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Not a chance in hell...

Either you are buying absolutely top-notch parts for the rest of the system, and dirt cheap hard drives, or your (desktop) case keeps the hard drives in a tiny enclosed space with no airflow. Cheap hard drive caddies and shock-mounted hard drives have that problem, but you very rarely see it in a normal system.

I lose many power supplies before the first hard drive fails. I lose many more motherboards than hard drives (yes, name-brands with 2+ year warranties like Asus, MSI, etc).

Here are a few of them:

New 1 Kilowatt PSU - Too Much Power?
Monday, August 22, 2005
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/ 22/2157244

Thirty Four PSUs Tested - Is Biggest Best?
Monday, September 26, 2005
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/ 26/1052233

A Kilowatt of Power
Wednesday December 28, 2005
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/ 28/0353252

Turbo-Cool® 1KW Power Supply Specifications
Current: 15A @ 115V
WARNING: PDF DOCUMENT
http://www.pcpowercooling.com/products/assets/TC1K W/specs.pdf

1) You're a l33t gamer, and you install a PC Power & Cooling Turbo-Cool® 1KW PSU, drawing 15 Amps @ 115V, and

2) You're a l33t gamer, and you install a Sapphire Graphics Water Cooled Radeon X1900, and

3) Your water-cooled Radeon springs a leak.

INT. WAGGNER HOUSEHOLD. BATHROOM. NIGHT. Tod picks up a razor and puts it to his face to shave. The water begins to leak from the toilet and slowly makes its way to where Tod is standing. He puts the razor to his face and instantly cuts himself. In the mirror?s reflection, a black mist floats across. Tod spins around. Nothing there. The water edged closer. Tod puts the razor down and picks up scissors instead and begins to cut the hairs from his nose. He then picks up a plug, thinking it?s the electric razor but it turns out to be the radio. The water edges closer to Tod?s feet. He?s unaware but pulls the radio plug out in time. He moves away from the mirror but the leak follows him.

http://www.allstarz.org/~final/transcriptdoc.htm

I have a PC Power and Cooling "Silencer" 470. It is quiet and good. I believe my quiet Seagate is louder. It is a heavy, no-nonsense power supply. I will never buy another "quiet" Enermax or Antec supply again.

Many power supplies from the big names have dubious features as they chase the enthusiast market. These companies are driven by marketing. PC Power and Cooling have engineered their supplies to be power supplies first, and quiet second. PC Power and Cooling is one of the few companies still driven by engineering.

For reference: The 470w supply is used in a system with an AMD x2 3800 (OCed), XFX 7800GTX, and Seagate 7200.8 80GB. The case is a steel Antec 3000 with stock low RPM 120mm fan. The cpu has a Zalman CNPS7700, and the chipset heatsink was replaced with a fanless Zalman heatsink (I recommand both). The XFX heatsink is stock. This system in not silent, but quiet. It could be used in a home theater system and it is unlikely anyone would notice. The noise from outside the house is generally louder. The noise from the forced air heating and cooling is louder.

http://www.pcpowercooling.com/home/

American-Designed & American-Assembled using the world's best components: PCP

http://www.pcpowercooling.com/products/viewproduct .php?show=T85SSI

Ditto. I got one of their 850 SSI ones for my Asus A8N with an Athlon64 4800+ dual core O/C'd to 2600, Dual 7800GTX on SLI, 6 SATA drives (4 as a raid5 set), 2 CD-ROMs and one DVD, lots-o-USB devices.

Yes, the room gets an extra 5 degrees warmer for this computer ;)

PC Power & Cooling makes some of the best PSUs, hands down. For the machine you're talking about i'd probably run one of their 510 models that support SLI. Since you're friend has more money than he knows what to do with I might go with their 850 SSI psu. Its impressive to say the least. Overkill? Perhaps. Then again I wouldnt want to run a system that expensive with some shoddy PSU....besides the 850SSI is future-proof for at LEAST 2 years i'd say. Link to the 850SSI model here. http://www.pcpowercooling.com/products/viewproduct .php?show=T85SSI

Hard to take something seriously when it's called 'Hiper' is it supposed to my 'Hyper-Mega-Awesome' or 'Hipper' or what are they going for here? Personally though, you can't go wrong with something from PC P&C

I've always built my own systems from components. Doing so may cost more than a pre-built unit, but the big advantage to DIY is that you get to pick every single component based on YOUR standards. You're not constrained by a group decision by some collection of profit-hungry BoD members.

When building any system, it is CRITICAL to match what you want in a computer to the components chosen, and there is a definite trade-off between system speed and stability.

Example: I have no interest whatsoever in 99.9% of the available computer games, but I also do some high-end EDA work (notably electronic schematics, circuit simulation, and PC board design). This calls for computing power that is at least somewhat comparable to systems built specifically for gaming. I also knew that stability (as in resistance to any sort of crashing, application or system) was critical to me.

