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How to Build a Fast Air-Cooled Quiet PC
msolnik writes "Tweak3D.net has posted an article over how to build yourself a fast box that doesn't sound like an airplane hanger. Its nice to find something like this - most articles are just about speed this article combines performance and usability. If your interested in building a fast pc that you don't have to put in " See my thoughts on this as well.
Anyone know if thing is very loud?
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
It seems to me like it'd be a better idea to build a system that isn't quite the highest end, and don't buy expensive overclocking equipment. Then, when it seems to be getting a little slow, buy a new processor that will likely be faster than anything you could have overclocked for the same or less money. Sure it sounds cool to say you have an ultra high clocked system, but in 6 months when there's faster non-overclocked, who's laughing?
Could have used this info months ago. Asked on several forums if there was a quiet way to keep my system cool while allowing me to run at a good enough speed to run modern games. The answer was always something along the lines of "Go with watercooling, or suffer with the noise from a delta."
I ended up settling for a system with decent, but not cutting edge speed (1 Gig TBird when 1.2 was the standard), moderate noise levels (audible in the room, but not annoying from outside the room), and decent but warm temps (around 48 C at full load).
RagManX
Any way to just soundproof my PC case?
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
Why are they doing this article a few days AFTER Christmas when everyone already has their new uber-ninja machines? It's too late to build a nice quiet one!
What a terrible article. With the exception of the power supply, there is absolutely nothing new! There are three really good articles on this in /. already. And he doesn't even mention the 5-1/4" sleeves for HDDs! Why is this article even posted?!
/.:
Other articles on
Shhh! Constructing A Truly Quiet Gaming PC by Hemos with 397 comments on Wednesday October 31, @08:30AM
Building the Quiet PC by CmdrTaco with 171 comments on Sunday July 01, @02:08PM
Building Quieter Computers by Hemos with 398 comments on Monday June 04, @06:51AM
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Try using Dynamic Dynamat [www.dynamat.com]. The company says it can cut the noise by 9dB.
Carpe meam simiam!
wasnt the G4 cube super quiet, and wasnt the iMac also super quiet, these both have no fan, but this might be because they use PPC which have a lower heat output than pentium? isnt it sad that i know all this
Though I've seen this on Slashdot before, I think this is still one of the neatest ways to cool beer and maybe adapt to your overclocked CPU.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
This is a very bland and non-revolutionary article. I was expecting something new and exciting, but it was not delivered.
The whole area of cooling for home PC's is very lacking in innovation. Most of the heatsinks are horribly flawed in the way in which they function. Very disappointing overall. There are plenty of changes I'd like to see made. I'll have to call up some heatsink companies and get them to give me some money for my ideas.
I am torn as to wether or not to put stock in this. Every page lists the parts to buy then offers links to buy them. It looks a little slanted on the choices there. Additionally, I would think that tweakniks (or speedfreeaks, whatever you call them) would not put so much FLASH on their page. My poor Windows box (I am at work) kept wanting to get this flash 5.0, I convinced it that we could live without.
Other than the last complaint this seems a very noteworthy resource at least and I thank you for pointing it out.
Cheers
Because it's making my cock HOT just thinking about it!
"Why did they cancel my favorite Sci-Fi show? I downloaded ALL the episodes!"
But I LIKE my jet engine start-up...
I even give it a countdown as I power up...
"All systems, report status. Cooling 1"
"Go!"
"Ventral Fan"
"Go!"
"Fluid Pumps"
"Go!"
.
.
.
In Soviet Russia, sig types you!
A few weeks ago, I finished putting together a shiny new Athlon XP 1900+ for my son, and was very disappointed to see that heatsink grease is indeed necessary on the newer processors. The CPU and power supply fan worked just fine, the heatsink was in very close contact with the CPU, but there was no grease. What happened when I turned it on nearly made me cry: the CPU overheated within minutes of seeing the KDE desktop on this new system, and I was out $200 for a new CPU.
