Dealing with computer fan noise

There are many factors that make for a noisy PC such as Fan's, CPU cooler, even case vibration.
 
Check out this place http://www.quietpc.com/casefans that might give you a start.
 
Another solution is to build a box to place your PC in this will require ventilation though otherwise your beloved PC will just so much recyclable electronics.
 

You can pick up a very decent case that will cut down on noise majorly for about $60. Then you just have to transfer all your computer parts into and it's like a brand new machine! Throw in a quieter fan for another $15 and you'll have solved a tremendous amount of the noise.
 

Damping material on the case doesn't cut down on sound escaping through the holes in the case but it helps stop the case vibrating.

I've been building my own very quiet PCs for many years now. It requires careful selection of components, always with a view to fitting big, effective heatsinks and as few, quiet fans as possible operating on the lowest voltage possible. My current PC is no louder than background measured in a typical quiet room - around 26-30dBA at 1 metre. For recording purposes any PC noise that finds its way into a sensibly positioned mic is lost in the general background.

This inevitably costs more than an off-the-shelf PC from HP, Dell etc. and means getting familiar with PC internals, their noise levels and their power consumption. Once built a quiet PC absolutely has to be stress-tested using software to send the cpu and graphics card to 100% and holding them there for several minutes while monitoring internal temperatures to check the cooling system can cope.

The PC in my sig has only three 140mm fans running slowly at 5 volts. One intake, one output and one in the cpu cooler, no fan on the graphics card or psu. It can hold 100% of cpu pretty much indefinitely so long as I clear the vents and coolers with air duster once in a while. The loudest components are the HDDs.

Just because a manufacturer claims their cooler/fan is super-quiet doesn't mean it actually is, at least not by audio standards. I suggest www.silentpcreview.com is a good place to start research. Many if the articles are old, but the forums are very useful.

My "solution" to this is over-simplified in a way, but effective. All audio takes I will leave a few seconds of "dead space" both before and after. For consistent background noise, a destructive noise reduction edit (I use Audition personally for this) is all that is necessary. Directional mics are highly beneficial as well.

Cleaning fans won't cut the noide down much. It's the fan motors that make the noise.

Paul G
I'm sure this has been discussed but I couldn't find the right search terms.   Anyway, you folks that have a 'one room' setup, how do you deal with the noise of the computer while recording? 
 
Anyone in this situation, how do you do it?  What's your setup?  Any and all suggestions are welcome.  Thanks.
 
Paul

Use a dedicated DAW designed for the situation. I'm using an Antec Sonata IV case and that has worked out well. It has one case fan and I don't have a separate graphics card. The case has a speed switch for the fan so I'm running it at the lowest level "quiet". The cpu is only lightly overclocked since I want to minimize fan noise - it runs between 3.2 & 4.2 GHz.

drewfx1
One fan running at high speed makes much more noise than 2 (or more) running at low speed. 

I have 8, yes 8 fans in my case. However they are large very slow running and do not make any noise. But what little noise they do make is damped by the case I have. A Cooler Master Cosmos 1000 and it does have damping on the interior sides. And it is dead quiet. 
 

Depends on the fan and how it is powered. Drawing fan power from motherboard/card headers which alter fan speed according to temperature generally results in a noisy PC as the fan speeds are poorly callibrated and the board designers play very safe because they assume, sensibly, that e.g. the cpu cooler will be a standard Intel one with a small fan that requires high speed to push much air and won't reliably start at low voltage.

Switch the cooler for e.g. a huge Noctua heatpipe one and the fan for a much more efficient model that will start at low voltage and the motherboard design assumptions no longer apply.

Stock fans are nearly always noisy to start with. If power for the fan is drawn from the GPU card and changed according to temperature automatically then what you describe might happen. However, the noise is still mostly coming from the motor.

Cleaning the fan won't help if the motor is too noisy to start with or if the blades create noisy turbulence.

Quite a few GPU BIOS can be edited to make the fan much quieter. One I had started with the fan running at a minimum of 70% then ramped it to 100% by the time temperatures reached 45C, less than half the rated temp. for the card. It sounded like a vacuum cleaner. After some tweaking I reduced the fan speed to a maximum of 40% and the card ran quite happily for the 3-4 year lifespan of that PC. Sure, the card ran hotter, but still well within spec.

