Quiet down you!

[Million]

Hey there,
I'm just after some advice from anyone who finds a noisy computer as irritating as I do. I've only had my setup six months, and am living in uni halls (ie room the size of broom cupboard) . My comp is my music player, DVD player and primary work station (not to mention gaming), so it's pretty much always on. I first had stock coolers and fans, but over christmas got new Zalman CPU and graphics card coolers, plus a Silenx front case fan. So, the only fan in there which doesn't claim to be silent is the coolermaster 120 case fan at the back. Unfortunately it still seems noisy to me! I think the problem might be the case - I have a Coolermaster Centurion 5, which is a very airy case with loads of simply mesh areas to increase airflow. The CPU runs at 42 on lowest (quietest) fan setting without overclocking.
System Details:
AMD Athlon64 3000+ Venice Core
Geforce 6600 GT PCI-E 128mb
512mb ddr400 3200 ram
Samsung SpinPoint1614C 120GB HDD
Abit AN-8 Ultra
Enermax EG375AX-VE Noisetaker 370w
Lite-On DVD-RW
I don't plan to overclock at the mo, so am after suggestions to make it all quieter and am not too concerned about increasing temp.
Cheers

[ultim8um]

Something like a zalman fanmate then to reduce the speed of that 120mm fan...

[arthurleung]

Cut down the voltage of your 3000+
I've 2 Venice 3000+s, one can go as low as 1.04V and one down to 0.97V. At that kind of voltage, they can practically run 7x24 full load on stock heatsink PASSIVELY without breaking 55'C mark. (Practically would be something like 49'C when I used the stock heatsink).

Unfortunately my damn A8N-SLI boards ignore all settings below 1.1V so they run fairly hot now

Open your case when your system is running and hear where is the source of noise. I would expect the PSU to produce the most noise based on your spec.

With a samsung HDD you should be able to cut both the intake fan and exhause fans. Give that a try and see if temperature is still within acceptable level (probably 95'C for GPU and 50'C for CPU)

[kalniel]

Are you sure it's the rear 120mm fan that you can hear? I have the same case and that fan is virtually silent - all I can hear is the air flow through the mesh.

Make sure you don't use the 80mm one at the front of the case though.

Even if a fan claims to be silent, it rarely is.

I would:

a) disconnect the front case fan - it doesn't really add anything to cooling anyway
b) make sure you have cool n quiet enabled
c) go into power management and set your computer to minimum power usage, and set it to spin down the hard drive after 10 mins
d) check vibrations for your DVD drive
e) use the coolbits nvidia thingy to adjust clock settings on your gfx card - underclock the 2D mode by a chunk

after that, you PSU will probably remain the noisiest component - it is easily in my case now, with an audible electric buzz at high frequency.

[Elessar_VPR]

I also have a Noisetaker PSU and it is very quiet(helps it keeps spinning after shutdown so you can get an idea!), as well as a Zalman 7000b CPU cooler, but an AC cooler for my GPU as the only fans in my case and

To try and see which fan is making the most noise, you could try briefly stopping each one using your finger (be careful!! Disclaimer: I accept no responsibilty for any injury sustained while doing this ).

Also I know the Zalman CPU cooler comes with a fan mate so you could try turning that to a lower speed, and the GPU cooler multi-connector I think allows you to set the fan at either 5V or 12V, so check to see which that is. Also the Noisetaker comes with a control to turn it down as well if you haven't done that yet (though i can't hear any difference due to the rest of the comp you may.)

Bear in mind, that silence is impossible (unless you go absolutley fanless and even then you may still hear a hum), due to the air being moved making noise as it passes through grills / fins etc.