Remember the good old days of overclocking and performance computing, when everyone was building faster hotter boxes with more and more exotic cooling measures, and noise be damned. You think I'm going to say those days are over, don't you? Well they're not. We're still doing it. But the good old days are a long way back, and while we like our overclocked screaming demons, many of us are getting sick and tired of the amount of noise they make!

Thankfully companies like Akasa came along, and offered low cost easy to work with ways to combat the noise problem. In the case of Akasa, it's their PAX.mate Acoustic Absorption Mats. I say easy to work with because the PAX.mate product is foam based, and therefore easy to cut and trim to the shapes and dimensions of your computer case. The other option is Dynamat, a tarry rubber based mat that is difficult to work with and isn't really meant for computers.

For the purpose of this review, the crew over at our sponsor CoolerGuys hooked us up with a PAX.mate package (thanks guys!). Included is enough to cover the interior of a standard mid tower case on the top, bottom, and side panels. At $21.95, it's quite a good deal, adding very little to the cost of a noisy case. But what does it look like and how does it perform? Let's find out.