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Shhh! Constructing A Truly Quiet Gaming PC
Over the last few months, I've had a number of AskSlashdot questions about quiet computers, what hardware to get, and other items for assembling a
mega-machine that won't knock the roof off. I've put the finishing touches on my own mega machine -- if you're looking at doing the
same thing, or are just curious about the hardware involved, you can find out about what I built.
My first priority was the speed and scale of the machine. I knew that I wanted to build a machine that would be able to play games very well, and look nice, but since I didn't want to totally break the bank on doing it, I decided to go with some lower-cost components in part. So, without further ado:
- The Case: This was the easiest decision to make. Thinkgeek has by far the the cooler and easiest case around to get. I went with the precut window, and put in the window, as well as ordered the blue neon light to put inside of the machine. This case frickin' rocks. Thumbscrews for everything, the drive bays, motherboard array and everything else slides out intelligently - this is the first case I've ever had where I'm *happy* to be working on the internals of the machine. However, I did replace the fans.
- The Fans: Rather then use the stock fans, I ordered the Silencer Fan from PC Power and Cooling. Three of them to be exact -- and they are as quiet as the Stereophile comment implies. Very very quiet (20 Db), and does a great job of keeping the internals cool. The fans are the standard size for an ATX case, so swapping was a breeze.
- Power Supply: In keeping with the keep-it-quiet theme, I went with the Ultraquiet 400 ATX. It's got ample power, and is incredibly quiet. Very, very nicely done.
- The Processor: Being that I was trying to be at least somewhat budget conscious, I went with the AMD Athlon. I got the 1.2 Ghz variety, as the cost difference, at the time, between that and the 1.4 were considerable, for what I saw to be very little extra additional speed. It was also at this point that I made the choice to go with a single processor machine, rather then a dual. Since I was going to be a lot of gaming on here this machine, in addition to work, and the gaming would be in a Windows 98 environment (Diablo 2, Baldur's Gate II:Throne of Bhaal, The Sims) there was very little reason to go with a dual processor machine. So, with that in mind, I ordered my single Athlon 1.2 Ghz.
- Processor Heatsink/Fan: I replaced the stock processor heatsink, and went with the ultraquiet one from PC Power and Cooling -- replacing it was no problem, and while when the case is closed, the noise difference is inaudible; when the case is open, you can definitely hear the difference between the two fans. Plus, on average, the new fan keeps the processor an average of 4 degrees Celsius cooler - from 69 C to 65 C, when running full tilt - e.g. Baldur's Gate II:Throne of Bhaal, and my little contribution to Team Slashdot, that's the temp. Running with just the OS is about 58 C. I just used the heat-sink compound that came along with the new fan to wipe down the CPU.
- The Motherboard: Originally, I was planning on going with the MSI-6380 motherboard. Tom's Hardware recommend it -- but what I quickly found out was that there was a nationwide shortage on those boards -- or at least that's what multiple vendors told me. Luckily, the folks at Teacco, who I had ended up ordering through recommend the Asus A7A266. This uses the ALi Magik 1 chipset, versus the Via KT266 Pro chipset, which the MSI board used. My assumption is that the Via chipset was in short supply. I still think the MSI was a better board, but sometimes you have to deal with shortfalls - and frankly, the Asus supported the 266 FSB, and the RAM that I wanted to use. Availability won -- and I've veen happy with the A7A266.
- The DDR RAM: Obviously, if speed is the goal, you want to get good, and a goodly amount, of RAM. Having talked the various RAM manufacturers over with ChrisD, I finally settled on the Corsair Micro CM73SD256R-2100. It had a 266 Mhz bus, and Corsair makes a good RAM chip.
- Hard Drive: My last machine had two hard drives, one SCSI and one IDE. Since the motherboard I had purchased had two ATA-100 boards onboard, I decided that rather then go through and purchase a SCSI controller, and get a SCSI drive, I would just get a ATA-100 IDE hard drive. Also based on past experiences, and knowing other people who had the same problem, I decided to go with a 5400 RPM drive, rather then 7200. Most of the 7200 RPM drives I've had, or others have had, regardless of manufacturer, or type of drive, have died after nine month or so. I also wanted to get a drive that was quiet, and reliable -- and I had been very happy with my last IBM drive, so I got the Deskstar 40GV. Heh -- good thing I didn't get the 75 GXP. With ATA 100, I'm getting around the same practical throughput as SCSI, without having an additional controller. Also, with the Deskstar, I can use my SilentDrive sleeves. More on that in a moment. But, with 40 gigs, I was making a choice not to have this be a MP3 box or anything. That's alright, because the other machine has a crapload of space, and can handle that role, easily.
- The Silent Drive: In sticking with my goal of trying to be as fast and quiet as possible, I picked up some Silent Drives from New England Digital Computer. The SilentDrive is made by Molex; it's pretty cheap, and really cuts down on hard drive noise -- and since I've used them in my other machine, I don't have much concern about them cutting the drive's life. Besides, the aim of this machine is not to be a server, but more of a gamebox, so I'm willing to live with a slight risk anyhow.
- CD-RW: Obviously, a machine is going to need some sort of CD/DVD format input device. I had already decided to forgo a floppy drive, because the motherboard will support booting from CD-ROM, and I wanted to see if it can be done. Yes, it can be done, easily. Moving files around is much easier with scp than with floppies anyway. *grin* I debated between the DVD or CD-RW, but decided to go with the latter, because I'm going to hold out for a while, and then purchase a DVD-RW for the machine. No sense in getting a DVD Drive and decoder board now, when the DVD-RW is only a few months away. I also wanted to be able to burn and rip CDs fairly fast, so I went with the Yamaha CRW2100EZ. It's a very nice, very fast drive, but has a major problem for the quiet machine: it's loud. When it's got a drive it's working on, this thing makes a huge ton of noise. So, my solution is that I don't have disks in there, and when I'm doing something with it, I just put up with the noise. Nonetheless, in the long run, this will be replaced with the DVD-RW, and thus, I'm not too concerned about it.
- Cabling: With all of these parts coming in, I had to start wiring it all up, right? The rounded EIDE cables were great. I've got two, and am happy as a clam.
- Video Card: Since this rig was being designed for gaming, my choice was pretty simple on this one -- the The GeForce 3. For all the hype out there about this card, this thing is totally worth it. I got the AGP version, of course, but one nice thing about the change in motherboards was that the Asus can handle AGP Pro, so when a good AGP Pro videocard comes out, I'll switch over, and eBay my old video card.
- Sound card: As above, with gaming in mind, as well ultimately hoping to do some home movie editing for burning to the yet-unpurchased DVD-RW drive, I went with the consumer top of the line sound card, the Creative Labs Soundblaster Platinum. This thing was a SOB to get installed, because you have to not only insert the normal sound card into the PCI slot, but also fit into the 5 & .25" drive slot the external control slot. It's pretty cool, because it comes along with a remote so that you can use the computer as a movie watching system, if you want. The front slot is also where you can a lot more inputs and outputs, versus the normal 4 inputs on the soundcard. It even has an optical in and optical out, so that you can do some PS2 gaming on the computer if you want. Very very impressive -- but getting the cable running from the external control slot to the sound card wasn't very fine, because: 1. I had a hard time getting the cables fitting together and 2. The flat grey ribbon cable ruined my esthetic of the black EDIE rounded cable. I know, an artistic argument, but dammit, this is my mega system.
- The Network Card: Nothing really exciting here -- I reused a Intel EEpro 100. Good network card; I don't use any of the remote management stuff, but it sends and receives packets. That's enough for me.
- The Mouse: CowboyNeal had been singing the praises of the Logitech Mouseman Wireless. system for a while, and I decided to take the leap. It's a remote system, but probably the first remote system that I've used that truly works. The latency between mouse and display is remarkably low, and that latency has been my major complaint of other remote keyboards/mice. I'm not sure that the mouse is appropriate for a FPS or other instant-reaction game which might expose problems at the finest levels, but it does just fine for games like BG2/The Sims. Slightly sluggish for Diablo II, but not lethally so. I recommend it, with the above reservation about FPS/faster paced games.
- Keyboard: This was one of two instances that I simply reused components from before. The keyboard that I'm using is the Microsoft Internet Keyboard. Yeah, yeah -- it's a M$ product. Whatever. The reality is that the keyboard has a good tactile feedback, comes with two built-in USB ports on the keyboard itself, supports PS/2 and USB for output, and is a full keyboard. Oh, I got it free through some promotion at CDW.
- Monitor: This is the second instance of reusing old components. In this case, I had purchased the Sony Trinitron G400 about eighteen months ago, for use on my first gaming machine. It's a great monitor -- 19", so it fits into almost any desk space, has a flat screen, and great color depth. It's been a very dependable monitor, and while other monitors have come out, I saw no reason to spend the several hundred dollars on getting a new monitor. So, I've decided to just stick with this. Maybe if flat screens or something get really cheap over the next year, I'll upgrade, but for right now, I see no compelling reason to do so.
- UPS System: We wouldn't want to be crashing in the midst of our gaming or working, now would we? I actually set up two UPS systems -- the system is on a APC BackOffice UPS, and the monitor is on a USB. I've used the BackOffice UPS's output to plug into COM2 on the system. Powerchute is APC's software hook-in. I've got the Windows version that came along with the software, and am also playing with getting the Linux version working, although it seems to be compiled against RH -- at least the version I have is.
The machine came together fairly well -- by reusing a couple components, I was able to keep the price under $2000 -- and the same system should be even cheaper now, since RAM is so cheap that we should throw away hard drives and just have RAM *grin*. Of course, then you'd better hope your UPS system works.
The point of this machine was really to create a platform for gaming and it serves that "need" admirably -- it's been a pleasure to play games on. With the prices on CPUs continuing to drop, I'll probably upgrade this to a 1.4 Athlon in the next six months, and throw in another half gig of RAM, but for the time being, I've happily created a nice, fast -- and quiet machine. Really, this thing is incredibly quiet: I don't have my decibel measuring device anymore, but my old Vaio laptop's fan is louder then this machine. Louder, and with 1/4 the computing power, and 1/4 the RAM. I consider this an improvement.
Is my hearing bad, or what ???
My pc's humm fairly quitly, they dont soun like chainsaw or anything, what a few hard drive clicks screws up you concentration on your game ?
I dont get it , alot of problems with commodity pc's but noise was never one in my book....
Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
awww dammit, I missed....
And I thought my Proc ran hot... 65C? Sheesh.
Instead of using powerchute with the APC UPS, you could try apcupsd - it's Free and works perfectly for me. I must have installed it on close to 50 boxen, and it's never given me any troubles yet.. unlike the closed-source stuff you get with it..
