Another thing to look for depending on your motherboard is a way to set the fan speed. If the mobo has presets for a Performance mode, that may be forcing the fans to run at a higher speed. You may be able to set the fans to automatically adjust their speed. 

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.

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

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. 
 

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

Not true, if the fan is clogged up with crud then the fan motor goes into overdrive..
 
I had this on my graphics card, had tried stupidly to adjust voltage, CPU temp, GPU temp controls and missed the most basic of checks.
 
Dust.

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...

I clean fans for the reason that sometimes they can become unbalanced do to dirt build up. This can cause vibrations that are annoying. Plus it can lead to excessive ware on the bearings. If done carefully it wont hurt and it may save your system.

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

John T
It's not cheap to do this, and it takes a lot of research and careful testing, but a fanless PC can be powerful and not cost the entire earth. The only moving parts in my PC are the hard drives, which will be getting swapped out for SSD's hopefully this year. For CPU cooling, I highly reccomend a company called NoFan. You need a big case to fit their heatsink thingy in, but it works astonishingly well.

Interesting, thanks.

 

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.