[CS-FSLUG] Silent computer cooling

[Nathan T.]

Hey everyone

I'm concerned about the volume of noise coming out of my computer,
even while it sits idle the fan is loud enough to be heard throughout
the house. I don't know whether the power supply fan makes a lot of
noise, but I do know the CPU fan sounds like a vacuum cleaner or maybe
a hawker, I can hear the thing from over half way across the house in
the basement, or the other side of the house on the main floor. At
first it was a nuisance, now I'm a little more concerned about the
long term impact on my hearing since research indicates that long term
exposure to perpetual noises, even quiet ones, can greatly increase
chances of deafness.

Whether there's a permanent health risk here or not, I need to quiet
this thing down. It's getting to the point where I'll favour my laptop
which doesn't have most of my files on it, neither is it as powerful,
over my desktop simply because of the noise factor. I'm even shutting
the thing off when I know it won't be long before I'll need it again.
I did see an absolutely huge heat sink at one of the local computer
stores that seated two abnormally large looking fans, and I asked
about fans but saw that most of the high end ones really looked like
they were made out of cheap translucent plastic even though they were
supposed to be good quiet ones.

I don't want to go out and spend too much money, I really don't want
to invest anything into a solution that won't work, and water cooling
kits are out of my price range. What can I do for roughly CAD $50 that
will quiet down my computer for sure? The only case fan I have right
now is on the power supply, the CPU fan is the one that came with the
Pentium 4 space heater in there.

I also need to know what to keep in mind when I go looking for fans, I
don't know much about the hardware inside the computer beyond how to
install drives, sister cards and their related cables. I became very
confused when the folks at the stores asked me what sized fan I needed
for my case and CPU, the same confusing question came up when I asked
about heat sinks. I thought everything was 8 inches, or 80
millimetres, or something like that. Can someone advise me on this?

If someone can tell me a way to quiet the thing down that they're sure
will work then I might be able to get some financial help from my
parents on this one.

I also don't know whether fans should be oriented to blow or suck
depending on where they're placed, can someone inform me a little?

One thing to keep in mind, there is some selection at the stores here,
but unfortunately not as much as I'd like.