Blaming GW Bush for the Iraq war is like blaming Ronald McDonald for the poor quality of food.
That's WAY too hot. Granted my Athlon's much slower, but it's the old Slot-A Athlon at 700, which can run pretty darn hot. With 1 intake and 1 exhaust case fan, and 3 processor fans blowing over the wide Aavid heat sink, I keep mine at around 30-35 C, in summer maybe it peaks at 38 without the AC on. Right now it's 29.5 C. Maybe going ultra quiet isn't the greatest thing to do for a heat sink fan, eh?
jX [ Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Einstein ]
decibells are a relative scale, it doesnt mean naything unless you say what its relative to.
Its like saying a piece of sting is long.
Maybe DBm ?
and the gaming would be in a Windows 98 environment
You would be correct.
I recently went with the Iwill KA-266Plus motherboard. (An version with an early BIOS got a bit of a poo-poo from Tom's Hardware, but the latest versions rock.) Purchased a 1.3mhz Athlon with it, and 2x256mb of DDR memory.
I have to say, I'm extremely pleased with what I have. I've managed to bump the FSB up to 147mhz, and have the system run stable. That means I'm getting 1.47ghz on the Athlon, and 294mhz on the memory. Very nice.
I'm really surprised the Ali Magik chipset didn't get more attention that it did. It was the first to enable DDR memory with the Athlon Socket A chips.
My configuration allows me to get the very highest 3DMark 2001 benchmark for my system, although I'm not running a Gamer's video card.
I went with the Radeon VE. It has built in hardware optimizations for viewing DVDs, MPEGs. It also has dual-video output, so I've got a normal monitor, and my home television connected as two different screens.
Anyhow, just wanted to say, nice choice on the ALI Magik motherboard.
Correction VA software.;) "VA software" is in that much trouble.
Snoozer.
So, windows 98 for gaming and I'd assume linux for work.
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
(Diablo 2, Baldur's Gate II:Throne of Bhaal, The Sims)
That is one HELL of a machine for those three games. Seeing as a 600MHz, TNT2 machine will handle them just as well. Usually, high end machines like what you have are for serious FPS afficianatos (sp?). Another note, is that serious gamers could give a rats ass about their box noise. Usually, the games produce enough sound outta their huge soundcard/soundsystem to muffle anything the box can produce.
Sorry to gripe, but this article is either:
(A) A gloatfest on your new box (which I do myself)
(B) A thinkgeek plug
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Sometimes people just have to learn and adapt to change, it is one of the requirements of being a living thing.
It's Windows 98. He mentioned it early in the article, when talking about processor requirements.
sulli
RTFJ.
When you've got a couple hundred watts of surround sound. I hardly notice anything other than the rockets exploding around me. That's especially handy when the wife's naggin ya...
"What did you say, I can't hear you!?"
:)
-- this space for rent --
hardware, n:
The parts of a computer system that can be kicked.
In the CPU section he says he went uniprocessor because he is going to use a win98 gaming environment.
Note GreenCrack makes you dumb and unable to read.
Since it was mentioned that the author wanted to eventually do some Video Editing: When editing on computers with 5200 rpm drives I've had huge playback problems in Adobe Premiere and other programs, lots of skipping and so fourth.
Mod my comments down. It'll be fun.
Right up near the top of the page he does say that is is a gaming box running Windows 98
Andrew
Turn off the computer and back away! You processor is WAY to hot, better rethink your cooling.
My Athlon 1.33Ghz only gets up to 48C when maxed out playing games or calculating prime numbers!
sig this
Ok, there's an important question! Which is the noisiest/quietest OS?
Frequency of disk activity
Cycle through any mechanical devices, i.e. floppy drive (my Sun IPX often goes click once a minute)
Anything else?
Shh! Be vewwy, vewwy quiet! I'm hunting viwtual wabbits!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Nothing wrong with 65 degrees, I have a new 1.2Ghz DDR Athlon and mine runs at 55-65 degree depending on room temp, and my machine makes so much fan noise it is insane
I know lots of people that run new athlons and they all run at about 55-65 degrees, I also know several people that build PC's for a living and they always set there motherboard kill temp to 70 degrees.
There has been a lot of talk about thermal death and an article I read talked about AMD tech guys shutting down an athlon when it hit 80 degress (I think it was 80, might have been 70, I can't find the article again) so whats wrong with 65 max? I think you are way too paranoid about CPU temp.
If you ever drop your keys into a river of molten lava, let'em go, because, man, they're gone.
Yet the case costs 200+ bucks? That seems like a contradition. Condidering that for many of us, not breaking the bank means going with the 32MB DDR video card instead of the 64MB Geforce 3 for 300 bucks.
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
I'm guessing it's somewhere in the $1000 range, since I just recently put together louder, but similarly outfitted boxes for my home.
Seems like a lot of cash to get rid of fan hum...
ceci n'est pas un sig.
... They could have told you that the TEAC 16/10/40 model is just about (if not) the quietest CDRW that can hit 40x reading.
At least, that's why I bought mine a couple of months ago.
One: Unless you plan on putting nutty amounts of drives and video cards into a machine 400W is WAY overkill. I've got a 1.2Ghz Athlon with a CDrom drive and using a ATI Radeon and the MicroATX power supply drives everything just fine. Wattage? 120W. More wattage usually requires more fan to cool. More fan = more noise.
On the subject of quiet CDR drives. Plextor has a kickass utility (windows) that allows you to speed limit the drives X rating. SO you can cap at 4x, 8x, 10-24x 14-32x, etc. At around 10x it's pretty much silent.
Fsck cluebie moderators. I'll say what I want, offtopic or not. And fsck having to qualify every bloody statement just
GamePC Story on the subject
"You can take our lives, but you can never take our Flerbage!!!!"
Did you even read the article!?! He mentioned Windows98 numerous times with one mention of a non-RH linux distro. Sheeesh.
On a side note, he made this comment:
The keyboard that I'm using is the Microsoft Internet Keyboard. Yeah, yeah -- it's a M$ product. Whatever.
I'm not one to talk highly of MS software, but their hardware is good quality stuff. From my experience, their mice, keyboards, and joysticks are nothing to be embarassed about. I'd be interested to hear others experiences though...
-Derek
All the games I've played recently worked fine in W2k. Win98 is crashed too easily by bugs in the games.
My box has an Athlon 600 MHz with an Asus K7M mobo. At this point, I'm trying for a quiet PC (at least as quiet as I can get it). I've already installed an Ultra Quiet power supply and a SilentDrive enclosure, and those are working well so far.
:-/. In that case, are there other quiet-coolers I should try? Or, should I just go straight to the
acoustical foam?
As far as I can tell, the primary remaining source of the noise is the chipset fan (an RDJD K701). Looking through 2Cooltek (a good source for cooling products), I came across the "Alpha P7125 Athlon/SECC Cooler (no fans)". However, does the "no fans" designation mean that the cooler comes without fans but needs them, or that it comes without fans and can operate without them? I'm thinking that if indeed it can operate without fans, then that could mean a significant sound reduction for me.
Then again, if that one does require the fans, then I'm guessing that it's about the same loudness as my current setup
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
>The Case: This was the easiest decision to make. >Thinkgeek has by far the the cooler and easiest >case around to get. I went with the precut >window, and put in the window, as well as >ordered the blue neon light to put inside of the >machine. This case frickin' rocks.
.... but... it's $200... for an ostensibly pretty case... i dunno, i put 'em under my desk, no need for 'em to be pretty. my considerations in buying cases are (1) good airflow, (2) number of bays, and (3) lack of fruitiness (those damn purple or hot pink knobblies on these iFruit-looking cases these days).
it never ceases to amaze me how people have such varied experience with hard drives, and it molds them into either brand A fanatics, or anti-brand B crusaders... take me, for example: i've never, ever had a problem with a 7200 rpm hard drive, but i attribute this to the fact that i've never bought a maxtor 7200 hard drive.
eh, cheers, have fun with the rig.
I too have recently spent some time investigating how to make my machine quieter. Eventually I plan to build a *silent* mini server for home, but this is another project...
I was running a GlobalWin 802 case, with 2x Sunon 80mm case fans and a GlobalWin FOP32 heatsink and fan. This was quite noisy.
After some research, I found out that Papst (a German company) makes just about the quietest fans you can get. You can get them as low as 12dBA. Getting hold of them is another matter - they're often expensive, reorder times when out of stock is long (many months) and most suppliers only stock a very small part of the Papst range.
Eventually I found a local (UK) supplier and purchased 2x 80mm fans (rated about 19dBA). I put one of these as the exhaust fan for my case and the other I put on my FOP32 heat sink. I needed to get a 60mm->80mm fan adapter (most CPU heatsinks come with 60mm fans, you can get an adapter from most overclocking stores). I did away with the extra case fan.
Overall the transformation was remarkable. The machine is now very quiet - not silent, you can still hear the fans, but very very quiet. As far as cooling goes, it's just as good as it was before. Both my board and cpu are running at the same temperature (I'm running an overclocked AMD TBird).
One of the fans I got, the one I use for my case, has a temperature sensor built into it. This detects the airtemp and alters the spin speed of the fan accordingly. From 25oC is starts to spin faster upto a max temp of 35oC when it's running full speed. At it's lowest speed (say 25oC) it runs at 10dBA going upto 19dBA at full speed. This was more expensive than the standard Papst fan (US$30ish!!!) but seems to work.
I'd certainly recommend looking to get Papst fans for anyone.
An alternative (not quite as good) is Panasonic's Panaflo fans.
tom's hardware has a great Piece on cpu fans. They rate 'em on temperature versus noise... Not surprisingly, the biggest heatsink with the largest fan caused the greatest drop in temperature and the most noise. But if you're looking for some brand ideas, its a great read.
Also, there is the following:
Silencer 80mm Fan (sold by someone else but made by PC Power&Cooling)
24dba SECCII fan
I got these last few from here, i thought slashdot had run an article linking to the tom's hardware review, but i can't seem to find it.
~zr
sig?
So you've eliminated all of that extrea noise that keeps you up at night only to be kept awake by the brilliance of the neon light shining from your outrageously overpriced case. I hope at least it matches the neon lights under your car.
--
The Ol' Gray Mare, Ain't whut she usta be...
That only satisfies "Quiet" and "PC".
Link to GamePC article
Here's my own ultra-quiet rig that I've just built:
$189 Seagate Barracuda IV SoftSonic 80 Gig (30 dB)
$757 Monarch 2x1.2Ghz AthlonMP
2x256 ECC DDR RAM
Tyan Tiger MP mobo (29 dB)
2xThermalTake VolcanoII Cooler (31 dB, 31 dB)
$070 SD-M1502 Toshiba 16X DVD Drive
$335 Asus GeForce3 Pure 64Meg AGP
$85 SB Audigy Platinum (mysimon)
??? Speakers?
