DIY PC Soundproof Box: Effective and Affordable Solution

Building a U-shaped sound isolation box for gaming PCs significantly reduces noise levels, maintaining performance and affordability.

### DIY Soundproof PC Enclosure: Cheap, Easy, Effective
* 🎮  This project aims to create a **simple, cost-effective solution** to reduce noise from a gaming PC or console.
* 🔊  The enclosure is designed with two u-shaped shells made from a single **4x8 sheet of plywood**, with **slots for airflow**.
* 💰  The total cost is estimated to be around **$40 to $100**, making it an **affordable option** for many gamers.
* 🔇  The enclosure significantly reduces noise levels, with tests showing a **reduction of up to 10 dB**.
* 🌡️  Despite the soundproofing, the enclosure has minimal impact on thermals, with only a **half-degree increase in GPU temperature**.
* 🧰  The project is DIY-friendly, requiring basic tools like a **circular saw, jigsaw, and drill**, along with some **sound insulation material**.
* 🏠  The enclosure is versatile and can be used for **other noise-making devices**, not just gaming PCs.
* 🎥  The video tutorial provides **detailed instructions and tips for building the enclosure**, making it **accessible to a wide audience**.

I think every gamer can relate to this. Much better and with no downside at all. Okay, one downside, but the other ways to silence your gaming PC or your console take a lot of time, money, and space. That is, unless you're willing to get a little creative. Here we go. Now, guys, this isn't a woodworking channel, so we're going to keep the goals pretty straightforward. Number one, we want to keep this simple enough that anyone could build it with basic tools. Two, I don't want to spend a ton of money. And number three, I want to significantly quiet down my computer without harming performance or resorting to exotic measures like sticking in another room. I just hope I bought enough wood units to complete both our project and the segue to our sponsor, Seasonic. You know Seasonic for their reliable and energy-efficient power supplies. So snag your Vertex GX1000 right now by clicking the link in the description. Here's what I'm thinking. Rather than building a fully enclosed box, I want to make two identical

u-shaped shells that have these slots for air to move through them. Then I just slide them around our PC like so, leaving a little gap, put a in on it, and voila, quieter computer. To keep costs down, our box is designed to be cut from a single 4x8 sheet of plywood or whatever other sheet good your budget allows. For those of you watching in not America, that's 1,220 mm by 2,440, but I'm going to stick with freedom units for the rest of this video so that my Southern neighbors don't try to liberate the studio. Now, most building supply stores will cut down large sheets for you for a nominal fee, so we have them cut ours into quarters to make them easier to transport and to make them a little bit easier to work with safely. If you guys want to build along at home, by the way, we're going to have our plans on the Forum, which will be linked in the video description. Our first cuts are to remove a 1x 2T piece off of two of our quarter

panels. That's going to give us our sidewalls and the outside end pieces. Now, it's worth noting, guys, we're in a fancy shop, but you don't need a fancy shop to do this. A circular saw, jigsaw, or even a hand can get these cuts done pretty cleanly. Just be patient, measure twice, cut once, and all of that jazz. With that said, fancy tools do help sometimes, and a nail gun like this one is a great way to attach wood pieces together before you secure them with screws. You guys really did pick the scuffed piece of plywood on the face of the Earth. Hey, um, what's up with that? Wasn't me. Thanks, Shaggy. How good are you with a nail gun? Never used one before. All right, okay, wherever your nails go, you're going to want to make sure that you pre-drill some pilot holes before screwing the panels together with your LT screwdriver or, more realistically, with your drill since you were already holding that, and that's the real tool for

this man I put that nail right where I'd want to put my first screw. Yeah, I you might say I screwed up. Pro tip, by the way, guys, if you're not sure what size bit to use to pre-drill, it's actually listed on the side of the package. With our third piece of plywood, we're going to make our inside ends. Each of these is going to get a slot cut into it, either to allow passive airflow through our box or for bonus credit to mount some fans. We didn't factor fans into our budget, though, so we're going to go with the slot. And the easiest way to cut a slot is by drilling a starter hole, then using a jigsaw. If you don't have a jigsaw, you can use a coping saw to do this by hand, but it'll probably end up looking like, Hey, I don't know where you're going. You, that was actually me, but to be fair, I voted to use the laser, but Jordan said no, those are too expensive. That is a fair point. We're trying to keep this

