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While I'm impressed that they actually bothered to measure the sound coming from their case, their final measurement of 31.7db hardly counts as silent. In fact I personally regard that as fairly noisy, though I'm perhaps pickier than most. Realistically how much noise one can tolerate is a personal thing. If it bothers you it's too loud no matter what the acoustic measurements might tell you. And what bothers me might not bother you. I have just listened carefully to my machine and whichever component made the most noise got replaced.

The only way to have a truly silent case is to have no fans and an idle hard drive. If that isn't possible fans like Pabst 8412 NGL are the next best thing. They don't move much air but they're very quiet. And a better solution IMO than the hard drive enclosures which drive up heat and reduce reliability is vibration isolators combined with a naturally quiet drive like Seagates. There are some fanless and semi-fanless (doesn't run unless it gets hot) power supplies out there like the SilentMaxx Semifanless. And replace those stupd 60mm fans that they insist on using for CPUs and GPUs with big headsinks and/or heatpipes. Also install neoprene or other washers and use rubber to deaden case vibrations. Home Depot is a great source for a lot of this stuff.

• A Zalman Silent 400W Power Supply helped a lot and only emits about 20db of noise. Still not silent enough for me so I'm going to get something like a SilentMaxx Semi-Fanless 450W soon.
  
• I replaced my case fans with Papst 8412 NGL fans which only emit 12db; basically silent. I tried one of the PC Power and Cooling Silencer units and it's a fine power supply but still pretty noisy.
  
• I put some new rubber feet I picked up from Home Dept (about $3 each) which are normally used for door stops to help dampen case vibrations.
  
• I switched over the 7200 RPM Seagate hard drives from the 10000RPM Maxtor/IBMs I was using. The old drives were fine but rather noisy.
  
• I replaced my graphics card fan with a Zalman Heat Pipe system which emits no noise at all.
  
• I picked up these hard drive coolers with rubber shock absorbers from CompUSA which further helps dampen case vibration, and helps keepd the drive quieter. My case uses drive rails and I had to drill an extra hole in the drive rails to make them compatible.
  
• I also installed this Anti Noise Kit from CompUSA. One caution is keep at least one screw from the case touching both the power supply and the case with no padding. Helps keep a ground between the power supply and the case.
  
• I also bought some rounded cables (yes I'm aware of the crosstalk issues but they haven't been a problem) which helps cooling. I got some cable wraps and zip ties to keep the cables bundled and out of the air flow as much as possible.
  
• Installed a HUGE Thermalright SLK800 heat sink with a Pabst fan (above) to keep the processor cool and silent. This actually dropped by processor temp by several degrees in addition to being quiter.
  
• I installed Melamine foam from Home Depot throughout the case to dampen noise.
  

I have a couple of the single-fan controls that dangle inside the case - they're made by zalman. They basically just have a knob that varies your voltage from 5v to 12v. I found them at sharkacorp.com and plycon.com"> Both of those sites have a other components for noise reduction also...

For around $150 total, the improvement was pretty dramatic. The only sound I hear from my box now is the hard drive, and if that ever starts to become an annoyance, there are options.

For around $150 total, the improvement was pretty dramatic. The only sound I hear from my box now is the hard drive, and if that ever starts to become an annoyance, there are options.

Also, see if you can talk to whoever in incharge of the heating/AC system in the building to see if there is anything they can do. Maybe Allergy Free has a filter that would work with the system or maybe you could get together the with the other groups of people in the building and buy an electrostatic air filtration system for the whole building. They work great on both dust and allergies. These are just wild ideas from brainstorming, they really aren't that realistic I guess. The first paragraph though will probably work well.

PS: We have electrostatic air filters installed in our house. We also had them installed in the house we had before this one. Our family has allergy problems and when we clean them, you'd be amazed the colors the water turns from what comes off them. They really do catch alot.

PPS: Or you could just watercool everything and run it all through one massive radiator. But this would be a bit more than $500. More pipedreaming.

In the end, I ended up using US-based Plycon for the Papst fans (they are the best queiet fans you can get, bar none) and Magic Fleece. Other bits, like the Zalman cooler, I had to buy in the UK.

Why is it that it's so difficult to find any of this gear in Canada? In this regard, Canada is a third world country!