Like you, I don't like a ton of extra stuff on my motherboards. With that in mind, I chose a Tyan dual-CPU board for the AMD Athlon MP chips, specifically the Tiger MPX. I kitted it out with two processors right from the get-go (Athlon MP2600's), and a full gig of ECC DRAM. The board itself comes with two serial, one parallel, two USB, and a 3Com 10/100 NIC all on board. Everything else is left to the end user. These days, that's about as bare-bones as I've seen any board get.

Tyan motherboards have a great reputation for stability in the face of all kinds of different configurations, but they're not very overclockable and, thus, not very popular with the gaming crowd. Tyan is the board you choose if you're building a serious server or high-end workstation, not something to game with.

One other thing that is absolutely vital if you're serious about DIY: Follow the CPU manufacturer's recommendations for motherboards, power supply, memory, and cooling. I cannot stress this strongly enough, particularly where the motherboard and power supply are concerned! Besides the Tyan mo-bo, I opted for Corsair memory DIMMs and a 550W power supply from PC Power & Cooling, all in accordance with AMD's recommendations for the MP series CPUs. A visit to their site will provide you with hardware recommendations for any of their CPUs, and it looks like Intel provides a very similar aid on their site.

The system has been with me for nearly two years now, and I've had ZERO trouble with it. Windows 2000 Pro (you won't catch me using XP, ever) has been solid as a rock on it, as have every single one of my applications.

Building your own system has a lot to say for it but, as others have pointed out, be prepared to pay more than you would for a pre-built box.

Happy tweaking.

Yup. AMD has a good guide to power consumption here. It has, among other things, a formula for computing the power usage of the processor, taking into account the expected inefficiency of the voltage regulator. Combined with spec sheets available from the manufacturers of various parts, it can tell you if a power supply will work.

I did all the math for a server I was thinking of building, and I was quite surprised by the outcome. Despite the fact that my server should only use about 140 W of total power, some of the 300 W supplies were inadequate. They didn't supply enough on the 12 V line. It looks like the maximum current draw on the 12 V line is a better indicator of the quality of a power supply than its total maximum power.

I recommend the PSUs from PC Power & Cooling. The Silencer units really are near-silent, and you can pump a lot of amps through the 12 V lead on all of their supplies. (An improvement they made since I bought mine, unfortunately.)

According to the ad copy it'll even work in your 486DX system!

I just found it funny to see the picture demonstrating the device in a computer that needs no special CPU cooling.

-Adam

PCPowerCooling.com sells an overheating alarm for $10. I put it in all the systems I build.

Alarm Available Here

...though I got a 510W supply from PC Power & Cooling. Of course, my hard drives and all of the internal fans make enough noise as it is, no need to spend extra for a "quiet" power supply that isn't going to have any impact on the noise level of the room anyway.

Why is it that every time these "high-end" power supplies get compared, the most high-end one always gets ignored? PC Power and Cooling has long manufactured the world's best power supplies. They're the Ferrari or the Moto Guzzi of the power supply world. Yeah, lots of Asian manufacturing firms make OK power supplies, but PCP&C's stuff is the only company that makes boards that the major motherboard manufacturers highly recommend and use exclusively in their own tests. Why does such an obvious high-quality product always get ignored?

You might try Silencer fans instead. No fan is truly silent, but these are 20dB. IIRC, whispers are 30dB, so you might not even be able to hear it at all. Mine does not contribute tto my machine's noise in any noticeable way. I've also got a Silencer power supply. That just leaves the processor and video card fans.

The top 2 things you can do to quiet your AMD system:

1) Get an Antec TruePower series power supply. Two big fans running slow/quiet. They're also the best power supplies you can buy short of the atrociously expensive and noisy PC Power & Cooling power supplies (which I've also used).

2) Get a Thermalright SLK800 copper heatsink, YS Tech Rheostat 80mm fan, and Arctic Silver 3 thermal compound. I recommend buying from 2CoolTek. The YS Tech fans are adjustable, so you can try a slow/quiet setting and if that proves inadequate crank it up a bit. I've found 2500RPM to be a good balance of noise/performence on my 2400+ CPUs (which do run cooler than your 2100+ CPU, assuming it's the old Palamino core), and at 2000RPM you won't hear the fans at all. 60mm fans have to run at much higher RPMs than 80mm fans to move the same amount of air.

Point #2 is the best place to start. It's probably all you need.

I second the recommendation for PC Power and Cooling. I got tired of going through a PS every 6 months, having themburn-up or worse; the bushings would start to fail and it would sound like a turbine engine until it warmed up. As far a price goes; it's a matter of perspective. I think I paid around $200 for my high-perf 350W supply about 5 years ago. To date, it's the only piece that I haven't upgraded or replaced in my system (including the case). Spend twice that amount for the latest bleeding-edge graphics card and see if you still have it half for half as long.

The only decent third-party manufacturer of power supplies that I (and I presume most people) have every heard of is PC Power and Cooling. It doesn't appear that this article covers any of their products. Am I missing something?

PC Power & Cooling have an off the shelf P4 model called the Sleekline that is now running at 39-40dB with the new motherboard rev.

The Compaq EVO D510 ultra-small desktop is rated at 19 dB. The mini-tower model with expansion capabilities is 22 dB.

