A Silent PC Solution? 485
An anonymous reader writes "Fed up with the monotonous whirring emanating from your PC? Well for once, someone with an actual knowledge of acoustics demonstrates what can be done AND backs it up with measurements!"
Oh just shut up you whiner (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Oh just shut up you whiner (Score:3, Interesting)
I fell in love with quiet computing when I got my Grape iMac. I was in a quiet room and turned the computer on....and...absolute silence. I'm still impressed by the genius of having that entire machine convection-cooled.
Re:Oh just shut up you whiner (Score:4, Interesting)
I have a week-old G5 dualie, which replaced a convection cooled Sage iMac (around the same general era as your Grape, maybe slightly later.) What blows my mind is that the G5 is quieter than the iMac. The G5 has a much quieter hard disk, and the low-speed fans are really, really quiet.
Brilliant engineering.
Re:Oh just shut up you whiner (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm seeing the value in a very-very-quiet-if-not-silent computer more all the time. I spend a lot of time doing production on live recordings, and just lately, the noise has been getting to me more than usual, making it hard to determine what's background noise on the recording, and what's fan noise from the (ill-placed) CPU reflecting back at me from the corner behind the desk. I could definitely improved things by shuffling the setup around, but it wouldn't really be worka
Re:Oh just shut up you whiner (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oh just shut up you whiner (Score:5, Funny)
AIK
Re:Oh just shut up you whiner (Score:5, Funny)
People are always asking me "How can you work in here? Doesn't that noise drive you Nuts?" I tell them: If the noise stops is when I'd go nuts!
That said, I'm obviously not working in a recording studio.
Re:Oh just shut up you whiner (Score:5, Interesting)
returning to the city, I could not sleep for weeks, and I was highly irritated by the drastic difference in background noise levels. There it was almost zero DB at 10pm outside... the kind of silence you feel and that makes you notice that you can hear the amount of noise your head makes.
now, mentioning that, I am in a server room with 4 machines right now, 6 72" tall server racks sitting there full of blade severs with a couple of the newer big servers sounding like vaccuum cleaners running. I also have 4 TV's on right now with the sound on to different levels.
but, when you get used to quiet, you crave it and curse the noise of civilization.
Re:Oh just shut up you whiner (Score:4, Interesting)
I just continued this on. Of course now, I suppose if someone were to break into my house I'd never hear it...but that's why I have my dog...vicious little blighter that he is.
Quieter cases (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately my house is in the middle of major renovation, so my office is temporarily located in the basement. Now I have all the noise from the water heater (power vent) and boiler. My new office design has the systems in a back-open cubbie under the desk with a smoked-glass door (kinda like a stereo cabinet.) That should all but eliminate the remaining noise. It's too bad most periphereals have such short cables.
My noisy servers are in another basement room - one with 4' thick granite walls so it stays nice and cool year round (and a higher humidity level for less static.) I don't hear them at all
Re:Easy solution (Score:4, Funny)
Get yerself born in the 1950's. Go to concerts(1) by the Who, Led Zeppelin, Cream, etc. Buy headphones, get stoned, and listen to the headphones with the volume cranked up all the way. Head banging might help.
Nowadays, I don't hear my PC at all. I don't hear much of anything, come to think of it.
Headphones are an even better solution.... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Headphones are an even better solution.... (Score:3, Interesting)
My machine is nearly as loud as an airplane, and I can hear it from the other end of my house. Personally I find it comforting, but headhones wouldn't solve the problem if I did want it to be a little quieter in here.
Now for those working in an office, how many of you really have loud computers that would need this sort of silent PC solution? Headphones would
Re:Headphones are an even better solution.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Turn it off?
I've gone to great lengths to build a quiet PC, but the hum of it is loud enough that I sleep better with it off.
Re:Headphones are an even better solution.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Turn it off?
I'm sure my family and friends who have email addresses at my domain would really like not being able to send or receive mail for 8 hours each night.