I learned my lesson the hard way: don't try to skimp on thermal grease, especially on the new Athlons. They run hotter than ever now and you're risking your system's life if you don't take the proper precautions.
-Isaac
What I would like to know is where can I *buy* a complete system. I have built dozens of PCs in my life, and quite frankly have neither the time nor the inclination to build another.
Is there a vendor who builds quiet PCs?
And what real world skills do you have, other then acting like a billy badass. I run linux, im not a huge fan but i like it plenty. But linux is not a toy operating system. Its free so it costs less for a biz. Its stable (say for servers) its good for development.. err programmers. Must i say more?
Carpe meam simiam!
What if your using this technology in other applications? For instance building information centers to sit in rest areas along the highway? I've got a project somewhat like this, but, alot of the things I'm trying to work out no one discusses. For instance, Monitors give off ALOT of heat, try putting that in a sealed enclosure! =P Anyways, I think all this over-clocking, water cooled, 15 fans and a monkey blowing in the case is cool and what not, but why don't we see very many hardware hackers out there playing with more than just CPU speed? Either way, I'd like to see people hacking monitors into cooler cases, or building star trek like keyboards. Then I'd be impressed.
Can all fish swim?
Can't Microsoft solve the noise problem?
Too much thought went into that, hmm looks bait, smells like bait ...
After reading the article this is what I got out of it ..
..
..
..
...
... like this ...
...
Here is what I want
Here is the system I spoolley all over for
iMa leet kewl doOd
Daddy is going to buy this for me
Film at 11
I mean the the article was written without testing
The heatsink fan on the northbridge of the KR7A-RAID isn?t that loud, but it causes vibration which produces noise. For that, you could just take off the fan. The KT266A should run fine using a passive heatsink,
Should? Should? Gawd
Has this system even been built? All I see are pictures found on the products web pages.
Where is completed project?
Where is test of the decibals of it?
-- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.
I tried this in one of my machines, as well as the car audio application it is intended for. Not only does it STINK (I mean *really* bad), it doesn't do much to reduce noise. The reason it works in cars and not in computers is that it reduces noise caused by vibrations, which in some cars can be quite loud. Vibrations aren't typically the problem in computers, usually it's fan noise caused by air on the rapidly-spinning blades.
I just recently ordered parts for a AthlonXP 1900+ running @ 1.6ghz. (yep, its fast). And I ordered some really nice cooling on it. The heatsink is much larger than I thought, and the fan is enormous. Talk about noise... The brand name is 'Volcano', attached to the top of the Heatsink of the Athlon.. And it makes a sound like a jet taking off the runway. It runs at 7031rpm according to the sensors built into the Epox motherboard. I actually like the sound of the hum. I have 3 machines in my room alone, several others throughout the house. But the 2 workstations, and the house server in my room generate a loud noise that puts me to sleep at night. The 2nd workstation has only one fan, and sounds like a small commercial plane. The server has 2 large, and one for the PII processor, and it sounds like an air conditioner when I shut down the Athlon.
The hard drivers generate very little noise, if none at all.
--------------------------
Is this a sig?
--------------------------
One more article about this subject and I fall asleep. BORING!
On the good side, it matches what I just did yesterday: I ordered parts from QuietPC.com to replace power supply and fan in my Sun Blade 100.
What I found sucks is the shipping from UK to the US that cost about $30 or 25%. No warehouse over here makes these things more expensive than they should be. Hope they realize that the biggest market for computer stuff is in the US not in the UK.
Second thing I did was to order a Seagate 80GB ultra quiet drive. These drives rock. A friend of mine got one to replace the HD in his Apple G4 Cube. Absolutely quiet!
Now I need to a neighborhood where they ban leafblowers and I will be able to concentrate on my screen.
-- I feel better now. Thanks for asking.
If your like me you dont care how loud your system is, as long as you have ample speakers to drown out the noise.
