I’ve got a computer that has this really annoying rattle that occurs every now and then. I guess it must occur when all the hard drives and fans all happen to sync up for a few moments and create excess vibration, which causes some of the metal pieces on the chassis to rub and produce the annoying rattle sound. This is a real pain and I usually just give the PC a light whack on the top to make it go away.

Out of the blue this weekend, I remembered how we used to deal with rattling doors way back in the day when me and my buddies would put ridiculously loud stereos in our cars: Dynamat. This stuff is like a magical rattle silencer. I stopped by a local car audio shop and got a door kit for speakers which consisted of two 10″x10″ chunks of Xtreme Dynamat.

Application is pretty simple, you just cut to the size/shape you want and apply. It’s best to use a small roller of some sort to really stick this stuff to the case. Once it’s on…it’s not coming off. It’s imporant to put enough Dynamat on the case to dampen the rattling, but not too much, as it can act as an insulator and make your PC run warmer than before the application of the Dynamat.

I decided to focus most of the Dynamat around the top of the computer and near the power supply, since that’s where it sounded like most of the vibration noise was coming from. After applying all the Dynamat, the computer actually does sound a bit quieter, but most importantly, that annoying rattle is gone!

Here’s a small gallery of pics from the installation (hold mouse over pic for description):

Update: I just discovered that Dynamat actually makes kits specifically for computers. They use the same material, but they are pre-cut to a different size or you can buy a roll of the stuff. I’ve never seen the kits in any stores, but apparently they do exist: Dynamat Computer Kits

I really like the illustration of the loud, angry, swearing computer before Dynamat and the happy humming computer after Dynamat!