Re:Headphones are an even better solution.... (Score:3, Funny)
I have got almost 30 days uptime with my crappy winxp box. You want me to ruin that just for my sleeping enjoyment?
Hell just today something called lsass.exe decided to crash and my computer had the nerve to tell me that it was going to shut down. I nipped that one right in the bud (shutdown
Re:Headphones are an even better solution.... (Score:5, Funny)
Have kids. Then there is no way is any PC noise going to keep you awake.
Re:Headphones are an even better solution.... (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, they would, if you bought the right ones [bose.com].
Re:Headphones are an even better solution.... (Score:3, Funny)
A real silent PC solution? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:A real silent PC solution? (Score:3, Funny)
SIlence is a pipe dream for me (Score:5, Informative)
I have a Zalman flower on the processor, replaced my northbridge fan with a passively cooled heatsink, fitted two 'silent' YS-Tech fans for intake and outtake (with plastic vibration-reducing rings!), and each one is connected with a 12V->10V converter to reduce the speed a bit.
Heh, well I still can't sleep next to the thing when it's on. There must actually be some phantom device in there making noise.
What *affordable* things have you
Re:SIlence is a pipe dream for me (Score:5, Informative)
Re:SIlence is a pipe dream for me (Score:5, Informative)
Have you browsed, for example, a Some of the websites dedicated to silent PC's [silentpcreview.com]?
The one I linked has a recommended page where they give noise to performance. For hard drives, the far and ahead winner is the Seagate Barracuda IV which is apparently discontinued. Your PSU is also generally one of the largest sources of noise on your whole machine, what do you use?
Re:SIlence is a pipe dream for me (Score:3, Informative)
Not true--in fact, there is now a 200gb version.
Re:SIlence is a pipe dream for me (Score:3, Informative)
No, it IS true--the version you speak of is not the Barracuda IV. Seagate introduced the Barracuda IV in 2001, followed by the Barracuda V in 2002. While the Barracuda V received a stay of execution by becoming an early adopter of the SATA interface this year, the Barracuda IV was discontinued. The current iteration of the Barracuda line, the 7200.7 models, are much different acoustically (since noise is the focus of this article) than that that had gone B-IV
Re:SIlence is a pipe dream for me (Score:3, Informative)
My graphics card is sufficiently old that it doesn't have a fan, and I've found the Sonata's case fan can cool the CPUs (2xPIIIs) sufficiently now I've put some bloody gigantic heatsinks on them. I'd probably underclock them if I knew how - the computer's more than fast en
Re:SIlence is a pipe dream for me (Score:5, Informative)
Replace the power supply with a Zalman unit (check Newegg for "noise-free" versions). The Zalman isn't completely silent but it's a very high quality supply (heavy though!) and it adjusts the fan speed automatically. There may be more quiet units out there, I don't know. That Enermax is loud though.
You've got to get rid of your video card's fan. It will be loud when everything else is quieted down. I would seriously consider a fanless video card. This can make a huge difference even when you think it's fairly quiet.
Those hard-drives you're using are loud as hell (and you've got 2 of them!). Go with a single "quiet" drive. I use Seagate but you'll have to look around for what you need (maybe the quiet Maxtor). Last I checked, Western Digital drives are the loudest out there.
2 80mm case fans?? You might try taking one or both out and see how your system does. Improve air-flow through your case and let the power supply do most of the work. This is harder to do and takes lots of experimentation. It is a black art of sorts. You could also try a much larger fan running at low RPM (larger as in at least 160mm+).
Re:SIlence is a pipe dream for me (Score:3, Informative)
* Enermax 350W PSU. Not fan-adjustable.
* 40GB Maxtor D740X.
* 160GB Western Digital WD1600JB.
* 2xYS-Tech 80mm fans reduced to 10V and attached to the case with vibration-reducing spacers.