The Signum Data FutureClient does away with fans altogether and uses fluid cooling for the ultimat ein silence. Unfortunately, it isn't available in the US (yet).

Apparently, interest for silent PCs is greater in Europe, probably because of more stringent workplace ergonomics laws in countries such as Sweden.

A few other links for Silent PCs:

• The Silent PC
• Quietpc.com
• Silent PC Review

... and roll your own.

Look at MP3Car.com which has the details you need. Check out the forums.

Currently the Epia MB with a laptop HD via a 2.5 to 3.5 HD converter a slimline DVD/CD-R. You can use the S video or composite for a mobile LCD or serial based character LCD or go all the way and run VGA or SVGA LCD. Schematics on building the Sproggy DC to DC PSU or buy an ATX DC to DC power supply which is probably the hardest component to find.

On mp3car.com's forums you can find schematics for Delayed relays, noise suppression, why NOT to use an inverter, etc. For pics: mp3 webring list or searchmp3cars list.
Look at Mini-itx which has the spacecase that was discussed here on /.
So much for your afternoon.

Yes, /. needs a DIY section for hardware hackers.

i've always been quite pleased with the goods from PC power and computing. it might not be the cheapest, but a cool running & quiet machine makes a huge difference in the long run.

- Nickie

Perhaps you want something like this or this.

Perhaps you want something like this or this.

Point being, if there is a problem, then the owner has a place they can drive to, which is important. This qualifies as the equivalent of a ford or chevy solution (vs a yugo solution)

PC Power and Cooling has attracted advocates with a religious level dedication, especially the quality of their power supplies.

They also have this chart on what various components draw is very useful for figuring out how much power you need. Worth a bookmark in itself.

Point being, if there is a problem, then the owner has a place they can drive to, which is important. This qualifies as the equivalent of a ford or chevy solution (vs a yugo solution)

PC Power and Cooling has attracted advocates with a religious level dedication, especially the quality of their power supplies.

They also have this chart on what various components draw is very useful for figuring out how much power you need. Worth a bookmark in itself.

How about the Sleekline 1260?

It's slim, powerful, and you can get it with many different options. May not be the size that YOU want (it's actually slimmer), but I'm sure that with some modding, you could probably due something creative with the case.

--OptipleX02

The folks at PC Power and Cooling have this monster which, altough comprised of 2 separate hot-swappable 420W PSU's, is supposed to be able to deliver 840W peak.

Unfortunately, you need a mobo with the i815 b step chipset, which has a very limited life span. Of course, your cooling mileage may vary.

Unfortunately, you need a mobo with the i815 b step chipset, which has a very limited life span. Of course, your cooling mileage may vary.

Unfortunately, you need a mobo with the i815 b step chipset, which has a very limited life span. Of course, your cooling mileage may vary.

PC Power and Cooling offer a stand-alone temperature sensor with a piezo alarm called the 110 Alert. Not exactly what you're looking for, but at $15, probably about as cheap a solution as you'll find.

They rock. best power supply company around.

Then buy an maxtor 7200 RPM drive which are %100 siloent by default. I believe IBMS are also silent but due to the press they have been recieving recently, I would stay way from IBM for awhile. I own one of the maxtor drives and I have to runx xosview jsut to see if its being used! Talk about quiet. Also the links above are rating highly from pcmag.com and maximumpc.com as the best powersupply and case around PERIOD! I have had fans and powersupplies brake before but the one's from pcpowercolling rock. I haven't tried the silencer series but If I was going to build a new computer tommorow I would deffinetly buy one. I hope this helps. I have my computer in my room so like yourself I like things quiet. I know many college students read slashdot and suffer the same because they live with their machines in there dorms.

Then buy an maxtor 7200 RPM drive which are %100 siloent by default. I believe IBMS are also silent but due to the press they have been recieving recently, I would stay way from IBM for awhile. I own one of the maxtor drives and I have to runx xosview jsut to see if its being used! Talk about quiet. Also the links above are rating highly from pcmag.com and maximumpc.com as the best powersupply and case around PERIOD! I have had fans and powersupplies brake before but the one's from pcpowercolling rock. I haven't tried the silencer series but If I was going to build a new computer tommorow I would deffinetly buy one. I hope this helps. I have my computer in my room so like yourself I like things quiet. I know many college students read slashdot and suffer the same because they live with their machines in there dorms.

You can get the Silencer fans cheaper (especially in quantity) direct from PPC&C and get free shipping to boot!

They don't make anything, they just stick their name on things then charge inflated prices

Take for example their full tower case. The PC Power & Cooling full tower case is just a California PC full tower case with a different bezel on the front & an inflated price tag.

Its the same with every product they sell, for example their mid tower case is the same as one of the big OEMs (I forget which brand) with a different bezel & again an inflated price tag.
Their heatsinks & powersupplies are no different.

I remember when they used to sell a 275 watt 'Silencer' powersupply. It turns out it was just a generic 300 watt powersupply that was just de-rated to cope with the retro-actively fitted low speed so-called 'Silencer' fan (I think just a slow speed Adda fan).

