The Sound Dampening Foam Test: A Dive into Case Design and Acoustics

As I worked on my latest project, I couldn't help but wonder if sound dampening foam was truly necessary for a quiet system. In this video, I decided to put the question to rest once and for all by removing the foam from my case and testing its acoustic properties.

The first step in the experiment involved disassembling the case and carefully peeling off the sound dampening foam. It's good to know that it's glued on, making it easy to remove without causing any damage to the surrounding components. The foam is also a single thick piece, which made it simple to work with. I was relieved to find that it didn't smell particularly strong, as some cases can sometimes have a lingering scent.

With the foam removed, I completed the first panel of my case build and moved on to the next one, hoping that this would be an easier task than the previous one. The clean surface of the panels provided a stark contrast to the sound dampening foam, making it clear that I was starting from scratch. As I worked on the panels, I couldn't help but feel a sense of excitement and anticipation for the results of my experiment.

The final step in the process involved reinstalling the panels and running an audio test to compare the acoustic properties of the case with and without the foam. The graphs revealed some interesting insights into how the sound dampening material affected the overall noise level of the system. The ambient variation in decibels above audible (DBA) was reduced significantly when the foam was present, but the actual difference between cases with and without foam was only 0.9 DBA.

One of the most surprising findings from my experiment was that the audio was actually quieter when the side panels were open, compared to when they were closed. This suggests that the sound dampening material is helping to absorb and dampen more of the system's noise when it's present, rather than when it's not. The only explanation for this difference is that there's no other area for the audio to escape from when the side panels are open, allowing it to disperse throughout the case.

The most interesting part of my experiment came when I turned up the GPU fan to 100% and tested the acoustic properties again. The results were consistent with my previous findings: the system was significantly quieter without the foam. However, this also highlighted another aspect of my experiment that I hadn't initially considered - the impact of the fans on the overall noise level of the system. In this case, the difference between cases with and without foam was much greater when the fans were at full speed.

In conclusion, while the sound dampening foam did reduce the acoustic properties of the system, it wasn't a game-changer in terms of quietness. However, it did help to absorb and dampen more of the system's noise, particularly when it was present. As I mentioned earlier, choosing the right hardware components is often more important than the case design when building a quiet system. In this case, using quality fans at lower RPMs, avoiding AIOs, and opting for custom GPUs with larger heat sinks can all help to reduce the overall noise level of the system.

The experiment also highlights the importance of considering the acoustic properties of your case when designing it. The rear of the case was significantly louder without side panels, suggesting that there's nowhere for the audio to escape from when they're closed. This information could be useful for future case builders looking to optimize their design for quietness.