Anyway, these are probably your culprits. I'd be mostly suspicious of the hard drives, as ball bearing drives (which both of yours are) put out an insane amount of high pitched noise. I also went for a silent system similar to yours, but I cared more about noise than performan
Re:SIlence is a pipe dream for me (Score:5, Informative)
Re:SIlence is a pipe dream for me (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:SIlence is a pipe dream for me (Score:5, Funny)
Undervolting (Score:3, Interesting)
Put noisy harddrives to sleep. (Score:5, Informative)
Windows solution: Use Multiple Power Profiles
- Control Panel > Display > Screensaver > Power. Turn off hard disks after x mins. [I have x set to 21 mins]
- Save As "SLEEP Mode".
- Set x to "Never", Save As "AWAKE Mode".
- Under Advanced, check "Always show icon on taskbar".
Icon appears in System Tray. When awake, use AWAKE Mode power profile and before sleeping, set to SLEEP Mode power profile.
Linux solution: Use hdparm
From the hdparm man page: -y
Force an IDE drive to immediately enter the low power consumption standby mode, usually causing it to spin down.
Write a little script to include the command for all secondary harddrives.
Sometimes the secondary drives are woken up for housekeeping jobs and refuse to spin down again... so it might be necessary to include some spindown times in script.
From the hdparm man page: -Svalue
Set the standby (spindown) timeout for the drive. This value is used by the drive to determine how long to wait (with no disk activity) before turning off the spindle motor to save power. Under such circumstances, the drive may take as long as 30 seconds to respond to a subsequent disk access, though most drives are much quicker. The encoding of the timeout value is somewhat peculiar.
- Value 0 (zero) means no spindown will occour.
- Values from 1 to 240 specify multiples of 5 seconds, for timeouts from 5 seconds to 20 minutes.
- Values from 241 to 251 specify from 1 to 11 units of 30 minutes, for timeouts from 30 minutes to 5.5 hours.
- Value of 252 signifies a timeout of 21 minutes.
- Value of 253 sets a vendor-defined timeout.
- Value of 255 is interpreted as 21 minutes plus 15 seconds.
NOTE: Spinning down drives may cause it not to spin again, so backup data often. NOTE: Defragment windows partition often. Boosts speed and keeps drive relatively quiet.
Re:SIlence is a pipe dream for me (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:SIlence is a pipe dream for me (Score:3, Informative)
If you're using some version of Windows that supports it (XP, Win2k Server, Win2k3) you'll get _vastly_ better results using Remote Desktop Client instead of that POS VNC.
Re:SIlence is a pipe dream for me (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyways, because the driver hook is part of the base VNC code, all of the VNC derivatives have it (TightVNC, Ultr@VNC, etc).
I'd check it out.
Re:SIlence is a pipe dream for me (Score:3, Interesting)
tightVNC, while useful, has a tendency to crash.
Re:Sorry (Score:3, Insightful)
You really want to pump ion-laden air through the guts of your computer? I'm thinking your delicate CMOS-based computer doodads won't like that very much.
Buy a laptop (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Buy a laptop (Score:3, Interesting)
Reports on G5 noise are mixed [insanely-great.com]; apparently it varies alot between machines, or they built some early noisy ones and then fixed it.
Get a Mac (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Get a Mac (Score:5, Informative)
-Benjamin Meyer
-Benjamin Meyer
iMac versus "commodity" PC's (Score:5, Insightful)
For all the snide comments the original iMac got when it came out ("gumdrop," "Volkswagen Beetle") there is no denying the thought that went behind its design when it came to cooling. It worked entirely on convection, and, having no fan, was silent (but for the occassional whir of the hard drive).
The top of the case (where the heat vented) was hot as hell, but if you felt down on the bottom by the motherboard, it was cool to the touch.
No doubt this wasn't possible with the G4 (the iMac was a G3 chip), as it runs much hotter. If Apple gets some cooler running chips from IBM, we may see fanless Macs again.
My new iMac (G4) runs very quiet. The fan does not run constantly, nor at one speed only.