- "For the power supply, the three of us easily agreed on a vendor: PC Power & Cooling"

Bloody typical. Yet the reality is that the PC Power & Cooling mob are just 'badge engineers' - they re-sell other manufacturers products with their own own brand markings & inflated prices.

[con mucho snippo] I recommend the Enermax 350 watt EG365P-VE(FC) or 450 watt EG465P-VE(FC) power supplies.

If you want to snub PC Power & Cooling's inventory, you could contribute something positive by finding the same (or equivalent) PS from another vendor, cheaper or better.

[And for what it's worth, I'm not affiliated with pcpowercooling.com, ESR, or with the mob.]

The inside of the California PC full tower case. If you compare it with the guts of the PC Power & Cooling full tower case, you'd notice they are exactly the same except for the bezel (actually some Aopen & Antec cases are the same except for the bezel).

It amazes me the amount of 'software' guys who think they're experts but have no idea when it comes to hardware.

Check these examples out:-

- "Do get a pure PCI-bus machine (not a hybrid PCI/ISA design, you sacrifice about 10% of peak performance with those)."

This is pure humbug - you do not get 10% greater performance by buying a motherboard that has ni ISA slots (like those Asus KT boards). Because the fact is that even if they have no ISA slots, they still have a ISA bus built in the southbridge to support legacy stuff like the printer/parrallel port, the serial port/s & the PS2 mouse & keyboard ports. Now as far as the USB ports are concerned, I'm not sure whether they use the ISA bus or the PCI bus.

- "For the power supply, the three of us easily agreed on a vendor: PC Power & Cooling"

Bloody typical. Yet the reality is that the PC Power & Cooling mob are just 'badge engineers' - they re-sell other manufacturers products with their own own brand markings & inflated prices.

For example their full tower case is just a California PC full tower case with a custom bezel on the front.

Now as far as their power supplies are concerned. I remember when they used to sell a 'Silencer' model 275 watt power supply. In fact all it was was a generic 300 watt power supply, de-rated down to 275 watts so it was understressed, so it would cope with retro-actively fitted low speed 'silencer' fan.

As far as powersupplies are concerned I recommend the Enermax 350 watt EG365P-VE(FC) or 450 watt EG465P-VE(FC) power supplies. They have a push/pull dual fan design (a 80mm exhaust fan at the back & a 92mm intake fan at the bottom), which means the fans can run at a much slower (therefore quieter) speed, without losing any cooling performance. The Powersupply comes with a standard motherboard 3 pin senser connector cable, so you can blug it into a spare motherboard fan header, which means ifyou can see what revs one of the power supply fans are running at in you PC monitor applet in you system tray (& it can warn you with an alarm if it fails). Also the powersupply comes with a thermastat on a connector which can be somehow attached to the heatsink or against the CPU core if its a exposed flip-chip type core (as long as it has no heatspreader like the AMD K6 series has), this controls the fan underneath the powersupply & it only runs when necessary. Consequently these power supplies are so bloody quiet you sometimes think its not running.

- They also recommend the Thunder K7 (S2462) Motherboard, which is a huge waste of money as you can buy a very similar motherboard made by the same manufaturer at a much cheaper price (the Tiger MP (S2460) Motherboard). Also the 'Tiger' has a standard ATX connector, rather than the propietry connector that the 'Thunder' has. Which means you can use normal ATX powersupplies, rather than the inflated priced propietry powersupply that the 'Thunder' uses.

- Also, even though this is s'pose to be a 'Ultimate Linux Box', they fail to mention that both IDE floppy drives(if you are using the IDE bus) & SCSI floppy drives (if you are using a SCSI BUS) are avaliable. Even better one can get the LS120 variety which are compatible with both 120MB 'SupperFloppies' & standard 1.4MB standard floppies.

- They spend 4 paragraphs talking about 'Noise Control and Heat Dissipation' without really saying anything. When all they really needed to say that it's best using bigger fans at slower speeds - such as 12 volt 120mm fans running at 7 volts (positive hooked up to the 12 volt line while the negative is hooked up to the 5 volt line). The quietist fans (all other things being equal) by brand are the Papst Simtec bearing fans, the Sanyo Denki fans & the L1A1 versions of the Panaflo fans.

- They recommend a pretty well generic (though above average) Antec case, but this is s'pose to be a ultimate Linux box.

Therfore I recommend the Addtronics 'Server Cases' (their full tower cases) - the 7890 & the 7896. They are great cases with their great cooling options, filtered intakes, butterfly doors & slide out 'mainboard & I/O backplane tray'. Supermicro sell their own badge engineered version of this full tower case.

Other good full tower cases are the all alloy ones made by Lian Li. Such as the Lian Li PC-70 aluminium full tower computer case & the Lian Li PC-76 server case

If a mid tower case is more your style, both Lian Li & Coolermaster maker great alloy ones. They are great for LAN parties. In this regard I recommend the Lian Li PC-60 computer case & the Coolermaster ATC-201SX. Both cases are unbeatable as mid-tower cases - they have everything. I Personally thing a midtower case must have 4 5.25inch drive bays; so you can have both a CD burner & DVD drive, plus 2 HDDs in removable HDD pullout caddies.

