Hot: Akasa sound dampeners $9.99 plus s/h

[Aagiants]

Lower then any other site, ordered 2

http://store.yahoo.com/svcompucycle/akasapaxmate.html

total of 2 shipped is 26.23 which is 13$ shipper for one which is great

 

[ianbergman]

decent store; question is, do these things work well? I'm interested to hear your feedback on 'em

 

[Silvestry]

Originally posted by: ianbergman
decent store; question is, do these things work well? I'm interested to hear your feedback on 'em

I have these in my Antec SX1040B case.

First, there is only enough material to cover the side panels.
Second, it does muzzle some of the sound (but not significantly).
Third, while keeping sound in, it does keep heat in somewhat also.
Fourth, it is hard to remove later.
Fifth, majority of the sound comes out of the fan intake and exhaust anyways.
Sixth, what I found to keep the noise down is to use a 80mm GC68 cpu cooler (instead of 60mm, cut down the voltage on all other fans (including power supply), and use Seagate HD. * Warning: Cutting down voltage does pose some risk on your power supply!

 

[Aagiants]

thats why i bought two to fill majority of it

Well if you only have one side on, then it wont work as well

 

[BaseGrizzly]

Most of what I've read agrees with silvetry. Sound dampeners absorb vibration, but not the sound of wind going through the fans, which generates the most noise in a computer. I've replaced all the fans in my case and power supply with Panaflo L1A (24CFM @ 21dba) fans to cut down on the noise.

Dampeners also add a lot of weight to the case.

 

[tallest1]

Originally posted by: Silvestry

Originally posted by: ianbergman
decent store; question is, do these things work well? I'm interested to hear your feedback on 'em

I have these in my Antec SX1040B case.

First, there is only enough material to cover the side panels.
Second, it does muzzle some of the sound (but not significantly).
Third, while keeping sound in, it does keep heat in somewhat also.
Fourth, it is hard to remove later.
Fifth, majority of the sound comes out of the fan intake and exhaust anyways.
Sixth, what I found to keep the noise down is to use a 80mm GC68 cpu cooler (instead of 60mm, cut down the voltage on all other fans (including power supply), and use Seagate HD. * Warning: Cutting down voltage does pose some risk on your power supply!

1) I got 3 when I found some for $4.99. All interior walls of my computer got covered
2) It doesn't do miracles with dampening
3) It hardly increases heat. Thats why you use this and not dynamat (for cars)
4) I think its meant to be permanent

 

[Kipper]

I think these are designed for those cases for overclocking maniacs who stick 6 Deltas in their case...

 

[Jenova314]

i gets rid of some high-pitched whine on in my case. and yes, it's meant to be permanent. as for adding weight to the case, that's not true at all. it only feels that way because if you bang on the side panel it feels more solid; an illusion of weight. you forget that the actual boxed contents itself isn't heavy at all.

 

[ElusivePeon]

SVC sells these for the same price... many people have had good experiences with them.

 

[Silex]

Akasa sound dampening mats are cool and all (well not really in that sense!), but like someone mentioned earlier, I know for a fact that although it does muffle sounds more, it more than makes up for it generously with more heat. IMHO, not worth the trade off, we got enough heat problems in a case.

 

[rockyct]

Originally posted by: ElusivePeon
SVC sells these for the same price... many people have had good experiences with them.

The link at the top is SVC.

 

[weepul]

um, if this works like those stuffing between walls, stuffing also helps keep heat in, defeating the purpose of the fans right which generate the noise...

//krunk (^_^x)

 

[matsuhisa]

i'm not sure if the antec 1030bx case is any smaller than the 1040x, but i bought one packaging of akasa pax mate and it filled all the walls of my case... i'm perplexed to wonder why some people bought 2 or 3?!?

for me, it primarily lowered the pitch of the noise from a whining to a lower sounds. as for heat, i have intel, so heat is not a factor.

 

[papaschtroumpf]

My local compUSA carries it for $9.99, so it may be cheaper than paying shipping if yours carries it too. I've seen it both under the Pax.Mate name and their own compUSA brand but it's the same stuff (it may also be sold under a PC Toy brand at compUSA also).

There is enough stuff in one of those packages to cover 4 sides of a mid tower case (2 side panels and top and bottom).

While you should't expect miracles it works relatively well at reducing high pitched noise, like hard drive whine or CPU cooler, as long as it's not the entire case that's vibrating.

I'm a silent freak, so as far as I'm concerned, it's worth the $10 to get that case just a little bit more silent. I do some overclocking, and I haven't seen a rise in temperature in my case after applying it (which doesn't surprise me because I believe the case does very little in the way of dissipating heat, despite what aluminum case mfrs would like you to believe)

 

[eyeguy]

loudpeaker dampening pads - same thing, and these are not in centimeters.....

http://www.speakercity.com/damping.shtml

you only need to cover 1/2 the walls

it will low wall vibrations

if you care, markertek has acoustic foam at good prices

 

[MrCrab]

I bough the akasa foam pads from SVC two days ago and have it installed..

my impressions:

- very easy to apply, good quality stuff--firm, very light, and rubber-like foam. It doesn't crumble at all when rubbed.

- doesn't work too well, but it does cut out some noise.

- the best thing you can do is buy low cfm fans that rate < 20 decibles.. SVC sells NMB ones for really cheap.. I got five for like 11 bucks... They are very quite, almost silent.

-they stink.. However from what I read, it won't go away for another two weeks or so. It isn't aweful, and in closed areas like my room, you get used to it rather quickly.. I can't smell it anymore, until I leave and come back in.. It's that sort of smell.. just stings your nose to the point where you don't smell it anymore.. (yes, it's a rather strong smell).


You can reduce your pc's sound by at least 50% with the combination of the Akasa Paxmate, a quiet HSF, and new case fans. The HS I also bought from SVC is Thermalright SK-7.. very affective and quiet using an 80x25mm NMB fan that I also use for case fans.

The HD whine was the worst culprit for my PC noise problems, since I have 4 IBM hard working as a striped raid. Very fast but loud. I read alot about the PAXmate mostly just cutting out high-pitch whine , but in my experience it's still quite evident, probably because the hard disks sit right up against the front vent of the PC, where there is no dampening material. From the side it is much quieter, but you still hear most of the noise coming from the pc through the front vents... I'm tempted to just close those up and open up some PCI slot covers for rear venting.

Anyway that's where I'm at, hope that helps.

I think the stuff is worth it, and would work better if I didn't have so many damn hard disks.

 

[rochlin]

I bought these from SVC a few months ago when building a new system. I bought two packs and lined everything except under the motherboard - and double lined in some places. It has definitely improved the noise - no question.
As someone said, there are things that will reduce the noise more. In order of noise improvement, here's what worked for me:
1. Get a temp sensitive CPU fan. Those P4 fans just are not peaceful devices. For most normal computing, the fan can be ratcheted down quite a bit (and when I'm playing games, I don't care about noise so much, what with all the screaming.)

2. Get a quiet harddrive. The Seagate Barracuda's are the best, but the New Maxtor 160gb (glass platters, fluid bearings) and the 180GB IBM 180GXP (not the lower GB versions) are about as quiet and tend to give you more GB/$

3. Get a quiet power supply. Antec's seem to have the best quality and performance among quiet Ps's.

4. Add a quiet case fan (in the back of the box) like a Panaflo or similar. That'll keep the internal temp down quite a bit, which means the evil CPU fan won't kick on as often - and you can't really hear it.

5. Akasa Padding.

The diff between this system and my old regular vanilla P3 system (with the same case) is huge.

Oh. I also recommend avoiding cases that have big holes in them