There's also the Koolance and Sen Fu product lines at Plycon Computers

Those are the ones I knew about. A Google search turned up a whole bunch more. Man, I'm glad I don't subscribe -- ads are unavoidable, it seems.

I've also thought about adding cheesecloth in front of my one fan to really cut down on the dust intake, but as of yet, haven't done so.

I've also thought about adding cheesecloth in front of my one fan to really cut down on the dust intake, but as of yet, haven't done so.

Gez every 2nd laptop currently being made has a heatpipe - its no big deal

"Heatpipes" are nothing new.

Although heatpipes are mainly utilised where things are cramped arround the heatsource, to move the heat to another spot where there's more room for a heatsink (hence its popularity in laptops, where they move the heat from the CPU to behind the screen, where there's room for a wide albit flat heatsink), there are a couple of Socket 7/370/A heatsinks that utilise the heatpipe effect. The "Zen Radiator", which uses the heatpipe as the core of a radiator like arrangement; & the "Coolermaster HHC-001 Heatpipe Copper Cooler", which has long (as in high) fins & uses heatpipes to help conduct heat to the top of the fins.

All this article shows is that PC World employs a laptop reviewer who doesn't know what he's talking about in regards to laptops.

Really if a tech mag is going to have someone write a blurb about laptop cooling they should employ someone who actually knows something about laptop cooling.

If you didn't want to go with water-cooling, (such as ripping apart a koolance 1U case), you could instead just go with a convection-cooled style case similar to the Mac cube (iCube?).

Plycon sells a nice assortment of different heat-syncs, the one you would be particularly insterested in is this one, it's designed to use a moving air current to cool the CPU rather than a direct fan. If your using a slower or underclocked CPU, it probably won't take very much to keep it cool.

Your biggest problem will most likely be finding room for a large enough heat-sync that doesn't require a fan of some sort.

If you didn't want to go with water-cooling, (such as ripping apart a koolance 1U case), you could instead just go with a convection-cooled style case similar to the Mac cube (iCube?).

Plycon sells a nice assortment of different heat-syncs, the one you would be particularly insterested in is this one, it's designed to use a moving air current to cool the CPU rather than a direct fan. If your using a slower or underclocked CPU, it probably won't take very much to keep it cool.

Your biggest problem will most likely be finding room for a large enough heat-sync that doesn't require a fan of some sort.

You might want to look at icrontic.com or at this blurb about how to use trace tape to unlock the Athlon XP. I know I saw the latter something like a week before I saw the Tom's Hardware article.

I agree -- 64C sounds too high. Here is a good article on the subject from Via Hardware.

I recommend the following three steps to cool it down:

1. Run H.ODA's WPCREDIT/WCPRSET and set the ACPI HALT cooling on, if your processor is running at under 1.33 GHz or if you're not running Win2K. This will keep your idle temperature down. See the end of the VIA Hardware article for the admonition about CPU speed and Win2K stability.
2. Use Arctic Silver II thermal paste. I bought some at Fry's and it's pretty cheap. It brought the temperature down 2-3C under load.
3. Try the NoiseControl Silverado fan, if it fits in your face. North Americans no longer have to buy it from Germany, as Plycon sells it in the US now.

I have a 1.2GHz Athlon which I run at about 1.35GHz by upping the FSB. My IWill KK266 board claims that it idles at 26C, and it gets up around 41C during heavy use, and 49C in a tight loop.

I have a shutoff at 50C, which it last reached when Outlook went into a tight loop overnight. I ran a program called MBM to check on it, and it recommended a program called Shutdown Now to shut down and power off in case of alarm. Unfortunately, I hadn't noticed that Shutdown Now was nagware, and my system was up all night at 50C, sending me pages every 5 minutes. When I got to work in the morning, there was a pop-up dialog saying to please send in $15 to them before it would shut off my computer. Talk about lame! It would have been fine to nag a boot time, not not at shutdown time! I'm just glad the program didn't fry my CPU. Anyway, I replaced it with the NT Resource Kit program called shutdown.exe that took a little bit of mousing around to get into MBM's configuration, but no way was I going to give money to the guy who almost fried my computer.

If you're looking for silverados... check www.plycon.com. They have them for $60, and they are in the US, so no import hassles. I can't speak for their quality, yet... but mine should arrive tomorrow.

