If those In-laws are Japanese, they should be used to sounds.. pachinko parlors spinning like a banshee on crack, cars honking, bosozoku whizzing by, kids screaming...

The tiny burrrrr of the PC should be almost therapeutic for them


Just yanking your pud. Are the hard drives making all the noise or is it the case fans? If it is the hard drives making that much noise, then those HDD case enclosures might do the trick. I know maxtor makes a hard drive silencing mode or something like that. You have to check in your hard drive properties and see if there is a setting for something of that nature.

Where is your PC placed? Is it setting up on a desk? Or is it underneath?

I used to put my PC in the desk cabinet. Silenced it down quite a bit. At night, I'd shut the cabinet door and the sound would nearly disappear. I guess you might have to sound proof the cabinet if you want the sound to totally vanish.