"The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else." - Bush 05
The iMac uses convection cooling. The processor heat heats up a surface, the air near that surface expands and rises, pulling cooler air over the processor. It just shows why computer engineers are supposed to study physics. A simple change in case design (and materials), and viola! You have a silent computer.
There are numerous articles on how this design works floating around the net.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
That's about as safe a statement as:
if (x=0){
} else {
}
(which I've actually found in code, no statements, just a compare and else.)
Well, M$ Troll, I hate to tell you this but *REAL* companies do use Linux. As a consultant, I've installed Linux as a file/print server, and as a e-mail/web server/router in several dozen businesses. Granted, the workstations at those businesses were Win9X, but the databases, documents and spreadsheets are stored on the Linux server. E-Mail is served and delivered via Linux. And their web sites are hosted on Linux. The only things stored on the Win9X workstations are M$ apps, or fat clients that cannot be installed on the Linux server. Businesses are astounded when I've upgraded their NT systems to Linux and they are no longer required to babysit their file/print servers. Grow up M$ Troll. This world is big enough for everyone, although you and M$ seem to have trouble understanding that.
The "timeline of heat" jumps right from early Pentium to Thunderbird with no mention of the K5, K6, Cyrix, IDT, etc. Reading the article, one would think that waste heat has been constantly increasing unchecked. In reality, AMD made serious efforts to reduce waste heat after the K6/233. IDT came out with their WinChip line which runs very cool. So cool that it can stay in-spec with a big heatsink and no fan. It may not be a good foundation for a bleeding-edge game box but it'll run office apps just fine. Intel's mobile CPUs go to great lengths to both reduce heat and extend runtime by using less power.
:P
And what about PPC chips? G3? G4? Heck, Apple's got their cubes and imacs running fanless. That "article" is just a big old ad for cooling systems.
And the fans - (one to two per processor) complement this ambience with a critical indicator to health - ie: they usually start making a hell of a racket when starting to fail - along with the power supplies' fans. Time to start checking things out before your sense of smell takes over!
Of course, your mileage may vary.
db
Cig:
ôô
"The drives use Fluid drive bearings which make the drive run very silent."
How can one improve on silence? Isn't silence the complete lack of sound that a quiet PC strives for? If one machine is silent, another machine can't be very silent and be better (i.e. quieter).
The towers are loud. Mine has a loud CPU fan, a loud (added) hard drive, a noisy video card fan, and a very noisy DVD-RAM drive - it sounds worse than one of thonse ancient floptical drives.
The Cubes and iMacs are almost silent - by design. Steve Jobs walked into a mac lab at a school and complained about the noise from the fans. The next design of the low end macs (iMac and Cube) did not have fans.
what a lousy article. they manage to get an average 2 paragraphs in before I have to click onto another page. have to get that advertising dollar, don't you? I quit at page three.
This page on QuietComputers describes a cheap way to reduce noise by slowing down PS/CPU/case fans using resistors. Works nice in addition to other sorts of quieting solutions, although I've found it sufficient by itself. It works well enough for me that my roommate came in after a power outage and cycled the power 3 times before realizing that the machine was on the whole time...
--Just the place for a snark!
I guess that wasn't PC.
I would have liked to see included an example of a water cooling system or even the author's assembled system with some db emission readings. I was a bit disappointed by the last bit about removing all fans, that's about as recommended as using your laptop in the bathtub and should have been more strongly discouraged.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Hahahahaha! The thought of a loser like you hiring someone? Non become non-AC stat and show your true self, so we may laugh at your blatant stupidity. ___AS___
I have an Athlon 1600XP and a Thermaltake Volcano 6.. the system runs generally at 55 C.
I also have a case fan installed (which seemed to help 2-3 degrees)
It's rare for my PC to be under 50 C..
thoughts anyone?
