"Silence! I Kill You..."

In my last post I mentioned that perhaps I may leave my unfinished vocal booth just the way it is, especially considering that it works perfectly fine in its current setup... and to be honest, I just don't have the budget (nor the motivation) to finish it off at the moment. Leaving it in its current state however does have its challenges... most obvious would be 'noise' due to its lack of soundproofing.

Luckily, the studio is in the quietest room in the house (well, apartment to be exact). It faces nothing but the hallway, so its virtually oblivious to the construction noises from surrounding areas and public noises from the recreational area. There is the occasional 'noisy neighbour syndrome', but due to the current low occupancy rate the building is still relatively peaceful... for now anyways.

The air-con is a slight issue, but I find that if I cool the room adequately I could switch it off during recording and get a good 10-15 minutes before the room starts to get warm again. Ok, so it might be a problem when sessions need to go for longer but so far I've had no major issues... not yet anyway.

So the only major noise culprit at the moment is none other than the heat-generating always-in-need-of-extra-cooling PC. With multiple fans spinning at around 2000 rpm, the constant ambient sound has so far inevitably made its way into every recorded wave file. Granted that I do use a software that help reduce the unwanted noise, but it can only do so much. Because the program is design to play around with frequencies, using too much of it will compromise the quality of the recording itself as it may alter vital and required frequencies.

What started out as just a simple open-and-look into my PC became two days of intense research and exploration. From simple silent fan upgrades to water-cooled systems to confusing variable-fan-speed Power Supply Units (PSU) that adjusts itself according to system load percentages, I was amazed at how intricate the concept of silencing a PC could be. I learnt that in order to quieten down the PC properly I had to first understand the interrelation between heat generation & cooling, and to understand that, I needed to understand the lingo that come with the subject such as CFM, db, rpm, W, V, hz... u know, all the geeky stuff. Anyways, I'm not gonna sit here and pretend that I actually understood most of it (coz I didn't), but I'm learning..

Having done all that research however only made it more frustrating because due to my financial shortage I was not able to go out and purchase all the 'good stuff'. All is not lost though as I did have some spare parts lying around the house (mainly from my brother's abandoned PC) so I figured doing 'something' is better than 'nothing'.

I first began with the Northbridge. I had noticed a long time ago that unlike most motherboards that I've seen, my mobo uses a fan to supplement the cooling of its MCH. I had always found this to be unusual and question its necessity, especially considering that others don't really require it. The aim is silence and cutting down unnecessary fan usage is a very good place to start, but I was concerned that if I was to simply remove the fan, the heatsink that it came with may not have been designed to work on its own.

To cut down the risk I decided to replace the whole heatsink/fan combo with a heatsink-only unit taken from my brothers faulty motherboard. It looked as if it could dissipate heat better so it was probably a wise decision.

Next, was to change the CPU cooler. The noise generated from the stock heatsink/fan combo that came with the P4 2.8ghz CPU was too damn loud. I swear it must have at least let out around 45db! Once again, thanks to the well equipped abandoned PC, I managed to upgrade my CPU cooler to a more 'expensive' heatsink, and a quieter silent-fan that I had purchased a while ago. I was a little worried about the airflow at first as the fan only generates 27CFM, but my bro used to run his PC (with the same heatsink) with a 37CFM fan, and had no problems in normal environment temperatures. My studio is air conditioned, so I took an educated guess and assume that it should theoretically be okay. Worth a shot. At only 21db we're talking about reducing more than half the noise here.

As graphically nice as it was to upgrade my graphics card to an Nvidia 6800 (a nice donation by a friend) from an Ati 9250, noise level did move up drastically due the unit requiring the use of a cooling fan. Furthermore, its fan was the noisiest of all the fans in the casing because it was not only tiny, but also faulty. Therefore, a small sacrifice had to be made and I replaced the better card with my old 9250 because of its passive cooling system (no fan, no noise).

There were only a few fans left to attend to, and the bulk of it all were case fans. Not having the budget to go out and purchase new silent ones, I did the next best thing I could do: I installed a fan controller. I figured, if I can't get new ones, I'll slow the current ones down to its bare (yet still working) minimum.

As my brothers PC lay in pieces due to my 'strip and inherit' actions (sorry dude! I'll replace em eventually I promise), it was finally time to check out the results.

Upon startup the PC noise level was noticeably quieter. It was much more bearable.

Next was to test how the computer was running. A quick install of SpeedFan and temperatures seem to be steady. CPU is running in the 50 degree park (+/- 3 degrees) which is standard... Everything else seem to be running smooth too, with the exception of the 2nd HDD that seems to have quite a high reading.. but I'm suspecting that its due to a faulty sensor, cause the temp never seem to fluctuate.. which is truly odd indeed.

Now with a quieter CPU fan, the elimination of the northbridge/mch fan and graphics card fan, and the ability to slow down the case fans, I think I had reduced the noise level by about 35%, which is not bad considering I only relied on spare parts that were lying around the house. However, I plan to reduce the overall level by 85% and I really do believe that a quiet PSU and a specially designed PC case will give me that extra 50% reduction I need.

Now... who owes me money...?