Using Linux to quieten your computer

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Optical drives

Modern CD- and DVD-rom drives spin very rapidly causing much noise. Compromising speed to lower the noise can be done by lowering the drive's speed. There are a few ways of doing this:

hdparm -E [speed] [cdrom device]

echo current_speed:4 > /proc/ide/[cdrom device]/settings

setcd -x [speed] [cdrom device]

Another way is increasing the readahead. Note that adjusting this is tricky since it might result in the drive spinning down after a read just to spin up again. This acceleration could cause a lot more noise then the drive simply continuously reading the disk.

hdparm -a[sector readahead] [cdrom device]

echo file_readahead:[bytes to read] > /proc/ide/[cdrom device]/settings

Duron/Athlon (XP) processors

Due to some odd and mysterious reason AMD Socket A CPUs don't save power when they are idle (at least not as much as possible) unless you explicitly tell them too.

These processors can run A LOT cooler if you ask them too. The intricate instructions and explanations are found in the Athlon Powersaving HOWTO, or you could just use athcool

System Bell

See turn off the system bell.