Fed up with the racket eminating from my PC, I decided it was time to introduce some "quite PC" tricks - when you're spending an age trying to get that cut "just so", the last thing you need is the sound of runway 3 at Heathrow!
So after looking at the products available at
www.overclockers.co.uk, I decided upon a "Zalman CNPS7000B-Cu Ultra-Quiet CPU Cooler", "Akasa AK-PAX-2 PaxMate Plus Acoustic Absorption Mat" (sound damping material). A day later and 60 quid poorer, Amtrax delivered a box at my door...
... after ripping the contents of the box open and briefly reading the instructions, I set about installing the CPU heatsink and fan.
Zalman Ultra-Quiet CPU Cooler
Installation on my P4 3.4 Nothwood was a breeze. After cleaning off the gunk from the stock fan and putting a ball of arctic 5 on the CPU and heatsink, it was simply a matter of attaching two "arms" to the CPU fan supports on the motherboard then screwing the heatsink and fan into these. Absolute breeze (no pun intended). Only slight problem is that the fan must stay at it's max speed of 2500RPM on my particular CPU, so I didn't bother using the fan control unit and linked the power directly to the motherboard.
Not only is the noise of the fan significantly less than the stock fan, the CPU also runs a few degrees cooler (although this may be a combination of the better thermal compound and new cooler)
Sound Damping
Next up was the sound proofing. Boy what a difference this makes! It really deadens the noise coming from the four case fans, two PSU fans, one CPU and one graphics card. Affixing the matting is as easy as cutting to size, peeling of the backing and sticking onto the inside of the case. Unfortunatly I couldn't get into the top of the case (Cooler Master ATC 111-SX1), but I may tackle this at a later date!
All in all, I've now got a much quieter PC. I'd reccomend sound damping to anyone with a PC seated on their desk!
Getting you PC to be a bit more QUIET 
Linear Mode
