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but also GPUs, I installed one of these bad boys: thermaltake schooner, but before I bought it I did some research and the reviewers claimed that the x800 pro from ATI would run at about 92 degrees Celsius under load, that was a bit worrying, but I took the chance and installed it. My card has never been above 80 with that heat sink, and I think the difference is in how and what type of compound used. I didn't use the supplied compound, but went with arctic silver instead, also I paid special notice to the instructions, most GPUs are slightly concave, so you have to be extra careful when applying the paste.

I'd rather see such cooling techniques used to make silent mid-range cards with good performance

I don't know much about in a rack system, but I had been running a Big Water system in my gaming rig for about a year, and it developed a slow leak. Mind you, they recommend that you check the fittings every so often for leaks, which is something that I didn't do as religiously as I should have. I had modified it by including 2 VGA coolers, and a leak developed on one of the VGA coolers and a smaller leak on the CPU block.

The leak from the CPU block was such a small leak that it dripped sludge, as the water evaporated before it could actually drip, and the residues built up. Unfortunately, the sludge landed right on the back of one of the video cards, on the GPU connections. Crossfire didn't much appreciate the signals that the video card was sending, and pretty much fried both cards and the PCI-e slots on the motherboard.

The leak from the VGA block dripped on my audio card, and fried that. In the end, I ended up having to replace 2 video cards, an audio card, motherboard, and a 1 gig stick of ram (fried as well, but can't be sure that it was caused by the water.) I can imagine that a leak in a rack would be even more catastrophic.

The fan he mentioned was an AC fan, so yes, a capacitor would have worked to slow the fan down in that case. But why would you want to wire up 120VAC by hand inside a computer case?

If you want a case with good airflow, the Antec P180 would be a great choice if you want sound deadening on the case panels, or if you don't mind the case fans that much, the Thermaltake Armor or the CoolerMaster Stacker is a great choice. The Tt Armor also has an accessory side panel with a 250mm fan: http://www.thermaltake.com/product/Chassis/misc/A2 356A2400/sidepanel_index.asp

Their only real disadvantage is their weight. Many people forget to consider that a ~19 kg (40 pound, empty) case isn't exactly easy to take to LAN parties. Though with that weight comes a high degree of robustness that has often shown to be very valuable.

Their only real disadvantage is their weight. Many people forget to consider that a ~19 kg (40 pound, empty) case isn't exactly easy to take to LAN parties. Though with that weight comes a high degree of robustness that has often shown to be very valuable.

But a windowless black Tsunami Dream is another story. No Stikers for me Mr.

Already happened, sorta. There's a silent GFX cooler by Thermaltake called the Schooner that uses a heatpipe to extend cooling fins outside of the back of the case via an empty PCI slot. Quite nifty IMHO, although I don't like the idea of a fairly fragile piece of metal next to big hulking VGA/DVI connectors.

Done.

you could do this.

I and MANY MANY other people have been doing this sort of thing for a LONG time.

In fact I started doing it back in the TNT2 Ultra days.

Use a 1U CPU cooler and you won't block more than 1 PCI slot at most.

Here are a few examples: (This from my old GF4 ti4200)

http://wyrdone.org/casemods/DCP00783_t.jpg
http://wyrdone.org/casemods/DCP00784_t.jpg

I've since done the same for my Radeon 9800XT 256MB card.

Using the Thermaltake Volcano 10 Cooler ( http://www.thermaltake.com/coolers/volcano/si/a167 1.htm )
  the card runs overclocked at 500Mhz at 50'C.

This site has a lot of ideas:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/

An earlier guy wrote about how he ran cables to his garage and kept his keyboard, monitor, mouse, so he couldn't hear any noise from his computer. It only cost him a few hundred plus labor. But there are alternatives.

Here's some of mine:
Get a passive power supply (check the article this whole thing is about, or google for some, or check the SPC site at the top of my post)

Get a passive CPU cooler (they do exist) or use one of the ones that can mount a 120mm fan, make sure all fans are very low noise 120mm fans that can move more air than smaller fans, but at much less noise.

Here's an example of a passive CPU heatsink (its quite big, but can handle fast modern CPU's)
http://www.thermaltake.com/coolers/4in1heatpipe/cl -p0071SonicTower/cl-p0071.htm

You may want to consider some of the recent AMD64 cpu's that run quite cool and low voltage, but yet very good performance. Like the venice version of the AMD64 90nm 939 pin 3000+ cpu.

Memory doesn't matter so much, you can use them as is.