For a ultimate box it should have the all alloy (better heat dissapation) twin fan caddies that agains are made by Lian Li. The 3 best models appear to be the RH-620 , the RH-600 , & the RH-29

For the motherboard, I'd recommend one with the SIS 735 'chipset'. Preferably it would have a AGP Pro slot, 6 PCI slots, one shared with a ISA slot at the bottom. It would have BOTH 2 DDR slots & 2 normal SDRAM slots. It would have a integrated RJ45 network connector above the 2 rear USB ports, plus integrated 'hardware' 5.1 sound (IWill have brought out a couple of boards of late with integrated 'hardware' 5.1 sound, they have the 3 standard female jack ports under the midi 'D' plug at the back, plus the extra connects hook up via a ribbon cable & a slot backplane cover). The board would also have integrated SCSI & Firewire like some of the MSI Pro or Turbo or whatever boards have. Plus an extra IDE controller (Promise, Highpoint, etc) so there's the potential for 8 drives (HDD, CD, DVD, LS120, ORB, etc) rather than the standard 4. The extra IDE controller will also have RAID 0,1 & 1+0 options (most have this built in, though its sometimes disabled). All the integrated stuff must have the capability to be disabled, either via jumpers or in the BIOS.

Twin AthonXP/MP CPUs would be the go (the XPs work fine in SMP setups, they just are not certified/supported for such configurations - that's the main difference between the XP & MP, the MPs are certified/supported for SMP use.

That's enough raving for now.

It amazes me the amount of 'software' guys who think they're experts but have no idea when it comes to hardware.

Check these examples out:-

- "Do get a pure PCI-bus machine (not a hybrid PCI/ISA design, you sacrifice about 10% of peak performance with those)."

This is pure humbug - you do not get 10% greater performance by buying a motherboard that has ni ISA slots (like those Asus KT boards). Because the fact is that even if they have no ISA slots, they still have a ISA bus built in the southbridge to support legacy stuff like the printer/parrallel port, the serial port/s & the PS2 mouse & keyboard ports. Now as far as the USB ports are concerned, I'm not sure whether they use the ISA bus or the PCI bus.

- "For the power supply, the three of us easily agreed on a vendor: PC Power & Cooling"

Bloody typical. Yet the reality is that the PC Power & Cooling mob are just 'badge engineers' - they re-sell other manufacturers products with their own own brand markings & inflated prices.

For example their full tower case is just a California PC full tower case with a custom bezel on the front.

Now as far as their power supplies are concerned. I remember when they used to sell a 'Silencer' model 275 watt power supply. In fact all it was was a generic 300 watt power supply, de-rated down to 275 watts so it was understressed, so it would cope with retro-actively fitted low speed 'silencer' fan.

As far as powersupplies are concerned I recommend the Enermax 350 watt EG365P-VE(FC) or 450 watt EG465P-VE(FC) power supplies. They have a push/pull dual fan design (a 80mm exhaust fan at the back & a 92mm intake fan at the bottom), which means the fans can run at a much slower (therefore quieter) speed, without losing any cooling performance. The Powersupply comes with a standard motherboard 3 pin senser connector cable, so you can blug it into a spare motherboard fan header, which means ifyou can see what revs one of the power supply fans are running at in you PC monitor applet in you system tray (& it can warn you with an alarm if it fails). Also the powersupply comes with a thermastat on a connector which can be somehow attached to the heatsink or against the CPU core if its a exposed flip-chip type core (as long as it has no heatspreader like the AMD K6 series has), this controls the fan underneath the powersupply & it only runs when necessary. Consequently these power supplies are so bloody quiet you sometimes think its not running.

- They also recommend the Thunder K7 (S2462) Motherboard, which is a huge waste of money as you can buy a very similar motherboard made by the same manufaturer at a much cheaper price (the Tiger MP (S2460) Motherboard). Also the 'Tiger' has a standard ATX connector, rather than the propietry connector that the 'Thunder' has. Which means you can use normal ATX powersupplies, rather than the inflated priced propietry powersupply that the 'Thunder' uses.

- Also, even though this is s'pose to be a 'Ultimate Linux Box', they fail to mention that both IDE floppy drives(if you are using the IDE bus) & SCSI floppy drives (if you are using a SCSI BUS) are avaliable. Even better one can get the LS120 variety which are compatible with both 120MB 'SupperFloppies' & standard 1.4MB standard floppies.

- They spend 4 paragraphs talking about 'Noise Control and Heat Dissipation' without really saying anything. When all they really needed to say that it's best using bigger fans at slower speeds - such as 12 volt 120mm fans running at 7 volts (positive hooked up to the 12 volt line while the negative is hooked up to the 5 volt line). The quietist fans (all other things being equal) by brand are the Papst Simtec bearing fans, the Sanyo Denki fans & the L1A1 versions of the Panaflo fans.

