Dead quiet fans for HTPC

[limiter]

I have a Silverstone LC11M case for my HTPC and it was loud enough to annoy me so I went and bought a replacement Heatsink and 2 80mm fans made by Arctic Cooling for the case. I had the stock 80mm fans and the AMD stock fan and heatsink and they were unacceptable for a living room setting. The Arctic Cooling fans were quiet enough that when I turned on the case I heard nothing but the hard drive and thought I messed something up to the point of swearing at it. Turns out they were just dead quiet.

Now if only I could get a softer hard drive...

I don't work for Arctic Cooling, I just thought someone else might be interested in finding some quiet fans for their HTPC case.

[danielpugh]

i use the samsung spinpoint hdd - very quiet

combined it with elan powersupply - silent operation mode (only turns on when it gets hot which in mine is never)

had zalman replacement cpu cooler, passive northbridge and graphics card fan.

passive northbridge got very hot
silent fans, but case meant that a lot of noise from the movement of air.

so moved to zalman reservator ... water cooling is definately the way forward - no sound whatsoever and case runs very cool (cpu at 33 degrees under load)although you have to be careful in getting a motherboard that will take a northbridge cooler that doesnt get in the way of the graphics card.

i have sapphire x800 gto2 and msi diamond nf4motherboard, and accent ht-400 case with imon.

currently two twinhan dvb-t graphics cards.

and an overloaded credit card

[wannabepvr]

I have a very old 4.3G HDD for my HTPC operating system, tuner and data are on a separate server in another room. I had to isolate this drive with foam blocks then wrap in vinyl to reduce the noice to an acceptable level. I was concerned about heat but this has not presented as a problem in the 2 months since I built it. You only just hear it in the still of the night when nothing else on on.

There are many tips on quiet PC on sites such as.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/index.php

I have found running fans on 5V and 7V to be a huge winner even if you need extra fans at low speed the noice difference is staggering.

The only problem with making PCs quiet is that you become very intolerant of noisey ones. I had to also quieten the server, and my work PC as well.