And if the fans are drawing power from a fan control unit rather than motherboard headers that provide varying voltage then cleaning the blades will help cooling efficiency but not reduce noise because the fan won't have ramped up in the first place.

Anyway, we're probably well off topic for the SonarX forum by now...

tlw
Damping material on the case doesn't cut down on sound escaping through the holes in the case but it helps stop the case vibrating.

Thanks.  That makes sense and most of the noise from my system IS moving air and not fan motor or HDD noise, (although I do have five HDD's in this case so I supposes there is some drive noise). 
 
My case is a Antec P-183 mid tower.  There are four AM Scythe 120mm fans, one 120mm fan on the AM cooler and of course the fan on the 750 watt PS, so that's six fans!  My graphics card is fanless.  I guess I should edit the thread title to "moving air noise".
 
I won't be building a new system anytime soon so I was hoping for an inexpensive solution.
 
Paul

mettelus
My "solution" to this is over-simplified in a way, but effective. All audio takes I will leave a few seconds of "dead space" both before and after. For consistent background noise, a destructive noise reduction edit (I use Audition personally for this) is all that is necessary. Directional mics are highly beneficial as well.

Thanks.  I do have a version of Audition around here somewhere.  I should take a look.  Izotope RX3 would be my ideal choice for noise removal but it's a bit out of my budget at the moment.  Still, this is not a solution but a fix I'd rather not have to use.
 

tlw
Cleaning fans won't cut the noide down much. It's the fan motors that make the noise.

I agree and the fan motors really aren't making any noise.  It's all that moving air.  Thanks.
 

rsinger
Use a dedicated DAW designed for the situation. I'm using an Antec Sonata IV case and that has worked out well. It has one case fan and I don't have a separate graphics card. The case has a speed switch for the fan so I'm running it at the lowest level "quiet". The cpu is only lightly overclocked since I want to minimize fan noise - it runs between 3.2 & 4.2 GHz.

I looked at the Sonata case prior to this build but it was not big enough to house the AM cooler I had selected so I went with the P-183.  As I said in the previous post, I'm going to go back and revisit the fan speed thing.  Thanks.

John
I have 8, yes 8 fans in my case. However they are large very slow running and do not make any noise. But what little noise they do make is damped by the case I have. A Cooler Master Cosmos 1000 and it does have damping on the interior sides. And it is dead quiet.

Thanks John.  I don't remember if I looked at this case or not.  My brother is a big fan of Cooler Master.  One thing about these more stylish cases is that you can't really put stuff on top of them.  In my office, computer top storage space is a must!  LOL
 
Paul

tlw
Depends on the fan and how it is powered. Drawing fan power from motherboard/card headers which alter fan speed according to temperature generally results in a noisy PC as the fan speeds are poorly callibrated and the board designers play very safe because they assume, sensibly, that e.g. the cpu cooler will be a standard Intel one with a small fan that requires high speed to push much air and won't reliably start at low voltage.

Switch the cooler for e.g. a huge Noctua heatpipe one and the fan for a much more efficient model that will start at low voltage and the motherboard design assumptions no longer apply.

Stock fans are nearly always noisy to start with. If power for the fan is drawn from the GPU card and changed according to temperature automatically then what you describe might happen. However, the noise is still mostly coming from the motor.

Cleaning the fan won't help if the motor is too noisy to start with or if the blades create noisy turbulence.

Quite a few GPU BIOS can be edited to make the fan much quieter. One I had started with the fan running at a minimum of 70% then ramped it to 100% by the time temperatures reached 45C, less than half the rated temp. for the card. It sounded like a vacuum cleaner. After some tweaking I reduced the fan speed to a maximum of 40% and the card ran quite happily for the 3-4 year lifespan of that PC. Sure, the card ran hotter, but still well within spec.

And if the fans are drawing power from a fan control unit rather than motherboard headers that provide varying voltage then cleaning the blades will help cooling efficiency but not reduce noise because the fan won't have ramped up in the first place.

Anyway, we're probably well off topic for the SonarX forum by now...

Off topic or not, thanks to everyone for this discussion.  I am certainly going to revisit the BIOS settings and see what happens.
 

http://download.cnet.com/SpeedFan/3000-2094_4-10067444.html
 
quite useful.