- They recommend a pretty well generic (though above average) Antec case, but this is s'pose to be a ultimate Linux box.

Therfore I recommend the Addtronics 'Server Cases' (their full tower cases) - the 7890 & the 7896. They are great cases with their great cooling options, filtered intakes, butterfly doors & slide out 'mainboard & I/O backplane tray'. Supermicro sell their own badge engineered version of this full tower case.

Other good full tower cases are the all alloy ones made by Lian Li. Such as the Lian Li PC-70 aluminium full tower computer case & the Lian Li PC-76 server case

If a mid tower case is more your style, both Lian Li & Coolermaster maker great alloy ones. They are great for LAN parties. In this regard I recommend the Lian Li PC-60 computer case & the Coolermaster ATC-201SX. Both cases are unbeatable as mid-tower cases - they have everything. I Personally thing a midtower case must have 4 5.25inch drive bays; so you can have both a CD burner & DVD drive, plus 2 HDDs in removable HDD pullout caddies.

For a ultimate box it should have the all alloy (better heat dissapation) twin fan caddies that agains are made by Lian Li. The 3 best models appear to be the RH-620 , the RH-600 , & the RH-29

For the motherboard, I'd recommend one with the SIS 735 'chipset'. Preferably it would have a AGP Pro slot, 6 PCI slots, one shared with a ISA slot at the bottom. It would have BOTH 2 DDR slots & 2 normal SDRAM slots. It would have a integrated RJ45 network connector above the 2 rear USB ports, plus integrated 'hardware' 5.1 sound (IWill have brought out a couple of boards of late with integrated 'hardware' 5.1 sound, they have the 3 standard female jack ports under the midi 'D' plug at the back, plus the extra connects hook up via a ribbon cable & a slot backplane cover). The board would also have integrated SCSI & Firewire like some of the MSI Pro or Turbo or whatever boards have. Plus an extra IDE controller (Promise, Highpoint, etc) so there's the potential for 8 drives (HDD, CD, DVD, LS120, ORB, etc) rather than the standard 4. The extra IDE controller will also have RAID 0,1 & 1+0 options (most have this built in, though its sometimes disabled). All the integrated stuff must have the capability to be disabled, either via jumpers or in the BIOS.

Twin AthonXP/MP CPUs would be the go (the XPs work fine in SMP setups, they just are not certified/supported for such configurations - that's the main difference between the XP & MP, the MPs are certified/supported for SMP use.

That's enough raving for now.

They're generally recognized to use high-quality components, such as ball-bearing fans (in my experience, the fan is the first thing to die in a power supply - and, in the process leading to its death, it turns from quiet to an annoying failing-engine-like sound). They have a line of ultra-quiet supplies, as well as high-performance ATX power supplies providing up to 600 watts.

Hope this helps :)

Here's something. It isn't exactly what you wanted though... not fanless, and I think they are all ATX supplies so they won't work on that 486. But it's a start.

I hear these are good, but caveat emptor.

Ditto what the other folks replying said about power supplies. I have a 1.4GHz Athlon OC'd to 1.5GHz (11x136MHz) on my desk at work (custom built because Dell only sells obsolete P3s and brain-damaged P4s), and the 400W Silencer power supply from PC Power & Cooling has no trouble at all, the +3.3V rail stays between 3.30 and 3.34 (average 3.33) volts, the +5V rail stays between 4.95 and 5.05 (average 4.99) volts, and the +12V rail stays between 11.86 and 12.04 (average 11.93) volts. Expensive beasts, but worth it, and they have the juice to handle the dual Tyan motherboards that are just starting to trickle onto the market (the $250 workstation boards). If you can't afford a PCP&C supply, at least get an Antec.

Use good DIMMs too, Crucial, Corsair, etc.

There are a few considerations I learned about when I set up my living-room-based rack:
1) Temperature: Even a few pieces of equipment will boost the temperature of the room where the rack is placed. Beware of closets and other closed spaces since they collect heat and can be so hot in a few hours that your equipment will fry. UPS units make a lot of heat! Have a decent A/C available.
2) Noise! The rack can act as an echo chamber for equipment noise. The fans run all the time, and they can get irritating 24/7 when the rack is in a living area. You may want to consider low noise power supplies such as the Silencer from PC Power&Cooling if the rack will be in a populated room. Also, some of the cooling fans that are actually attached to the rack may cause too much noise.
3) Power Requirements: I had to install an improved plug in the living room of my apartment just to handle 4 rackmounted systems, a switch and some other peripherals. Be careful if you are planning to plug lots of stuff in as it could be drawing too much current. This would cause your circuit breakers to blow frequently or possibly a fire hazard.
4) Appearance: I got a lot of flak from my girlfriend when I installed the rack. Since I could not leave it in the closet for temperature reasons I had to put it in the living room, and she didn't like the way it looked. Fortunately, I bought a Middle-Atlantic unit (somewhat pricey, though) which allowed me to add a plexiglass door which made it look a little better. It sits in the corner with a lamp on top and looks okay, though.