Finally, I want to thank everyone who watched this video and joined me on this experiment. It may have been a little long, but I hope it provided some valuable insights into the world of sound dampening foam and case design. Until next time, when we'll be exploring another aspect of PC building, stay quiet!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwell hello there I finally got a sound level meter so that we can test to see if sound Ting material on PC cases actually works this going to be non-scientific but before we get into that I want to establish a sound reference as to how loud certain things are around the household in our everyday life so guys I'm super excited to hear the difference between sound dampening material inside a PC case versus no sound happening at all and this is going to be non-scientific we're just going to have fun with it I'm excited hope you guys are too let's begin right after this it's time to try something new with the K900 M mechanical keyboard by zan with kale Brown switches onboard macro recordings and absolutely gorgeous RGB illumination with the white frame even your fog will go nuts check it out in the description below all right so the test subject for this one is the Silverstone K7 from the KU series and I'm using it because it's one of the only cases that I have that has a completely closed off interior and also it is silen focus so we have this really thick noise dampening material applied on all of the side panels so on the rear side panel on the front and top and the main side here and for the fans I am basically populating every single fan slot inside of it so I'm keeping the two stock fans that came with the case I'm also populating two more 140 M fans at the top uh 140 M fan for exhaust and also there's the one fan for the CPU Cooler plus the GPU and so that is six fans in total I'm using the be quiet silent Wings 3 140 M fans because I love these fans they are quiet so it's not like I'm cheating and stuff but I will be stressing them out thing is having two fans for the top is totally Overkill but the whole idea is to introduce as much air flow and noise as possible and uh basically see what happens and to just quickly prove so we have sound dampening on the top on the front and both side panels so this is how the case comes stock the interesting thing about this material is it's the thickest I've ever come across on the PC enclosure as you can see it's like almost as thick as my finger usually sound dampening material is like very thin piece that is dense and uh just kind of Applied on the side panels but here Silverstone has gone a different approach where we can actually see those dimples and I guess they would help to uh capture the sound waves so they vibrate in between them and will not allow the sound to escape but this material is interesting it's almost memory foam like and it's very porous looking it's almost like if you were to pour water on here it will just absorb everything so the rear side panel is closed and the main build is complete all right so I got my four stations for audio set up so one in front here measuring from how much noise escaping from this side panel we got one behind the monitor over here so facing the rear to see if there's any difference and how much noise is escaping the case based on the the airf flow from the one exhaust fan we have one at the front over here and one over here measuring to see if there's any audible difference from the rear side panel so everything is on equal distance from each other so now the computer is off my phone is on silent everything else in this room is completely off aside from my light but I don't think that's making any noise anyway I'm going to do three tests first of all is to do an Ambient sound so turn off the system and measure the audible DBA at all these four locations without the system on I'm going to then turn on the system and measure what the DBA is without all the side panels and then uh put on all the side panels measure that and then take out all the sound dampening materials like literally rip it off the side panels and see if there's any progression and how that DBA changes wish me luck and one more thing I want to mention is the sound Metter level is on the little tripod I will not be touching it during its recording time all right so the first s stage is complete but I realized I made a mistake even though all the fans inside the system are running at 100% fan speed damn you be quiet fans you're way too quiet for this test the GPU was idling and therefore I want to increase the fan speed on the GTX 1070 to 100% to give this system as much noise as possible to potentially give me a greater difference between when side panels are on and off and the uh sound dampening material uh removed as well all right no turning back let's get rid of all the sound dampening foam it's good thing it's kind of just glued on there and it's all one thick piece so I feel like I can just peel it off it doesn't smell so that's a good thing all right first panel complete next panel hoping that this would be the easier one for the big panels oh yeah clean bam so the only thing left to do is put those panels back on and redo the audio test so just looking at the graphs the ambient variation in DBA is probably due to different heights of the microphone on where it was placed so that's understandable but there is very unique uh thing that I've discovered here and that is when the panels are off and we're recording from the rear the audio is actually quieter when the side panels are not on the case and I'm thinking that is because when the side panels are on any audio that escapes goes through the back versus if the side panels are open the audio kind of disperses throughout the case and can exit wherever it wants and therefore the case is the loudest at the rear when the the side panels are completely closed because there's no other area for the audio to escape cool so the Moment of Truth has come here's the graph uh and you can see that without any sound dampening foam the general system noise levels is higher the DBA has increased not by much by a little bit