How to control the noise from your computer

Keeping your computer quiet can be an issue if you work late or have to operate in a small room.

The 'white noise', is similar to that emitted by the various fans inside a computer, has been judged to be torture! The noise can have a discomforting effect and obscures other sounds.

My computer has five separate fans to keep the key components cool. To make our computers run faster, the chip makers have packed more processing power into a smaller space. Power generates heat which degrades and can even destroy chips.

My Fan club

Fans, or some other forms of cooling, are essential. The fans start and stop as the temperature rises and falls. When the fans gets dirty, the computer can sound like a coffee grinder. This is an alarming sound especially when you begin to imagine that the hard disks might be grinding your precious data to iron-oxide. 

Fans

Fans come in various shapes and sizes. Fans with a larger diameter tend to make less noise than smaller ones. Large fans do not rotate as fast and seem to attract less dirt.

The fan needs to match the type of chip, so changing it is probably a job that is best left to the experts.

Case fans: 6db is very quiet, 10db is noisy.

CPU fans: 8db is quiet, 18 is noisy.

Power supply

The power supply is usually the noisiest component. If you have a computer that has given five years' service, you might give the box a treat and install a new, quieter power supply.

6db is quiet, 8db is normal.

Laptops

To save energy their fans turn on and off and some even vary their speed. Identify the place where the air is drawn in and where it is blown out when the fan is operating. Ensure that these are unobstructed - So don't leave them on duvets and try to ensure that the hot air escapes and is not recycled.

Location

Look at the location. If the computer is under, rather then on, a desk, then the noise will be muffled. If the sound has to bounce off several soft surfaces, the sound energy will be absorbed so the noise you hear will be attenuated. .

So

There are some exotic technologies that conduct the heat from the chips to the case to be silently convected away. Silence comes at a price. If you are buying, ask to hear the computer and you might just get a quieter fan. If you are specifying you own machine, which is much cheaper than you might think, ask for quiet components if you think the white noise from the many fans is going to be a nuisance.

A few thing you can do:

Lifting the lid Inside the box Cleaning a computer Making it quieter

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