$014 floppy
$170? Lian-Li PC-60 Case
$089 Enermax Whisper 431W EG465P-VE(FC) Power Supply (directron.com) (33 dB)
$214 24X10X40 Plextor CD-RW
$80 Wireless Keyboard / Optical Wireless Mouse from Logitech
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$1918 Subtotal sans Shipping
Michael C. Hollinger
If you want truly quiet, go the watercooling route. You can watercool everyone component in your case, exhaust the heat out the back using two fans, and the noise is normally below ambient. I currently WC both processor's, my ram, my Vid card, my PSU, my HD's, and both MoBo bridges. I only have 3 fans in the case, two exhausting past the radiator in the back, and one that pulls air into the case. Put a filter on your intake and your set.
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
Apparantly the banner adds were losing effectiveness, so ThinkGeek asked Slashdot guys to do up a story disguised as an add. OSDN may be losing lots of money . . . but, damn! Talk about un-subtle.
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
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.
The 'cuda IV is probably the quietest hard drive I've found with great performance (rivaling the 75GXP) according to some benchmarks. I like it, and it's ultra-quiet. When I first got it, I had to put my ear to the side of the drive to even see if it was working!
The Case: I went with the precut window, and put in the window, as well as ordered the blue neon light to put inside of the machine.
..
..
.. then later on
The Processor: Being that I was trying to be at least somewhat budget conscious
Buddy, if you're trying to stay on a budget, buying a $230 case and a $40 light fixture is not the way to do it.
If it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet.
Dude, I am most excited with your purchasing experience, but perhaps it would be helpful to explain why you wished this whispery machine.
Are you frequently coding in a zen like state of consciousness? Do you trade high quality sho files and play them on your wharfdale? Are you seeking the ultimate immersive gaming experience?
Also, why not just put the pc in the other room and run cables? Wouldn't that be much quieter? I am sorry, but this just seems to me to be episode 12,037 of how I built a very chi-chi pc to bring to lan parties. Thats okay, but its a different horse than "how I found silence in computing"
www.avacal.com -- the home page of pete shaw
I have the same burner, and it is loud. It shakes my desk pretty good when it gets going. I find it to be a nuscience and wish Yamaha would come up with some firmware that you could adjust the read speed to something a little lower.
As a burner though, it is nice.
ok i know your pc your choices right? but as i build pcs for a living, i woudl just like to interject a few things.
.25" drive slot the external control slot. It's pretty cool, because it comes along with a remote so that you can use the computer as a movie watching system, if you want"
"Plus, on average, the new fan keeps the processor an average of 4 degrees Celsius cooler - from 69 C to 65 C, when running full tilt "
allthough im sure ill get flamed for this, that is absurd. a cpu cant run at 65c all the time. well it can but your asking for trouble. that is far to hot. my p4 1.4 runs at a cool 38 with just a few extra fans in the case. i mean i know amds are faster but they dont last as long by far.
"based on past experiences, and knowing other people who had the same problem, I decided to go with a 5400 RPM drive, rather then 7200. Most of the 7200 RPM drives I've had, or others have had, regardless of manufacturer, or type of drive, have died after nine month or so."
are you insane? you went from a scsi system to a ulta ata100 5400!!!! hdd system!!! you WILL notice a decrease between 7200 and 5400. it is VERY significant and frankly i am shocked that you would go with a 5400 based on a totally flawed judgement that 7200 fail more. your amd processor will fail before that hdd i guarantee it. i have never had a 7200 in my systems fail. other peoples yes, but the rate of 7200's failing to 5400's is exactly 1:1. the speed does not make a difference. if it did, my compaq 9.1gig 10krpm would fail way before my 7200's. the way i think it works is that some hdds fail, some dont and theirs nothign you can do about it.
"I also wanted to be able to burn and rip CDs fairly fast, so I went with the Yamaha CRW2100EZ. It's a very nice, very fast drive, but has a major problem for the quiet machine: it's loud."
yes well you have realized somethign very commonly known in the industry. yamaha's make a TON of noise. the other thing to note about that particular drive is if you try burning those mini credit card sized cds in them, they always buffer underrun so their not the best drives to get. i would have gone with a plexwriter or a scsi yamaha (which i actually own btw).
"I went with the consumer top of the line sound card, the Creative Labs Soundblaster Platinum. This thing was a SOB to get installed, because you have to not only insert the normal sound card into the PCI slot, but also fit into the 5 &
ahhh you baught into the hype! creative cards are awful! they suck tonnes of cpu power, install all sorts of buggy programs (ie creative disc detector) and have huge drivers. a better card by far, albiet hard to find in my part of the world are turtle beach cards. also they are cheaper and dont come with all that useless software. and they dont make your system load 1/2 as fast!
"Nothing really exciting here -- I reused a Intel EEpro 100"
just a small note. i read somewhere (i believe toms) that those intel cards eat tonnes of cpu and us eless bandwitdh than they should. personally i would go with a 3com 3c905c. thoes people know what they are doing.
"UPS System: We wouldn't want to be crashing in the midst of our gaming or working, now would we? I actually set up two UPS systems "
rofl! if you have money sure! but ups's on a gaming machine.... it doesnt really serve any point except being able to play quake when the power fails, but on that hand if your routers/switches are not on the ups you will loose your connection anyways so it doesnt really matter.
i dont mean to cut up your system because it sounds sweet (i wish i could afford a windowed case w neon tubes) but some of your dicisions strike me as odd and i figured you posted here to see what we thought of it so thats what i think!
-
Anyone have any experience using sound absorbant sheeting? I'm interested in lining computer case panels with it, or possibly building a fully-enclosed rack that is lined to house noisy equipment.
I'd like to give an example but I can't get to the site that has them. The most basic form is an asphalt-based flexible sheet with adhesive that can be applied to just about any surface. They are often used in automotive stereo setups to deaden road noise (and reverberations?).
To help minimize heat and noise, consider these tips:
Enermax has a good rep for p/s.
Get a 4500-5k RPM CPU fan.
Cut out those grills where the computer case fans go; they cut airflow down by up to 50%.
Use a silver thermal transfer compound on your heat sink (wash the heat sink with acetone, then isopropyl solution, then a silk/lens cloth (no lint) before applying the compound). Use plastic to rub the compound around clockwise and counter-clockwise, then clean off excess compound with the cloth.
Get a video card without a fan, like a Geforce2 MX. Video card fans are small and wear down faster, so you get ball bearing failures more often and faster, so they end up being the noisiest part of the machine.
If you've got the money, get an aluminum case.
Tie back your cabling
Direct airflow towards the CPU.
He said in the article that it was a gaming machine, so runs on Win98.
And VA Linux no longer exists (see another thread for details). They're now just called VA, since they've found they can't make money off Linux.
Grab.
Seriously, I absolutely understand the desire/need for a quiet work machine. But gaming? What game is quiet? Unless you've got a turbo-jet fan in your machine, the sound of the game should easily drown and overpower any sound the machine is making, at even the lowest reasonable gaming volumes.
Why is a quiet *gaming* machine even an issue?
1. First and foremost - get an AMD Duron (and cheapest proc you can find in the Duron series), and an easy-to-overclock motherboard. I cranked my Duron750 to 995MHz (very stable) using an Abit KT7A (non-RAID) motherboard. And it only took about $300 to do this since I had my old case, monitor, various PCI cards, etc. My computer isn't the top notch machine out there, but it definitely does the job. Especially when it comes to ripping mp3's for cheap, as that is a pretty CPU intensive operation. :)
2. Prepare to have a noisy PC. For those of you who don't "get" what all the fuss is about fan noise, try using a powerful heatsink on a high-temp running AMD chip. It's loud! My roommate says it sounds like a small vacuum cleaner or miniature jet plane when I turn the computer on.
Obviously, we're all going to debate what the 'best' computer is, but what it really comes down to at this point, is individual tastes, gaming preferences, work needs, price, etc, etc, etc. I read a lot of those computer review and mod sites on a daily basis, so I have a pretty good idea of how to build a PC for just about anyone's personal taste and budget. I'm trying to get a little shop off the ground that makes customizations/recommendations for people, so if you'd like to test my knowledge and drop me an email for some free advice, and give me feedback on how you like (or hate) what I have to say, and how it works out for you, please feel free. ;) [/shameless plug]
- Hard drive. Obviously he didn't do much research into quiet hard drives. First, a quick scan of hard drive reviews at Tom's Hardware suggests that Fujitsu drives are usually the most silent. However that is not the glaring mistake: missing the Seagate Barracuda IV is.Besides being faster than any 5,400 rpm drive it is also the quietest drive ever. You literally have to press your ear against it to hear it.
- Holy Case. Sure some people might think it looks cool (I think it looks about as cool as cutting a big hole in the hood of a car). But it can't be quiet. If this really was a "quiet" machine then wouldn't he have chosen a quiet case? Perhaps something with extra thick sides and few rattling parts (thumbscrews?).
And of course he if he really did care about silence then he could have gotten a mac. But arguably that would have hindered the, "gaming" part.This is just a kid who wants to brag about his new half-assed machine. And, to no one's surprise, slashdot it up for that.
I can't spell or type, but that doesn't mean I'm unusually stupid.
Man, salaries in USA have to be totally amazing, because spending 2000 US$ in a computer, only for gaming, seems to me like quite overkill. Damn Big Overkill (tm).
:-)). And he's got a "minor degree" (3 years of study) only. He's got an Audi A4, to say it that way, while "chief executives" in private firms that earn about 2200 US$ drive in big badass BMWs.
... well, it just costs a lot. A normal case here costs about 50 US$. The one picked by Hemos costs 230 US$.
... Hemos, man, did you buy the Ferrari yet? :-)
I don't know around there, but here in Spain 2000 US$ is, more or less, 3.5-4 times what I earn each month, and almost twice of a "good but not all that special" salary. Some examples: a friend of a friend, which is teacher in a public school, earns 1300 US$ (translated from pesetas, of course
More examples: my MSI-6330 mobo (Pro2, I think: it has ATA100, while the "Pro" only had ATA66) and Duron 800 costed, 4-5 months ago, about 200 US$ (36000 pesetas, to be exact). The thinkgeek case that Hemos tells is a fine one, but
So, if Hemos spends 2000 bucks in a computer *for playing games*
My weblog in spanish
Why does the link to CDW point slashdot.org?
Winter 2010: With Glowing Hearts
In my experience (and this has been verified by hardOCP, anandtech, etc benchmarks), the only uniprocessor DDR motherboards worth buying over the VIA KT133A chipset are those with the VIA KT266A or AMD 76[01]. The ALi has been shown to perform _worse_ than a PC133-ram solution. Bad move.
