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Gotta jump in here to say I standardized on this Zalmon radial design several years ago for all my boxes and haven't looked back. The thing for me is dust, which would easily clog all the other coolers reviewed in TFA. Like it or not my PC real estate is dusty! Over the years I've aquired two types of tools to deal with the (serious) problem (very well).

Zalmon coolers of this design
http://www.zalman.co.kr/global/product/Product_Read.php?Idx=416

cans of compressed air to blast the cooling fins and:

a Dyson hand-held vacuum!
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Dyson%20DC34%20Hand-held%20Vacuum

These Zalmon coolers make it realistic to remove the dust. With x-acto knives if necessary, without rebuilding the entire PC. I just open the case regularly to deal with the issue and life is good.

This one.

Still like the idea of cardboard case though. and there is nothing wrong with painting it inside with aluminum paint to shield for RF and paint the outside to made it look nice.

Your rig needs five fans, but makes a little less noise than the Wii? I can't even hear my Wii's fan from across the room, especially not over my computer's fans even when idling and the CPU and graphics card fans are at their lowest speeds.

My PC is *almost* silent. It can be heard if you listen carefully, but it's quieter than ambient background noise. Assuming you have decent silent fans, a silent power supply, and an aftermarket CPU cooler, the addition of:

a fan controller (any will do)
acoustipack-ultimate

will pretty much silence any PC. The only remaining noise i have a few frequencies from the hard drives, but it's now so quiet that it no longer bothers me. If i had money to replace my hard drives with SSD's, my PC would actually be quieter than my wii......

blech

Do yourself a favor and get yourself a TNN 500AF. Since I bought one of these a few years ago I have never looked back and my ears have been served well, even with 6 drives on board.

Overclocking? No problem, and it's still quiet. Actually when I upgraded the motherboard (in 2006) in the machine I found that I had pushed it so hard the motherboard came out warped around the cpu area. Both have been intel chips wound up. Funny thing is I was looking at the i7 920 as my next upgrade with a gigabyte GA-EX58-EXTREME.

The only issues I have with the case are 1. the power supply can sometimes have a mind of it's own but I hope Zalman have rectified the issues in the meantime (I intend to have a spare power supply handy for when the original unit dies). 2. when upgrading you need to order the motherboard rear mount thermal blocks well in advance of your upgrade. 3. It fuckin hurts if you stub your toe on it. 4. sometimes you can go to bed and forget that the machine is on, it really is that quiet - I love it for music production.

But you are right though, music production is more demanding than game play, my music prod box handles games easily. In some respects I think the kernel tuning, for music production, makes the games run better than they do under windows - but I've never done anything but a cursory comparison. Many of my game player friends look at my music prod box with envy, and whilst I let them use it to play the odd game - I never let them put that shit through my carefully room eq'ed production monitors - this machine is for real work.

Plus the case makes a great space heater during the winter ;-)

Hasn't anyone tried to manufacture an LCD with alternating LCD polarity between adjacent lines of pixels?

Actually, someone has.

For all the cases where silently cooling the inside ambient temperature to below body temperature is possible, you're, of course, absolutely right. In some cases, though, the "silent" aspect turns this into quite a feat, that's where the case materials' conductivity I was referring to comes into play. Some (e.g. Zalman) made attempts to directly connect heat sources (CPU, GPU) to the case via heatpipes. From what I've heard, this can work quite well but failed due to weight, cost, installation difficulties and somewhat unique design.

The PCB is often used as a heatsink for SMD chips. It wouldn't work too well for a CPU, unless we adopt a new form factor with a surface area of 5,490 cm^2, or roughly a 2.5' square (and it would need a lot of heatpipes to make up for the extra distance between the CPU and the edges of the heatsink).

Maybe if it's crammed full of heatpipes and the whole case is a heatsink. Even then, there's a limit to how small it can get without overheating. Otherwise, your choices are:
small and powerful, but noisy
silent and powerful, but big
small and silent, but slow

How about Zalman? They still make 300W supplies which I can still buy here in NZ.

http://www.zalman.co.kr/eng/product/view.asp?idx=7 5&code=015

These are quiet and fairly efficient (75% full load).

Water cooling won't help. For one, you still need a very hefty fan cooling your radiator, as well as a noisy water pump.

A water pump that uses 85W sounds like way too much. The Zalman Reserator fanless water cooling system gets by with a 5W water pump. I have been using a slightly older version of the Zalman Reserator 1 on my computer for probably about 2 years now. I do not have a fan on my CPU or the video card so the computer is very quiet. With less heat being released inside the case I can also get by with running the case fan slower by adjusting the fan speed with the knob on a rheostat.

