Hardware Tips: Give Your Ears a Break--Put Your PC on the QT

Turn Down the Volume

Stopping PC racket at the source can be difficult because the two primary noisemakers are your PC's fans and hard drive(s)--vital components that must remain on while you work. But you can do a few things to keep them quiet.

Tighten Up: All it takes is a loose screw or an ill-fitting case to turn a quietly running component into a rattletrap. Check inside the case to make sure all the expansion cards, drives, and cables are securely fastened. And be sure to fit the case snugly back on when you're finished. Unfortunately, some poorly designed cases make noise even when they're properly fastened. If that's the case with your case (sorry about that), you may be able to make it quieter by using a vibration dampening kit such as Dynamat's Xtreme Computer Kit ($30). Find out more at www.dynamat.com.

If your PC sits on a desktop, tiled floor, or other hard surface, you can reduce the level of vibration by placing a rubber mat under the PC. Computer stores sell antivibration mats; alternatively, you can save some money and reduce landfill by rounding up several old mouse pads instead.

Fans: The only way to silence your PC's fan entirely is to buy a PC that doesn't need one. KryoTech produces an AMD-based system that's actually refrigerated. (No, it doesn't have a place to store your lunch.) For people who build their own systems, Koolance sells a water-cooled case. One warning, though: Both companies' products are expensive. Check them out for yourself at www.kryotech.com and www.koolance.com, respectively.

If you're more budget-minded, you may prefer to replace your PC fan with a quieter model. To hush your power-supply fan, you need to buy a complete power supply unit--and they're not cheap, either. PC Power and Cooling ( www.pcpowercooling.com) sells the 235-watt Ultra-Quiet Silencer 235 ATX for $59. If a noisy power supply is driving you nuts, however, the product may be a bargain. For low-cost cooling fans that are built into your PC's case but separate from the power supply, check out PC Power and Cooling's $9 Silencer Auxiliary Cooling Fan. Two sizes are available, so make sure to get the one that's better for your PC's case.

Many systems use a fan to cool the CPU. Others use a passive heat sink--a metal (usually aluminum) cover studded with many fins or spikes to dissipate heat silently (there are also active heat sinks--that is, heat sinks with fans). Third-party heat-sink vendors may tout their products' noiselessness, but before you replace a noisy CPU fan with a silent heat sink, make sure that the sink will cool enough to keep your CPU from frying.

Hard drives: Any device that spins at 7200 rotations per minute is bound to make some noise. (A car with wheels spinning that fast would be moving at over 500 mph!) Your best bet for quieting a loud hard drive is to use a sound insulator. Molex's SilentDrive is a plastic case that encloses your hard drive in a drive bay and muffles much of the sound it emits. The SilentDrive is available in the United States from New England Digital ( www.nedcomp.com). Hard drives can generate a lot of noise when they read and write data. To minimize the annoying clicks of an active hard disk, run Disk Defragmenter regularly. In most versions of Windows, click Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Disk Defragmenter. Defragmenting your disk makes the task of accessing files faster and more efficient.

A hard drive that chirps incessantly--even when you're not writing to or reading from it--may indicate that your system needs more RAM. When your PC's physical RAM fills with data, Windows starts writing the overflow to a swap file on the hard drive. Having too little RAM increases the number of hard-drive accesses--and the level of noise. For more information on improving your PC's performance by setting the size of your swap file manually, see last month's Answer Line.

Also, if you're thinking of buying a new hard drive, consider the Barracuda series from Seagate; these drives have the reputation of being easy on the ears.