Will sub damage PC?

[iGPR3]

I'm building a subwoofer soon, using either a rockford fosgate P1S4-12 or P2D4-12. It'll be used for home listening just under my desk, probably only 1-2ft away from my PC. It's gonna be under my desk until I get a car, and then I'll buy a car amp and hook it up in there if I have the space. This means I'm using my little home amp that can do 120W/channel into 8ohms (specs doesn't list it but I'd assume that's into 8ohms). A sub modelling program called WinISD tells me that, on 100W, it peaks at 110db. Will that rattle and shake my PC enough to damage any hardware considering I have 2 HDDs or will I be fine?

[iGPR3]

1 minute ago, 8tg said:

I would not put a system with hdds anywhere near a subwoofer, that’s probably the one thing you’d want to avoid entirely when it comes to a modern pc and vibration.

Everything else would generally be fine, edge connectors and power connectors and all that won’t have any issue with it, tension mount mechanisms like the cpu cooler will be fine, but hard drives are heavily impacted by vibration.

Would a hard drive have issues if the sub were 3ft or so away? And what if it's powered off?

[Bitter]

Look into magnetically shielding the subwoofer magnet, the enclosure, or the PC. I put some steel conduit boxes on the backs of some un-shielded speakers that are on a desk very near a PC, that cut the magnetic field from the magnet by almost 2/3 at the outside of the cabinets in 5 of 6 directions. Field strength falls off with distance fairly quickly, use a magnetometer app on your phone to measure field strength and compare to allowable limits for the hardware in question, shield if needed.

[iGPR3]

30 minutes ago, Bitter said:

Look into magnetically shielding the subwoofer magnet, the enclosure, or the PC. I put some steel conduit boxes on the backs of some un-shielded speakers that are on a desk very near a PC, that cut the magnetic field from the magnet by almost 2/3 at the outside of the cabinets in 5 of 6 directions. Field strength falls off with distance fairly quickly, use a magnetometer app on your phone to measure field strength and compare to allowable limits for the hardware in question, shield if needed.

To be honest, I wouldn't have thought that the magnet would have such a massive impact. I plan on putting it below the PC but I could put it at the other side of my desk if the magnet will be such an issue. The P1 and P2 have 1.3 and 2kg magnets respectively, so I don't think they'll be strong enough to interfere with the drive. My biggest worry would be the sub shaking the drive and rattling it about. Of course I will test magnetism just in case but I would've thought in a 3/4" enclosure it would be fine for the most part.

[Bitter]

31 minutes ago, iGPR3 said:

To be honest, I wouldn't have thought that the magnet would have such a massive impact. I plan on putting it below the PC but I could put it at the other side of my desk if the magnet will be such an issue. The P1 and P2 have 1.3 and 2kg magnets respectively, so I don't think they'll be strong enough to interfere with the drive. My biggest worry would be the sub shaking the drive and rattling it about. Of course I will test magnetism just in case but I would've thought in a 3/4" enclosure it would be fine for the most part.

Well wood doesn't block magnetism at all so...

A few feet away is likely fine, vibrations can be dampened to an extent but spinning drives are not a fan of them. My desk speakers are on rubber feet, my sub sits on carpet, my desk is on carpet, and the case is on rubber feet. Everything is fairly isolated. My media PC is near a shielded sub enclosure but vibrations could be an issue since it's physically very close. I've been thinking about re-arranging the room to avoid that issue.

[Cocococo]

For sound and comfort reasons i'd really advise finding anywhere else your subwoofer could sit, sub placement isn't super important, however if it sits under your desk you'll feel bassnotes crawling up your legs (this feels super weird) and you'll have a harder time isolating vibrations from the desk, this could damage your hard drives. Plus you'll get more legroom with the sub in a more conventional place

[Blue4130]

Listen to audio at reasonable levels and problem solved. You will suffer hearing damage before your harddrives have issues.

[NinJake]

17 hours ago, Blue4130 said:

Listen to audio at reasonable levels and problem solved. You will suffer hearing damage before your harddrives have issues.