Get a graphics card that is passivly cooled. For example, I bought this one and I love it:
http://www.giga-byte.com/VGA/Products/Products_GV- NX66T128VP.htm
Its a nvidia 6600gt pci-express.

An alternative is to get one of the mobos that support the Pentium M CPU. That cpu is normally for laptops, but has great performance and very low power and heat. You can also get older graphics cards that are cheaper and passively cooled and put out less heat (my 6600gt gets pretty how) if you aren't going to do any gaming.

Replace the chipset fan with a heatsink
I used this one on my asus a8n-sli deluxe mobo:
http://www.zalmanusa.com/usa/product/view.asp?idx= 71&code=014

As for hard drive, check this:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article258-page3.htm l
Its a 200 gig SATA hard drive with noise levels of 21db idle and around 24db while writing.
If this is still too much, get an older 5400 rpm hard drive and enable the noise reduction technology on it. Many many hard drives have utilites you can download from manufacture to enable noise reduction in operation. It slows the performance a slight amount but can often reduce noise quite a lot. I dont know if laptop drives are any quieter, but you could purchase one and use one of those adapters to plug it into a normal IDE plug.

Get a well designed case. Here's a review of a system that runs cooler than an open air test bench and can use a single 120mm 5.5 volt case fan:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article254-page4.htm l

Or if you really want to go extreme in case design, there was a case a couple years ago that was almost $1000 and it was basically one giant heatsink with stuff so you could passive cool cpu and video card to the outside of the case, so you could operate it fanlessly if you wanted.

For fans, if the uber quiet 120mm fans are still too noisey, then run them at 7v or 5v instead of the normal 12v. You can greatly reduce the noise this way and its not a hard thing to do.

This page has a bunch of info and PDF/xls tables on differant fan characteristics with undervolting. You can get fans down to 15 or less db when you run them at 5 volts (the ones that work at that speed)
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article25-page1.html

If this is still too much, you can go with eve

Your card is about as big and as hot as they come. I had a slightly more modest (and older, hence the fan failure) Radeon 9800 Pro. I did notice that Thermaltake had a larger solution for hotter cards, though-- it costs twice as much at $40, but it has more heatsink area, including a set of copper fins that stick out of the neighboring slot to give the card some cooling outside the case, too. The external part looks kinda silly, but it doesn't stick out any further than the VGA plug already would, so it's not going to necessitate any rearrangement in your desktop.

I can't vouch for it, because I haven't used it myself, but it's like the humongous big brother of the one I bought. And those external fins should help significantly-- dumping heat into the lower-temp outside air is much easier than dumping it into the alread-warm internals of your case.

Linky

Why wait?

The Thermaltake shark http://www.thermaltake.com/xaserCase/shark/black/b lack.htm is one of the nicest cases I've ever seen. It is designed with water cooling in mind and it is made practically "tool-less".

I have one Athlon XP 3200+ (Barton) and one Athlon 1.14GHz (T-bird)

Athlons have always been known to dissipate lots of heat, especially the T-bird series. I have large copper heatsinks on both of them and during this summer temperatures of 60 degrees celcius weren't uncommon. Dont need a heater during the winter though (seriously).

The fan's a custom job for the Asus card (though there are a pair of holes for mounting other heat sinks) and I can't seem to find a way to order a single replacement part without just getting a whole new card instead. Once I get a job and have some cash in pocket, I'm thinking about getting one of these, but I might've already damaged the core from heat, so I'm also debating just getting a new card.

If you don't mind 10-15 minutes worth of manual labor you can slap one of these on and leave the fan unplugged. I've done it and it works just fine. Although mine isn't AIW and you may have trouble fitting the heatsink around the TV tuner.

I have found that the ThermalTake Xaser III case to be very quiet while still cooling very well.

I use Thermaltake's volcano, which has this little knob that I can turn the fan up or down, depending on if the CPU temp is going up or not. Also, on my other computer, I hooked the Volcano fan up to a hardcano hard drive case. It sits in one of your 5 1/4 bays, and via a probe, monitors your CPU temp so you can see it on the front of your PC. Plus Hardcano hooks up to Volano, providing a fan speed/volume adjustment on the face of hardcano.

I use Thermaltake's volcano, which has this little knob that I can turn the fan up or down, depending on if the CPU temp is going up or not. Also, on my other computer, I hooked the Volcano fan up to a hardcano hard drive case. It sits in one of your 5 1/4 bays, and via a probe, monitors your CPU temp so you can see it on the front of your PC. Plus Hardcano hooks up to Volano, providing a fan speed/volume adjustment on the face of hardcano.