You satisfy your curiosity and finally decide to fry bacon on the top surface. The sizzling is pretty loud, louder than the crackle on that really old abused Iron Butterfly LP album you still own. Since cooking this way doesn't knock out the fat, you eventually end up replacing the G4 cube with one of those iMac-colored George Foreman grills, which is only a little less useful for running software.
The heat from the CPU finally melts the case, and your quiet reverie is interrupted by the sound of liquid gray plastic dripping and splattering on the floor.
"Melt different"
Jeez, are you still angry about losing your lunch money so often? Such blatantly insulting language from someone with only half a command of the English language would be disconcerting if it wasn't so funny.
I am going to replace an aged Pentium 200 MMX Linux box with a much faster Linux box in the next few months. Via's C3, running at 933 MHz, doesn't even require a fan; heatsink alone is sufficient.
w ww.via.com.tw/jsp/en/products/C3/c3reviews.jsp+c3+ reviews+and+awards&hl=en).
I have a silent drive sleeve for my 20 GB 5400 RPM drive, and with a fanless power supply (see the links from http://home.swipnet.se/tr/silence.html), this thing will only have moving parts in the drive and should register less noise than my breathing.
Surprisingly, it will also perform fairly well--those C3 processors are not dogs, as you can see from the reviews linked to on Via's page (cached at http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:PMSJrxoMUV4:
For Quake 3, Wolfenstein, and others, I have a GeForce3 card and an Athlon 1600+ (which also runs fairly quietly, with a Silencer fan replacing the original noisy one on my Volcano cooler), but for thoughtful tasks you can't get better than blissful silence.
What? You've never heard of clearance or inventory reduction sales? That's where the smart start spending after Christmas!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
A better choice for a heatsink would be the Alpha 8045:
Here
These mount VERY securely using the 4 holes that surround the cpu socket on socket A motherboards and you can pick whatever 80mm fan you think is best for your situation.
This is a little of topic, but bear with me...
I had to put a sofa in front of my electric heater, and now my electric bills have skyrocketed. I'd love to have a quiet fan back there that starts when the heater gets hot and blows the trapped heat heat out.
A CPU cooler fan already has the heat triggered activation, it's small enough, and according to the article, at least this Thermaltake Volcano 7 model is designed to be quiet. But how hard is it to take a component designed to be inside a PC and plug it into a regular out let?
I can't speak for the KT266 chips, but the KT133A "can" run with just a heat sink on the Abit KT133A board. My chipset fan was squealing, and I ran a few weeks without while waiting for a replacement. I'm all SCSI and not overclocked on that box, however, so your mileage may vary. The chipset got hot to the touch using only a passive heat sink - probably a stability thing.
I added a 1.4 gHz AMD CPU and had to get a better heatsink / fan combo than the chrome orb I had used on the previous duron processor. I bought a copper heatsink kit that cooled well and fit my budget. What I did not know is how load the 47dB Ytech fan really is in practice. ARGH! I started shopping for a new fan based on amps, airflow, noise, and air pressure.
There are some good fans out there that fit the normal 60mm CPU mounts, but I'm also seeing some 60-80mm adapters used to match a larger, lower RPM fan to a cpu. Mind you, air pressure makes a difference. I'm building my own adapter now since I have a couple nice quiet 92mm fans that push/pull enough air (with ducting) to keep my CPU around 40c under load. Still tweaking the heat resistant foam ducting before I put on a coat of fiberglass. And to think we would never use our fluid mechanics outside the classroom!
As for the thermal paste... you don't need any if you use the thermal pad they leave on the CPU. You are a dead man if you take off (or re-use) the thermal pad and run the CPU bare back. Artic Silver is nice stuff, not only because of heat transfer, but it is non-conductive. Some do conduct electricity, which is generally a bad thing if it drips or leaks.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
The earlier tower G4s aren't quite as loud. I have a 450 in here and it's absolutely silent, even the hard disk doesn't make a sound. The only time I get noise from it is when I pop in a CD.