I think there's plenty to be done to reduce noise; but the manufacturers who ship out PC "commodity boxes" couldn't be bothered.
New powerbooks are dead silent. (Score:3, Insightful)
I had a Tibook, it was very loud. It wasn't so loud after I physically disconnected the fan, heh heh. Didn't seem to hurt anything.
I have a new Albook - it is absolutely dead silent. I think I've heard the fan click on once when running a simulation, and even then it was barely perceptible. Suffice it to say
Re:Get a Mac (Score:3, Insightful)
Like the Mac itself, once you tried silent computing, you
seriously, Power Macs *are* real quiet (Score:3, Informative)
Thermoacoustic Cooling System (Score:2, Funny)
It's easy (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It's easy (Score:5, Informative)
one of several mini-ITX boards which take Pentium M
processorts. Try Googling on LV-671 for the above board.
Dynamic site (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't even have to be a particularly loud sound to be distracting - a relatively quiet noise containing a strong tonal component such as a high frequency whine or a low frequency hum can be just as irritating to some people. Fortunately, there are now numerous noise elimination products available to purchase, either as add-on components or devices that replace the existing cooling fans in your system - these components are designed to reduce the sound of a noisy PC to barely a whisper.
Sounds too good to be true? Well, specialist component supplier QuietPC [quietpc.com] certainly doesn't think so and has provided us with a range of silencing products for testing. The effectiveness of each noise-reducing component has been assessed subjectively based on the different acoustic features in each instance, and also from noise measurements taken using a high-quality sound level meter.
So, if you fancy the idea of creating your own near-silent PC but are unsure of the best place to start, or are just keen to learn what the latest IT noise control technology has to offer, you should find this feature interesting.
Re:Dynamic site (Score:4, Funny)
Most of my favourite movies don't have a lot of dialogue.
Re:Dynamic site (Score:3, Interesting)
Sheesh - you'd think active noise cancellation hardware would be cheaper... (Not to mention way, way, cooler!) Er - as in "gadget-like cool", not temperature cool.
Re:Dynamic site (Score:3, Interesting)
Vocalists and musicians who mic their instruments (or who play acoustic instruments with pickups sensitive to background noise).
When you are recording a track and you don't have the luxury of a vocal booth, you will go to great lengths to cut back on background noise, even if said lengths include $1200 cases.
Of course, this opens the debate on why anyone would be recording on a PC, but that's probably best left for another day...
Whoa this is /. (Score:5, Funny)
Not cheap.... (Score:3, Informative)
I'm looking forward to when I'm not a student and have a proper job so that I can afford to do something remotely like this!
tough choice (Score:2, Funny)
noise.. (Score:2)
Dosen't bother me... (Score:4, Funny)
Now if I could get it to act a little less like a space heater.....
Jaysyn
How about the Noisy Ice Cream Truck solution? (Score:3, Funny)
CD drives! (Score:5, Insightful)
A while ago, I'm sure I read a review for a "quiet" CD drive, but I haven't found it since.... Old quad-speed drives were never like that!
Re:CD drives! (Score:3, Interesting)
I used to read games and stuff into image files and mount them using Alcohol 120%, partly for the speed increase, but mostly to get rid of the noise from my old CD-ROM. With the new one, I don't really need to do that anymore.
Other tips include finding a quiet hard drive (Seagate Barracuda, Samsung Spinpoint), a silent CPU fan (Arctic Cooling, most newer Zalmans, basically anything with a large, relatively slo
Re:CD drives! (Score:3, Informative)
Try one of these:
or
This will temporarily degrade your CDROM to a quiet 20-speed model, if you run the correct OS, that is.
Think Cheap (Score:5, Interesting)
Start with the Case - Aluminum is the best but really expensive a cheapo person would make a case out of wood (im sure your going to do this one).
Next the Case Fans - yeah you can buy those fancy isolators, better yet use silicon to "glue" the fans to the outlets.