For example, the Silent Boost heatsink/fan from Thermaltake is advertised as being as loud as 21 dBA. However, closer inspection will tell you that it uses an 80cm Panaflo 2450 RPM fan, and Panasonic says the fan alone (without the heatsink, which will add to the noise due to additional turbulence) is 28 dBA loud.

The same goes for all sorts of fans and PSUs advertised as being silent. Manufacturers exaggerate their claims, and the one with the lowest number typically sells the loudest product.

For example, the Silent Boost heatsink/fan from Thermaltake is advertised as being as loud as 21 dBA. However, closer inspection will tell you that it uses an 80cm Panaflo 2450 RPM fan, and Panasonic says the fan alone (without the heatsink, which will add to the noise due to additional turbulence) is 28 dBA loud.

The same goes for all sorts of fans and PSUs advertised as being silent. Manufacturers exaggerate their claims, and the one with the lowest number typically sells the loudest product.

The X-Box jsed to be called the X-barn because of this size. Can I call this the Plex-barn? Perhaps I can go one better and see if I can "case mod" my PS2 into my Xaser III case.

Considering the consequences of a little algea or whatever in tubes so small, I'm sure they'll provide the coolant(likely non-water) and perhaps even an on board Closed coolant system.

Considering the size of 3rd party coolants shown on site's like Tweak3d.net I wouldn't be suprised at all if the setups didn't look like some of ThermalTakes larger models.
If most of the tubing is kept in the in-die, and the motor is solid state (not sure what size we're talking about) then I'd envision something that would leak about as mutch as an air cooled system. hehe.

I just got myself a Thermaltake Xaser III with the Thermaltake 420W PSU with PFC. The case comes with 7 fans. I'm running a stock heat sink for my P4 2.6C. Granted I only have a GeForce MMX440, but it's damn quiet, a lot quieter than my old dual P5 200MHz MMX, and my new rig stays between 25-30 deg C. Mind you it is winter here and I don't know what the Bribane summer is going to do. And the cost? US$165 for case and PSU.

Thermaltake Aquarius II, £60 for an all-included watercooling kit. Reasonable enough for you?

Not completely silent, but 29dBA isn't that far off.

Supermicro

Thermaltake

I keep my cover off most of the time. Hot air hanging around in the case is not an issue.

To elaborate:

The Themaltake fan is mounted at the bottom of the ring of fins, on top of a round cylinder of metal, which is mounted on top of the CPU with clip and patch. It sits down at the bottom of the well, with the chassis of the fan in direct contact with one of the hottest part of the heatsink. Conduction heats the fan assembly as the heatsink gets warmer.

The CompUSA fans have basically the same shape of metal, cylinder with fins spiraling off the top. The fan is mounted on a plastic ring which is mounted on *TOP* of the fins on the end. So it is a good inch further from the CPU, making it cooler. Any heat due to conduction is greatly reduced, because it has to travel up the fins (most of it escapes into the air if the fan is running at that point), across the plastic mounting, and into the fan assembly. Some heat due to air currents will get on the fan of course. So when it fails, it would be the plastic mounting melts first, not just warming the bearings enough to make them seize.

It is a design flaw.

Here is a link: (wrong design)
http://www.thermaltake.com/products/orbs/chromeorb .htm

Newer, more expensive ones have the mount on top, on what thermaltake calls a "grille", here: (correct design)
http://www.thermaltake.com/products/orbs/dragon1.h tm

CompUSA's fans dont look the same and do not have the fancy grille, but the fan is not IN the heatsink as the earlier Athlon models from Thermaltake; instead, it sits in about the same place, but is mounted on TOP of the fins. The basic point, is to let the heat get away from the heatsink before it gets to the fan, those little fans can't handle high heat of normal operation very long.

But my basic point with the original post; dont believe all the hype, look good !== work good, stick with what you value. (I value a reasonably priced, reasonably fast PC that I do not have to dick with all the time.)

I keep my cover off most of the time. Hot air hanging around in the case is not an issue.

To elaborate:

The Themaltake fan is mounted at the bottom of the ring of fins, on top of a round cylinder of metal, which is mounted on top of the CPU with clip and patch. It sits down at the bottom of the well, with the chassis of the fan in direct contact with one of the hottest part of the heatsink. Conduction heats the fan assembly as the heatsink gets warmer.