My Kill-A-Watt meter shows that my computer is only using 90 Watts at the moment (not counting the monitor). It uses significantly more under a heavy load. The cool 'n Quiet feature of my AMD-64 3800+ is enabled so the clock speed drops from 2.4 GHz to 1 GHz when under a light load. I don't have my monitor, water pump, DSL modem and other devices plugged into the Kill-A-Watt meter so the 90 Watt figure only includes my CPU and whatever else is inside the tower case. He uses 85 Watts just to cool his computers, he is cooling several computers, not just one. With my 5 Watt water pump the 2 water hoses shouldn't be more than a few feet long. The distance to his pool might require some extra power but would it require 85 Watts?

Heat exchangers are used in a few types of solar hot water heating systems. Perhaps that type of heat exchanger could be adapted for this purpose to create an inner loop of distilled water or coolant that would be separate from the swimming pool water. A single walled heat exchanger would probably be adequate in this case since. Not only would that help prevent corrosion but if you ever spring a leak you would only have a limited supply of water or coolant in the inner loop to leak out.

Back in the 1970s in the early days of solar energy the there was a solar hot water system called the "drain down" system (not to be confused with the more reliable drain-back system). It sent full main water pressure through the solar collectors on the roof. For freeze protection, during cold weather, it used a combination of a air-vent vacuum breaker (which looked like a salt and pepper shaker on the roof) and a sunspool valve. Unfortunately, after a few years the freeze protection was no longer reliable because of lime deposits forming inside the air-vent vacuum breaker. I know of one case where the pipes in the attic froze and sprang a leak. The insulation and sheet-rock on the ceiling of the master bedroom became soggy and caved in onto the bed. Most other solar hot water heating systems are not only less likely to freeze, but if they do spring a leak, there is only a limited supply of distilled water or propelyneglycol anti-freeze to leak out. When cooling computers with a swimming pool, a leak would have an unlimited supply of water. By the way, I have a neighbor who has never had any problems with his batch type solar water that he has been using for the last 21 years..

I have been using a silent fanless water cooling system on my computer for 2 years and love how quiet it is. I use an older version of the Zahlman Reserator. It is expensive, but works great and is totally silent. They also have a newer version of the system called the Reserator 2. It is an off-the-shelf solution that does not require a swimming pool. I have the water pump hooked up to my UPS so that cooling will still occur during a power failure when the computer is still running.

Heat exchangers are used in a few types of solar hot water heating systems. Perhaps that type of heat exchanger could be adapted for this purpose to create an inner loop of distilled water or coolant that would be separate from the swimming pool water. A single walled heat exchanger would probably be adequate in this case since. Not only would that help prevent corrosion but if you ever spring a leak you would only have a limited supply of water or coolant in the inner loop to leak out.

Back in the 1970s in the early days of solar energy the there was a solar hot water system called the "drain down" system (not to be confused with the more reliable drain-back system). It sent full main water pressure through the solar collectors on the roof. For freeze protection, during cold weather, it used a combination of a air-vent vacuum breaker (which looked like a salt and pepper shaker on the roof) and a sunspool valve. Unfortunately, after a few years the freeze protection was no longer reliable because of lime deposits forming inside the air-vent vacuum breaker. I know of one case where the pipes in the attic froze and sprang a leak. The insulation and sheet-rock on the ceiling of the master bedroom became soggy and caved in onto the bed. Most other solar hot water heating systems are not only less likely to freeze, but if they do spring a leak, there is only a limited supply of distilled water or propelyneglycol anti-freeze to leak out. When cooling computers with a swimming pool, a leak would have an unlimited supply of water. By the way, I have a neighbor who has never had any problems with his batch type solar water that he has been using for the last 21 years..

I have been using a silent fanless water cooling system on my computer for 2 years and love how quiet it is. I use an older version of the Zahlman Reserator. It is expensive, but works great and is totally silent. They also have a newer version of the system called the Reserator 2. It is an off-the-shelf solution that does not require a swimming pool. I have the water pump hooked up to my UPS so that cooling will still occur during a power failure when the computer is still running.

My computer uses the Zalman Reserator fanless water cooling system which has an almost 2-foot tall finned aluminum water tank. That would probably be much like the single bucket of water test. The Zalman Reserator is somewhat expensive, but after having once owned a noisy computer, I was willing to pay the extra cost to build one that is totally quiet. I have been using an earlier version of the Reserator for about two years now and it runs cool and is almost totally quiet. A newer version of their product is called the Reserator II

An aquarium could probably be used instead. Perhaps they could even have a fish highway with clear acrylic pipes running from one aquarium to another aquarium in another room. What would a person's wife think of that? At least the kids would probably approve. Someone actually even wrote a book on building fish highways, but it wasn't intended to be part of a water cooling system for a computer. Whatever you do make sure that you can't accidentally turn the computer on without the silent water cooling at the same time. I have the water pump plugged into the UPS so that water cooling continues, while the computer is still running, during the typical brief power failures that occur during during summer thunderstorms.