Hard Drive - Noisy little beast you can actually have it free hanging in the pc or use zip ties to isolate it from the case. Or you can sandwich it in between two thick sheets of copper or aluminum (wouldn't use wood here) and put bolts at the corners and tighten lightly.
CPU cooler - hmm can't use the fans from a hair drier, any other ideas?
The Actual Fans - ball bearing last longer and are a little more expensive, better go with the sleeve bearings because they are quieter. Also if the fan gets noisy peel the off sticker (half way so you can re-stick it) on back and drop some 3n1 oil in the hole.
Placement - get the computer off of the desktop and put it into a ventilated box. I have been thinking about building a small box with a regular household box fan on the back having a solenoid start the fan when the computer is on.
Re:Think Cheap (Score:3, Informative)
Not this again.
Fer crying out loud. There's a number of reasons to build a case out of aluminum. The most important one is it's conductive. Any radiation coming off the motherboard/CPU/PCI cards gets blocked by the case and then goes to ground, preventing it from interfering with other devices around it. Open up any standard PC (or Apple or Sun or...) and you'll see the inside full of metal.
If you use something th
Re:Think Cheap (Score:3, Informative)
In my experience, hard drives don't take well to being free-hanging. One of my drives died very soon after I tried suspending it from rubber to keep the noise down and I've heard other people say that rubber mountings can impact the seek times of the drive.
Cool and quiet (Score:5, Insightful)
2. Only use Pabst fans (replace all of them)
3. (optional) Thermaltake Hardcano12
I run a rack-mount digital audio rig with 4 hard drives and 2 processors, and the loudest thing on the system is when the mirrored audio drives start crunching.
Noise reduction per dollar (Score:5, Interesting)
73 units (low-noise case fans, 40 pounds)
5.5 units (low-noise power supply, 90 pounds)
9.6 units (CPU/GPU cooling, 75 pounds)
5.2 units (acoustic materials and HD enclosure, 128 pounds)
5.8 units (resistors on case fans, 0 pounds)
1.3 units (remaining)
So, by far the most bang for the bucks is in the case fans (with resistors), accounting for 79% of the noise. The worst deal is the acoustic materials and HD enclosure, which cost a whopping 128 pounds for only 5% of the total noise.
Re:Noise reduction per dollar (Score:5, Informative)
It's not deceptive as noise is also perceived on a logarithmic scale by humans.
Re:Noise reduction per dollar (Score:5, Informative)
Certainly the human ear works like that, but if you want to make a decision how to spend your money, it's hard to compare numbers in dB. In the original test, you might have read something like:
case fans: 5 dB
PSU:1 dB
GPU/CPU: 2.5 dB
Materials/enclosure: 2 dB
low-voltage resistor:7.5 dB.
This may lead you to believing that replacing the fans AND adding the resistor together will give you 12.5 dB noise reduction, while the rest gives you only 5.5 dB extra for . It is not meaningful to use dB in this situation, where you take out one noise source after the other. It would be meaningful to use dB if one were discussing an isolating enclosure for the whole computer.
Re:Noise reduction per dollar (Score:5, Funny)
5.5 units (low-noise power supply, 90 pounds)
9.6 units (CPU/GPU cooling, 75 pounds)
5.2 units (acoustic materials and HD enclosure, 128 pounds)
Were any other Americans, like myself, sitting there thinking "damn, that's one heavy computer!"
mini-itx (Score:5, Interesting)
but I built a fanless PC for less than $300 using a Mini-itx mother board, it's quite good.
I installed the 17cmx17cm mainboard in the cardboard box it came in. It's small and quiet... I should've bought a quieter hard drive though.
Useful links:
linitx.com
mini-itx.com
via.com.tw
I think I must've missed why this is news.
Pick two (Score:5, Insightful)
Cool running, Fast, Silent
What I use (Score:3, Informative)
Here's a Totally Silent PC. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Here's a Totally Silent PC. (Score:4, Informative)
1) It isn't 100% silent when you add in the hard drives.
