Gaming Hacks

Build a Quiet, Killer Gaming Rig

Make your game worlds more immersive by quieting the real world.

The highest-end monster PC is likely a noisy tower with fans and hard drives spinning away. That may be fine when you’re blasting hordes of alien zombies to a heavy metal soundtrack, but a 10,000-rpm drive spinning up at the wrong time can ruin the suspense of sneaking around in the dark. Even with 1,000 watts of power driving your speakers, sometimes nothing beats the sound of silence.

A quiet, distraction-free environment can make your game experience more immersive. Fortunately, you can modify your current rig to run more quietly. The same tips apply if you’re building a new PC. Here’s how to assess where you stand now and plan to make your computer quieter.

Understanding Noise

Understanding how to attack your computer’s noise problem is closely related to how audio compression algorithms (such as the one in MP3s) work. Your brain will hear only the loudest noise at any given time; you won’t hear any quieter noises. In order to compress sound, audio engineers drop the quieter information because listeners won’t hear it. When you attempt to quiet your computers, this phenomenon applies in reverse. Removing one loud noise often unmasks another noise beneath the sound threshold of the first one.

Quieting your computer as much as possible is often a matter of trial and error. It might take several attempts to reach an acceptable noise level. To identify your biggest problem areas, start ...