65 degrees C? Anything over 50C is considered 'borderline'. AMD CPUs can take 90C iirc, but that's internal core temperature - the temperature that you see in the BIOS setup is an external temperature taken via a probe below the CPU socket.
Most of us tend to research major purchasing decisions before we make the plunge.
m$ sftware yadda yadda we rant on that tll we pue but the hardware they put out tends to be top notch. use that MS pro eyboard not the buttons so much but USB hub bult n rules. and ths one tme was surfng on my laptop n thebathtub (sry my kkkboard s a lttle messed up- bulot n laptop one that s)
anyway one tme n the bat wth my laptop dropped the MS optcal USB mouse nto the water whle on unplugged t shookk t out and let t dry. that was a year ago stll usng it now!
yea ms maes mostly good hardware where they bother to.
if you're not too conferned about cost, you might want to check out Creative's new Soundblaster Audigy - the Ex version has a box similar to the "LiveDrive" of the SB Live but it's external with a thick cable to connect it to the SB Audigy card. The card does 24 bit 5.1 channel audio and also provides a firewire port and all the digital I/O that the high end SB Live cards had. I found the drive bay box on the SB Live Platinum to be a pain in the butt too, I never managed to get it mounted securely in a Dell box, but this external box is great.
Don't use this motherboard with Crucial / Micron memory - it's terribly unstable. Other stuff works well tho.
-Chris
Put a stop to and end redundancy.
http://www.iphi.com/pooter/silent.html
She has already begun to embark on this endevor and made a page for it, hopefully with some useful information
(Score:0, Interesting)
though i was thinking along the same lines, but really wanted a burner AND a DVD...
so i ended up getting the Toshiba SD-R1002 4X4X24X CD-RW / 4X DVD-ROM IDE drive... all in one bay!
It's a nice set up, I'm looking for one like this for server/program on it. But I don't see the point to having a quiet machine to play loud noissy games with volume pretty high(enough to hide all the ambiant noises).
Just have louder speakers! and a more powerful stereo.
When I play Quake Arena, the whole neighborhood knows it.
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
decibells are a relative scale, it doesnt mean naything unless you say what its relative to
When engineers use "dB" as a sound loudness unit, they most often refer to the ratio of the audio source's power to the quietest sound that a person with good hearing can hear. An increase of 6 dB corresponds to a doubling of amplitude; 9 dB corresponds to a doubling of subjective loudness. For example, 20 dB is about 4.7 times louder than the quietest perceptible sound and about twice as quiet as the noise floor in the typical quiet 30 dB room.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Here's the deal-
The case was way to expensive. >$200, and it does nothing towards the goal of a fast-quiet gaming machine.
I would argue against picking up the extra special quiet power supply myself, but hey, he was going for quiet, I guess thats excuseable.
The CDRW drive is a waste unless you really don't have a cdrecorder in any of your other machines. A 52X CD-ROM is $100 cheaper, and does what you need for a gaming rig. Especially considering he's holding out for a DVDR drive.
Another $30 blown on rounded ide cables (if they matter THAT much to you, round the ide cables that came with the mobo while watching this weeks Enterprise)
Then he splurged for the SBLive Platinum instead of the basic, another 50-75 down the tubes.
Why am I whining about $320 on a "somewhat budget concience" machine because it only costs ~350$ to 375 build a box that performs almost as well as this, add $200 if you've really gotta have a gef3. The point is configuring a box like this isn't to make it quiet or a great gaming rig, at $2000 its a showy waste of money.
(the $230-just-because-its-shiny-case really set me off)
You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
I guess I am not sure what the point is here. When playing games, it seems that one would not mind a little hard drive noise/fan noise given the sound FX are going to be cranked up a bit and will probably mask any noise inherent in the machine. However, for work I really do want a quiet machine. For this the Mac Cube sitting on my desk with a 17in Flat panel is absolutely silent. No fan noise, no CRT electron beam flyback squeal, NOTHING. Its wonderful. The cube is not the greatest game machine, I expect it would be adequate for most games but hey, this is work. The real game machine is at home.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Game boxes will be very quiet in the future because they're going to have PVR functions and what not, and you don't what your box drowning out the T-vision.
I'd like to see some actual work put into researching a quiet box. How about using Seagate's U series drives which is actually designed for home entertainment applications?
(By the way -- how exactly does aluminum dampen noise? Gotta dig out that physics book again dammit...)
A beginners' guide to Portland, OR?
Having just built a quiet pc myself (for my bedroom), I'd recommend a couple different components.
First off, a 400W powersupply unit for a 1.2 GHz CPU, one HD and one CD-RW is simply overkill. If you are looking for a quiet PSU, I'd recommend one from http://nwccomputers.com/ATX1125B.htm . It's the same as sold by www.quietpc.com and they are the only US distributor that I was able to find. Sure, it's only 250W, but it's more than enough for what you need. And it's rated at 27 db vs 38 db of the one from PC&C. They also sell a 300W version if you feel like you need more power.
I'd also recommend the Radial Fin CPU coolers made by Molex. Very cool design, and very quiet also.
Kingmax have some wicked RAM. There's a review showing up to 172FSB
Do your best, hope for the best, suspect the worst.
If you bought that machin in the last 30 days, and spent anywhere near 2000.00, see the subject.
I have a Athlon1.4, 2 scsi 18G drives, LSI 160 dual controller, GeForce3 AGP, 768M 2100 ram, Soyo Dragon Mobo, Aluminum case,emerex PS. 1200.00 dollars.
My only regret is the PS, its load as hell.
He mentions cost concerns, but buys a specialty case, sheesh.
What with that CPU temp? my Athlon 1.4 under heavy load, hits 48c Just OS 38c Playing Quake 3 or Dark Ago of Camelot, its usually around 43c. This guy needs to rethink his airflow, because I've note some heat issues with my geforce if my ambient case temp starts to climb to high.
I worked in an enviroment where we tested IDE and SCSI regularly. Time and time again the latestes SCSI always beet the Latest IDE, even the 100.
Note I said Latest, I always here "my IDE is nearly as fast and cheaper", but it never fails thay there comparing the latest IDE to an older SCSI card. My personal favorite, comparing a RAID IDE 100 to a non raid SCSI 40. sheesh.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
When adding another half gig of ram, remember that Win98 can only handle up to 512mb. I had a problem with tryna run win98 on a gig of ram using my ATI radeon 64mb vivo - I couldn't set the resolution higher than 640x480@8bpp.
That temperature for the 1.2ghz athlon is crazy high. I'm running a 1.4ghz at full load and it's only at 45C. Although I am using a Swiftech mc462-a (y'know the one with all the aluminum pins) and a delta 68cfm fan which is noisy as hell. That PCPower heatsink looks pretty weak - at least get a decent heatsink with a less noisy fan. I also set the core voltage down to about 1.625V (that's what it's set at in the bios, but it actually runs at about 1.69V) And that made a difference of ~5-8 degrees C. The default bios setting was around 1.8V - you might want to check your setting.
Also, the round cables - I've been reading a lot bad reports on those things. Apparently the reason cables are flat ribbons is because the way all the wires work together. Rounding them can cause all sorts of interference and performance issues. Anyone have any experience with this? I've got round cables, but am not using them right now because of what I've read.
The mouse -- why go cordless when you've got the keyboard with USB ports? Get a nice optical with a cord, plug it into the keyboard, and stop worrying about the latency issues.
-kidlinux.
A few years ago there was a lot of buzz around so-called "A/V hard drives", which were said to provide a more even flow of bits in/out for video applications. The theory was that it was better to have a consistent, even if a little slower, flow of data to prevent interruptions during vidoe editing, playback, etc. This was supposedly accomplished by better management of thermal recalibration cycles and similar demon tweaks.
Does this technology still exist? Perhaps a better first question is, did it ever exist, or was it just a bunch of marketing smoke? If it did, is it still around, and if so in what products?
It seems to me that if such a smoothing of bit flow is possible it would be advantageous for games as well as straight video.
sPh
it is Super quiet, cool, runs just as fast, and you can stay with OS X.1 or use Linux....what else do you need?
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
The 80GB ones are a little hard to find, but 40GB are available for just over a hundred bucks.
314-15-9265
Who, being a real gamer uses a retail outlet that is hurting bigtime for customers to procure their "Dream Gaming PC" parts?
He also never mentioned PriceWatch which is a fantastic resource for being able to determine who is offering the cheapest prices for the best hardware in the US.
I think he way overspent on his case and fans totally, and a grand total close to $2000? Who can afford that? I got the same system that this guy did minus the expensive case and fans (I've got the same temps on CPU), purchased a flat-screen 19" monitor, and instead got Crucial 512MB RAM for a grand total of $600 less.
Sounds like more advertising for OSDN and less thoughtfulness of $$$$ on his part.
I'd suggest to also go to Google Groups and search in alt.comp.hardware.amd.thunderbird for opinions on setups, if going with an Athlon system. There are a lot of people writing their experiences there.
-- I'm out
Stress levels associated with low level background sounds are shocking. It can have real physical effects on your heart etc...
If you work in a quiet environment and you hear a humming noise constantly then PUT THE RADIO ON or something. This will drown out the lower level noise with something your brain can understand and filter out. If you don't hear anything your either deaf, or your brain is doing a good filter job.
The scenario is roughly analagous to tinitus, though usually not as serious, where your brain is struggling to make sense of the white noise and 'strains itself'. You end up in a constant state of low level panic because you don't know what is happenning around you.
Seriously dudes - fan noise, the new RSI!
My gaming PC is absolutely silent, boots instantly, and has all of the greatest games. I didn't even have to assemble it. It's my Commodore 64.
What is a 13817? Something some slasdot'd person said a few lines of something no doubt.
;)
So anyway said to the entire construction industry, yeah we make anything. So where was the moon again was it, oh yeah up there again.
Flight system data recorders are in check.
Back at you, for now.
Replacing the Soundblaster Platinum with a Hercules Game Theater XP yeilds more input/output options and better sound at a lower price. (minus remote control, which hardly gets used.)
Also the case... neon light? $200+ for a case when a $30 case would have been just as good? Ugh...
Replacing the GF3 with a Radeon would have been a good choice aswell...
-- iCEBaLM
Do you want good luck to follow you and your offspring for geneations to come? This troll has the solution for you...
All you have to do is copy this troll onto two to four of the discussion threads of your choice! That's right! Just copy this into a new message and click "post anonymously." That's all there is to it!
Tired of that idiot talking about geek culture? Stick one of these babies on it! And it's good for the economy!
