Reply 60 of 66, by SirNickity
wrote:What I mean specifically is that modern cases have WAY better airflow (and quieter airflow) options than oldschool cases had (loud fans is not part of me enjoying a retro experience)
I agree, however... most of my old beige boxen aren't loud at all. The 486 in particular is hardly audible. My first order of business: Replace the fans. All of them.
I use brand new 80mm NMB fans I got from Digikey to replace all the PSU fans. They're not quite 120mm stealth fan silent, but they're about a whisper, and in those AT PSUs, the fans have put in their time and are due for retirement anyway.
For CPUs, there are 40/50/60mm fans available that are considerably more quiet than those on old S7 / S370 heatsinks from the day.
The loudest fan I have is the one on my Radeon 9800 Pro. I replaced the PSU fan, the CPU fan, and tested the (already quiet) case fan on that P4 build and finally realized that the racket it was making was entirely from the video card. Haven't quite decided what to do about that yet... but a case change would not make any difference.
Definitely the loudest thing in most of my older PCs is the hard drive. That's a judgment call whether to live with it, embrace it, or jettison it for flash media.
Now, I have to admit, hands-down my quietest PC is my modern Core i5 build. That thing is so quiet I have literally had it powered on for months and didn't realize it. (The case LED is extremely subtle. You really have to look for it.) Unless you have your ear within a forearm's length, you just can't hear it, even with a CPU fan, GPU fan, and PSU fan.