The CompUSA fans have basically the same shape of metal, cylinder with fins spiraling off the top. The fan is mounted on a plastic ring which is mounted on *TOP* of the fins on the end. So it is a good inch further from the CPU, making it cooler. Any heat due to conduction is greatly reduced, because it has to travel up the fins (most of it escapes into the air if the fan is running at that point), across the plastic mounting, and into the fan assembly. Some heat due to air currents will get on the fan of course. So when it fails, it would be the plastic mounting melts first, not just warming the bearings enough to make them seize.

It is a design flaw.

Here is a link: (wrong design)
http://www.thermaltake.com/products/orbs/chromeorb .htm

Newer, more expensive ones have the mount on top, on what thermaltake calls a "grille", here: (correct design)
http://www.thermaltake.com/products/orbs/dragon1.h tm

CompUSA's fans dont look the same and do not have the fancy grille, but the fan is not IN the heatsink as the earlier Athlon models from Thermaltake; instead, it sits in about the same place, but is mounted on TOP of the fins. The basic point, is to let the heat get away from the heatsink before it gets to the fan, those little fans can't handle high heat of normal operation very long.

But my basic point with the original post; dont believe all the hype, look good !== work good, stick with what you value. (I value a reasonably priced, reasonably fast PC that I do not have to dick with all the time.)

A very good point indeed. Always RTFM.

Here are some more points for would-be computer-builders.

- You need a thermal interface compound between the heatsink and CPU. Don't just assume you can get by without one. Some heatsinks come with wax on the bottom which is slightly better then nothing. But it you want to step up a notch, get yourself a Thermaltake or Thermalright as opposed to the silly "Cooler-Master" HS that came with your machine and some Artic Silver 3 thermal compound. If you want to go hardcore, get an Alpha 8045 HS for Athlons or a Thermalright SLK-600/800 for P4's plus AS3.

[I fully expect 1-2 followup posts from people who cooked their CPUs by not using a thermal interface compound.]

- Don't put one hard drive right on top of the other in 3.5" mounting slots. They generate too much heat unless you've got a fan right on top of them.

- Always set the master/slave jumpers of CD/DVD and HDD drives BEFORE you install the drive because it is hard to access/see the jumpers when the drive is mounted in the machine. Make sure you plug in CD-Audio cables before the drive is mounted.

- Don't immediately install the motherboard into the case. It is often easier to install the CPU + heatsink, plug in the HSF (heatsink fan power cable) plus set any jumpers and check for any cable orientations BEFORE you install the mobo. (The necessary connections may be behind the power supply after the mobo is installed.

- Remember that in some cases, you have to flip the orientation of the data cable for the a-drive floppy and use the IDE cable that has the twisted wire in it. (You'll know it when you see it.)

- Bundle up the wires in twist-ties and keep them out of the way so that they don't vibrate in the breeze from fans. It only takes a small touch to disrupt an HDD power cable. Some, but not all, also say that this will improve airflow. It will definitely make your case look tidier and make later work inside it more easy.

- The first time you turn the box on, be looking at the heat sink fan and make sure it starts spinning, otherwise your CPU may come to a quick death. If it spins, immediately enter the BIOS and check the temperatures and make sure they are not insane.

- Don't close the case when you're done setting up the system. This is because you probably forgot to do something and it's annoying to have to remove the screws again.

I finally broke down and built a TV machine last summer.. I mainly used it to play Divx movies--both ones I ripped from my DVDs myself and ones I downloaded from Morpheus.

Remote Control:

1. I bought an IRman and got it working with Winamp's VidAmp..
2. At first, I kept no mouse or keyboard on the box. I opted instead to use the remote,
   TweakUI-configured auto-login, and VNC (from my laptop already wired-up in the living room.

1. I tore down a mid-tower case and buffered all of the metal joints with duct tape as I built it back up.
   This eliminated any inherent case rattle.
2. I layed the side and reconfigured my entertainment center's shelves to accommodate it.
3. The case had a interesting configuration of fans (combinations of Thermaltake "smart" fans and things)
   to try to keep the AthlonXP 1700+ and three Maxtor drives (one 30GB and two 80GB) cool.

What have I learned?

1. I *have* to have TiVo functionality and soon.
2. Morpheus/Kazaa and other online sources of movies are dying.
3. Drives fail quickly if not properly cooled.
4. Drives tend to fail anyway or have the remote possibility of very quickly losing 100 of your
   hard-earned movies in the event of failure.
5. Almost no matter what, a TV PC is going to be too loud to enjoy having in the living room.

What will I do differently next time?

