Silent PCs With Thermoelectric Panels?

pdxChris asks: "I'm assembling a new PC for digital audio recording and music production. I'd like this machine to be absolutely silent, with no fan noise at all -- actually, no mechanical noise of any kind outside the hard drive spinning. While browsing at an ecology products vendor I found information on thermoelectric panels: they pump heat from one side to the other when supplied with DC, without making any noise. As this is new to me, I did an AltaVista search for more information on the topic and found a nice overview. I'd like to replace all fans in my new PC with thermoelectric panels, so that the machine could be right in front of me (for swapping audio cables, popping in new blank CD's, etc.) without making any sound at all that could distract from the music or be picked up by my microphone. As for the hard drives, perhaps I could put them into an external SCSI case with an extra-long cord to get them into the closet I'm willing to put up to a few hundred dollars and a few dozen hours into the project if it's feasible to obtain a totally silent PC!"

Comments

Re: Thermoelectric Panels

[Tinfoil]

G'Day!

What your looking at is a Peltier device. These are the holy grail for overclockers. There are a few drawbacks to them though:

They require alot of power
they generate a fair bit of heat (it has to go somewhere)
There is a problem with condensation with these. They run VERY cool. Just like uninsulated windows in winter time

As far as the scsi hd, there is a limit on the length of your scsi chain. So you have two options really. Get a Firewire (IEEE 1394 I think) drive, or hook up with a gigabit lan and pop in a Quantum Snap server (basically HD's that you hook directly into a LAN

Not looking good eh? Well now, I have seen enclosures for Dot Matrix printers (in fact, I have one at work for the printer we use to print our monthly journals) that are heavily insulated, but they do require a fan for cirulation. It may be something to look into, though I would not know where. Or... there is *shudder* iMacs or the new G4 Cube that are fanless.

Peltiers are going to be a problem

[Kefaa]

The difficulty you are going to face is that Peltiers need MORE fans not less. In order to be cold on one side, they are VERY hot on the other. This extra heat is needs to be moved out of the case as quickly as possible.

In addition, these have a host of other issues to deal with, especially condensation (see http://www.overclockers.com/)

You may want to consider the alternative of moving the entire box into another area and running a powered KVM module with long cables to it. There is a maximum distance from the machine before degradation becomes so bad it is useless.

Or when all else fails, try a cabinet that is vented or directly over an A/C vent. You can soundproof the cabinet and be done.

Good luck.

High power ICs should come with control logic

[BitMan]

I'm a big proponet of putting peltzer or other thermal control logic on high power ICs (such as general-purpose CPUs) to control these cooling devices. The main problem is condensation and if you put the CPU in control of its own cooling, that would eliminate 98% of it's issues.

Otherwise, I found the units for enclosures to be a little too expensive for consideration ($500+!). While it would be neat to run my box with a consistent 60-65 degrees F (you should always run about 55 degrees F for condensation purposes), I don't think it is worth it for $500.

-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith

Cheap-o solution (the one I use)

[Brazilian Geek]

I know you mentioned that you're willing to put a fair amount of money on the system but a while ago I wanted to get rid of all the noise my computer made and didn't want to invest more than I had so I came up with a few cheaper solutions:

1 - I came up with the idea of putting my box under my desk inside a double cardboard box (a 14" monitor box inside a 17" monitor box with that weird foam/sponge from my old pillows in between them)

2 - The box was set on it's side and put next to the coolest wall in the house (hopefully the cold wall would cool the air and to let it recirculate) . The cables were all sent out through the handle openings to my desk.

3 - For audio, I bought a cheap (US$ 30) wireless (radio) headphone set - works like a charm, a gazillion times better than my other set. BTW, I use headphones cause when I'm gaming I don't want ANYTHING to bother me. For line out and mic I bought some 2 meter (about 7 feet for you non-metric geeks) headphone cables and made a pair of extension cords that are next to my monitor - I plug it into my surround sound system (for heavy duty gaming).

That's about it - it's very quiet, not silent. I've been running it since and so far so good - I've overclocked my processor, added a 20gig 7200 RPM HD (with fans) and added a pair of old 486 cooler fans to blow the hot air out the top.

I have an external Zipdrive and I've got an internal one at work (with more bandwith) so I just ditched my 3.5 drive. My CD-ROM drive is internal so I have to sit on the cold floor once in a while to change a CD or whatever...

My rambling probably didn't help you out but my dumb little setup is quiet enough for me and only set me back some $ 45.

Thermodynamics

[Detritus]

From what I've read, Peltier devices are not very efficient (< 10%). Wouldn't this just make the problem worse? Instead of removing 30W of heat from a CPU, you now have to remove 300W of heat from the hot side of the Peltier device.

Simple is best

[photozz]

give a bunch of geeks a stick and a donut and tell them to make a sundial, the first thing they want to do is plug it in. Have you considered removing the all the fans from the box, connecting a long length of flexible ductwork (ACE Hardware $2.00) to the case, Duct tape is fine, running it to somewhere else and connecting a fan (ACE Hardware $10) and crank that sucker up? the air flow should be tremendously better than the 2 1/2" fans that are in there now, and perfectly quiet.

Quantum hard drive

[Mark F. Komarinski]

Quantum has a new drive (lct20?) that spins at 4004 RPM but with the performance of a 5400RPM. The slightly slower speed drastically cuts down on noise and vibration. I got a demo unit here in the lab, and powered it up. I couldn't tell the thing was running until I started reading and writing data.

Think Outside the Box

[InitZero]

You'll be wasting time and money if you attempt to make the box silent.

The newspaper I work for supports the operation of a local cable station next door through a co-branding agreement of some sort. The bottom line is that I deal with a bunch of TV equipment. (And, worse, TV people.)

We were faced with a similar problem. Our solution was to put a closet between the audio studios and put the PCs in the closet. Through the wall, we run the keyboard, mouse and monitor cables. Not only don't you have sound problems if you keep the computers in a closet, you also don't have the related heat problems.

Even if you don't have a dedicated systems closet right next to the studio, with a good keyboard extender, you should be able to get at least 25 feet between the user and the PC. While good cables ain't cheap, they are certainly less expensive than many of the other hairbrained schemes I've read.

Another possibility is a good laptop. We've found that the are much more quiet than desktops. So quiet, in fact, they are below our noise floor. A generic IBM ThinkPad 600E at our installation is studio safe.

InitZero

Re:Thermoelectric Panels

[Tower]

Can the Mac boot off of the firewire disk? I didn't think it was able to at this point.

Also, the firewire disks themself are usually not up to the task of keeping up with quality digital recording (lots of extra RAM will help alleviate this, but there's no guarantee). The whole Firewire -> IDE bridge is a little clunky in terms of speed. If you can, stream all digital recording to a SCSI stripe set, if not a true RAID array (a little drop in write performance with the RAID setup as opposed to the stripe, but hey - you don't want to lose that perfect take!).

U2 SCSI runs LVD, so there shouldn't be a problem with distance (<12m)... PowerPC chips are amazingly power efficient compared to the x86 line, and I'd like to see more (PC type) machines besides the Macs being made with them (and low-end RS/6k machines).

Like I mentioned in another post, a U2W card, 5 drives, external enclosure, and 20 ft cable is cheaper than a 1GB ss drive... and you get 40 times the capacity...