My computer uses the Zalman Reserator fanless water cooling system which has an almost 2-foot tall finned aluminum water tank. That would probably be much like the single bucket of water test. The Zalman Reserator is somewhat expensive, but after having once owned a noisy computer, I was willing to pay the extra cost to build one that is totally quiet. I have been using an earlier version of the Reserator for about two years now and it runs cool and is almost totally quiet. A newer version of their product is called the Reserator II

An aquarium could probably be used instead. Perhaps they could even have a fish highway with clear acrylic pipes running from one aquarium to another aquarium in another room. What would a person's wife think of that? At least the kids would probably approve. Someone actually even wrote a book on building fish highways, but it wasn't intended to be part of a water cooling system for a computer. Whatever you do make sure that you can't accidentally turn the computer on without the silent water cooling at the same time. I have the water pump plugged into the UPS so that water cooling continues, while the computer is still running, during the typical brief power failures that occur during during summer thunderstorms.

The background to this exercise is that until the Innovatek water cooling set became available, none of the vendors offered compatible brackets for socket 775. Thus, a bit of handiwork was the only option available.

Completely ignoring that Zalman's ZM-WB3 which has been part of their Reserator 1 Plus kit and the older Reserator 1 has been out for quite a while.

Then again, certainly without the additional fan, it's likely unable to handle the half killowat (why am I so tempted to write it as 5x10-4 MegaWatts?) that the crazily jacked Pentium draws. Granted it costs more than the watercooling used in the not overclocked cheap rig - but it runs a little less than the option used in the rig they actually did overclock.

Personally, I was happier with overclocking the 4200+ X2, totally silently, with absolutely no fans, to the same kind of benchmark scores. Sure, it was $200 more - but the price difference bought a processor that needed vastly less overclocking, thus generated vastly less heat, and thus could run totally silently - as opposed to leaving me with ringing ears every time the rig got switched on.

The background to this exercise is that until the Innovatek water cooling set became available, none of the vendors offered compatible brackets for socket 775. Thus, a bit of handiwork was the only option available.

Completely ignoring that Zalman's ZM-WB3 which has been part of their Reserator 1 Plus kit and the older Reserator 1 has been out for quite a while.

Then again, certainly without the additional fan, it's likely unable to handle the half killowat (why am I so tempted to write it as 5x10-4 MegaWatts?) that the crazily jacked Pentium draws. Granted it costs more than the watercooling used in the not overclocked cheap rig - but it runs a little less than the option used in the rig they actually did overclock.

Personally, I was happier with overclocking the 4200+ X2, totally silently, with absolutely no fans, to the same kind of benchmark scores. Sure, it was $200 more - but the price difference bought a processor that needed vastly less overclocking, thus generated vastly less heat, and thus could run totally silently - as opposed to leaving me with ringing ears every time the rig got switched on.

The background to this exercise is that until the Innovatek water cooling set became available, none of the vendors offered compatible brackets for socket 775. Thus, a bit of handiwork was the only option available.

Completely ignoring that Zalman's ZM-WB3 which has been part of their Reserator 1 Plus kit and the older Reserator 1 has been out for quite a while.

Then again, certainly without the additional fan, it's likely unable to handle the half killowat (why am I so tempted to write it as 5x10-4 MegaWatts?) that the crazily jacked Pentium draws. Granted it costs more than the watercooling used in the not overclocked cheap rig - but it runs a little less than the option used in the rig they actually did overclock.

Personally, I was happier with overclocking the 4200+ X2, totally silently, with absolutely no fans, to the same kind of benchmark scores. Sure, it was $200 more - but the price difference bought a processor that needed vastly less overclocking, thus generated vastly less heat, and thus could run totally silently - as opposed to leaving me with ringing ears every time the rig got switched on.

How can they have real review of CPU coolers without a Zalman?

http://www.zalman.co.kr/usa/product/view.asp?idx=1 93&code=

I haven't used this exact model, but I put their "CNPS7000" CPU cooler and their "VF700" Gfx card cooler in my PC. Combined with an Antec Phantom power supply and AcoustiPack case dampening material, acoustically it went from "this is really annoying" to "is this thing turned on?" (and is running a lot cooler, too)

...you could just use one huge heatsink: http://www.zalman.co.kr/eng/product/view.asp?idx=6 4&code=020

Right. And this power supply is actually designed to be used in a case with a case fan to help move the air. So while the PSU itself is silent, it is not really designed to be a part of a silent computer.