WHAT?

[Bitter]

2 hours ago, NinJake said:

WHAT?

I think it's a challenge. I'm pretty sure the 175W ported 10 in my living room could damage a hard drive before it would deafen me, but before either I'm fairly certain someone would call in either a noise complaint or report a tremor to the USGS. It doesn't get much below 20hz but down around 30hz it's still strong and can really shake a building pretty good .

[NinJake]

Yeah it was a joke @Bitter lol. I will chime in and say I have a sub under a desk, the PC is up on top the desk and it's been running fine. When it comes to potential vibration damage, Try to use anything with a bit of shock absorption between the sub and PC. If you have a mechanical hard drive in the rig, it's certainly possible the vibrations "may" cause some issues down the line but I highly doubt you'd be able to sustain a loud enough subwoofer to actually damage a drive. A simple accidental drop from 6 inches off the ground/desk would most certainly damage the drive more than a subwoofer ever would. (I do still have a mechanical hard drive for bulk storage in my PC as well)

 

Regarding the rest of the components inside the PC, it's possible slight sustained vibrations may slowly loosen the fittings of screws but if you semi-regularly do maintenance on the pc that should void your CPU cooler from falling off.

 

At the end of the day, you'll be fine OP. Enjoy your bass! What car are you planning to put the subs in?

[Heats with Nvidia]

When your little home amp is only specified for 8 Ohms, means you can`t really power it with this amp anyway since your speaker is either 4 or even 2 Ohm, which is too low for your amp. When its a "newer" amp, which for me means, less than 30 years old, its very likely that it will just switch off after a while of listening to music that is too loud. If its older, this might kill it. The 4 Ohm version might work well enough, the 2 Ohm is really low for a hifi amp.

[iGPR3]

7 hours ago, Heats with Nvidia said:

When your little home amp is only specified for 8 Ohms, means you can`t really power it with this amp anyway since your speaker is either 4 or even 2 Ohm, which is too low for your amp. When its a "newer" amp, which for me means, less than 30 years old, its very likely that it will just switch off after a while of listening to music that is too loud. If its older, this might kill it. The 4 Ohm version might work well enough, the 2 Ohm is really low for a hifi amp.

I was considering a dual voice coil sub, the P2D4 from rockford fosgate in particular. I could wire the 2 4ohm coils in series and get an 8ohm resistance and then wire them in parallel for 2ohm in a car.

The sub is just a cheap amazon sub, and it says 4-16ohms through 2x120W channels, so I wouldn't want to put too much power through it at 4ohms. My Pioneers that are supposedly 6ohms, but measure more like 4 after about 5khz, work fine.

 

23 hours ago, NinJake said:

Regarding the rest of the components inside the PC, it's possible slight sustained vibrations may slowly loosen the fittings of screws but if you semi-regularly do maintenance on the pc that should void your CPU cooler from falling off.

 

At the end of the day, you'll be fine OP. Enjoy your bass! What car are you planning to put the subs in?

If vibration is a big enough issue then I can always put some rubber feet under the sub, but I'll be bracing the enclosure to hell so that it doesn't vibrate as much.

 

I don't actually have a car yet, but in a couple years when I do get one I'll be popping it in there. Hopefully it'll fit okay because I'm gonna be riding around in the cheapest, smallest hatch under the sun because of the UK insurance prices. I haven't built it yet, might do in the next couple months, might just wait for Christmas.

 

On 5/27/2024 at 10:16 PM, Cocococo said:

For sound and comfort reasons i'd really advise finding anywhere else your subwoofer could sit, sub placement isn't super important, however if it sits under your desk you'll feel bassnotes crawling up your legs (this feels super weird) and you'll have a harder time isolating vibrations from the desk, this could damage your hard drives. Plus you'll get more legroom with the sub in a more conventional place

I've got very little room under my desk now, I literally just picked up my pair of old Pioneer CS 595s today for £20 and that was the only place they could go. Not much room for a sub but I could make it work somewhere.