Generally, besides these special concerns for a home rack, it is like any other piece of industrial equipment. I bought it for the specific reason that I run a home-based business and I needed to economize on space. I recommend against buying it unless you have a specific need. Even a single rack because of the above considerations will take some planning and setup work when one could just as well stack up systems on top of one another.

- John

Seriously... pick up one of these. Any power supply should be able to be retro-fitted with one of them. No need to buy a whole new PS.

Well, it seem these days, most of the power user just care to get something like 200fps in Quake III. Why ? Beat's me ! I'm not on a quest to get the ultimate frame rate, I just want my box to be quiet as possibly can be.

To help you understand my take on the subject, here is the background :
My PC has the following components :

• A OEM case
• A 235W OEM power supply
• ASUS P3B-F
• Intel Pentium II rated 400Mhz @ 400Mhz
• A cheap OEM SECC2 Heat-Sink made of aluminum
• A 128MB CAS2 no-name DIMM
• Two 32MB CAS3 Samsung DIMM slowing down my memory timing, but preventing the appearance of the all mighty evil SwaP
• A ATI All-In-Wonder Rage128 16MB
• A Creative SoundBlaster Live! Value
• A Realtek 8139 Ethernet NIC
• My beloved USR 56Kbps ISA Real Modem. Sorry but to me a component that uses CPU power to do it's processing instead of taking the load off is not worthy of being in my computer. Not to mention the M$ Win part...
• A Creative 48x CD-ROM drive. It's the loudest damned thing in my computer when it's spinning
• A Quantum Fireball AS PLUS 40GB (7200RPM) in a removable tray
• A Quantum Fireball CX1 10GB (5400RPM) mounted inside the case
• Of course the stupid old 1.44 MB floppy drive only used for booting Tomsbrt in case of emergency

Soon to be :

• A Adaptec 2940UW
• A Diamond Monster 3D II for Glide games

It turn out that the Quantum Fireball AS makes less noise than the Quantum Fireball CX1. I still have to figure it out ...

I use my PC for :

• Running Linux and learning as much as time allows me (Jez I had so much time when I was a student... Think of all the time I wasted in High-School running the evil W monster)
• Doing some gaming i.e. : Diablo II, Unreal, UT, Undying (Although that thing is going to cost me a new box)
• Spending numerous nights filling my brain @ Slashdot, Tomshardware, Anandtech, Arstechnica, StorageReview, Developper.Intel.com, and most importantly, hounding the web for all the case manufacturers and their take at a quiet box.

As I'm writing this post, that is probably going to be the base documentation for my Silent Case Project, you're guessing that my sleepless night of browsing have not yielded the desired result.

I've check out many options such as water cooling, moving the PC to the closet, returning to the forest where a PC is pretty far from your everyday quest for survival. None of them suits me.

The objective of my project is to build a case that meets the following criteria :

• A silent as possible
• Accessible
• Provides sufficient ventilation to maintain all the components running within thermal specs
• Be light enough to be easily transportable (Let's not forget the Lan parties ;-)

To attain those goals I have to :

• Read all I can about noise, sound, aerodynamics, PC specs
• Find suitable materials : A case is not just a protection against unwanted fingers and dust ; it must provide EMI shielding, proper grounding, resist to impacts, and fit into my conception of the king of object you want in your bedroom (If you were thinking about plywood and a box of rusted leftover nails, forget it)
• Find the tools or the companies or individuals with the means to work the materials I choose to build the casing

For the sound isolation I was thinking about some kind of foam. Mineral lint would be affective but that takes too much space and it's not the kind of thing I want beside my bed. Form the casing itself, metal is almost inevitable if you want EMI shielding and grounding. And as for you who wonder why I have not mentioned water cooling yet, the greatest source of noise is not my CPU cooler and your just moving the problem out of the case (Nice ; you have water heating up but unless your reservoir is like a bathtub or something you will have to transfer the heat for the water to the air).

That about as far as I am. If you have any idea that might help me, please fell free to send me some bits forming ASCII characters at Prozzaks@operamail.com

To finish up, here is a list of thing that might help people wanting to achieve similar goals :

• http://www.formfactors.org/ You should be able to find all the documents regarding the ATX form factor and thermal design guides. A must if you want to build a quiet PC.
• http://developer.intel.com/ Intel has contributed a great deal to the ATX definition ; here you will find many relevant documents including thermal design guides for all Intel processors.
• Etract from my favorite's :
  
  

  Hardware\cases PC CASE
  Fong Kai
  PowerOn
  Enlight Corporation
  dir.yahoo Enclosures Manufacturers
  procase
  YY Computer
  Psi
  IN WIN
  Amtrade
  American Suntek
  Addtronics
  A-Top Technology, Inc
  Nikao
  Palo Alto Products
  Antec
  Lian-Li
  amaquest
  Koolance
  Quietpc
  PC Power & Cooling
  
  
  

  Hardware\Heat Sinks ALPHA
  Cooler Master
  AVC
  ekl
  GlobalWIN
  globefan
  RDJD
  Foxconn
  Spring Spread
  Sanyo Denki
  TITAN
  TaiSol
  ChipCoolers
  Orb a
  ElanVital
  
