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Is IODD the new Zalman? My ZM-VE300 looks exactly like those pictured on their website, including the UI.

Examples of the first group include media PCs / DVRs, because you don't want loud CPU, case, and power supply fans in your living room,

To be fair, there are a lot of silent PC case/psu combinations out there. I have my MythTV system in an Antec NSK2400 with (something like) a Zalman CNPS8900 CPU cooler/fan and the whole thing is dead silent.

I spray painted the front silver bezel matte black and it looks like a high-end A/V unit - scroll down to photo on the Antec link. I installed a two-row CrystalFontz (blue back-light) LCD display in the top slot and the DVD drive in the bottom.

10 years ago I built a box using MDF and glass for my computer, using noise dampening foam and watercooling, space for two motherboards. (I had a lot of problems with headaches - noise made it worse, and I wanted to game.)

It was upgraded this summer to a GTX 780 hydro copper, new motherboard (z97) and the latest i7 that fitted, M.2 disk and windows 8.1. The other motherboard is running my Linux server, XBMC and the RAID.

It's about as big as a small fridge (55x70x50cm) and it weights about 55kg (10 liters of water) (it has wheels), but the noise level is below 10dB(A) (@1m); the pump and the disks are the loudest. It's more silent than the cats' water fountain - and it's more silent than this laptop on idle (well, firefox is heating it up as usual).

It's not impossible. It just takes some effort. The expensive part of watercooling is the water blocks, which you need a new one or two for every upgrade since CPU and GPU changes shape. (This time I went for the hydro copper so I wouldn't have to do the GPU watercooling myself.) Building a case is fun and will allow you to buy nice tools, useful for any craft.

Later on Zalman came out with the Reserator, allowing people to cool any system passively and very quietly. Are they still around? That is, I hear, a rather good solution.

http://www.zalman.com/global/p...

That said, Zalman will be missed as a passive cooling solution for many.

They wont be missed by me, i've had too many bad experiences with their products:
- my Zalman GM1 mouse emits a constant high pitched electronic noise
- My CNPS5X has a high pitched "whuring" fan noise. Louder than any other fan in my PC, even at lowest RPM. http://www.zalman.com/eng/prod... . The contact plate also had metal fillings left on it, had to sand it down. The contact plate wasnt level and the copper pipes "dig" into the cpu.

Not a great experience i've had, shame because they are so tempting with the cheap price. They wont be missed on my part. As for "passive cooling", so many more companies out there doing exactly the same with higher quality finish.

http://www.zalman.com/eng/product/Product_Read.php?Idx=750
Virtual Drive + External HDD Case
Real Time 256-Bit AES Hardware Encryption

Dimensions: 146(L) x 80.8(W) x 14(H)mm
Weight: 91g (except hard disk)
Materials: Aluminum alloy, Acryl, Poly Carbonate (PC)
External Interface: USB1.1 Max. 12Mbps
USB2.0 Max.:480Mbps
USB3.0 Max.:5Gbps
Internal Interface: S-ATA I/II
Compatible HDD Size: 2.5'
Power: Input : DC +5V (USB Powered)
Supported OS: Window 98 / ME / 2000 / XP / VISTA / 7, Mac OS, Linux
Color: Black/Silver

I have one of these.

http://www.zalman.com/eng/product/Product_Read.asp?Idx=198

No on/off switch at all.

Zalman make 3D LCD displays that use circular polarization (using horizontal interlacing). You can use the same cheap light glasses that cinemas provide with them.

I have one myself - http://www.zalman.com/ENG/product/Product_Read.asp?idx=384 - and it works, but there are quite a few limitations. Obviously there's the consequences you'd expect from horizontal interlacing, less resolution to each eye. For PC gaming the Nvidia drivers are pretty good, but, they only work with the earlier Zalman monitor. Zalman didn't cough up the cash to Nvidia for them to continue support, so even though the Nvidia drivers are quite capable of supporting the newer Zalman monitors, they won't (although unofficially, it is possible to get them to work with a bit of hackery). Otherwise there are 3rd party drivers (http://www.iz3d.com/ for example) which have their own issues, e.g. variable quality and being detected by PunkBuster as a hack.

There's also quite extreme limitations on the vertical viewing angle for 3D, a 10-12 degree range. Move your head up or down out of that and the image splits.

As for the PS3, it won't detect this monitor as being 3D enabled at the moment. It relies entirely on automatic detection, there's apparently no way to manually configure it, so if it doesn't detect the display as 3D, that's it, no 3D for you. I'm not sure the PS3 even supports horizontally interlaced 3D output at the moment either.

I wouldn't really recommend it at the moment. It does work, the effect is great with the Nvidia drivers, and it is a bit cheaper than active shutter glasses solutions, but I expect (hope?) the technology to improve quite rapidly over the next year or so, so I'd hold off going down this route at the moment (if I didn't already have one).

Agreed, I ran into that trouble with hardwired rack fans too.

The trayless Welland racks have no fans, they're little more than an open-air frame internally. You have to supply your own cooling/filters.
http://www.welland.com.tw/html/mobile/751.html

Alternately there's these Zalman 3-bay racks, they're much heavier, use (tool-less) trays, but have a replaceable 92mm fan. No filters.
http://www.zalman.com/ENG/product/Product_Read.asp?idx=383

Of course what I'd really like, is to have one of the big case manufacturers decide I should design their next model. :)

If you get a silent water cooling kit (like the Reserator) then you can have a good gaming PC which is completely silent - no large and loud CPU fans, no jet-engine-taking-off-like sounds coming out of your PC when you are playing 3D games.

I do admit that most water cooling kits out there are targeted at the "crazy overclocking and maybe compensating for something" crowd, not the "gamers with silent PCs" one.

That said, I do have a Reserator (picture: http://www.zalman.com/DataFile/product/RESERATOR-1-V2_01_b(0).jpg - notice the radiator tower) so maybe I'm compensating for something myself ;)

With regards to heat, in a water cooling setup the heat from the CPU/GPU goes directly to the radiator outside of the PC case where it will radiate directly to the large volume of air in the room where the computer is. With air cooling, the heat radiates to the volume of air inside the case which in turn has to be forcefully refreshed with air from outside the case (usually using case fans).
Although in the end, both systems move the heat out to the air in the room, water cooling is much faster at doing it since water can transport a lot more heat out, it flows faster and since it travels inside pipes is barely affected by the geometry inside the case (e.g. obstructions to the air flow such as cables, boards and everything else in the path of the air coming inside and going outside).
Even with a passive water cooling setup like I have, the increase in efficiency versus air-cooling is so large that my CPU usually runs at around 32C instead of the 57C that where usual with air-cooling.

Which model is that?

Zalman TRIMON ZM-M220W