But it can be done. I own a Silvestone PSU, and I use it in a fanless case. I have connected the PSU to a Zalman Reserator, which is a fanless watercooling solution. I'm also using the Reserator to cool my GPU, CPU and Northbridge. In order to silence my HDD I built a really sturdy noise-proof box, and put the HDD in it, together with a water block connected to the Reserator.

The result? I've been running a nearly 100% silent system with reasonable performance (Athlon64 3000+, dual videocards, fast HDD) for about one year. The biggest downside is the maintainability. Changing a system component can take well over an hour, what with emptying the system of water, removing the tubing, etc..

I saw the same thing ... "woah, ugly!" when I looked at the pictures.

I wouldn't want that on my desk, or under it for that matter.

If you want pretty, check out Zalman's stuff, like the fan I use in my PC.

Sometimes the cases are not really capable of handling everything we can shove in there.

Then why are we able to shove things in there? If there is a valid mounting position for something, the case designer should assume it's going to be used and design accordingly.

I've been using this "cooler" (Zalman ZM-2HC2 ) of Zalman's to cool and quieten my SCSI hdd. It does a good job of quietening it (the rubber dampers do damp out the noise well). But the cooling's poor. It cools by conduction through the Al frame and radiates it away on the tubes, but the cooling rate's evidently too slow for SCSI hdd's anyway (may work better with IDE-hdd's). While the reserator is a different kind of cooling system, I'm still a bit skeptical about it's effectiveness in high-end systems that are overclocked. I've asked around in hardware forums and many are of the opinion that, in the final analysis, there is no substitute for good old fashioned airflow (you can use strategically mounted low CPM 13db case fans if you want a quiet PC).

What do slashdotters think?

Here's the heatsink. The manufacturer has several similar products.

But I only have a Radeon 9200. (It does just great on Railroad Tycoon II and Master of Orion II. I think my AMD-64 3000+ may be overkill however.)

My All In Wonder 9800Pro is fanless. I installed one of these on it.

I hate to burst everyone's bubble... but the Phantom is not silent.... merely very quiet... I work for Voodoo PC and we've started using the Phantom 500 in machines that need help in the noise department.... they only have one fan, and a good design with tons of surface area to bleed the heat... the problems are it needs to have room to dissipate that heat, probably at least an inch clearance on every side unless you want to have another fan aimed at the PSU....

the only really silent power supplies that I've seen come from Zalman in their TNN Series (Totally No Noise).... those cases are awesome, but building one will result in the builder being coated in thermal paste up to the elbow.... the 400W power supply is fanless, as is the entire system.... and the chassis is so heavy duty that you can't even hear the drives spin up.... plus it looks (and essentially is) a giant radiator...

http://www.zalman.co.kr/

There's link to shameless plug "review site" but no link to product itself. Not even in the sidebar thing on top.
Here it is.

But, really, all of those fan and water and air-conditioning based cooling options are just really good ways to make your office or computer area really friggin' loud.
It's not that I want to spend $1500 Canadian on my next computer case, but I'm going to seriously consider it. Just imagine, no fans at all to make my room noisy, and if there's a nuclear attack, I can hide behind it for safety!

Bet it's a Zalman. At two pounds, it's pretty hefty...

This could also be it.

http://www.zalman.co.kr/eng/product/view.asp?idx=1 45&code=009

If that's a 120mm fan, it's pretty damned large.

Antec Phantom 350 PSU [silentpcreview.com]
Gigabyte 6800 fanless (only 12 pipes, but not a big sacrifice...though if this liquid metal stuff works it should make things easier the next time I upgrade) [cooltechzone.com]
Thermalright CPU heatsink [thermalright.com] with a 120mm fan on a Zalman fan bracket [zalman.co.kr] and set at minimum on a Zalman fanmate control.
All in an Antec 3700BQE case [silentpcreview.com] with quiet 120mm exhaust fan.

The annoying thing was that as soon as I got rid of one whining or droning noise I'd notice a slightly quieter one... Now, it's inaubible except in dead silence.

Antec Phantom 350 PSU [silentpcreview.com]
Gigabyte 6800 fanless (only 12 pipes, but not a big sacrifice...though if this liquid metal stuff works it should make things easier the next time I upgrade) [cooltechzone.com]
Thermalright CPU heatsink [thermalright.com] with a 120mm fan on a Zalman fan bracket [zalman.co.kr] and set at minimum on a Zalman fanmate control.
All in an Antec 3700BQE case [silentpcreview.com] with quiet 120mm exhaust fan.