  
  

  Hardware\Info\Form Factor Platform Development Support
  SSI
  WTX
  
  
  

  Hardware\Info\Standards Fibre Channel Industry Association
  PCI SIG
  RAB
  serialata
  SPEC
  
  
  

  Hardware\Info\Storage RAID.edu
  
  
  

  Hardware\Info\Cours CS 252 - Graduate Computer Architecture
  
  
  

  Hardware\Info The PC Guide!
  Hardware Bible
  FullOn3D
  developer.intel.com
  HwB The Hardware Book
  United Overclockers
  Ars Technica
  Tech-Junkie
  HardwarePub
  Webopedia
  Illustrated Guide to the PC Hardware
  SysOpt
  2CPU
  Ace's Hardware
  Technical Support - RaidHelp v1.0 - Free RAID Technology Guide
  Computer Architecture
  OPENCORES.ORG
  TechFest
  MidWest Micro Support
  
  
  

  Hardware\Resalers GeekTek!
  Micro-Bytes
  ALCO
  ABC Micro
  2CoolTek
  Plycon Computers
  TCWO
  ABC Micro - Lprix
  Case Outlet
  The Chip Merchant, Inc
  Cimsys
  OrdiGros
  ALIENWARE
  SHENTECH
  FireStorm
  Hyper Microsystems
  TWEAKBOX
  
  
  

  Hardware\Reviews Tom's Hardware Guide
  Sharky Extreme
  StorageReview
  HardOCP
  AnandTech
  SystemLogic
  x-bit labs
  Active-Hardware
  FiringSquad
  SocketA
  Overclockers Australia
  HEXUS
  dansdata
  SysReview
  
  
  

  Hardware\Manufacturers AMD
  ASUS
  Belkin
  MassMultiples
  Promise
  StarTech
  VIA Technologies, Inc
  ABIT Computer Corp
  Comcase
  Micron Semiconductor
  ECS
  
  
  

  Hardware Freeboxen
  

So I bought one of PC Power's Thermalsense fans and used it to replace the PS fan. Now everything is nice and quiet when I'm just surfing, but the fan revs up when it's hot or when I'm gaming. I'm quite happy with it so far.

I'm planning on getting another one of these fan, amputating the temp sensor and putting it on a long extension wire, and using it as my case fan. The sensor will go up near the top of the case so that the fan will vary its speed based on the case temp, not on the temp of the incoming air.

quiet power supplies from PC Power & Cooling

no fan on the processor, only a very large heatsink on a PIII 300

fluid dynamic bearing hard drives from Fujitsu MPG3xxxAH-E series

IBM's latest GXP hard drive: very quiet

sleep the hard drive when it is not in use

lower the voltage on K6-2 200 fan from 12V to 5V, with temp monitoring. In 2+ years no problems.

use external firewire/USB enclosure for loud peripherals so I can unplug them (plextor CDR, older hard drives)

but I just bought an G4 Cube last week (with ATI fanless video card).

The silence makes this machine livable. I am going back to school (photography) and needed a computer I could use in a small appartment where it would have to live in my room. I also have all my CDs in MP3 because I do not want to lug them around and wanted to watch DVDs on it. No matter what I do, unless you play the music VERY loud, my PCs make too much noise. The Mac is not perfectly silent, but even when there is sound around, you can hear yourself think.

I also use a Vaio picturebook C1-XS and contrary to some posts on how quiet laptops are, it is very loud especially when the fan comes starts to be happy. It also has a disturbing whine which may come from the toshiba 30GB HD I installed in it. Sadly I did not have a choice as the 9.5mm in those densities are quite rare. IBM has one now I would have bought. The moral is that you only hear the loudest component...

I would prefer a desktop that uses technology designed for laptops with convection cooling, even if it was a tad slower. There are lots of progress to be made in how processors are cooled. Why not use the computer case as a radiator ? On another aspect, I would really appreciate a computer system with an external power supply (like the Cube) also capable of powering all the stupid little periperals that each require an annoying wall wart (imagine some larger cable like a power bus (including a few lines at different voltages) with different interchangeable plugs along the way that can power all sorts of devices: camera, USB hub, KVM switch, modem, hub, ...).

And in the "Less is better" vein, if getting rid of sound is number one and wall warts number two, then cables are number 3 (I use airport or IEEE 802.11 cards)...

My apologies for getting mystical on you... As in meditation, in the quest of perfect computing happiness, or computing Nirvana, the less, the better...

/philippe

www.phitar.com

PC Power and Cooling has this nice siliencer line of power supplies if you want a quiet power supply fan. Your gonna pay more money, but i can definately say that if you have a noisy supply now, one of their new supplies will sound whisper quiet when compared to any old supply. For cpu fans your on your own. you can try on from PCPower&Cooling, but i don't know how quiet they are.

I replaced all my PCs power supplies with PC Power and Cooling supplies. Expensive, but worth it. Cuts down the noise quite a bit. My home office is now not completely silent, but a lot better than it was before.