If only my P-III 600 were as quiet, it only seems to be getting louder. Much of its noise comes from the HD, guess I need to replace it with a new one.
Squirrel cage fan. And the sweaty mouse thing? Sand the surface with 60 grit sandpaper.
I want to see more elegant solutions to these things from now on, folks.
http://crazy.codetroop.com/randimg/?overclock.jpg
I get an average framerate of a couple of thousand running Quake III.
Better yet, go with the case sold from Koolance.com It's a liquid cooled setup. This will be my next case/cooling solution. My friend got one a couple months back. I couldn't believe how quiet it was. And for about $200, this is a nice setup. He raves about the low (and stable) temperatures in his system. He also moves his system around a lot, so it's a pretty sturdy setup.
For those who fight for it, life has a flavor the sheltered will never know.
Hot damn! Imma gonna build me the first ever first post machine! Lookout cyborg_monkey, make way for sdem!
Is your company running tools written by ma
"Starboard ailertuder...
Ailertuder?
Where's the starboard ailertuder?"
--P. Opus, A Wish For Wings That Work.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Actually, "they" did. Those who live in ignorant houses shouldn't... well, shouldn't do much of anything. :D
This sig is xenon coated, and will glow red when in the presence of aliens
psxndc
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
Thanks in advance.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
You could always move to the Fortress of Solitude or Mr. Freeze's Lair. They seem like places that will keep computers cool. As for the sound, all you need are huge speakers turned up full blast while you're playing Quake 2. Imagine, with that kind of set up, you could have a beowulf cluster of them and they would all stay cool, which would be kewl!
Of course, the snow would eventually melt with all that heat...
You die too easily.
--sdem
The 'Disagree' link points to that ripped out @$$!
Holy crap, someone else out there uses a sunblade? Aside from the abysmal video card, I love mine, how happy are you with yours?
Casca
The site was down, owing thanks to /. effect. I could only read the leading page so bare with me.
I had my focus on building a silent computer when I did my hardware upgrade plans. It still amazes me, that some people don't bother to check the noise levels of their gear prior to purchase. I spent some two to three weeks browsing through stuff, reviews and user reports.
In the end, I got myself a Q-Technology (sold to new owner now, unfortunately) silent power, NoiseControl processor cooler, and a tube of Arctic Silver thermal compound. The cpu cooler did not have the best of contact surfaces, so additional help was required there.
My case didn't have enough space to fit a Silverado MkII, so I settled for even quieter model. After putting the components together, I was happy to find out that the absolutely noisiest part of all this was the fan on the motherboard chipset. Which I promptly unplugged. Now the loudest sound I get from my computer is the sound of the hard drive spinning.
All this required only some thought and a little effort to try to find out things in advance. Why more users never bother to do this, I can't even imagine. So much post-purchase whining could be averted, if they only did at least some research... Yes, this was far from the cheapest of solutions, but I was prepared to pay some extra for silent quality parts.
As my mom used to say, 'poor people can't afford to buy products that are cheap and lousy in quality.'
There is no such thing as good luck. There is only misfortune and its occasional absence.
* get an athlon xp 1600+ or so
* ecs k7s5a motherboard (w. lan)
* 256 mb ddr ram (apacer/nanya cl2 will do)
* a GOOD psu (i suggest a CWT420A)
* a quiet and fast hdd - Seagate Barracuda ATA IV, * ST380021A says tom's hardware
* and say 4 of Papst 8412 NGML fans
* an alpha pal8045 heatsink
* arctic silver 2 or even better CoolerMaster Premium thermal grease by ShinEtsu
* that babies: http://www.blacknoise.de/d270.jpg
* copper spacer
* vga card and soundcard of your choise
* maybe a hot glue pistol (you know what i mean)
* and at last but not least a good case
here goes the fun: open the psu and replace the fan inside with one of papst 8412 ngml's (i know you void your warranty. for folks here living in germany or austria you can get the CWT420A with that silent cooler at blacknoise.)
put the thermal grease on both sides of the spacer and onto the die (just a small amount)
carefully attach pal8045 heatsink then attach another of those papst fans on it. build the whole system just as you would build a vanilla pc. then glue the other 2 fans into the case so air can circulate from the front through the cpu heatsink to the back. attach the insulator material all over inside the case and under your hdd. close all other holes of the case, leave only those for the two fans and the psu fan open. have fun
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
I got a Twinhead for that reason, and have been glad that I did.
