I agree wholeheartedly with Inderjeet [here](http://weblogs.java.net/blog/inder/archive/2005/04/quest_for_a_sil.html) about quieter PCs. I have also rebuilt my old Athlon PC which I had lying around by doing the following:

* Replacing the case for a [special case](http://www.quietpc.com/uk/cases.php#acc6607) designed with noise reduction in mind.
* Replacing the processor heatsink with [this Zalman unit](http://www.quietpc.com/uk/p4cooling.php#7700)
* Replacing the case fans for [these Acousticase 120mm fans](http://www.quietpc.com/uk/casefans.php#acoustifan). They are bigger than the normal 80mm fans hence they don’t need to rotate as fast to move the same amount of air.
* Replacing the power supply for [this one from Qtechnology](http://www.quietpc.com/uk/psu.php#qtechnology)

I didn’t need to replace any graphics card fans as the machine had an older NVIDIA Geforce2 MX card which comes with a heatsink. I was only planning on using this machine as a medium power server so the graphics card didn’t matter to me.

After all this effort, I had a virtually quiet machine! Note that I said virtually quiet because there is still some residual noise but it is so low as to be imperceptible from about a meter away. It doesn’t bother me anymore and that means the exercise was a success
The first comment on that post says to get a Mac because they are quiet and I would like to point out that I recently sold my Power Mac G4 because it was **too** noisy. I know the newer Power Mac G5s are quieter but some people are still quite unhappy with them because they make strange chirping noises. I’m not making this up, I tried hard for a long time to buy another Mac but couldn’t justify the hassle of finding out whether it would be quiet enough for me. After a month, my G4 machine started making rattling noises. At that point I had never opened up the machine and so I had to peek inside and couldn’t figure out why it was doing it. I took it back to the repair shop and as expected they said there’s nothing wrong with it and I had to pay them for doing nothing! I brought it back home and it was rattling again. This is **not** quality. I somehow figured out that placing a stack of books underneath it reduced the noise.

There are definitely issues with Macs as far as noise is concerned. Russell has a [good rant](http://www.russellbeattie.com/notebook/1008309.html) on it. What is he supposed to do about it? Nobody is going to fix the noise issue because as far as Apple is concerned it’s normal noise. Check out [g4noise.com](http://www.g4noise.com) for more G4 related noise issues and a petition to Apple to replace the power supply in the older PowerMac G4s. The problem Russell describes about the fans increasing or decreasing their rotation speed and hence noise based on load drove me insane! Whenever I did something slightly heavy on my machine (like going to a certain page in a browser \***gasp**\*) the fans would ramp up. Then they would go down again. It drove me nuts.

Many times on forums people are literally *shouting* about the bad service they got from Apple. Just go to the ArsTechnica Mac Achaia forums to witness this yourself. Do you know what the final course of action is if nobody helps these people? Email Steve Jobs himself! These people have actually had their problems fixed this way too! I mean, I understand that may be a good thing but come on! You’re supposed to get top-notch support from these people if you call the regular support line!

To be honest, though, I really love the Mac operating system but I hope they sort out their hardware problems or at least ensure that **everybody** gets a quiet machine if it is advertised as one. I won’t be buying one until they do.