Noise can be annoying especially when you are using your your PC/Laptop at night time. Whether you are playing a game or working on an important presentation, the unbearable whirring/buzzing/whistling noise coming from the PC boils your blood. The jet-engine noise coming from Computer can be distracting and inconvenient if you are sharing room with someone. Such disturbance is usually generated by the moving/rotating parts inside your PC case i.e. Cooling Fans, Hard Disk Drive. You remember when you first bought your PC, it ran quietly and now after an year it is making vacuum cleaner noise? Don’t worry it is normal and can be fixed.
PC Components like CPU, Graphic card, Power Supply have cooling fans to get rid of heat generated during operation. When your PC gets old, the dust accumulates inside heat-sinks, fan propellers and circuit boards. This puts cooling fans under stress and forces them to run at higher Rotation per minute (RPM) than usual. When CPU, GPU, PSU fans combined run at an increased RPM, they produce loud buzzing noise as a result.
How to fix Loud Noise Coming from PC:
- Get an Electric Air Blower
- Shutdown the computer, unplug power cord and other devices
- Open the PC case by unscrewing case cover and slide the lid.
- Unplug the CPU and system fans from the motherboard so they do not produce electricity while spinning freely when you are blowing air on it.
- Put your PC in open and dry space, now power up the air blower.
- Blow the air over your PC case, make sure to hold the fan blades with other hand, if you let fans spin freely it will could damage your fan as well as motherboard with static electricity.
- Keep blowing air until the PC is dust free.
- After that connect all the components fans, power cords and devices back.
- Start your PC, you will notice significant improvement in noise
Here is a video that shows the cleaning process. Everything is done right except the guy is not holding the fan blades which is strictly important.
Tips and Warnings
Here is a list of important tips, that could potentially save you PC from overheating as well as increase the lifespan of its components.
• You can also use compressed air for this task. But, be careful too much pressure can cause damage to semi-conductors inside the motherboard/graphic card.
• Laptops have to disassembled completely in order to get their heatsink/fan cleaned. Laptop manufacturers such as Lenovo offer fan-dust extraction utility program which makes fan spin in opposite direction to clean itself.
• You can monitor internal temperature of motherboard and CPU using programs such as. Open Hardware Monitor, Real Temp and Speccy. You can download them for free.
• The optimal CPU temperature while idle is 32 degree Celsius.  The ideal temperature under heavy load under (playing games etc.) is 60 degree Celsius when using stock cooler.
• If the noise is still there, you might have to replace your CPU cooler with an aftermarket one. Intel/AMD Processor stock coolers usually go bad after an year of usage. Get an aftermarket cooler like CoolerMaster Hyper EVO 212 and install it with good thermal paste (grease).
• If you want your PC to be quiet and noise free, you can invest in larger 120mm system case fans and All-in-one Liquid CPU coolers.
• If your PC is making grinding noise, there might be some wire/cable touching the fan blades. Good cable management improves the airflow inside the casing.