more so on the rear and on the left sides versus right and the front but it has risen and just to make sure that I was accurate I tested the ambient room sound as well and my results were identical to what I tested a few hours prior so that any uh differentiation that you will see without any foam removed is associated with the foam removed and not other factors inside the room but more interestingly when I turn a GPU flan to 100% this is really cool because on all sides we see about a 0.9 DBA increase uh very consistently as you can see from rear right front and the left and this is pretty interesting because as the system gets louder it seems like the sound dampening material helps to absorb and dampen more of that sound versus is when the system is a little bit quieter so in our example we shaved about a .9 DBA with the GPU at 100% with the foam installed versus about a 0.5 to 6 DBA uh with just the fans at 100% with the GPU at idle but with all that said the DBA difference between foam and no foam is only .9 DBA so that is well within margin of air even though I tried to reduce the variables that could impact those tests uh and so I still think that um you know the foam quantifiably has proven to reduce and dampen some of the sound but uh we cannot ignore the fact that mathematics tell us that if we are you know in that margin of airor that something else could be the factor in uh tinkering with our results so what does that mean for your future case buying decision if you are going the silent route I've always said that you know choosing the right Hardware components is more important if you you're building a completely silent system so choosing quality fans at a lower RPM maybe avoiding aios so you avoid any pump noises and stuff like that going with a custom GPU that has a larger heat sink so maybe doesn't even spin at like idle and low load situations but that is not to say that the case is not important and as I've proven today that slight reduction in the DBA levels uh with the sound ding material installed inside the case is something and will help to overall reduce the noise level of your system so guys I hope you enjoy this video coming along with me to experience this project together uh made sure that my ambient acoustic levels were the same as when I started to eliminate any potentially other noise that was introduced into the room so I'm happy that the ambient acoustic levels were exactly the same as when I started and so that leads me to believe that the foam the sound dampening foam actually works even though it's only a slight um you know difference of a 0.9 DBA at full system load with GPU and a whole all those fans at 100% the most interesting finding for me was the DBA readout from the rear without any side panels versus when the side panels were on as that shows you that there's more audio or the rear is louder when the side panels are on because I guess there's nowhere for the sound to escape aside from anything from the back uh and that was cool so you know maybe potentially will help you to place your case accordingly based on this data so guys I'm Dmitri with how connects thanks so much for watching this one's a little bit of a long one but I hope you enjoyed and we'll see you in next videowell hello there I finally got a sound level meter so that we can test to see if sound Ting material on PC cases actually works this going to be non-scientific but before we get into that I want to establish a sound reference as to how loud certain things are around the household in our everyday life so guys I'm super excited to hear the difference between sound dampening material inside a PC case versus no sound happening at all and this is going to be non-scientific we're just going to have fun with it I'm excited hope you guys are too let's begin right after this it's time to try something new with the K900 M mechanical keyboard by zan with kale Brown switches onboard macro recordings and absolutely gorgeous RGB illumination with the white frame even your fog will go nuts check it out in the description below all right so the test subject for this one is the Silverstone K7 from the KU series and I'm using it because it's one of the only cases that I have that has a completely closed off interior and also it is silen focus so we have this really thick noise dampening material applied on all of the side panels so on the rear side panel on the front and top and the main side here and for the fans I am basically populating every single fan slot inside of it so I'm keeping the two stock fans that came with the case I'm also populating two more 140 M fans at the top uh 140 M fan for exhaust and also there's the one fan for the CPU Cooler plus the GPU and so that is six fans in total I'm using the be quiet silent Wings 3 140 M fans because I love these fans they are quiet so it's not like I'm cheating and stuff but I will be stressing them out thing is having two fans for the top is totally Overkill but the whole idea is to introduce as much air flow and noise as possible and uh basically see what happens and to just quickly prove so we have sound dampening on the top on the front and both side panels so this is how the case comes stock the interesting thing about this material is it's the thickest I've ever come across on the PC enclosure as you can see it's like almost as thick as my finger usually sound dampening material is like very thin piece that is dense and uh just kind of Applied on the side panels but here Silverstone has gone a different approach where we can actually see those dimples and I guess they would help to uh capture the sound waves so they vibrate in between them and will not allow the sound to escape but this material is interesting it's almost memory foam like and it's very porous looking it's almost like if you were to pour water on here it will just absorb everything so the rear side panel is closed and the main build is complete all right so I got my four stations for audio set up so one in front here measuring from how much noise escaping from this side panel we got one behind the monitor over here so facing the rear to see if there's any