emachines - first attempt at silencing a computer

[jonathangallant]

My first computer mod. First time I took apart an entire computer right down to the motherboard. I'm happy with the result, but there's room for improvement. My hard drives are problematic, and of course, while eventually I'll have a brand new case, mobo, cpu etc etc, I'm doing what I can with this emachine.

"emachines" are for people who don't know anything about computers, and want a cheap package deal. Since I bought it I've started meddling and I'm ready to build my own now. As you can see, all ended well, even though the Zalman was a tight squeeze. I was afraid the motherboard plug would be blocked along with one of my ram slots, and the PSU is actually touching the heatsink.

My computer is a lot quieter, but not silent. I made a switch too, for the case fan. I'm considering undervolting the case fan to 7V, but since everyone is talking about how you feed power back into the PSU and that's bad, I'm a bit hesitant. My hard drives definitely are cramped and a bit warm.

This is the whole setup.

And the switch I made. I lucked out, in that there was a square space for an ethernet plug, and two holes for firewire underneath the black vinyl. Fitting it all into a little case was very nice, and I prefer to have easy access to the switch, even though I never turn it on high. You'll see the little casing in the next picture, where you can put firewire cables or whatever to come out the front

the switch


cutout the grill

cramped hard drives, Seagate Barracuda, and Western Digital

and the ram problem, little bit close to the ram

A closer look at the main setup


Temperature Readings on max load
previous setup: stock 5V cpu 60mm fan, crap PSU
CPU-----------------59
M/B-----------------45
Seagate------------46
Western Digital----39
new setup:
CPU-----------------49
M/B-----------------40
Seagate------------45
Western Digital----38

I took temperature readings the whole way through. Details found on my site
http://linux.jonathangallant.net
I would say all temps are accurate relative to each other +/- 1 degree. It seems that cutting out the grill made no difference, but I'm not suprised, it's very cramped in there. I thought maybe having the Panaflo blow air would be an interesting experiment to try.
This is such a great site

[ckolivas]

Nice. Great to see significantly cooler numbers and quieter. What's the noisiest part now? Even without new case etc you can make this one significantly quieter too.

[jonathangallant]

I would definetely have to say the hard drives. The cdrom, after it spins, vibrates ever so slightly as well. The hard drives also seem to be generating the most heat and vibration.

Nice. Great to see significantly cooler numbers and quieter. What's the noisiest part now? Even without new case etc you can make this one significantly quieter too.

significantly eh? do tell

I'm thinking of suspending the hard drives, but beyond that, how would you make it quieter? It may be that the case fan is not needed. My temp chart shows no real difference in temperatures with the case fan.

[ckolivas]

Even without new case etc you can make this one significantly quieter too.

significantly eh? do tell

I'm thinking of suspending the hard drives, but beyond that, how would you make it quieter? It may be that the case fan is not needed. My temp chart shows no real difference in temperatures with the case fan.

Hmm the hard drives are harder to quieten than everything else if they are noisy models. You can suspend them as you've already said or put them in some silencer (usually these increase temperature unless then get their own active cooling obviously). If your case fan is not helping there seems no point in having it there. What you can do, though, is place the case fan where it blows over the hard drive - they often are quieter when cooler, although if you get very cool (<10 degrees this is unlikely in your setup) some models get noisier. From your url it looks like you run linux so you absolutely must use acoustic management to your advantage; the speed difference is not noticable but the noise difference on seeks is massive:

Code: Select all

hdparm -M 128 /dev/hda

for hda for example. 128 is the quiet setting.