Buy Windows XP: give Bill Gates even more of your money.
It's not really Microsofts problem.
they didn't make the fans that are loud.
They can't do everything. Heck. they can't even make a stable OS.
What if your room mate is trying to sleep? or you get to a quiet scene in a movie? or song, for that matter?
;-)) noise isn't that big of an issue.
But I do agree with you that as long as your music is up (as it should be
My server
...if you live alone or with deaf relatives
Wouldn't large diameter fans be able to run at lower speeds? The chassis fans in my computer don't even use half the depth... if they were 150mm across, presumably they would shift a lot more air and could run at a fraction of the speed.
Does anybody know of cases and PSUs that take really big fans?
Step 1- Open tower case.
Step 2- Convince blonde that humming sound on interior of tower is an ice cream dispenser (or any similar delivery mechanism).
Step 3- Attach blonde's face to open case through nefarious or non-nefarious means.
Step 4- Inform blonde that ice cream dispenser (or whatever delivery mechanism you have selected for your fiendish trickery) only operates when you "give it a blow."
Step 5- Overclock and marvel at the volumes of air motivated by your new cooling unit.
That's what I get for not being able to score with chicks.
I went to find me some insight to quiteing my computer, and instead it was cleverly written AD.
I highly suggest the use of Crucial PC2100 for there price and quality.
Why do you need to recommend the type of ram I use? It had not insightful ideas on how to quite my system. But was more interested in recommending products to me, and companies i should buy from. If the guy mentions pricewatch one more time... grr.
The article went as far as to recommend the type of case i should use and how much i can get it for, but didn't bother to recommend a specific type of water cooling, or where i could learn more about water cooling.
Like I said it seem very much geared towards selling the products mentioned, rather then teaching anything about quiteing my pc.
If you can't fix it ask the 3 year old down the street.
How long will it be before website owners get really pissed that whenever a website gets slashdotted, it goes DOWN real quick....
What is the reasoning behind the dual-layer-skewed plexiglass door?
I just got a new desk which has a perfectly sized cabinet for my tower with some very noisy fans on the dual athlons.
I planned on making vents similar to what you describe in the back but was just going to leave the wooden front door.
Some time ago i got sick of the noise my pc was making, the loudest part now are the hard drives. That article doesnt even come close to coming up with something imaginative, dealing with the vibration, the noisy 20mm fans, the northbridge, gfx processor, replacing the cpu fan, adding passive heatsinks, ducting. My PC now runs at 38C on a 30C day, at very close to inaudiable levels.
Yet another reason to bring back the mainframes and ditch the PC. If every house had a server and nice graphical terminals running to your room, all the noise would be in the basement with your loud furnace and air conditioner.
Of course, then cabling becomes a problem. Shielded cables a necesity for those rooms far from the mainframe...or go optical.
Untill people realize the joys of mainframes, an alternate solution is to house the computer in a closet, or even in the wall (cooling vent?) Before my closet began overflowing with old and probably now-useless computer parts, I could stuff my box in there and close the door. It was a heck of a lot quieter.
--Roy
Now, most people aren't going to care about this but those who are trying to build a quiet PC are -- if you put a P4 in your system you could conceivably cool it passively and take the performance hit. I don't know how much of a performance hit you'd get by cooling passively versus actively but the video on Tom's Hardware about what happens when you remove the heatsink from various processors shows the framerate of Quake III returning to something close to the original just by reattaching the heatsink to the P4...and the fan isn't running on it at the time. Of course, that's probably because the heatsink itself is cool and will warm up significantly after being attached to the CPU for a while.
