This Space for Rent

The neverending quest to make my computer quiet

I built my home PC to be as quiet as possible, and, more or less, succeeded. The one thing that wasn't as quiet as I wanted was the video card, which had a fan it it which, over the course of several months, developed a little WurrawurraWurrawurra noise.

This was not as quiet as I wanted, so I shopped around (over the course of about a year) for a new video card ("new" as in "one without a fan"; for the SGI 1600sw, there is only one choice, and that's the Number Nine Revolution IV -- an old slow video card from a vendor that doesn't exist anymore) and eventually snarfed one up on an online auction site. It arrived today, and I ripped out the old video card and put in the new one, and, yes, it was very quiet. Too quiet, as a matter of fact, because that WurrawurraWurrawurra noise was masking a noticable (not quite audible, but quite noticable) supersonic hum, which after half an hour feels rather like a pair of persistant gnomes are trying to wedge cotton candy into my ears.

Sigh. If I'm lucky the supersonic hum is coming off the new video card, and then I may be able to make it stfu by attaching a Big Hunk Of Copper to the video chip. Otherwise I may have to revert back to the old video card and replace the fan with a big honking passive heatsink.

Comments


What operating system are you using? I am looking for a number 9 driver for Windows XP. Is it possible to use the Windows 2000 driver??

Donald Neal Thu Apr 7 13:01:52 2005

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