Lowering noise in recording studio happened accidentally when a GTX 460 video is added to already loud audio recording computer

eVGA GTX 460 video card, quieter than fanless video card

My home studio workstation got remarkably quieter when I added a new video card that should have made it worse.

The Nvidia GTX 460 card, last year’s fast card, has an average sound profile of 50 dB but reduced the computer’s noise level by 7 dB to 34 dB.

That was the quieter than the computer with a fanless ATI 4350 card. It doesn’t make sense but the results were stunning.

This astounded me and the folks at silentpcreview who review computers and components for audio recording.

It’s been a two year project to build the ultimate home recording workstation or DAW (digital audio workstation).

After selecting everything from the hard drives, fans and video cards for their low sound output, I still couldn’t get the noise threshold below 41 dB. 

That’s the sound level in your living room but a recording studio should be below 25 dB to avoid background noise getting picked up by microphones.

Before recording I already go around the house turning off the fans, fridge, furnace, air exchanger, TV’s, PVR’s and anything that emits noise. I’ve woken up in the morning a few times with the house freezing when I forgot to turn things back on after a recording session the night before.

My old Korg DT1600 MKII desktop recorder has a feature that turns off fans for the 3 or 4 minutes it is actually recording but that can’t be done on a computer without risking frying the CPU.

One would think a fanless card makes no noise and should be quiet; however,  for two years I couldn’t get the computer below 40 dB. I’ve used fans that only generate 15 dB and quiet SSD hard drives.

eVGA GTX 460 installed in quieter DAW (Antec P183, Intel i7 860, Noctua cooler and case fan, eVGA GTX 460, UAD-2 QUAD dsp, Lynx AES 16)

The GTX 460 was a Friday night Hail Mary from Future Shop as a video card upgrade. The UAD-2 Quad audio plugin software was freezing the screen.

After I installed the card, you could instantly tell the computer was quieter.

Reinstalling the ATI 4350 fanless card, I checked the sound level with a professional sound meter. It registered 41.5 dB  at 1 yard from the computer and 43.5 dB at the main microphone position.

Then I swapped the GTX 460 back and measured again: 35.1 dB at the computer and 34.1 dB at the microphone.

I repeated the tests the next morning to make sure and the results were 33.1 dB at the microphone.

Taking the cover off the computer, the noise at the fan was 49 dB which is about right according to the reviews for the GTX 460 card.

How does that work?

Apparently, a fanless video card generates heat that is left inside the computer for the case fan to exhaust, making it work harder. This was the suggestion from silentpcreview.

The fan on the GTX 460 card removes heat from the video card and the inside of the CPU making the larger case and CPU fans work at a slower speed, hence quieter.

I tried this with two different GTX 460 cards, the eVGA GTX 460 76g MB and the Zotac GTX 768 MB.  The eVGA was 1 dB quieter. Both cards cost under $200.

The GTX 460 is a good compromise for a high powered but non-gaming c0mputer. There is more than enough speed to handle audio recording software.

The computer case has a sound deadening lining to keep the noise from migrating forward. The fan noise at the exhaust is about 51 dB but falls to below 34 dB at the front of the computer. The computer is under the workstation, a the floor.

Amazing.

Computer is custom build with Antec P183 case plus sound kit, ASUS P7P55D EVO motherboard, Intel i7 860 CPU, 8 GB DDR3 RAM, Noctua NHU12P SE2 cooler with 1 fan installed, Noctua NFP case fan, eVGA GTX 460,  UAD-2 QUAD dsp, Lynx AES 16 audio card, 2 x Intel SSD M160, 2 x WD 2 TB Green drives, Windows 7 Professional 64 bit.