xset

Windows is Shutting Up

// February 14th, 2006 // Personal

Sat proudly on my desk is my Windows (FC4) test system. A cute little silver box (mini-itx) which takes up very little room and even lets me balance my pen pot on top of it. It was only £300 and served very well as a web-server, backup server, general music dumping ground and native Windows box.

It also ran pretty quiet, the CPU fan and PSU fan were almost unnoticeable and the case fan was a little louder but still within the realms of the tolerable … until it’s 3 month birthday.

The case fan slipped on it’s axle and began to make an incredibly irritating, clicking, buzzing, humming, argh makes you want to take a sledge hammer to the damn thing, kind of noise. This noise was so annoying* that I hauled the fan out and ran the system without its case as I began the search for a quiet, well built cooling solution.

I looked at (and immediately disregarded) liquid cooling – too expensive and none of the fans fit a small form factor PC. In the end I was saved by QuietPC.com who provided me with an Acousti dust proof, ultra-quiet fan. And it’s wonderful. Even running at full speed (mostly because I couldn’t get my head round the 3 speed cable which came without instructions) it’s drowned out by the other fans in the system and they are hardly loud!

Inspired by this improvement I investigated further and discovered that the same company make noise reduction foam for lining computer cases … well as I was on a quiet kick I just had to get me some of that. After a bit of measuring and slicing I’d got the case lined with only about 5mm gap for fitting, reassembled the whole lot and turned it on. And panicked because it didn’t seem to be working. Sure I could see the lights on the front of the case but there was no sound … hang on … after turning down the stereo I was able to just hear the hard disk!

I think I’ve discovered a lifelong friend in Acousti, especially if the rest of their products are as quiet as the two I’m using. And thanks to them my desk is now resplendent in (almost) complete, golden, silence. Thank f##k for that!