I’m just curious to know how many people have their computer fan as the noise bottleneck in their room. It most definitely is for my room. Mine isn’t super loud, but it is by far the loudest thing in my room. When tracking vocals, it’s generally not an issue. Acoustic guitar, I can hear it more than I’d like to, especially if I move the mic back a few feet.
My fans aren’t that loud, it seems like just the act of moving the air is going to make a certain amount of noise. So how do you guys deal with this? I’m assuming I’m not the only one with the issue, and moving the computer to a closet isn’t really an option (well, it is, but not one I want to do).
So what are some of the options I have to make my machine as silent as possible. Every fan on the market advertises that it’s silent, and I know that’s a lie, so what is there that actually works?
With PC’s, I had a fairly easy time finding system and CPU fan solutions that were almost silent. What was difficult was the video card fans. Those little suckers were the worst!
I haven’t done a PC build in a while though. That’s just my 2 cents.
The computers that run that Avid System 5 have dual fans, and they’re so loud you almost HAVE to have them in a machine room. The SSL and Neve computers are also pretty bad because of how old they are. The power supplies for the mixers are even worse because of how hot they get.
My mac pro has four fans in it, and when you run them all at once, yeah, its loud. 1 internal fa, 2 fans on each avid hdx card, and a fan on the graphics card. As soon as I get in a new building, the machine room is a must. I plan on putting all of the computers in there.
…and the Muse Receptor is another computer that makes a lot of noise lol.
I have my pc in a homemade box that is connected to the wall and all air exchange vents to another room.
A custom fan control varies the exhaust fans based on the internal temp of the box.
yeah, it seems that for whatever reason, I can only control the CPU fan, and not the case fans. It’s the case fans that are the biggest issue on my machine.
Noctua are the quietest I’ve ever come across, not even close. I have used them exclusively in all my builds since about 2010.
My music rig is as close to silent as it can get I reckon. I routinely track with my condenser mics (Vienna MK8 and AT4040) sitting no more than a meter from the case, and even those sensitive mics can’t pick up anything (I assume they hear better than I do!)
My go-to vendor for quiet components (or complete systems if you’re not building your own) is here:
Way to freaking loud. I have been vacuuming the poor old beast but i need to get a compressor and blow all that crap off and it will get quieter again. It is so bad that i have been using my surface pro for recording lately and it has been doing a good job.
My work computer is a bloody vacuum cleaner as well. I get so much relief at the end of the day when I switch it off. I really need to upgrade that thing.
But my DAW computer is much quieter and I’ve put it under my desk so it’s not noisy. I don’t even bother putting a gobo when I record vocals, although I do when I record acoustic guitars.
@bozmillar One thing might be that you have a VERY isolated room which is not a bad thing…
But…
What kind of computer are you running?
If you have a commercially built (dell/hp/etc) you may not have access to fan control in the bios as many oem mobos are tightly controlled. So when you do your optimization for performance, the bios protects the mobo by engaging the fans. There are ways around this but it involves either jumping wires, resistors or a custom bios. But probably not worth it.
There are high cfm/ low rpm fans that are very quiet. But you should see if the noise is from the PSU fan or the video card fan first.
On my first dedicated daw build, I went with quiet EVERYTHING… BeQuiet stuff and "zero rpm"fans. Yes, it was quiet but probably 3x as expensive.
The last 4 builds I did were all fractal r4 or R 5 cases, corsair PSUs and fanless video cards. Those items made the most difference. I used the standard fans that came with the fractal and standard Evo coolers. All of the systems were dead quiet in normal mixing/tracking situatiuons and the only time you hear anything is when you are rendering or burning. Still way more quiet than anything else I have worked with…
SO… if it is your main fans, you can try a quiet fan or relocate the ones you have… it won’t cost all that much. Or shoehorn your current rig into a fractal case for about 80 bucks.
But if it’s the video card or PSU, it might run a little more.
Probably info overload by now… But if you have any other questions, feel free…
have fun
rich
Good point rich @rjwillow, it pays to get a good motherboard when building a rig, one that comes with a solid fan-control system. Most mobos that you can get nowadays have those without coming at any real premium in price. Even my main rig, that I use for graphics-intensive games, is super quiet (although not silent like the music machine).
Yup… I didn’t even realize that there were mobos anymore WITHOUT some sort of fan control until I started trying to access it in other folks’ Dells and HP’s )
My old dell is like that and I just started to notice my fans. I guess that’s why I jumped all over this thread… Itching to do another build…
found the issue on mine. It was most definitely the top vent fan. I don’t know if it was the fan itself or just the position making the airflow really loud, but unplugging that fan brought the noise way down. It’s hooked up directly to the power supply, so I don’t really have any control over the speed of that fan. If the case gets hot in the summer, I’ll plug it back in, but for now, it’s way better. I walked in this morning and had to put my head down there to make sure the thing was really on.
You might have a utility on your system that reads temps or you can download one. Speccy by piriform is good. You can monitor your temps during differing operations and see where you average and peak. That will tell you if/when you need the fan and you can make the informed decision to remove/replace it
My dell has a fan controller on the mobo… But, once you set the system for “high performance” in windows, the fan follows suit with no access at bios level.
I should probably follow my own advise as I am starting to hear my fans lately… But I’m the barber who always needs a haircut…
have fun
rich
In my experience audio work doesn’t tax a machine anywhere near as much as graphics-intensive stuff does, like games. My temps barely fluctuate in my music rig even in the middle of pretty heavy music work, rarely get much above 30C. In contrast, when I’m running a fully modded Skyrim on my gaming rig I can break 60C in there easily, and the fans respond accordingly.
But even then, with those Noctua fans it’s only a whisper-level whirrrrr.
You might find your motherboard has a slot you could plug that fan into, giving your Mobo control of the speed. Or, you can get little inline slidy voltage dividers to manually adjust the speed.
For my money, I like cases with lots of mesh spaces for airflow and a couple of big, slow fans. Mine’s a gaming case - Bitfenix Prodigy M - Which is pretty open on the bottom, top and rear. I put the biggest case fan I could fit on the rear, set it to the slowest speed, and used a quiet CPU heatsink fan. The loudest thing is the spinning HD drive, which I’m fine with, and the temps sometimes get up to ~33 degrees after a few hours of mixing.
