markyzno
Clean your fans.

I clean the filter screens regularly and blow out the entire case at least once a year.  The fan blades don't get very dirty in this case because of the filter screens.  It's a feature I really like.  Thanks.
 
Paul

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.
 

DRanck
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. 

Thanks for bringing this up.  I know I looked at this during the build but I don't remember how I set it up.  I'll have to go back and take a look. 
 
The rear case fan has a selection switch to set the speed.  I also have a little program installed that monitors the core temps.  I try to keep the temp at 45C to 48C.  If I turn the fan speed down the temp goes up and with this CPU being OC'd I worry about letting the temps get too high.
 
Paul

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.

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

True!

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

markyzno

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.

Have I started the "Fan Wars"!?? 

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.
 

Paul G

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.
 

If you have a version of Audition lying around, definitely check it out... any "consistent" background noise can be removed by it effectively with the "default" settings alone, which is why I do the "environmental sample" before/after each take. I have Audition 4 (that came with CS 5.5), and it has been effective enough that I have not looked into another solution. Consistent noise of sufficient sample size it all it needs (I have never modified the default settings myself, but have run it twice in a row to clean off recordings of analog tape, which was rather impressive as to what it is capable of).

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