Marge Gentry of Cambridge, Minnesota participated, and the next day she received a large fruit basket outside of her door from a secret admirer. Unfortunately, Marge was hit by a truck the next day, so she didn't get to the Granny Smith apples.
Commander Taco of Hole-in-the-ground West Virginia didn't participate, and he was violated by a group of raging homosexuals. Since the gang was headed by Jon Katz, Taco had no recourse to the law because the entire town knew about their previous relationship. The unfortunate outcome is enshrined forever at goatse.cx.
So if you want to get the fruit basket and not get poked in the bread basket, just copy this troll onto two of the discussions threads of your choice. We could have this place blanketed by sundown
G4 owners will be shocked at a system that uses 3 fans and gets up to 69C! Plenty of posts from happy owners of cubes here, and I can't hear the noise from the fan in my tower over my roommate's HP across the room. Even after running at at 100% load with distributed.net or somesuch for days, I can't get it above 38C, and it idles at 23C.
"Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity" -Alvy Ray Smith
This is the first article I've ever read about bulding a gaming system where the aesthetics of the case was an important part of the system. I would think most people would rather save the extra $160 and put it into ram or a beefier processor.
;)
Of course, most sites that talk about building a game system don't have a stake in a company that makes pretty cases. Of course, I doubt that could be related
Well usualy when people (erh engeneers) talk about
...
dB is and dont say relative to something they mean
dBm or dBW...
It's very annoying when people say
"Wooow it's 40dB !"
since they have no idea what dB is nor what dBw or dBm
cheers ppl
...you would never buy a PC strictly for gaming (not that it was the point of the article and not that the article had a point).
The cheapest reasonable gaming PC would cost over $400 and perform poorly. Might as well buy a PS2, XBox, or Gamecube for $300-$400 and never worry about compatability.
i've got 5 80mm fans, 1 120mm, gorb, and blorb in my system. even when i have all the fans running on 5volts, it sounds like a fucking 747 is idling under my desk.
Here's a list of things quieter than what you chose. At the same time most of them are better quality, better cooling solutions and at least as fast if not faster.
1. Case - a heavy steel rackmount case is far quieter than an aluminum one. The extra mass provides dampening.
2. Fans - bigger, slower fans are quieter than 80mm anything. Panasonic 120mm L1A are perfect, and two will give you all the case cooling you need, one in front and one in back. Use only rounded grilles, no stamped steel or bullshit biohazard stamped stuff.
3. Processor heatsink - Noise Control's "Silverado" is the quietest. It is inaudible when the lid is on the case, and so far below the noise of the hard drives it doesn't matter.
4. Hard drive - Seagate Barracuda IV is the best around. It can't be heard, it is very cool in operation, and in RAID-0 is hard to tell from my old 75GXP drives as far as performance goes. Silent Drive? Why not just wrap your drives in a blanket?
5. Soundcard - Terratec Sixpack+, Hercules GTXP, Philips Acoustic Edge are all way better than that Creative shit. Have you noticed that you can no longer download Live!ware?
6. Mouse - mouseman wireless truly sucks. Don't you want accuracy in gaming? Optical yes, wireless no.
This, plus all the hassles I had to do to get stability in the Nvidia card with BIOS settings (like getting the I/O voltage up from the default 3.3 to 3.6V) and some PCI issues have resolved me to investigate the custom shops (Alienware as an example) when I am looking to my next system. As I've seen in ads and reviews by Maximum PC, they know how to build temperature cool and mostly silent systems, and know how to manuever the maze of ACPI, PCI, BIOS settings, and OS configuration to make sure that the machine shipped to you is stable and ready to go. Of course, one easily pays a ~50% price tag on this on top of parts and software, but I feel that this extra cost is worth the benefit of getting a well built system, particularly in the age of dating hardware specs.
Note that it's not that I can't put these systems together that I feel this way; the 600mhz and the tbird system were all from computer show parts. However, it's the concern and hassle of dealing with a possibly unstable system that concern me.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
...hushdot.org or something. Or maybe someone can spawn another website with that name for all the quiet PC articles.
-- SIGFPE
I have the pioneer-305s(SCSI) DVD and the creatice labs cd-rw(SCSI), and I have to listen closley to hear them at all. I can play a movie with the DVD and not even hear the player.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I recently replaced a power supply with an Enermax EG365P-VE and was quite impressed with the low noise level.
Another quiet power supply to consider is Ultra Quiet Power Supply from quietpc.com
What I did to get pure silence from my still noisy PC was to put the PC in another part of the house, and run a KVM extender all the way to my room.
Complete silence.
Getting decent audio cables all the way for games and listening to CDs / MP3 's meant that I got more cabling than I at first thought, but apart from that it was a no brainer.
Going to higher video resolutions, say from 1600x1200 upwards may not work that well, check it out.
ps. I used a dakota kvm switch, had no problem.
Quiet computing? It's called a closet. As long as you don't mind getting up to insert a CD, just stick everything but the keyboard/mouse/monitor in a closet and shut the door. Make sure there's some way air can flow into and out of the closet you should be okay!
I hope this is not still the case, but... When I first started using PowerChute Plus with my SmartUPS 1100 I had no end of problems. So, I fought with it until I could stand it no more and called APC. The woman at the other end of the phone told me politely that it would not work with the cable I had (they reworked Serial?) and that she'd be happy to replace it for me. So, I ordered the new cable, it was a different color and worked right off the bat. I hope that this isn't what you have to do, but at least they'll replace your cable for you. NOTE: I had to send the original cable back to get a new one.
It's a good thing you didn't go with the MSI MS-6380, mine has been a worthless piece of shit since the day I bought it. i.e. the floppy controller never worked, the second ide controller is extremely flaky, the raid controller (I got the Pro-R) looses data, the onboard sound doesn't work with even the latest kernels, and the AGP slot is unsupported.
First of all, PC Power & Cooling is some high quality stuff, but too expensive. I've found that CPU coolers are way too expensive for what you get. Go with a nice Alpha heatsink with a 60mm Sanyo Denki fan, which is really quiet.
PC Power & Cooling power supplies are very good, but going with a 400W is a bit much. You can probably make your own "Ultraquiet" power supply from another brand like Enermax or Sparkle, and replace the fan with a 80mm Sanyo Denki fan. A 300W should be sufficient.
The case is definately cool, so I guess it's okay to splurge there. But $200+ is a bit much.
Corsair memory, although one of the best, is overpriced. Get Crucial instead (even directly from their own web site), for much cheaper, and comparable quality.
In general, IBM drives are not well-known for being quiet. I don't know about the 40GV, but many models I've seen lately were loud on access. IBM's data sheet only shows idle noise, but I know on access these drive make loud crunching sounds. I know Maxtor's DiamondMax drives are a bit quieter on accessing, and there are other brands and models that are quiet.
GeForce3, for the games you listed? Go GeForce2 MX or something instead. Or GeForce Titanium.
Soundblaster Live Platinum: You Spent Too Much. There are other front panel products out there.
Yada yada yada.
I own a Plextor CDRW, and I have to say, it's damn quiet. Of all the CD drives I've owned and seen in action, the Plextor is very quiet. It's a little on the expensive side, but I understand you can get them rebranded for much less, wonder if they're the same quality.
... make sure you get a good power indicator light on the front - I have a reasonably quiet machine at work (compared to all the a/c etc.) and a few times I've come back in on monday thinking I powered down for the w/end (to be eco-friendly) and turned my machine off rather than on...
Yeah, I should thump the caps lock etc. but it still hurts when I do it - and when I do reboot it deliberately then it's hard to tell if its booting up - all solved with a better "Power is On" light on the front...
Of course, maybe thats what the neon light in the side window does for Hemos...
T
I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered. - George Best
Has anyone tried anything with foam or foam cones for excessive noise dampering? I can see that hindering airflow but not if done creatively.
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
the beer isn't so good.
I'm hemos., aka Jeff. Bates.. I help run this site, along with Rob. Malda.. I handle books, and generally posting storie
subtotal = grandtotal = 0$. Man, I can tell you that thing is quiet!
I have my G4 Cube...ah..silence, when I am not playing AC/DC, that is :)
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
7 Volts
It's not the ultimate game machine, but I think my Dell Latitude is making me deaf. I spend so much time on it and that constant humming is killing me. I think laptops are worse than desktops (which are usually under the desk) because they are so close to you. Humming all day and night. I feel like a guy from an Edgar Allen Poe story... I hear the fan running in my sleep. Do YOU hear it too?
It's not that it's loud, it's just constant. Does anyone else have this problem with their notebooks?
-Russ
Me
For $200, you could have picked up a pair of noise canceling headphones that would also have had other uses as well (such as traveling on planes, etc). That's $100 savings. Could have thrown that towards more memory, larger HDD, faster CPU, etc...
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
Oh for fucks sake ... this is the stupidest thing I've ever read. So you spent $2000 on a gaming computer that runs hot ... yeah so? This reminds me of those women who get married and pregnant and think they've actually accomplished something. Hey I built a computer that is loud but cool. Can I post that to /.?
Argh! Slashdot ate my comments.
Lemme try again.
Can you be a pal and explain a few things about the PAL 8045 to me? I've been looking around for them but they're really hard to find. I finally found a store that carries them, but is out of stock. They mentioned, however, that the Alpha PAL 8045 is only a heatsink, and you buy the fan separately.
So, are the fans you buy for it just standard case fans? Do they get power off the power supply like a case fan, or do they attach to the CPU fan header on the motherboard?
If they're just standard case fans, are there recommended fans to use with the unit? Are there big differences in the noise and airflow in 80mm case fans?
I'm on my quest to get the quietest, coolest PC so I can use it both to play 3d-heavy FPS games, compile kernels, and play DVD movies and music. The CPU and case cooling are my only remaining noise/cooling issues.
Are people bonding an external thermocouple onto their processors to measure heat? Or is there a software process to use the chip's thermocouple?
What madness is this? The SoundBlaster Live is a piece of shit, always has been, always will be. Audio quality blows, adherence to hardware standards blows, drivers in Windows blow.
If you need the nifty break-out box, buy a Hercules Game Theater XP; if not, get a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz. Both are supported under FreeBSD, so I'd imagine that Linux can run 'em; neither resamples all your sounds to 48khz, unlike the Creative garbage.
No comments on the rest of the purchases, even though some (a 5400 rpm drive?) are particularly mindless.
(jfb)
To spur "enterprise Linux," Big Bang, the distributed two-phase commit.