difference and how much noise is escaping the case based on the the airf flow from the one exhaust fan we have one at the front over here and one over here measuring to see if there's any audible difference from the rear side panel so everything is on equal distance from each other so now the computer is off my phone is on silent everything else in this room is completely off aside from my light but I don't think that's making any noise anyway I'm going to do three tests first of all is to do an Ambient sound so turn off the system and measure the audible DBA at all these four locations without the system on I'm going to then turn on the system and measure what the DBA is without all the side panels and then uh put on all the side panels measure that and then take out all the sound dampening materials like literally rip it off the side panels and see if there's any progression and how that DBA changes wish me luck and one more thing I want to mention is the sound Metter level is on the little tripod I will not be touching it during its recording time all right so the first s stage is complete but I realized I made a mistake even though all the fans inside the system are running at 100% fan speed damn you be quiet fans you're way too quiet for this test the GPU was idling and therefore I want to increase the fan speed on the GTX 1070 to 100% to give this system as much noise as possible to potentially give me a greater difference between when side panels are on and off and the uh sound dampening material uh removed as well all right no turning back let's get rid of all the sound dampening foam it's good thing it's kind of just glued on there and it's all one thick piece so I feel like I can just peel it off it doesn't smell so that's a good thing all right first panel complete next panel hoping that this would be the easier one for the big panels oh yeah clean bam so the only thing left to do is put those panels back on and redo the audio test so just looking at the graphs the ambient variation in DBA is probably due to different heights of the microphone on where it was placed so that's understandable but there is very unique uh thing that I've discovered here and that is when the panels are off and we're recording from the rear the audio is actually quieter when the side panels are not on the case and I'm thinking that is because when the side panels are on any audio that escapes goes through the back versus if the side panels are open the audio kind of disperses throughout the case and can exit wherever it wants and therefore the case is the loudest at the rear when the the side panels are completely closed because there's no other area for the audio to escape cool so the Moment of Truth has come here's the graph uh and you can see that without any sound dampening foam the general system noise levels is higher the DBA has increased not by much by a little bit more so on the rear and on the left sides versus right and the front but it has risen and just to make sure that I was accurate I tested the ambient room sound as well and my results were identical to what I tested a few hours prior so that any uh differentiation that you will see without any foam removed is associated with the foam removed and not other factors inside the room but more interestingly when I turn a GPU flan to 100% this is really cool because on all sides we see about a 0.9 DBA increase uh very consistently as you can see from rear right front and the left and this is pretty interesting because as the system gets louder it seems like the sound dampening material helps to absorb and dampen more of that sound versus is when the system is a little bit quieter so in our example we shaved about a .9 DBA with the GPU at 100% with the foam installed versus about a 0.5 to 6 DBA uh with just the fans at 100% with the GPU at idle but with all that said the DBA difference between foam and no foam is only .9 DBA so that is well within margin of air even though I tried to reduce the variables that could impact those tests uh and so I still think that um you know the foam quantifiably has proven to reduce and dampen some of the sound but uh we cannot ignore the fact that mathematics tell us that if we are you know in that margin of airor that something else could be the factor in uh tinkering with our results so what does that mean for your future case buying decision if you are going the silent route I've always said that you know choosing the right Hardware components is more important if you you're building a completely silent system so choosing quality fans at a lower RPM maybe avoiding aios so you avoid any pump noises and stuff like that going with a custom GPU that has a larger heat sink so maybe doesn't even spin at like idle and low load situations but that is not to say that the case is not important and as I've proven today that slight reduction in the DBA levels uh with the sound ding material installed inside the case is something and will help to overall reduce the noise level of your system so guys I hope you enjoy this video coming along with me to experience this project together uh made sure that my ambient acoustic levels were the same as when I started to eliminate any potentially other noise that was introduced into the room so I'm happy that the ambient acoustic levels were exactly the same as when I started and so that leads me to believe that the foam the sound dampening foam actually works even though it's only a slight um you know difference of a 0.9 DBA at full system load with GPU and a whole all those fans at 100% the most interesting finding for me was the DBA readout from the rear without any side panels versus when the side panels were on as that shows you that there's more audio or the rear is louder when the side panels are on because I guess there's nowhere for the sound to escape aside from anything from the back uh and that was cool so you know maybe potentially will help you to place your case accordingly based on this data so guys I'm Dmitri with how connects thanks so much for watching this one's a little bit of a long one but I hope you enjoyed and we'll see you in next video\n"