My question is this: what heatsinks exist out there that are designed for passive cooling purposes? I'm sure the design of such heatsinks differs significantly from those designed to accomodate a fan.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
"Tweak3D.net has posted an article over how to build yourself a fast box that doesn't sound like an airplane hanger."
Yes, I am sure an airplane hanger would have to be quite loud--can you imagine the size of the motors needed for an airplane hanging device?
I suppose it would be quite loud inside an airplane hangar as well, come to think of it...
doo be doo be doo be dooooooo
two words
Paxil!
Next time you could check out Quiet PC Canada instead of the buying from the UK website? That might save you a bit on the shipping...
Their order page says that they gladly process US orders by telephone even though the online ordering system is not set up for US customers.
I don't know if it would actually be cheaper in the end, but it's probably worth checking out.
Christopher
Mozilla
cheap pc's?
Let's say you want a cheap, SMALL, silent pc. No need for an athlon.
Any web articles on that?
Some parts that went into my machine:
314-15-9265
I've been looking at building a box to sit with the AV hardware, the basic aim is to stuff the fastest gear possible (that runs cool) into a case and then cool it either passively, or with fan(s) that aren't audible over the harddisk..
rough spec:
Tualatin P3 (they run cool enough to not NEED a fan, and a 1.2Ghz Tualatin is many things.. slow isn't on of them)
Seagate BarracudaIV ATA, right on the heels of the fastest IDE disks available, and almost completely silent..
suggestions on quiet/fast video hardware?, I thought about a Geforce 3 or Radeon 8500 with a BIG passive heatsink on it.. but I'm wary of that since my GF2MX with passive cooling gets very toasty...
hmm, perhaps I'm gonna have to suffer some low-flow 80mm fans or something, just to give some semblance of cooling......
What is an "airplane hanger"? How loud is it?
Oh, wait a minute... you meant "airplane hangar".
My hangar is pretty quiet right now. As a matter of fact, *nobody* runs an airplane in a hangar. We all push them out first, then we start them up.
So, I'd say a hangar is usually quiet.
Dumb simile.
Andy
First - I think that was a lousy article :(
The more fans there are, the more noise are you going to get - they could have choosen the MSI board which doesn't have any fan and they could have choosen a different video card that doesn't require a fan either, but they didn't.
My current system is an old celeron 300@450 (yes I'm overclocking currently, but it runs without problems) which I intend to upgrade to an Athlon XP soon.
My current case (which I'll be keeping, but upgrading with new and better noise dampening material - more about that later) is this one:
http://www.noisecontrol.de/info/big/inf.htm
(in German)
If you look at the "innen_vorne.jpg" picture, you can see it has 2 "air holes" (what do you call them? - English isn't my primary language) on the back, besides the one for the PSU.
I'm thinking about putting a 80mm Papst fan (I'll use a similar one for the Alpha PAL 8045, those fans are *really* low noise) at the lowest hole, to suck air into the case. Together with that I'll add a "NoiseControl Magic WhisperBox" to the back of my case:
http://asp.webconsult.dk/vareinfo.asp?VareID=112
(in Danish)
Bigger pictures can be found in this (also in Danish, but the illustrations should mostly be pretty easy to understand) pdf manual:
http://asp.webconsult.dk/Box-Manual.pdf
That box should eliminate the noise (which is currently not much) from the fans on the back, which is also why I would rather not put a fan on the front of the case.
AFAIK, the best heatsink right now, is the Alpha PAL 8045, which I mentioned earlier too.