The annoying thing was that as soon as I got rid of one whining or droning noise I'd notice a slightly quieter one... Now, it's inaubible except in dead silence.

Antec Phantom 350 PSU
Gigabyte 6800 fanless (only 12 pipes, but not a big sacrifice...though if this liquid metal stuff works it should make things easier the next time I upgrade)
Thermalright CPU heatsink with a 120mm fan on a Zalman fan bracket and set at minimum on a Zalman fanmate control.
All in an Antec 3700BQE case with quiet 120mm exhaust fan.

The annoying thing was that as soon as I got rid of one whining or droning noise I'd notice a slightly quieter one... Now, it's inaubible except in dead silence.

Well... trow one of theese onto an x850 (wont fit an 6800) and i would imagine it will be pretty toasty, but still stable. Pretty much as i imagine your card is. All this talk about how much temp is too much is IMO just BS as long as it doesent crash. However disabeling the fan on the (relativly) small and usually shrouded (sp?) standard heatsinks on newer cards propably wont work.

Like the Zalman TNN 500 Case?

Totally silent as it uses the case as a passive radiator for the CPU and GPU.

I beleave VR is still very much everyone's dream. I see more products now inching closer to affordable VR. Like IR sensors for hats to track head movement.

I've personaly cobbled together a kind of entry level system I use to play games like Republic Commando and Star Wars Galaxies with. It's not the greatest as resolution is far from what you get on a monitor. And text, small ones, sometime become hard to read. But I am happy with it.

Head Tracker (actualy taped to the headphones):
http://www.gyration.com/ultragt-compact.htm

Surround Sound:
http://www.zalman.co.kr/eng/product/view.asp?idx=1 10&code=023

Head Mounted Display ($500 off eBay, although my are an older version I think)
http://www.i-glassesstore.com/iglassespc-3d.html

There are a number of improvements to the setup which could be made with some electrical engineering type skills. Which I don't have, but it's to play with none the less.

So VR isn't forgotton, I just don't think it's really gotton to the point yet where the manufacturers see enough of a profit window to come up with complete systems.

Get a Zalman flower cooler. Zero noise. Then you'll want to get a quiet PSU and a fanless heatsink for your graphics card.

This Zalman Tower and this Breeze seem like a better combination at about the same price.

Someone else mentioned the Zalman flower cooler, which is what I'd recommend. Here's a link for it.

Honestly, any Zalman cooler is going to be absolutely inaudible in silent mode, and usually inaudable in normal mode once the case is closed. No, not "quieter than the competition", but genuinely silent.

Nonetheless, the flower cooler can run fanless on a CPU that isn't pushing the high end of its cooling capability.

I use two of them to cool my dual AthlonMP 1800+ processors. I do run the fans over them for peace of mind, but I could easily run them without it.

% cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_avail able_frequencies
2000000 1800000 1000000
% echo 1000000 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_setsp eed

I think this would be a lot quieter than either option you suggested. A good cpu cooler can make a difference in overall noise, but i agree, isolating the case fans with those rubber dampeners has dropped the noise level a couple of dB. Case fans are a good first step since they're more easily replaced and you dont mess up your warantee. Thats if you bought a prebuilt system though...

Quiet PCs are easy to cobble up. You can get the necessary bits'n'bobs from http://www.silenx.com/, http://www.zalman.co.kr/ and other vendors...

zalman surround headphones

You want a flower or a slotted radiator. Ensure the motherboard layout allows the heatsink oriented so that the openings face towards the I/O plate.

Install a big-ass 120mm, god-like cu. ft per min fan above the IO plate, and mount it with rubber fasteners, if available.

Feel free to use the low-RPM mode of the main cpu fan, because the large case fan will be doing most of the air moving (pulling it across the fins from the northbridge side of the motherboard). You can probably fashion an air hood to ensure the airflow goes only through the CPU heatsink and ditch the main CPU fan, if you're clever.

...is to buy Zalman components ( http://www.zalman.co.kr/english/intro.htm )

I built my last PC with their components. When I powered up for the first time I freaked out because I saw the power light go on, but that was it. Then the BIOS came up, thank god. No noise at all...seriously. I mean, I expected quiet, but not noiseless...

I was extremely let down by my hard drive though. Considering Seagate had a great reputation for quiet hard drives, I figured I'd get a Seagate SATA hard drive...well their SATA drives are loud as heck when writing...