fan is controlled by the motherboard and when the CPU is cool, it spins slower. So this little duct will suck cool air from outside the case and let the CPU stay a bit cooler.
Fitting it was fairly straightforward. Just needed to make a few little adjustments (there were some small metal tabs that were in my way) and the duct dropped straight in.
Next, the top drive bay was empty. This computer used to have both a CD drive and a DVD burner in it.
Since one of the drives had been moved to another computer, I figured that there was a lot of sound escaping through this little outlet. Rummaging around in my bits box I found a suitable blanking plate and plugged up the hole.
Still the noise was coming through, so I figured that it was time to get drastic. I went and bought some mineral filled rubber acoustic matting to stick to the case.
This was stuck to the inside of the removable side panel. I also stuck some to the inside of the top of the case and some offcuts on the inside of the front blanking plates. All these bits stuck on added about another kilo to the weight, but that isn't a problem.
And since I didn't cover any of the ventilation holes (other than the missing blanking plate), the airflow was maintained to help keep the temperature down. Now I'm happy. The noise is as muffled as I'm going to get it and this box is at the end of it's upgrade life. The computer still works, but any further upgrades will fail a cost effectiveness test as it would now be more efficient to buy a new computer.
I still have it in mind to buy another pc, mainly to put the oversize cooling fan to use but I don't think I need it just yet. The other day I tried hooking the laptop up to the tv to see how movies on the computer came up on the telly and had less than satisfying results.
Anyway, that's a project for another day.
Last updated: November 2008