2) If you want a fanless system, you are limiting the speed at which you can run.
That said, I traded a dual celeron 400mhz setup for a single proc 600mhz fanless setup and I don't notice the speed difference.
One other up-side is that I was able to mount it all in a set-top box case and it sits in my stereo cabinet right next to my audio equipment and the only noise is from the hard drives. It is so quiet that I am highly considering swapping my other 4 systems over to mini-itx fan-less boards.
Water cooling is not just for overclockers (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyhow.. I watercooled the disk, CPU, chipset, and power supply. No fans and the SCSI drives were enclosed well enough the 'audiophile' found the ambient noise acceptable. (I did not hear anything) Since I was not using any of the overclocking peltier kits, the coolant ran just above room temperature so I did not have any condensation issues a lot of people have. The copper tubing piped to another room where it dumped the heat. Worked great, though you did not move it around.
Or... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The Mac thing... (Score:3, Interesting)
Apple starts off with a CPU that produces less heat than others. That's a real good starting point. Then, they select and design components with the goal of a quiet computer in mind. The Cube and iMac were both designed for a chimney effect (the Cube didn't have any fan). The eMac is designed to be well ventilated. The PowerMac G5 is designed with many slower fans
A quiet PC for ~$200 (US) (Score:5, Informative)
2) CoolerMaster DP5-7JD1B CPU cooler. Barely audible. $10 at directron.com
3) Any Maxtor hard drive with an FDB (fluid dynamic bearing) motor. Essentially silent. ~$100 at your favorite cheapo online store.
I built this with an XP2600+ CPU, and it's quieter than the fan in my TFT display (don't ask). It makes just enough noise that I can tell that it's running, and I can still hear the quiet ticking of the clock behind me.
Re:A quiet PC for ~$200 (US) (Score:3, Informative)
Re:A quiet PC for ~$200 (US) (Score:4, Informative)
2) CoolerMaster DP5-7JD1B CPU cooler. Barely audible. $10 at directron.com
3) Any Maxtor hard drive with an FDB (fluid dynamic bearing) motor. Essentially silent. ~$100 at your favorite cheapo online store.
Unfortunately, Essentially silent + Barely Audible + Essentially silent = Sorta Loud. After months of messing with low speed panaflos, vibration damping mat, custom power supplies, etc. I bought a sonata with great anticipation and was dismayed when I turned it on and it was louder than my custom job. By a lot.
Move it further away from you .. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Move it further away from you .. (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe because people don't like having to go into another room, just to swap CDs/DVDs...
I was considering doing this: (Score:3, Informative)
$55 12V Power converter [mini-box.com]
$25 12V Power adapter [mini-box.com]
Free (own one), otherwise ~$42 or ~$80 for 512MB, or $178 for 2.2GB if you really want to go nuts.
$20 Compact Flash to IDE adapter [yahoo.com]
$216 1GB PC2100 RAM for VIA EPIA-M [pcboost.com]
$60 Aluminium Micro-ATX case; rip out the PSU [directron.com]
$62 80GB Seagate Barracuda IV [compuplus.com]Optional cause if your like me you store lots of junk... (quietest 5,400/7,200 RPM disk they make), set to aggressively spin down when not accessing your p*rn, mp3, software, etc. Collection:
Total: $583
Completely silent PC: Priceless
Not the fastest server on earth, but faster than my p166 POS running Linux just fine; would completely silent (no fans) or at least it is when you're not accessing your p*rn, mp3, software, etc., collection if you go with the HDD. Only pain in the *** would be using syslinux to boot... and of course I don't know about using a RAM disk to run the system, and CF might take all the writes and rerwites over lord only knows how much use... but it's the start of an idea I've been kicking around...