After Installing a killer sound card. Are you planning to use the PC Speaker. I have been having a lot of difficulty in finding good speakers. Most of the speakers I have seen play loudly but not clearly. When playing games I want to hear the quietess of sounds Because those just can be the bad guy in a corner ready to kill you. And I dont want the volume so loud that after I fire the rocket launcher (in the game) I dont want the FBI knocking on my door. With a ultra Quiet PC you have the opertunity to use really good speakers and play games clearly.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
It's all about the mouse...
Hyperbole? Maybe, but a good mouse will go a long way. One thing that can ruin a good gaming experience is a dirty mouse ball. So eliminate the ball and go with an optical mouse. Otherwise, you will find yourself hunkered down in a corner hiding, while you desperately take apart your mouse to clean it. Alternately cursing and praying the whole time that nobody finds your crippled ass and frags it.
Given the choice of an optical mouse, cordless is definitely not the way to go. I have a Logitech cordless optical. I like it a lot for desktop use, but it has its quirks. Most notably, when you leave it idle for some time, it seems to go to sleep (at apparently random intervals). You have to give it a wiggle or sometimes even a click to wake it up. This is not so bad when browsing the internet, but I would not in any way recommend it for gaming use. Those unusual starts and stops that give you only a slight pause in the desktop environment will quickly drive you nuts.
I can't speak to the Cordless Mouseman Wheel specifically but I should point out that this site gives it very poor ratings for gaming uses.
My advice: Go with a corded optical mouse. Logitech makes a nice one.
If electricity is produced by electrons is morality produced by morons?
I think you should consider a new heatsink fan for your CPU... 65C is quite high and I'd bet you could do much better. (Assuming the ambient temperature in the room is not more than 30C) My AMD CPU gets to about 52C going at full tilt, even with cheap aluminum heatsinks. Good Copper ones can get that down to 40-45C....
Does no one make a PC case with convection cooling ala the iMacs and Mac Cubes?
I'm quite frankly shocked that you didn't look into Seagate drives. They have "Softsonic" technology, but ultimately gives you good quiet performance. Storage Review has a review of the most recent drive the Baracuda IV.
A silent system doesn't exist, so the quest for a quiet system goes on. But for what reason?
;)
Surely, for the price of all this "silent" equiptment you could build a cupboard to remove all fan noise anyway and it'd be a damn sight cheaper.
Besides, the small amount of noise I have got helps remind me to shutdown the computer at night anyway
Hey,
at work I use a little beastie called an Igel. It's a little thin client about the size of a sheet of A4 and maybe 2.5 inches thick, and it's cool. It does sound, has ps/2/serial/parallel and USB sockets and built in 100base network. The graphics card can drive a monitor at 1280x1024.
It runs a cut down Linux that basically just runs an X server to enable you to use applications off a server, and because it has no disk drives and a teeny CPU (it does about 200 bogoMIPS, if I remember) it is completely silent.
Once home networks get fast enough (I don't think they're there yet) to stream DVD video/games over them I would definitely consider having several of these (they're quite cheap too) at home. I thought I was gonna hate it when I first got introduced to it, but I really enjoy having a completely silent machine to work with, compared to the hovercraft under my desk at home.
Cheers.
I'm just finishing up a new quiet PC here for my girlfriend. Despite my best efforts, it's no Mac Cube... you can still hear it. But at least it's tolerable.
First stop: case. For my money, nothing beats the Antec SX630/830/1030. You can keep your fancypants Lian Li, I'll take the Antecs any day of the week at half the price. This particular machine is the 630 - I greatly prefer the 830, but the 630 ain't bad. Comes with an extremely quiet 300w power supply and the case is an absolute joy to work in.
Next: fans. I tried the PCP&C Silencer and the Papst 8412NGL. The Papst is twice as expensive ($10 vs 20), but it is slightly quieter and better built. I've got one Silencer here that's badly out of balance, and when attached to anything sets up a nasty vibration. The Papst fans actually have little metal tabs in the hubs - apparently they custom-balance each fan. For that reason alone, I think I'll use Papst in the future, but the Silencers aren't a bad choice, either.
Hard drive: the Seagate Barracuda IV is 7200RPM and doesn't need a Silent Drive enclosure. It's absolutely positively dead quiet and fast. I haven't heard anything else that comes close.
CPU cooler: I tried a Molex Radial Fin on one PC and it was OK. For this machine, I used a stock retail AMD heatsink (a leftover) and a 60-to-80mm adapter, and a Silencer fan. I would've switched it to a Papst, but it's kind of a PITA so I didn't bother. Even the Antec 630 has plenty of room for this towering beast, and obviously it's quieter than the Molex or any of the other solutions out there. Might not be appropriate for higher clock speeds, though. For that I'd probably go with a Zalman.
As far as temperatures go, I don't give a fuck. This CPU is a Duron 900, not overclocked. It's like a $50 part. The temp was well within normal parameters last time I looked. I don't grok the heat geeks around here bitching about one temperature or another being too high - it's the nerd version of a 0-to-60 time, and it matters in my life not one little itty bitty tiny iota.
CD drive is an extra Teac 16x burner I had. Great drive, and reasonable on the sound front, although certainly not as quiet as a Toshiba DVD drive. I'm waiting for a recordable DVD, too.
The last part of my quiet PC is installing grommets on the Seagate. It's dead quiet, but it does vibrate. Once that's done, I'm convinced this machine will be about as quiet as any fan-cooled PC can possibly be. And the price? I didn't add it up, but it's quite reasonable.
obviously there are some sacrifices that many of us make to cool our processors, we use higher rpm fans and/or double ball bearing fans to cool our processors more and more reliably. but the choice of such a cooler in an athlon rig baffles me, rated at .4 C/W this is simply a terrible hs/f. for lack of a more clear concise explaination C/W is :
Interpreting C/W: For every watt the CPU radiates, the heatsink will cool the core by the (C/W x watts) plus ambient temp. For example, at an ambient temp of 25 C, a C/W of 0.25 with a CPU radiating 50 watts means that the CPU temp will be 50 x 0.25 = 12.5 C over ambient temp, or 37.5 C. The lower the C/W, the better.
i took this directly from:
http://www.overclockers.com
the only thing that the pc power and cooling hs/f does meet in this article is the budget price (roughly $14). personally i'm running a 1.2 athlon system that never has hit 50 C, and while 90 is the official spec for the athlon, the hotter your processor, the greater the voltage differential across the transistors, which in turn shortens their life expectancy. anyway to my actual point... to achive the greatest performance to noise ratio, the Alpha PAL8045 with a Pabst 80mm fan would fit the ticket, while both of these items are expensive, they are more worthwhile to a gaming machine than a pretty aluminum case and window. as for the harddrive, i heard that fujitsu was putting out a new drive using fluid bearing technology to quite their drives, which may or may not just be a load of marketing.
daniel
I've recently experimented with hdparm -S as a way to spin down hard disks after they haven't been used for a given period of time. For certain really noisy disks, this is really helpful. However- the way linux works, syslog is constantly writing to the disk, and thus keeping it from spinning down (or spinning it back up if it was already sleeping). Does anyone know of a way around this?
--
grep "xercist"
My IBM drive just finally crashed, and I was amazed at how much quieter my machine is now that I've removed it. OTOH, now I have to figure out how to wipe the drive clean before sending it to IBM for repair/replacement. Anyone know if some really big magnets will do the trick?
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
Has anyone ever tried the maglev fans sold by Cyberguys,such as this one?
This
I have a Logitech optical wireless (M-RM67A) (not mman :-(
It is often sluggish in Windows, and sometimes is unusable when the sysetm is under a load (and I have to resort to using the trackpoint).
Under X (on Linux 2.4) it is sharp as a tack.
I think that the windows USB driver isn't really designed for input devices. (Well, not designed for them to work without being frustrating as hell, anyway.)
In case anyone is wondering, this mouse "just works" with Linux 2.4.12 (usb-uhci and uhci both work fine for me) with the hid driver. It is so nice to be free of the cord and the ball!
Oh, and the wheel "just works" with the Debain unstable X packages (Xfree 4).
-Peter
You might want to check out the new Seagate SoftSonic line of drives. They all have Fluid Dynamic Bearings (FDB). I don't have one, but will be buying one soon based on the reviews I've read.
Also, check out this yahoo group. They seem to have a lot of good info:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Silent-PC
- lather - rinse - repeat -
Worse - these drives vibrate insanely.
I don't trust a Yamaha 2100-series drive in any case that's got a hard drive too. I bought both of mine on spec, and while they're great drives, they can practically walk a loaded tower across the floor. I moved mine into external boxes with cushioned feet.
I haven't figured out this fascination with expensive, lower power, quieter components.
I've got a server cabinet that's got six machines in it. Talk about noise. I'm going to buy a box of acoustic foam and mount it on the doors and sides, then on the walls of the room with whatever is left. For a box or two of foam, I can put any old hardware in the enclosure and ignore its noisy fans.
A suggestion: build an inexpensive box and line it with foam, cut out a circle or two on the lid and put some server extraction fans (114 CFM, 110v AC plug). Put a hinge on the front for cd and floppy access when necessary, bore a few holes in back for cables. You're there in under $150, and you get to use the same box for any upgraded computers you may buy in the future as well.
Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental.
I used to do a LOT of car audio stuff.. line your case panels with Dynamat Extreme or regular Dynamat (accept no subsitutes, if you're cheap, go get some Ice Guard material at the hardware store - but it doesn't work as well). This stuff will remove most of the high frequency sound from the case. I went with a water cooling solution and lined my case. The PC is SILENT now. (when it's put together, heh).
I mention this because I've never seen anyone do it on any of the case modding sites, and it works well. Ask anyone with more than 500W worth of bass in their trunk :).
..don't panic
Hmm. By my count, he reused three components, but he clearly thinks he reused only two.
There's only one conclusion we can draw from this: Hemos can't count, either.
I've been running two 60gig IBM Deskstar 60GXP's (7200rpm) in SilentDrive enclosures for four months now, with no problems whatsoever. I had some thermal sensors in there the first few weeks just to be sure, but the temperature never got within 10 degrees of the specified maximum.
:)
The enclosures are great - I've never heard my drives at all
-- If no truths are spoken then no lies can hide --
Most of the time you don't need 52x speed out of your CD-ROM dirve. MP3 uses 0.1x(!), video VCD - 1.5x, video DivX;) - up to 1x. Games may be different, but still I don't think they really require more than 8x. 8x seems to be the threshold below which the CD noise isn't a problem, and it is still 1.2Mb/sec.
A number of utilities are available to reduce the max drive speed, although not every drive supports this feature.
Search for keywords "Drivespeed 2000" if you are on Windows or "cdspeed" for Linux.