I'd just put together a new machine based on the Gigabyte GA7DXR (great board!). Everything was fine for about 2 hours, and then the Delta just stopped. Now, for those that don't know, this particular fan is LOUD. It has a high pitched whine that's unmistakable. I can hear it down the hall and into the livingroom. I knew immediately when it quit, and hit the power button faster than I'd ever hit it before... and STILL had to wait the 4 seconds for it to finally shut down. ;)

Don't know how hot the processor got, but that heat sink saved it. Turns out the Delta just blew the motherboard CPU fan header - as several sites that I found later said it would. I was VERY happy to find that plugging the Delta into the PS via a 3-4 pin adapter worked, and the machine hums right along to this day.

you may want to check out this power supply or the enermax whisper series.

alternatively, i understand it is fairly easy to disassemble a power supply and get really nice quiet sanyo denki or panaflow fan to replace the (most likely) lower quality noisy sleeve bearing fan in there now. check out plycon for fans if taking this route.

hope this helps.

complex

An effective way to reduce fan noise is to use an 80mm fan through the use of a 60mm-to-80mm adaptor. Some really slick adaptors can be purchased from www.plycon.com under fan adapters.

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
  

"In a attepts to remedy this, we put cheesecloth filters over the sites of heavy air intake -- it helps immensly, and I would suggest you try it if you need to. Alternatly, many 'server' cases have washable filters that snap over the air intake ports, but those cases are in the 100+ USD range."

Plycon sells computer fan filters, although I don't know if they'd help with cigarette smoke. I believe Radioshack has a few in their catalogue too.

A used fabric softner sheet also seems to work well, as the loose weave doesn't hinder air flow too much. It doesn't keep the smaller particles of dust out, but I can attest to its ability to stop cat hair.

Here's a keyboard you can roll up and shove in your pocket.
http://www.plycon.com/flex.htm

Well more or less (similar concept, different materials - plastic)

Check out these keyboards

I can testify that it's big enough for my mouse, a cup of coffee, AND an ashtray. It's also durable enough to handle a cup of coffee, and if you spill something on it, you can just rinse it with water. As far as mousepads go, it's the last one you'll ever buy. I have actually ordered two, but that's just because I wanted one at work, too :)

Instead of going on about it, I'll throw you a link to the main site. You can buy them there, or find links to other distributors (mainly overclocking/cooling stores like 2CoolTek or Plycon).

--

If making cables' isn't your thing...Plycon Computers (my favorite vendor online) sells them, both ATA-33 and -66, as well as SCSI and floppy drive connectors.

Very expensive, sure, but waaaay cool and they certainly can't hurt airflow in your case.

for one thing, this isn't news. i just thought i'd point that out. there have been tutorials on how to do this forever on enthusiast sites like virtualhideout, etc. not to mention plycon sells pre rounded cables. but anyway, as long as you have a sharp enough blade ata66 is equally possible (but if you're scared you can always pay $30 to have someone else do it for you...)

Floppy cables can be rounded (you can even remove the middle connector), the older IDE cables can be rounded, and 50 pin SCSI wires can also be rounded. Bind everything together at the end with zip ties and then wrap it up with spiral wrap from Radio Shack and similar (e.g. Ax Man in the Twin Cities).

ATA/66 and 68 pin SCSI cables are a different story. The wires are stiff, and if you don't do the cable exactly right, you have either trashed an expensive cable, corrupted the data on your hard drive. People seem to have mixed success with those.

If you want to mess with your cables, try some old junky ones, first. If you must use a knife or razor, make the incision as small as possible, then peel the cable apart in opposite directions -- those grooves are the path of least resistance, so it should be more reliable than making a long, perfectly straight cut with a small sharp object.

If you want rounded cables and don't want to take any risks, I know that Plycon has all sorts of high quality machine made cables of all types, albeit for a very steep price (just like everything else they sell).

I'm still not sure why this isn't the standard. Some PC manufacturers have been doing this in their servers and micro towers to improve airflow through the chassis. I'll bet that these kinds of cables eventually become the standard, especially if the cooling requirements for x86 hardware is going to start requiring 1lb. heatsinks like the upcoming P4...

WARNING: the above comment does not link to goatse.cx

Here's place that sells them pre-rounded. You can get rounded cables for ATA33, ATA66/100, floppy, and SCSI 50-pin.

http://www.plycon.com/flex.htm