For PC enthusiasts, besides performance, a second aspect is increasingly important. Noise, or rather, no noise. Humming and screeching fans are increasingly a thing of the past, and manufacturers are listening to their customers’ calls for as quiet an airflow in their PC as possible. But what to do when the fans of your PC resemble a starting jet engine more than a gentle summer breeze? In this blog post, I’ll show you 7 simple tips on how to quiet your gaming PC!
Finally swap out that old hard drive.
While SATA hard drives can hold large amounts of data, they tend to get pretty noisy with every read or write they execute. There is a small disk inside every HDD, spinning with up to 7200rpm and a tiny tool head, that's scanning this disk for its data. Movement usually equals noise, so if you want to keep your PC quiet, you should get storage media, that don't use moving parts. Those are called Solid State Drives, or SSDs and read and write and store data with electrical conductivity instead of a physical disk. They are also much faster and shock resistant, in comparison to traditional hard drives. Samsung has some compelling options for example, which you can check out here*.
Regular Cleaning of Components
Experts recommend it time and again, yet few do it. However, such cleaning can work wonders. The dust and lint that accumulate over time, for example on the CPU cooler, prevent effective cooling by blocking the airflow over the heatsink. So, the fan has to really rev up to provide cooling. What does that mean? Exactly, it gets loud. Therefore, it is sufficient to clean the important components in the PC 1-2 times a year with some compressed air or a special vacuum cleaner attachment. These are usually the CPU cooler and the graphics card, as well as one or the other case fan. The important thing when vacuuming or blowing out is simply to hold the fan blades of the fan to be cleaned with your free hand. If they rotate too quickly because you give them a lot of revolutions with the vacuum cleaner, the fan bearing often says goodbye to nirvana due to overload. What you can do in this case, you will find further down.
Correct Positioning of Fans
Not only clean fans are important for your PC, but also their correct positioning plays a significant role in their effectiveness. The more effectively a fan can work, the quieter it can be set at the same cooling performance. A hindrance here can be, for example, if two fans have to work against each other. Therefore, always position them so that they work together and transport the inflow or outflow roughly in the same direction. Also, placing too close to an air inlet can cause increased noise if the impeller blades create turbulence because a mesh or a perforated plate of the case is directly in front of the inlet. Here you can help yourself with 3D printed spacers. About 5mm space in front of the fan is enough to eliminate the resulting turbulence, or at least significantly reduce it.
Control Fans via the UEFI BIOS
Only in the rarest cases is it necessary for the fans of your office or gaming PC to run at full speed. However, some motherboard manufacturers see it differently and accordingly, the settings in the BIOS are often set silent-unfriendly. In a modern UEFI BIOS, fan curves can be set quite granular. Even with older motherboards, it is usually possible to set at least a low, fixed percentage value. But which setting is right for you? It is recommended to let the fans run at a speed of 30% or less at CPU and GPU temperatures below 60°C. From 60°C a slightly higher value should be set and at about 80°C it is a good idea to go up a bit more. The exact values, however, depend on the temperatures of your components and of course on individual hearing sensitivity.
Use the Software Fan Control
A better option than the fan control in the BIOS is the software Fan Control by Rémi Mercier. Fan Control is completely free to use and offers a bag full of features that can help you optimize the noise and cooling in your PC. You can set granularly adjusted fan curves, which can even be based on several temperature sensors, create trigger-controlled events or synchronize fans with each other. Check out Rémi’s simple but comprehensive documentation on this.
Replace Loud Fans with a Quieter Model
You have followed all the tips listed above but the noise makers in your PC just won’t be tamed? Maybe it’s time for one or two new fans. Some fans with an excellent price-performance ratio are Arctic. Check out the Arctic P12* (120mm) or Arctic F9 PWM* (92mm). If you like to spend a few more euros for the premium variant that teases out the last bit of performance, check out these alternatives from Noctua. NF-A12* (120mm fan) or NF-A9* (92mm slim fan).
Install Easier to Cool Components
Probably not a hint that you can implement right now, but still I have to give it. When assembling your PC, pay attention from the start to the most efficient and energy-saving hardware possible. Especially if you need a gaming PC, it doesn’t have to be an i9 14900KS that can draw up to 400 watts of power. A simpler, cheaper and above all more energy-saving Ryzen 7800X3D is just as fast in games, but only consumes around 80-90 watts. The 7800X3D can even be cooled sufficiently with a mini ITX air cooler at a pleasant noise level. Also pay attention to a model that works as efficiently as possible when choosing the graphics card and read tests on the individual models, where the noise level of the fans under load is measured.
Conclusion for a quiet gaming PC
If you follow all these tips, nothing stands in the way of a pleasantly quiet sound experience next to your gaming machine. Do you have more tips and tricks that I haven’t listed? Then feel free to leave a comment!
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