You have gone out and spent all your money on a great computer, with the latest processor, heaps of memory, and a super fast hard drive like a solid state, yet your computer seems to feel a little sluggish and in the same time become very noisy.

Living in Townsville brings its own problems to the logistics involved in every day life. I have done computer work in all corners of the globe, but the living in tropical North Queensland’s heat seems to be the biggest environmental problem plaguing computers.

Computers produce a lot of heat and fast and high performance computers produce even more. In order to reduce these heating problems your computers fans need to work overtime and in doing so make a lot more noise. This is probably the most common cause for loud computers.

Make your computer quieter

Here are a few things you can try to make your computer quieter and reduce the strain on your fans. It might not be just one thing that is causing your computer to be noisy. It is a process of elimination but here are a few good things to try and start with.

Get a new CPU Heatsink and Fan

If your computers cpu and heatsink fan came with your computer, it is most likely a standard setup. CPU’s (Central Processing Units) make a lot of noise because the processors get extremely hot and they have to work very hard to keep them cool.

Upgrading your CPU heatsink and fan to a good aftermarket product can help reduce the cpu fan noise significantly.

Acoustic Foam

Acoustic foam is a foam your can put on the inside of your computer case to stop the noise vibrations becoming to loud. I am on the fence a bit with this one as I worry about it adding extra heat to your machine.

I have never actually tried this but I have heard people get good results.

Hard Drive Enclosures

Hard drives make a very grinding like noise. The more you use them and the hard you push them the more noise they make.

Using a hard drive silencer enclosure like the one at Acousticpc.com can dramatically improve the amount of noise derived from your hard drive working so hard. Hard drives spin up to (depending on the one you buy) 10’000 rpm’s. Thats a lot of movement and you can definitely hear it if you listening to your computer good enough.

Other causes

Problems caused by dust

Your computer creates an electromagnetic field, which attracts dust. Most electrical devices do, hence why you always see dust behind your TV or computer monitor.

Your computers fans suck this dust in unintentionally as they are breathing for air and this dust gets stuck everywhere such as in the fans, joints and air ducts making your computers fans run slower and your computer harder and noisier.

Carefully opening your case and cleaning out the dust can help improve the overall performance of your computer and reduce the noise.

Hard Drive failure

As your hard drive gets older and starts to fail it makes a much louder grinding noise. It is always recommended to backup your hard drive regularly, but more important when you start to hear this noise and when you plan on doing any hard drive work at all.

Always be careful when opening up your computer and make sure everything is unplugged.