If you can afford it, and you want really pristine sounding audio, get a breakout box. I use the Echo Layla24, and I love it. Because the D/A converter is in an external box with its own power supply, you don't get any hum or interference from the PC. At $700, it's a bit expensive, and used mostly for home studio work, but Echo has a few cheaper models that would serve the same function, like Gina.
(No, I don't work for Echo, or have any stock. I just think they are a kick-ass company. Not to mention their excellent [eh-hem] Windows driver support).
I have 5400rpm 40GB Matrox and IBM drives and Maxtor is significanlty quieter.
Maxtor doesn't produce ANY noise to outside of the case when drive is seeking. IBM produce annoying seek noise, sure you can lower it with software but then speed drops signicantly.
Max operating frequency is directly linked to the max temperature. If you specify die temperature at 70C instead of 125C(pretty much standard value), suddenly your chip can run 10-15% faster!
I can't imagine marketing guys missing such opportunity. In my company designers are still holding out, but we are small. For Intel/AMD the differerence in revenue because of the 10% speed difference is billions.
Say I wanted to have a machine built to these specs. Who would I pay to do it? Can anyone recommend a shop?
While I think most of the choices made in this article are both poor and suspect, I, too, have wanted a PC that can handle FPS games well and allow me to sleep while they are on (though not playing games simultaneously, duh!). I find the fan noise from computers, especially some, somewhere between mildly grating to impossible to sleep with. I've considered replacing fan parts and such, but I rarely have the time and the energy to devote to that kind of pursuit. Virtually every pre-built PC out there that is marketed as being quiet is either sold at ridiculously high premiums or has lousy performance, especially for games.
Because fast and quiet PCs seem to be almost mutually exclusive, it is potentially interesting to some (e.g., myself) that a fast (enough for demanding games), quiet, and reasonably priced PC can be put together with a minimum of hassle. Throwing together the parts is not that troublesome, but tracking down the best parts for the job is a pain in the butt. That said, I don't think he did a very good job of it.
My dual pIII system curently has 2 case fans, 2 processor fans, 2 power supply fans and a video card fan. Needless to say it makes hearing the phone kind of difficult but thats the price of being a geek anyway i guess. So i think its funny when people talk about building a quieter "gaming" system. Say your playing quake III or half-life, what you can't hear the rockets over you case fans? I would have to say that no matter how loud your box is (granted its not an old clunker) what you do on it will be a whole lot louder.
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
The Apple G4 Cube- no fan and a quiet HD. Unfortunately, the game options currently suck, and Apple stopped making them...
microsoft's input devices are fantastic. note: they are the only microsoft products i use in my house.
:) i personally use a variety of mice for various tasks (apple pro mouse on ibook, intellimouse explorer on powermac g4 tower, logitech wingman gaming mouse on old gaming box, razer boomslang on main box, microsoft intellimouse at work), but microsoft's mice are good.
take, for example, the microsoft natural elite keyboard. the "elite" version is smaller than the first one and has a different arrow-key setup. these are probably the best keyboards you can get for under $100 (and i routinely pay $20 for them whenever i build a new system). not only are the slants on the keyboard just right and the keys layed out properly, but they're constructed exceptionally well and are light, meaning they can easily be transported to your lap, etc. re: construction - they come apart in only a few pieces. i spilled mountain dew into one in the summer of '98. an entire can, to be precise. i unplugged the keyboard, took it apart and washed it. the keys for the left hand are all attached to one board. the keys for the right are attached to another, and the keys for the numeric pad/arrows/home/end/pgup/sysrq/pause break are on another. i simply dropped them in hot soapy water, washed down the other pieces of the keyboard, let them dry and put it back together. works like a charm - i still use it on my home machine. since then i've cleaned it about 3 times, and i'm just amazed at how easily it comes apart. i'm going to be buying a new one shortly because a lot of the texture on the keys has been worn down and i like the feel of a new keyboard better, but the old one will be cleaned out and put in a box in case i need it. i use only microsoft natural keyboards, and have had my employer buy me one to use at work as well. very highly recommended.
as far as mice go, their mice are also of high quality. they tend to fit the hand very comfortably and just *work*. never had to take one apart, so i can't talk about that as much
Of course, at 800X600 mode it just sucks power down like an SUV does gas. I can't believe how much it takes to run at that resolution. Even 1280X1024 Q3 with most of the settings turned up isn't that bad.
-Elendale
IANAT (I Am Not A Troll)
As far as the 'ideal' FPS for quake 3, 125 constant is what you want. By setting Cl_Maxfps 125 (or some other variable very much like it... i forget the exact one) you can obtain this, as long as your system will be cranking out framerate equal to or higher than 125 FPS. The reason you want this is that the physics in Quake 3 are changed by the framerate (believe it or not) and 125 yields the most advantageous physics. One of the reasons the q3 'pros' can do many jumps that most people can't is because they ensure they're running at 125 FPS at all times (often by turning the graphical intensity way down) and thus always at that peak. Any frames greater than what your monitor can spit out (usually around 90) just get dropped, but they do matter for the physics.
And as far as your system, dual Athlon1800 could probably run Q3 at 1024X768 maxed everything in software mode :) (Note: Not an indication of actual performance!) My Athlon 900/GeForce2 GTS/256MB ram system runs with most settings (except a few wierd ones like R_Subdivisions) maxed out at around 90-115 solidly (really around 90-150 depending on the action and map).
-Elendale
IANAT (I Am Not A Troll)
Not to be rude, but what you just wrote SPEWS "I actually don't have a clue what I'm talking about." In fact, it reads like you didn't talk to a single person who knew anything about anything but "that slow thing makes less noise than that fast thing."
Apparently posting on Slashdot didn't get you the best hardware advice, so I'd suggesting reading up and then posting at any of the 50 good hardware sites out there (hardocp, techreport, amdmb, hardwareextreme, tom's forum, etc, etc) before you go on another buying expedition.
Now, that said, several of your choices were wise ones. Depending on when you bought this thing, some were questionable.
The DDR RAM: Obviously, if speed is the goal, you want to get good, and a goodly amount, of RAM. Having talked the various RAM manufacturers over with ChrisD, I finally settled on the Corsair Micro CM73SD256R-2100. It had a 266 Mhz bus, and Corsair makes a good RAM chip.
Where can I get this Ram? I tried nearly all of Corsair's normal and premier online retailers and all of them say they don't care this Ram.
grep >= ! == $your
I thought I accidentally went to the discussion forums on HardwareCentral or HardOCP :)
The original story headline is mildly interesting, but it looks like the submitter just wanted an excuse to post his $2000 dream system. What's the next story going to be? "Everyone post your scores for 3DMark2001 so we can figure out who has the biggest dick"
You can see more of these examples of lights and case windows on PC's here.
I travel to LAN parties all the time and shipping a PC is EXPENSIVE. I've been looking to assemble a small form factor PC that doesn't sacrifice video. With the small size I could carry on, vs shipping. NEVER NEVER NEVER let the airlines TOUCH your PC !!!!!! I've got a flat panel because the monitor is WAY too heavy, but the mini tower won't get on a plane anymore, especially since Sept :( I've thought about a laptop w/docking station but again they seem to sacrifice video...anyone got any ideas, that don't involve gritts and Natalie Portman ?
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Most people think water cooling has to be expensive and time consuming as well. Not the case! Check out http://www.koolance.com, pre-configured water-cooled cases for cheap. The noise output level is incredibly low. And in contrast to the Aluminum case thinkgeek offers, it's quite affordable as well.
A mouse I highly reccomend for gaming... if you're looking for mouse resolution for high speed gaming and such.. where you're moving the a lot and fast... get the Logitech Wheel Mouse Special Edition Optical ... its red yes.. so that can be cool or not cool depending on who you are.. but its got 800 DPI and its 30 bucks.. whereas most mice, and optical mice, have like 400 or so.. and you notice it playing things like counterstrike and you're zoomed in for a snipe. To give you an idea of the accuracy.. Does anyone remember the Boomslang line of gaming mice.. the low end one had 900 DPI (ok a little more DPI) BUT it was like 80 bucks.. and this logitech is CHEAP!!. plus no ball to get gunked up..
Who makes you Sig?
and the skittish sentence structure... I blame Caffeine.
Who makes you Sig?
That ends up costing a lot, and that money, IMO, is better spent in more memory or better hardware.
Of course, to each his own... a glowing box is kinda cool in its own way.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
65C sounds pretty hot.. even with a stock fan and a cheap case with 1 intake my 1.4 ghz Athlon was idling at 52C, I don't know what you did.. I swapped out my stock hsf and put in a lapped sk6 copper heatsink with a delta fan.. I'm idling around 38-43 now, depending on ambients.
Granted I can hear my computer down the hall, but real men measure their manliness by the roar of their computers.
It's been said before, but stay away from the Soundblaster Live!s. Mine won't output 5.1 surrond unless I'm watching a movie... Yes, i'm on the latest drivers and everything's configured correctly (in theory, at least).
I've heard CD-RW drives tend to wear out faster since they have a heavier read/write mechanism and that helps wear down the servo. I haven't verified this but it's a good excuse to spring for a DVD drive.
I've had good luck w/ Plextor's CD-RWs.
If you want to run linux or whatnot (and who doesn't?) stay away from nVidia. I can't get their freakin' drivers to compile, but maybe I'm a just a dumbass. In light of my recent purchases that seems pretty likely.
They come in a can. Says "Krylon" on the side.
Seriously, I built a system using the black Lian Li case from ThinkGeek, and I had to either live with the beige devices, or re-color them. So I painted them. CD-ROM/DVD-ROM drives are very easy to take apart (hell, I can do it!), and some floppy drives (assuming you still use one) are even easier. Just take the faces off, take the drive tray out (CD/DVD), and paint them with spray paint.
Disclaimer: you screw up your stuff, it ain't my fault. You have been warned!
Once you have them dismantled, paint them using thin layers of paint; better to have several thin layers than one thick one. The first coat should not even be opaque--you should still see beige! Do it right, and you'll be left with a black (or other color) surface, with no impact on performance; I painted the entire tray of my DVD drive, including the gear mechanism on the bottom, and have yet to have a single problem. Looks sharp.
Incidentally, I got the idea from an old friend of mine. She had a computer painted with the "granite" paint you see in some paint departments. Looked pretty cool. But you can use any color; the trick it to take your time and use thin coats.
"Make it ten--I am only a poor corrupt official."
--Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains), Casablanca
Running that high, seems like you would start risking a performance drop. As well, that could reflect the board temp around the cpu, and I would assume that's pretty high then. I've got my athlon at 42 C and the board at 29 C... maximum protection.
I put carefully selected resistors in series with my fans and removed some unnecessary ones, and have a much quieter system now for no extra cost. My writeup is here.
--Just the place for a snark!
