Silence is Golden

My office PC is quiet. No more jet engine whooshing and whirring below my desk. What a relief.

I ordered some components on Monday from Quiet PC online. The products were at my door the next day. I also purchased a Cooler Master WaveMaster case.

I spent several hours deconstructing my noisy PC and refitting all of the new and old components into the WaveMaster case. And, believe it or not, everything just worked.

The noise levels are almost half of what they were before. Instead of 58dBA of noise level, the PC is now generating about 32dBA. The difference is amazing. I can now work easily at my office computer without the overwhelming noise level.

The case, albeit very high tech, comes equipped with three quiet fans. Two front mounted draw cool air into the case and one rear mounted draws air out of the case. I had installed a Zalman 400 watt noiseless power supply and I also replaced the CPU cooler with an Arctic Cooler product.

Thermal impact was nominal. At idle the Prescott CPU was generating about 41 degrees Celsius with the stock Intel cooler. At idle, the Arctic Cooler keeps the CPU at 42 degrees Celsius. So I lost a little cooling capability in exchange for a whisper quiet machine. Intel rates the processor thermal maximum at about 70 degrees Celsius under load. I stress tested the machine with the new components and I could only achieve about 53 degrees Celsius under heavy load. Granted, I would not want to run this processor without the case fans.

Here is a picture of the WaveMaster case that I purchased. The black coating is a high gloss mirror finish. Very cool.