affordable, but if you don't mind spending a little bit more money, a hole saw can be had for about 15 bucks for the drill that you're probably still holding. And you can just put a few of those in there and man, with fans, that would be sick. Anyway, RBY thanks. You can cut for a bit while I cut. We're both cutting. You're still rolling, so I'll roll [Music] too. Now it's time for a quick test to see if we're onto something here. Our gaming rig is sitting at about 50 DB from this location. And this is not a scientific test by any stretch, but let's go ahead and take our second piece of P it and put it there. 3 DB, however, on this side, we drop more like 7 to 8. And that's before we add anything to deal with the reflections that are allowing sound to escape from our box, not to mention the gaping hole on the top. While we were at home desperate, we came up with a plan.

for that too, this stuff is really cool. It's a fiberboard sound installation that's made out of recycled wood. And before all you building material nerds go, But Li, I know it's only readily available in Canada, but there are alternatives stateside. Just look for a product called Sound Stop from Blue Ridge Fiberboard. Big home improvement stores should carry it, but if not, they'll probably have some generic acoustic insulation soundboard that'll also work. Just be aware that both of those options are thinner than Sonopan, so they may be slightly less effective. You can use power tools to cut this stuff, but we find it works pretty well with just a nice sharp blade and a utility knife. Perfect, slap her in. And as for sizing, our main concern, uh-oh, is getting a good friction fit. Nice, sorry, our main concern is making sure that any hard surface that sound could bounce off of is coated in this stuff. 11 by 24 for our next one. Oh, this is kind of short. Jordan, that's okay. All right, if you're

good with it. I'm good with it. Oh, you put a hole in it to the cables. That makes sense. Is it the world's most elegant solution? Yes, a little bit. No. If they wanted that, they could have tuned into DIY Perk's version of this. Oh, wait, he doesn't have one. Meanwhile, he's watching this going, You know, a bloody boy, they. I would have done it better. You know, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on, everyone. Quiet for a second. Quiet for a second. Damn, that's a mic drop. Get it, 'cause it's a microphone. I dropped it. I probably shouldn't have, technically, but okay. It's as quiet on the open side now as it was on the closed side before. Now, okay, I'm going to be about the same distance. Okay, let's see this side. Holy crap, we're down to about 40. Wow, and it gets even better. To prevent hot air from just recirculating inside of our box and encourage fresh air to be pulled in through the front of our baffle and then expelled from the back.

we're going to add these little foam strips. You can use basically anything you have lying around as long as you can pack it in here at the front. Oh dang, no, I'm not going to. I'm not even going to get a full two pieces in there. Okay, front's all sealed up. Oh yeah, I can feel the flow. Those fans could end up working a little bit harder, but wow, damn, I don't even need the decimal meter. Do you hear that? Damn, wow, we still have some work to do cleaning up the aesthetic. We have some ideas involving a vinyl wrap and uh, oh, I don't know, maybe putting the sides here on the edges like we had originally intended, but let's do a quick after test. That is a flipping huge reduction, and we may be even getting to the point where we are below the noise floor of this room. Hold on, I'm going to go around to this corner, and then we'll pull the plug and see what the actual noise floor is in here. We're below 35. All right, kill the

power. We're still marginally above the noise floor, but not by much. Huge improvement. The question is, how much does it impact thermals? Let's run it overnight and find [Music] out. Okay. [Music] It looks kind of cool now. I mean, don't look that close. No, back up, back up. Wait, wait, wait. We're reacting to how it looks, but it's on. Yep, it's on. Now, when I didn't note the scale of this graph, I was like, Oh, wow, GPU temperature sure went up a lot. No, but once I saw it, yeah, this is great. Half a degree, right? Like, this is legitimately as quiet, if not better, than having your PC in a completely different room. Okay, I had some idea that this was going to work, you know, way better than we thought it otherwise. Why would I green light the project? Yeah, but that's insane. But this is flipping awesome. And all told, for somewhere in the neighborhood of $40 to $100. And what's cool about this is this principle can apply to all kinds of

