When the computer is too loud, it means that the fans inside it are spinning fast. The problem of noise that makes a computer turned on can depend on four reasons :
1) That the computer is equipped with a somewhat old power supply and the fan is noisy on its own.
2) That the inside of the computer is dirty, so the fans start spinning more than necessary because the dust covers the vents.
3) That the graphics card and the computer processor are working with too much power than they would actually need, so their fans run fast.
4) The noise can also be caused by a somewhat old hard drive that would need to be changed.
To understand the actual origin of the problem of a noisy PC you should open the computer case, turn it on and try to understand, with your own auditory sensitivity, what is making too much noise.
For point 4, if it were the hard disk that made too much noise, the only solution is to replace it with a new one that will surely be quieter.
In general, however, the first thing to do is to clean the computer inside the dust on the fans .
Then clean the fan of the power supply and also those of the video card and processor if they are dirty, according to the instructions of the guide provided with the link above.
After freeing the computer from dust, if the noise still remains constant, you can act via software to reduce the speed of the fans.
Through programs it is not possible to adjust the speed of all the fans.
In particular, it is difficult to control the speed of that of the power supply which if it made too much noise, could be changed (even just the fan and not the whole power supply).
Two good programs to configure the use of computer fans are:
- Speedfan, the main of the programs to keep the heat and temperature of the computer under control which allows, on some, to configure the speed of the fans.
- MSI Afterburner which works for many models of video cards and allows you to increase or decrease the working power of the graphics processor, the GPU.
SpeedFan is a control program that displays the fan speed and temperature information .
When you start the program, the two main information are the Fan Speed or the speed of the fans and the temperature of each part of the computer in degrees centigrade.
PWM controls can be used to reduce fan speed.
It is not said that all the fans are recognized by Speedfan but, however, it is easy to see which ones can be configured, those that show a speed in RPM greater than 0.
You can then keep an eye on the temperature of the various parts of the computer and decide to lower the fan speed to 70%, checking how the noise should be reduced.
Be careful not to slow down the fan speed too much otherwise you run the risk of overheating which can cause serious damage to the PC hardware.
MSI Afterburner is a nicer program to watch that allows you to manage the fan speed of the PC video card in addition to many other things.
After installing MSI AfterBurner, you can open it and check, on the left side of the interface, the current fan speed which should be configured in automatic mode.
Then click on the " Settings " button, enter the settings and, in the fan tab, put the cross on "Enable automatic control software".
A graph will appear below, which can be changed by moving the handles, showing the speed of the fans of the video card according to the temperature reached.
You can configure the fan to rotate more slowly when working on light programs and the video card is used at idle speed and faster if you are using video games or programs that use the video card for hardware acceleration.
If desired, you could also lower the frequency of the GPU processor in the main interface.
Anyone who owns an AMD-ATI video card and processor can use the AMD Vision program that comes with the installation of drivers downloaded from the AMD website.
AMD Vision, in the performance section, allows you to configure the processor power that does not have to be used always at 100% and also the video card power that can be optimized by disabling AMD Overdrive (see article Overclocking of the ATI Radeon graphics card with AMD Overdrive).
In this way the main result is a lower energy consumption of the computer which translates into a lower use of the fans and, therefore, also a reduction of the internal noise of the PC.
When making changes to the fan speed, it is always necessary to check the temperature, at least for a while, to make sure that the components are not adequately cooled anyway.
It is also necessary to pay attention to the summer period, because higher general temperature levels always have an impact on the PC.
It may be necessary to speed up the fan again on hot days, also depending on the location and configuration of the computer.
In another article, very related to this, 8 ways to cool your computer when it's too hot
