PC noise supression: Dynamat and alternatives

Hardware Cases / Chassis
1

So if you guys already dont know, dynamat is something alot of car audio enthusiast use to help reduce unwanted vibrations in their car chassis that might be cause from their speakers, mostly the sub woofer.

what it does(from what i understand) is absorb sound vibration, turning it into heat.

i figure this can also be employed in a computer case to reduce the sound coming from fans, mechanical HD's  and whatever else components generate sound.

some people have suggesting using cheap insulation materials for roofing as a dynamat alternative but there are stories where the insulation material will fall off if mounted vertically. Also those are made with tar which i dont think is safe in a home setting or in your computer,(But what do i know?) You can go ahead and use dynamat but i was wondering if anyone knew of a cheaper or even cheaper/bulk alternative.

does anybody know if dynamat or a cheaper alternative will make a difference? what kinda heat production from the noise suppression materiel can i expect? it it negligible?

 

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vs

 

alternatives:

Accumat http://www.scosche.com/accumat
B Quiet/Brown Bread http://www.b-quiet.com
Dynamat http://www.dynamat.com
edead http://www.edesignaudio.com/ep2/edead.htm
Noise Killer http://www.noisekiller.com
Quiet Coat http://www.quietcoat.com
RAAMmat http://www.raamaudio.com/
Second Skin http://www.secondskinaudio.com/
VBlok http://www.cascadeaudio.com


msds of the peel & seal

http://www.cofair.com/msds.aspx


what do you guys think? im thinking of giving this a try in my pc with the super loud r9 290

2

sorry, i dont think some of those links work anymore.

 

3

I don't know a lot about dynamat and products like it but I do know from personal experience with it the name brand dynamat stuff has that shiny silver out side that seems like it would be good at keeping the heat out of the foam.  So in a computer I would guess it would fair better then other sound damping foams that don't have that kind of outer material.  I think if heat is a problem adding more fans for better air flow would be the best option.  I know from using dynamat in cars that it does work pretty well so I would guess it would also work well in a computer but I don't have numbers on the difference.  You could look at a Fractal R4 review and see if some one compared the noise out put of that vs other cases and that may be a good starting point.

4

“what it does(from what i understand) is absorb sound vibration, turning it into heat. i figure this can also be employed in a computer case to reduce the sound coming from fans, mechanical HD's  and whatever else components generate sound.”

What products like this do is add mass to the material applied and, to a small degree, a viscous property to the material applied, as to resist wave propagation through the medium. It would help reduce sounds emitted by the surfaces to which you apply it by decimating the acoustic coupling effects from the devices producing the vibrations/noise, but will do nothing to sound being emitted from the devices themselves. If much of the sound you hear IS from the acoustic coupling of these vibrating devices to the case (or whatever surfaces you want to apply this to) than that noise will be greatly reduced.

The most efficient way to get rid of these kinds of unwanted sounds is to simply remove the acoustic coupling effects from the devices creating the vibrations. There are rubber grommets and materials made to do this for fans and hdd's but I honestly have no first hand information regarding them.

As far as the sound propagation through the air, these material will do nothing. The logical choices are to absorb as much sound as possible with acoustic absorption materials or create some kind of acoustic barrier between the PC and your ears.

For the devices themselves that are creating unwanted noise, I have been curious about using acoustic paints but I would not personally do something like this on an expensive video card. If these acoustic paints work well, it would be for the same reasons listed above concerning the mat materials. Heat dissipation should not be overlooked, but I am sure that that is common sense here and you are fully aware of that. (I can imagine some noob painting all of their mechanical pc parts and really screwing things up, especially if they painted a video cards heat sink)

“what kinda heat production from the noise suppression materiel can i expect? it it negligible?”

It would be absolutely negligible, in fact, probably not even measurable with advanced equipment. Advertizing that these things turn acoustic energy into heat is mainly to make these products sound scientifically advanced. In fact, Any materials that absorb sound, including your walls, flesh, eardrums, carpet or acoustic absorption material do the same thing. An anecdote to demonstrate this is that if you take all of the acoustical energy from a 2 hour Beatles concert in the 60's and converted 100% of it straight to heat, you would be able to boil a cup of tea. (I am trying to find the source of this anecdote but have not found it yet, sorry)


This may not help at all :-/ but I hope you find a solution.

 
 
 
 
5

do you know of any materials that are efficient acoustic dampers?

6

so i went with what maestroP said about acoustic asorbers and i found this site

http://www.quietpc.com/acousticmaterials

looks alot like the same materials. is this site just snake oil?

7

list of 32 sound absorbing material

http://www.frostytech.com/permalink.cfm?NewsID=90302

 

legit?

8

These products seem to be be viable solutions. They even have fan mounts. http://www.quietpc.com/afm03b-group  It would seem that using a soft silicone caulking instead of the flat gaskets they have for the fans would work ok if you wanted to seal them.

Can you describe what the main sounds that you are hearing from your PC are? I know you mentioned your video card being loud. Maybe most of what you are hearing is sound reverberating inside the case. If that is the case, I can see these foam blocks and pads being effective. If you treat the inside of your case, that is not going to remove the sounds coming directly from the video card itself however.


I thought about looking into products like this when I was building my current PC but for now, I literally have no case fans running and a 120mm fan for the cpu that never increases it speed from the lowest speed setting. My MSI R7850 Twin Frozr graphics card has worked fine with no case fans, even overclocked to the highest speeds possible with the AMD Catalyst utility. I don't hear much of anything except a faint 'whirr' but only when it is really quiet.

 
I really don't have first hand experience in this. I am just sharing my knowledge of acoustics, so I hope it helps. I am going to bookmark that site! Thanks.
 
 
 
9

Looks like overkill and mainly for use in industrial applications. But I am sure it would look stylish in your PC !