Hands on Performance: Quick fixes to make your PC quieter

Graphics
Once your processor is being cooled quietly, you’ll immediately notice the noise generated by your other components. Some of the worst culprits are graphics cards, which are normally cooled by tiny, but fast, fans.

Believe it or not, it may be possible to cool a graphics card by a larger heatsink alone. Cards based on chipsets up to the ATI X700 and Nvidia Geforce 6600 can be silently cooled by Zalman’s ZM80D-HP heatsink (£27), which fits on both sides of the card.

Anything faster will need a fan of some description, although larger units, often fitted from above, can be used instead of tiny whining models.

Power supply
The third major generator of noise in a PC is the power supply. Since these involve mains electricity, it’s not safe to open them up and change fans.

Instead you’re looking at removing your existing power supply and swapping it for a quieter model.

Most quiet power supplies use larger fans, spinning more slowly to generate less noise. Some can spin them up and down, depending on the requirements.

Elan’s Vital Greenerger is a good choice at £93 for the 400w model.

Drives
With the fans taken care of, the noisiest components will be the drives. Noisy hard disks can be fitted into noise-absorbing enclosures, but you may wish upgrade to an inherently quieter model.

In our tests we’ve found Seagate’s 7200.8 Barracuda range runs very quietly.

Finally, just when you thought your PC was running as peacefully as could be, you insert a CD or DVD and your optical drive sounds like a plane preparing for take-off.

While there’s no solution for quietening a drive spinning at full whack, it’s possible to use software tools to slow it down and greatly reduce the noise.

Nero Drivespeed, which comes with Nero Burning Rom, can set your drive to run at any speed, and it’s amazing the difference it can make.

While you’d still want it at top speed for the fastest ripping or application installations, it’s great to reduce the speed for playing CDs or DVDs, and is therefore ideal for media PCs.