Would be an interesting project though..
ultimate silence (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:ultimate silence (Score:3, Informative)
I've been preaching the wonders of VNC and remote thin computing for a while now.
my development box (7/24 always up) is a dual xeon in the far bedroom; and its quite noisy to be sure (raid, 2 cpus, 24pin style server power supply, etc).
in the living room, where my 'terminal' is, and where I want quiet, I have either XP or freebsd or linux (any/all; its a tri-boot system) and all can run vnc client just fine.
the 2 systems are connected with a single point-point gig-E cable and both s
You are all just unlucky I guess (Score:3, Interesting)
I like the HUSH machines (Score:3, Interesting)
My idea - loose parts,cool compartment using water (Score:4, Interesting)
My idea is to have two layers of glass (or something else waterproof) with damp sand in between, possibily using water or homebrew alcohol
^ this liquid then evaporates
Picture of the idea:
pic [termisoc.org]
Prose and links:
txt [termisoc.org]
More:
directory [termisoc.org]
Dells (Score:5, Interesting)
It goes to show, a little thought in case design can pay off handsomely, and without costing a lot of money.
My Favorite Noise Reduction Technique (Score:3, Insightful)
Slashdotted (Score:3, Funny)
Wow. that's a lot of money (Score:3, Interesting)
Good suggestions.. I have a few more. (Score:3, Informative)
- CPU: Athlon 64. It has a feature they call "Cool n Quiet" where it will run at a slower clock speed when the CPU is not under heavy load. So, as you're browsing the web, typing in the word processor, playing MP3's, etc. it will run at 800MHz. When you play a game, process video, etc. It will run at full speed. This saves a lot of heat in the system, and actually lets the fan on the CPU heat sink stop much of the time.
- Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda (Samsung, and maybe Fujitsu also make some very quiet drives.. check spec's before buying). The Seagate drives are very quiet. In most cases, if you mount it well (rubber grommets, or suspending the drive to avoid vibration transfer) it is quiet enough to not require the drive silencer thing.
- 120mm Fans. He replaces the 80mm fans with super-quiet 80mm fans. Why not use high quality quiet 120mm fans for better airflow and lower noise?
- Power Supply. Zalman makes great products, so I assume their PSU is very quiet (but I have not used it). I have found almost every other PSU with small fans to be the loudest component in the system. There are several manufacturers that make PSU's with 120mm fans in the base. These big fans can run slower/quieter. They also give the system a fan right next to the CPU, which helps a lot. There are also expensive PSU's that have huge heat sinks, and cun run completely fanless. I plan on trying one of these next.. But, this puts more burden on the case fans.
Or, if you want it as quiet as possible, and cheaper.. go with lower-end components.
- VIA C3 CPU - Plenty of power for normal business tasks, and can be run fanless if the heat sink is large.
- Passively cooled video card - GeForce FX 5200 is not a speed demon, but it's fanless. Or, if 3D is not a concern, go for embedded video. (the 5200 will still kick up the heat inside the system.. fit the video card to your needs.)
- 2.5" Laptop hard drives. If you don't need buttloads of storage, a 20/40/80GB 2.5" drive could help a lot. Check spec's before buying, some 2.5" drives are loud. But, they run MUCH cooler than 3.5" drives (2.5W vs 15W). They are also smller, offering better airflow, and have less vibration.
And, lastly: S3 Sleep mode is your friend. The computer noise mostly bothers me when I'm not using it. I want to be able to hear the movie over the humm of my computer. So, use S3 sleep, with aggressive timeouts, to shut the thing down when not in use. It wakes up from this mode in a few seconds, and is completely silent while sleeping - saving noise, heat, power, and money.
Re:Slashdotted (Score:5, Funny)
Re:slashdoted (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Put your computer(s) in the closet (Score:3, Funny)
Four pairs jeans, check. 38 t-shirts, check. 3 sweatshirts, check. socks, underwear, 3 pairs shorts. What else do I need?
Re:Not fed up here (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Maybe silent isn't the best solution anyway. (Score:3, Informative)