I did the overclocking and overvolting thing (with a pencil) for a bit, but then I became obsessed with silent computers and went the other way: undervolting. Trying to keep it running at the lowest possible voltage without reducing the clock speed too much. Those were fun experiments. Could do passive air cooling when the overclockers were getting into water cooling.
Aside from undervolting to reduce cooling needs and thus fan noise, suspending disks on sturby rubber bands greatly reduced vibration noises, same with mounting fans with plastic plugs instead of metal screws. Getting bigger, slower fans also helped a lot.
PCs now tend to be pretty quiet these days, but loud fans and rattling still bug me from time to time.
Word for word the same here. I remember spending hours and hours in the silentpcreview forums looking for the latest and greatest in silent fan technology.
I split the difference. I went with an overkill watercooling set up with quietness in mind, just so I could have nearly-passive cooling at high clock speeds.
I’m currently using 2x 360x360mm radiators stacked together, with 4x 180mm 300rpm fans. It’s virtually silent yet keeps my CPU and GPU quite cool, even when gaming.
Aside from undervolting to reduce cooling needs and thus fan noise, suspending disks on sturby rubber bands greatly reduced vibration noises, same with mounting fans with plastic plugs instead of metal screws. Getting bigger, slower fans also helped a lot.
PCs now tend to be pretty quiet these days, but loud fans and rattling still bug me from time to time.