By Daniel Greenberg
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, September 3, 2006; F06
Sometimes, it's the smallest noises that can be most annoying -- like crickets chirping outside your bedroom window in the middle of the night.
Or those buzzing, roaring, humming and rattling noises that come from inside your computer.
Silence from your computer is more important now than ever before, especially as computers become hubs for media -- for activities such as watching DVDs and playing video games.
And there's always the theory, supported by environmental psychologists, that low-level background noise can increase health risks and lower an employee's motivation.
Computers don't have to be noisy, thanks to some new innovations in cases, fans, hard drives and even chips.
Computers can generate a lot of heat, and that can lock up hard drives and fry internal components. That's why the manufacturers sometimes go overboard with fast, noisy fans.
There are two ways to have a quiet computing experience: Buy a machine designed for quiet operation, or retrofit your computer to tranquilize its loudest components.
If you go the route of a new machine, do yourself a favor and don't gauge its noise level in an electronics store. The booming hip-hop music from the stereo aisle will drown out any hum or rattle. Instead, consider these tips:
· Buy a Mac. Apple has led the way in quiet computing, due in part to much more efficient design and in part to less powerful components that need less cooling.
· Buy a Core 2 PC. Intel recently released a new generation of computer processors known as Core 2, which are not only considerably faster than the Pentium processors but are also nearly twice as energy efficient. These machines run more quietly because they generate less heat and can cut back on fans. Intel has also changed the arrangement of the basic computer components on Core 2 PCs to improve airflow and increase cooling without noise.
· Buy a BTX PC. Wait. Don't go running from another technology acronym just yet. What you need to know is that PCs with the newer BTX motherboard (the computer's main circuit board) are designed to run noticeably quieter than the older ATX motherboard. Be warned, though. Not all PCs list the type of motherboard they have -- and a nonscientific sampling of local electronics stores turned up only a few salespeople who were familiar with the term. If you really want to go this route, shop for a PC made by Gateway, which is making all of its consumer models with the quieter BTX.
The second option -- retrofitting your machine -- can be much easier on your wallet, but you need to be comfortable opening up your computer to make some modifications.
The unpleasant gronking noises made as a computer accesses data are among the easiest to fix because hard drives can be swapped out with less fuss than other upgrades. One of the quietest lines of hard drives comes from Seagate ( http://www.seagate.com/ ), but make sure you get the right kind of hard drive: a "parallel ATA" for older computers; a "serial ATA" for newer ones. Check your owner's manual.
The rattling, wooshing noises from the CD or DVD drive are also easy to stop -- with a replacement. The Plextor PX-760A ($100) is a DVD writer that is both faster and quieter than most.
A leader in the silent-computing revolution is Antec ( http://www.antec.com/ ), with many parts for quiet PCs. The company sells quiet power supplies, such as the SmartPower 2.0 ($60 and up) and cases like the Sonata II ($130) that have a special channel to route hot air more efficiently.
The Sonata II's large, variable-speed fan can push more air than smaller fans, turns more slowly and has a lower pitch, making it less noticeable and less annoying. Special rubber grommets prevent hard-drive noises from being amplified by the case.
In our tests, the best sound reduction came from Antec's $180 P150 case, which also adds sound baffling for even greater noise reduction and suspends hard drives from thick rubber bands so they can't vibrate the case.
We removed the motherboard from a conventionally noisy PC and transplanted it into the Antec P150 case and power supply. We added a Seagate Barracuda drive (and copied the contents of the old hard drive with Laplink PCmover ($50 with USB cable for data transfer). The end result was nearly whisper-quiet computing, even when the machine was pushed to its limits converting video.
Antec also makes one of the cheapest quiet PC fixes, the PC Noise Killer Kit, that for less than $20 includes a collection of rubber grommets used to keep PC parts from rattling against one another.
Installation can be time consuming, but it really did reduce noise in a stock PC at a bargain-basement price.