I've got a redundant moderation someone gave me by mistake that you can have.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
My 486 runs silent as a mouse... it only has 1 fan (in the power supply) and even that's almost totally silent. And hell, I can even score 60 FPS on Wolfenstien 3D!
Once upon a time...
How old are you?
Are you not past the "beer snob phase" yet?
...go drink some Schlitz....
Some thin layers of neoprene rubber should work well for dampening sound/vibration inside the case, provided your ventilation is sufficient to compensate for the marginal amount of heat insulation they'll also create...
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
it illimunates the bodies he's dragging under his car.
just a small note. i read somewhere (i believe toms) that those intel cards eat tonnes of cpu and us eless bandwitdh than they should. personally i would go with a 3com 3c905c. thoes people know what they are doing.
In my experience with network cards, I have yet to have an Intel EtherExpress card fail. I've had more than six 3Com boards fail (fatally) on me. I've used about equal numbers, maybe more Intel boards than 3Com. I know a lot of those 3Com boards were 3C905's, and I think I had a few 3C509's go out on me.
I've also had very bad experiences with 3Com switches, but I won't get into that...
There is absolutely nothing wrong with an Athlon running at 69 C. AMD Athlon chips are built to withstand on-die temperatures of 95 C (newer generation, older is 90 C) and only require a fan that pushes 16 CFM. Of course, this limit is *ONLY* for socketed CPUs. Slotted CPUs have a much lower tolerance of 70 C.
Unless you are overclocking your CPU (which is rather silly given how frequently new processors come out and how cheap they are), nothing bad will happen with a small CPU fan. The only thing you really have to worry about is the ambient case temperature which should never rise above 42 C.
This is all documented quite clearly in AMD's 'Thermal, mechanical, and chassis cooling design guide.'
So repeat after me: "I do not need to use a turbo prop engine as a CPU cooler. I do not need to worry about my CPU blowing up because it hurts my hand when I touch it. My CPU does not run at a significantly different speed because my CPU is hot."
Of course... what I want to know is if I can buy a dual athlon mp system and underclock the entire thing and use entirely passive cooling. The question is, how low would I have to underclock.
The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.
I do believe the other guy was a littel rude but I would like to comment on hard drive speed here. 7200 rpm drives were considered very reliable until IBM came out with 60gb and 80gb drives. If you had bad experiences with IBm drives then I am sorry. I would find some other upset users to mail consumer rights groups. If enough people complain, IBM will fix the problem. I believe the design for the latter IBM drives is probably defective. I think 5200 and 5400 RPM drives would probably be included as well.
:-)
:-) Still works quite reliable. Can turtle sound cards like the one the previous poster talked about last that long? Go do some benchmarks and let me know how this baby runs.
Anyway I believe hard drive performance is the most major bottleneck for most systems. About 18 months ago. I upgraded my old p166 with a Maxtor 7200 RPM 10 gig drive and I couldn't believe the performance increase. Yes they are %100 silent and really really fast. NT 4 loaded 3 to 4 times quicker as well as Mandrake 7. I also bought a new computer with the same brand of hard drives around the same time. You know what? For non performance related tasks, both systems seem identical thanks to the faster hard drive. Win98 loads about the same time, MS office loads close to the same time, as well as linux boot time is close in console mode. For loading kde and X there is a huge difference obviously. But for things like games the newer system leaves the old p166 in the dust. I bet HD performance is probably the biggest bottleneck for most (non gamer) users. A 7200 RPM drive would make loading UT and Q3A alot snappier on your machine. On my old system, I would have to wait whenever my system paged data to the disk when playing quake1. With the new drives its so quick that I don't even notice the paging and there is no lag while its happening. I wonder how a 5200 would perform in a networked game battle while the system pages data simultaneously. If I were you, I would of bought 1 40 gig and 1 20 gig ata100 7200 RPM drives instead of 1 big 5200 rpm drive. You would not have the problems with the 60 and 80 gig ones from IBM or Maxtor and could dual boot with ease. I bet the price would of been similiar. Also you were smart by buying an ultra quiet drive. They are wonderfull for those of use who like there systems on 24/7 and live in a dorm or have there computers in their rooms. My next system will have a quiet system fan as well for pure bliss. Also the cpu decsion was a good one. Today's bottleneckes come from video cards and not cpu's when playing games. several years ago the situation was a little different. I am cautious about AMD since tomshardware.com did a video showing the processor melt in literally seconds after the heat sink was removed. It burned at up to 600F! Ouch. but at the same time I hate intel's crippled pentium4. Especially its cache and high latency Rambus ram. I am glad I am not buying a new computer today. My p3 700 has been running for several days and my case is still cool to the touch.
Try that with an athlon. My theory is if you invest lots and lots of money into a system, it better be excellent quality and not overheat at all. I would love to see systems with no fans at all actually. Fans break down first with any system and they are a cheap way for OEM's to overclock there systems and brind down the life of hardware. I think this is a bad practice. I love your case as well as your sound card. Sure creative labs has lots of programs with there stuff but I am concerned about quality. You don't have to load the extra programs if you don't want to. I am still using my 6 year old sbawe32 from my 486 right now.
http://saveie6.com/
This post is too late to be seen by much of anyone, but oh well...
I was going to be a lot of gaming on here this machine, in addition to work, and the gaming would be in a Windows 98 environment (Diablo 2, Baldur's Gate II:Throne of Bhaal, The Sims) there was very little reason to go with a dual processor machine.
Why use Win98? As pretty much anyone will tell you, Windows 2000 is much better from a stability/usability standpoint. As far as gaming goes, I have personally used two of those three games on my Win2k box, while the last one (The Sims) works fine on my roomie's 2000 box.
So, I would advise you upgrade. If you're just using Win98 because that's what your used to, or that's what you have, or just because you heard 2000 is "not good with games," you're missing out on a lot. Not just stability, but multi-processing. I have known the joys of a dual-CPU box, and I'm never going back.
± 29 dB
I have had my server up & running since the 27th of December 2000 24/7. I think my downtime is less than 1 day in total for minor hardware & software upgrades. My other comp is usually on as well. The only thing I shut down is my laptop. :)
Apart from these two PC's I also have the network equipment turned on.
I can't say that I actually hear any noise coming from all of them...
I guess I got used to it
Dante G.
I tried some similar type stuff (might have been same stuff, dunno), and it worked very nicely. The only problem is most glues seem to peel off the inside of the case. What'd you use for it?
I build myself a quiet PC about 18 months ago. It has been upgraded a bit since (only the fans - they do get lounder as they get older and a new fan is not that expensive). The only thing that I can hear right now is the IBM Deskstar 7200RPM harddrive. I seriously consider switching those out with one of the new Seagate ultra quiet Barracuda IV disks which is mentioned somewhere in this thread also. Here is what I have:
Case: I bought a Noisecontrol case. They aren't cheap, but they are pretty okay and have a "door" in front of the your CD-drive which takes away a lot of the noise. I'm pretty happy with the board
Fans: I'm using fans from Papst (they are mentioned somewhere here also. They are great and I highly recommend them!) As said before, I can only hear my harddisk now, if I pull the plug in the harddisk, I can't hear my PC, even with the case open it's practically quiet.
You could also watercool your PC, Koolance is looking pretty okay and their latest version have gotten pretty good reviews.
Some people says that noise is not a problem and they don't think the noise from the computer is a problem. I think they haven't tried to use a quiet PC. You get used to the noise that comes from you PC, which makes you more or less ignore it, but when you first try a quiet PC - you don't want to go back!
Besides that, I plan on upgrading my current Celeron with one of the new Athlon XP processors. I haven't upgraded yet, because boards with the new VIA KT266A chipset has just arrived and furthermore boards with the new Nvidia Nforce chipset is finally starting to arrive. The Nforce is currently looking pretty good imho. Take a look at this review.
Question: What is the most quiet CPU fan for an Athlon XP?
This is what I did:
- wireless mouse/keyboard.
- Cambridge Soundworks Digital speakers
- vga extender
http://www.aten.com.tw/aten%20ve-120.htm
I needed to pull the rca cable for the PCM signal to my speakers and a Cat5 stp cable for the vga extender. Those cables can be hidden.
"When your PC is screaming in the cabinet and nobody listens, does it still make a sound?"
Dag B
Dag B
This stuff works wonders, and it's possible to remove it if you really want to. I also used hot melt on any kinda carpetting that I'd use for covering subwoofer/speaker boxes, too. $5cdn for a gun and sticks at walmart.
Steve
..don't panic
I'm running my noisy server (with cheap old disk drives that make a huge racket) in the basement, and in my office I've got an old Pentium with no disk drives and a fanless heatsink. The only fan in the system is in the power supply, and that one's temperature controlled and pretty quiet.
Next step: underclocking the pentium and seeing if I can disable the power supply fan without it burning up.
Now I'll grant you that this is no fire-breathing twitch-game monster setup, but works great for hacking and web surfing, and the quiet is really nice at 3:00am when the wife and kids are all asleep.
imho, latency might be the issue here. Without having studied the architecture of Q3, I'd say the higher the framerate, the shorter the time between mouse movement and image update. The smaller the latency, the better the control of the game.
In games with a solid frame-rate, latency should be constant, which is nice for eye-hand coordination. If Q3 latency were independent of image update rate (I assume this is not the case), I would be satisfied with 60 Hz image update and refresh rate.
Furthermore, I've heard all sorts of horrible things about VIA's KT266 chipset, and now that there are alternatives, there's really no reason to buy it at all. SiS's AMD chipset rocks (if you don't believe me, read this, but if you're going for cost-no-object performance, you'll want one of tyan's mobos w/ AMD's own chipset.
Also, Creative has a new sound card out, and it has built in firewire, and considering that, it's not too much more than the platinum. And you may want to at least consider ATI graphics solutions, esp if you're ever going to run linux on this machine. From the reviews I've read, the 8500 is comparable or better than the GeForce3 in most ways. If everyone starts considering nvidia a foregone conclusion, it won't be long before we don't have a choice at all.
As far as the silent drive thing goes, insulating a device that is supposed to be conduction cooled (ie it conducts heat through its metal casing) is a very bad idea! nuf said.
Finally, those of you considering those nifty round IDE cables may want to read this first.
In closing, I would like to point out that this article was little more than a shameless plug for thinkgeek and pc power and cooling. All of the choices that didn't involve these stores were ill thought out. And you'll notice when it comes to the cpu fan, a very important piece of hardware these days, he didn't even bother telling us what he bought, only that he got it from pc power and cooling!
If Hemos ever had any creditibility, he just pimped it out to thinkgeek and pc power and cooling. Oh well. I guess in these troubled times, ya gotta do what ya gotta do.