noise-making things in your life. In fact, the real inspiration for this was when we had a Transformer that was on one of our sets a number of years ago, and I was looking for a way to quiet it down. I was like, Oh, well, could we use like these principles? Huge difference. I just wasn't sure if it would apply to a PC. So effectively, Hey, Sebastian, check this out. This is Sebastian from the Creater Warehouse engineering team. Okay, we, I am the tallest Sebastian. We made a box, and you might not be that impressed until I go like this. Ooh, and it's gone. It's gone. That's pretty good. He's not that impressed, but he's kind of course. The thermals don't tell us the performance story. Let's have a look at our GPU clock speeds over time. Okay, that looks pretty darn stable. That's great, 85 MHz variance. Now that we know performance isn't impacted, it's time to bring our setup into our in-progress DIY sound isolation chamber. It's not perfect, but it's a fair bit

quieter than the workshop. Let's start by measuring the sound floor. About 33, I guess you'll just kind of have to take my word for it. One of the things that's in progress is our mount for our decibel meter. One moment, please. All right, Jordan, want to turn the system back on? Yeah, we're at 100% fan. Perfect. Dude, 42, 43 dB from a meter away. That's a loud computer. Yeah, man, you'll even be able to hear this on the mic, I bet. Ready, one, two, three. Okay, everybody, back down to barely above the noise floor. See, the thing is, I'd love to just put the meter closer and to do a fudge test. You totally can do that. We could have done that, but technically you're supposed to be like a meter away. So, in a nutshell, it's way quieter. And thanks for watching. And check out this message from our sponsor, Acronis. If you run a business, your IT infrastructure is probably the backbone of your entire operation, whether you have one location or

multiple locations with aonis cyber protect, you can relax knowing that you're covered by Cutting Edge backup security and Disaster Recovery technology, all integrated into one platform. Their lightning recovery is great for multi-side environment and is powered by Machine learning to keep your data safe. You can manage remote endpoints, run vulnerability assessments, and handle patch management all from one place. Plus, with oneclick self-service recovery, anyone can fix it issues quickly without relying on Central it. So, simplify your business's data protection and cyber security while saving money that you would have otherwise spent dealing with multiple vendors by checking out a chonus cyber protect using the link in the video description. Looking back on the project, if we did this over, I'd like to make it a little on the smaller side, and I think it would have been worth the investment to go with it, even just like a pine project board compared to the plywood that we used. Then we could have put a little bit of like, I don't know, Danish oil on it or something. It could have looked more like

a piece of furniture, and less like a piece of debranded skin. Who make good skins, you know. Anyway, if you guys enjoyed this video, why not check out the one where I put a computer in a completely separate room in order to achieve much the same effect. This is kind of better.

Silence ANY Gaming PC for $25 and Some Wood

Linus Tech Tips is a passionate team of "professionally curious" experts in consumer technology and video production who aim to educate and entertain.


Linus Tech Tips

DIY: Simple and Affordable Gaming PC Soundproofing

Silence your gaming PC without spending too much money or effort by building u-shaped soundproofing shells.

The design allows airflow while effectively reducing noise, using basic tools and a single sheet of plywood.

The project offers a cost-effective and creative way to quiet down your computer without impacting performance.

Using the right size bit for pre-drilling is listed on the side of the package.

Cutting slots in the plywood allows for passive airflow or the option to mount fans for better ventilation.

Soundproofing the box with fiberboard sound insulation or alternative options can help reduce sound escape and reflections.

DIY Project: Reducing PC Noise with Simple Solutions

Putting a hole in the cables can significantly reduce PC noise.

Adding foam strips to the PC box helps to encourage fresh air flow and further reduce noise.

With a minimal cost of $40 to $100, this simple DIY project can effectively decrease PC noise levels.

Innovating PC Noise Reduction with the Creator Warehouse Team

The Creator Warehouse engineering team developed a box to reduce PC noise, impressively lowering the sound floor to 33 dB.

By optimizing the PC's thermals, they were able to achieve stable performance with minimal impact on noise.

The team also worked on a mount for their decibel meter and successfully created a much quieter setup in their DIY sound isolation chamber.

Chonus Cyber Protect offers integrated backup security and disaster recovery technology.

It provides lightning-fast recovery for multi-site environments using machine learning and allows for remote endpoint management and self-service recovery.

Chonus Cyber Protect simplifies data protection and cybersecurity management, saving money and offering a comprehensive solution for businesses.