Thread: Optimizing ventilation system ensures a quiet living room

Your once-quiet living room computer roars loudly every time you start it up and its incessant noise is irritating.

Effective and quiet fan control can be achieved when the cooling and ventilation systems of the computer are optimized. The regular temperature regulation on all mainboards cannot do that. The speed control is usually only a cheap additional function of the so-called Super-I/O ICs, which, also accommodate other functions such as interface control. In many cases, these switches offer very few control levels and are designed considering only the safety aspect. So, most PCs fans are too fast and hence too loud.

A more sensitive fan control is available in a tool called 'Speed Fan'. It functions on all current motherboards. The problem of the excessively loud computer start cannot be solved with that, since the program takes effect only after starting the OS. A different approach could work. As an alternative to the temperature dependent speed control, you can reduce the noise with a slow rotating 12-cm fan. It cools the CPU sufficiently. In many cases, the operation is done with 7 instead of 12 Volts. You only need to be sure that the fan works safely with 7 volts as well. You get this voltage if you connect the 5-volt cable to the 12-volt cable instead of the earth connection. The fan then runs with the difference of 12 minus 5, i.e. 7 volts. After the conversion, run a load test to check whether the cooling is sufficient.