1. I will build two different boxes--one bare and quiet set-top box or something in the living room and the other a
   nasty, tricked-out, noisy system to handle all of the grunt-work in another room.
2. IDE RAID. 'nuff said.
3. Linux--as much as possible. I will actually make the full effort to get away from Windows and build
   On-Screen Display menus and things.. One of the bottom lines of my experience is that Windows/FAT32
   *kills* drives.
4. I *have* to have TiVo/PVR/DVB/DVR/VDR functionality.. I could theoretically
   have one DVB card in the
   STB to add pause-live-TV functionality. For the setup and recording of other scheduled TV programs and movies, the "big box" in the other room that will have somewhere in the
   neighborhood of 4 or 5 DVB cards. This is fine for Digital Cable.. If I had a dish, it would
   likely be very different.
5. Rip, rip, rip. Get those DVDs archived onto file and quit letting other peoples' copies be sufficient.
   I really didn't do all *that* bad.. I had ripped somewhere around 60 of the DVDs myself.
   I've really got to say this--AVI-archived DVDs beats the friggin bug juice out of any multi-DVD player.

Here are some more related links..
LinuxDVB
VDR

Never use UPS to ship computer stuff.

Ever.

Whenever I need to move a computer and I need it done right (i.e. it is my personal box) I do it myself. That means packing it lovingly in the original box with the original styrofoam I have saved, strapping my 0.7 kg CPU fan into place with metal wire and then strapping it securely into the back seat of the car.

When your equpiment matters, trust nobody expect those who truly love and respect it to give it the care and attention it deserves. [Sexual reference not intended.]

Egad, I am sounding like a retirement home advertisement...

why the hell is everybody so intent on making some sort of BE/Linux hybrid?

Not to "save" the BeOS legacy/religion/apps obiously, but to save the linux kernel with all its drivers/features/fans/developers/sponsors/bouty from becoming a platform used for running nothing but posix webservers on headless pc hardware while it can be better (in design) then OSX for (even old) pc hardware.

This BefrankensteinAtOS is just a step toward what is my dreamworld:

- a cheap Nforce like mainbord with onboard graphics(nvidia, nuff said),audio(dolby 5.1 encoder),network(100mbit is 100mbit) and firewire (usb is now a "legacy connector" ;-))

- A dvb-c card

- two or four Clawhammer cpu`s

- Cooling that makes sense, not noise

- a linux-based kernel that loads directly from eeprom instead of an ugly old bios that doesn`t even understand todays harddrives. but still load ms-dos 3.00

- no more X, just every bit of experiance nvidia has with performace drivers

- A really fast gui, just try going back from Be`s Beos to windows

- a simple gui and cli shell that doesn`t eat more reasorces then it offers functinality but has a noice look and feel

- configurable translators

A filesystem that is fast, doen`t need complex journaling couse the oswrites metadata in a recoverable order and the hardware is fast enough to offer reasonable fast recovery anyway and has optional metadata (like the BeFS mime filetype)

I think this is really close to what others on slashdot want, note the lack of "evil" technology (except for perhaps nvidia).
After reading it back I found it also lacks girls and a social life but then again you can`t have it all ;-)
I guess for now I will have to do with the dano leak....

I'm typing this from...
Tyan Tiger MP (S2460)
2x AMD MP 1600+ (1.4/266)
Cooled by Zalman CNPS3100-GP "flowers"
Infineon 512meg Registered ECC DDR (CAS2)
2x IBM 20gig ATA 100 IDE
LG CD-RW w/DVD read (GCC-4120B)
ASUS V8200 (GF3 64meg)
SB Audigy X-Gamer
Intel eePro NIC
random floppy
in an In Win IW-S508 case
...no problems.

Originally built the box with Volcano II's...they were kinda loud.

Currently, the PSU and hard drives are the loudest things in the box. Will prolly replace the PSU with one of the quiet ones from QuietPC or Zalman.

I just got an Athlon XP 1700 and got the Dragon Orb fan for it. It works really well, but it makes the sound of a really loud hair dryer. Sometimes, you need to choose between performance and noise... With the Dragon Orb, you definitely do not go the silent way.

If you want a quiet CPU fan the Golden Orbs are the way to go. Not only do they look cool (not much use unless you add a window to your case though, but the added geek factor of owning a funky CPU fan never hurts) but they do a nice job of cooling your CPU and are some of the quietest I know of, both after looking at the tech specs on various CPUs and actually hearing other peoples CPUs to compare. Have a hunt for the GOrbs here