First post, by songoffall
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It's no secret that retro rigs are often noisy. There's a lot of moving parts making some kind of a sound. Silent running wasn't a big consideration until in 2000s PC thermals went up and the PC fans ended up sounding like a jet engine. Even before that, there were manual fan controllers and you could build automatic ones with thermistors.
But in modern day and age, having a PC that wakes up people in the next room isn't really that practical.
So here's a few things I learned about fans while optimizing my own retro systems.
There's multiple types of fan noise.
With older ball-bearing fans, the loudest and most annoying one might be the high-pitched bearing noise, and most older fans get dirty and dry and sometimes the bearing gets jammed or damaged. In these cases, cleaning the fan, lubricating it with WD-70 or lithium grease might return the noise levels to stock, but you've got to be realistic - these fans weren't very silent to start with.
Older sleeve-bearing fans - mostly so worn that I just throw them away.
Even modern fans, when running at full speed, won't be very silent. Noctua fans I'm using have very silent bearings, but the bearing isn't the only thing making the noise. Old cases and power supplies have very restrictive airflow grates that create turbulence, especially when the fan blades are close to the grates, and most old cases only support 80 and 92mm fans that have to run faster, push more air through a narrower surface to try to match the CFM of 120 or 140mm fans. this creates even more turbulence. Noctua has come up with a solution - the IS1 series of fan spacers - but those are for 120 and 140mm fans, and I was unable to find any for smaller fans. So I guess I'll have to build my own. they are quite simple and seems like going above 5mm doesn't result in noticeable gains. I'll keep you posted on how it goes.
I've also removed the grate of my old PSU, filed off the sharp edges and replaced it with a wire-based one, which didn't eliminate the noise, but significantly reduced it. I'm also planning to build a thermistor-based speed control for my PSU fan because it's a bit of an overkill right now - the PSU barely gets warm.
Another factor is the case. I have proper heavy cases and late-2000s cheap light cases, and those heavy cases seem to dampen the sound a lot. It's quite logical - sound is vibration, and it takes more energy to vibrate more mass. Lighter, flimsier cases seem to rattle quite a bit.
Overall, you've got to keep your expectations realistic. You can't eliminate noise completely in a retro system, but in most cases you don't have to settle with a jet engine. I've managed to get better thermals with a lot less noise with my systems, and there's still a few things I can do to make it better. Whenever I can't hear my HDD over the fan noise, that's unacceptable, I think.
Compaq Deskpro 2000/P2 300MHz/384Mb SDRAM/ESS ES1868F/Aureal Vortex 2
Asus A7N8X-VM400/AMD Athlon XP 2ooo+/512Mb DDR DRAM/GeForce 4 MX440/Creative Audigy 2
Asus P5Q Pro/Core2 Quad Q9400/2Gb DDR2/GeForce 8800GT/Creative X-Fi