Reducing PC noise

Fans are the single greatest cause of noise from the average PC. For at least part of the problem, The PC Doctor has found a solution:

I decided that this was a good time to try out one of those fan noise reduction kits that I’d seen in PC World a few weeks earlier.

These kits are both simplistic and quite cheap. Basically it’s a silicone rubber frame that fits around the fan and this forms a cushion between the fan and the PC case. In the kit I bought there were also some silicone washers and new screws.

This is worth trying if the fan itself is quiet and the connection to the case is the problem, and in this example it worked. I’ve seen lots of PC fans, including those on power supplies, where the basic design of the fan is just plain loud. In that case, the only real solution is to replace the fan with a better one – that’s a case where reading reviews can pay off.

Another source of noise, even with a well-designed fan, is when a process gets stuck and starts demanding excessive resources of the system. Firefox does this on me occasionally. I notice that a PC is suddenly very noisy and discover upon checking Task Manager that the Firefox process is cranked up to 50% or more and won’t go down. Usually, killing the offending process takes care of the problem.