As said earlier, I'll upgrade my case with some new noise dampening material - you can read a bit about it here:
http://www.chillblast.co.uk/
(look under "Accessories/Magic Fleece noise killer")
The last thing I should mention is that the harddisk is usually also an noise issue which is why I use a "NoiseControl Hard Drive cage" - it effectively removes vibrations. I have also tried the Silentdrive , but in my experience, it doesn't make the harddisk become les noisy and since it encloses the harddrive completely, it's not good for high performance harddisks (they are simply getting to hot).
Actually, the only thing I can practically hear from my current box, is the harddisk (an older IBM Deskstar, 7200RPM). That will be changed with a new Seagate Barracuda IV, which should be much more quiet.
The main issue I have here is how little cooling is enough to cool an Athlon XP.
Another issue is the video card - that is actually a big problem, but I think I'll buy a Gainward Geforce3 Ti200 card which should be able to run only with passive cooling (if you buy a good heatsink). It should have pretty good 2D image quality also.
Wow..another tweak3d article that explains the painfully obvious and manages to drag it out to 3 or 4 pages, which of course have banner ads on them.
i dunno.. maybe it's not that obvious to someone.
I have build numerous computers over the years, and I never got them as quiet as some of the manufacturers out there.
Apple is whisper quiet. If you want a PC, consider (gasp) Compaq. I don't know about the consumer stuff, but the business PCs aere relatively quiet. They don't employ CPU fans, just big ass heat sinks, and the case is properly designed to route the air over the heat sinks. I think that is something hard to find when you build your own.
I have owned two. An older PII and a newer PIII 1G dual Xeon workstation. In both cases the hard drives were the main noise makers. The Xeon wks is a little louder than the PII, probably because of the big ass power supply.
In both cases however it has to be absolutely quiet to be able to tell the PCs are on when the hard drives are not spinning.
I also love the sideway hard drive bays on the workstation, but that is a different story. No more nicked knuckles trying to remove and install drives.
The only way to build a really "silent" pc is to get or make one without any fans in it.
;-), or maybe even one of the more recent Celeron babies, but then you still have the noise generated by the PSU.
How come Apple can make computers that run completely fanless? G4 cube? iMac? I mean, PC builders should get their heads together and make a completely silent pc!
You could make an almost silent one by using the Via C3 processor(the ones running at 933Mhz of course
Someone: Please make me a fanless Pwer Supply!!! (or if they already exist: where can I find one??)
Why is myth continuing to circulate?
The iMacs has a fan in them.... between the monitor and the actual 'cage' that holds the computer?
Has Apple's marketing got everyone brainwashed? Or is it that no one here has used/owned an iMac, let alone taken it apart?
----- One piece short of Legoland
Will you finally squish those pimples out and get back in your room? Thank you.
An article online had suggested using a blower fan on the case, which I also followed up with. Works great. I have 3 machines kitted with the Dayton 2C647 AC blowers and standard bathroom fan speed controls. The three machines are quieter in total than one used to be.
The info on the blowers is at Overclockers Forum. You can also search for info on the "Hoot Chute".
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Original (bondi blue) iMac had a fan, but after FireWire came along, iMac was re-engineered to enable convection cooling
and is now one of the quietest computers on the market.
You need to read between the lines.
What Hemos & Taco are really saying is that they did not get a quiet computer for Christmas, again.
./ fans, you missed your chance!
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Unfortunately, you need a mobo with the i815 b step chipset, which has a very limited life span. Of course, your cooling mileage may vary.
Here's one.
Why not use noise-cancellation means to keep noise level down? Like those headphones that use out of phase sound to diminish the outside sound.
Moderate this up!
Strangely people talk about passive cooling in tower cases. Passive cooling would work much much better in a desktop chassis than in a tower. Reason being you could take a nice sized heat sink and stick it on your processor with plenty of headroom over it. With enough intake slits near the processor convetion would work pretty well for the most part. Heat sinks are perpendicular to the plane of the processor but making the plane of the processor perpendicular to the direction air is going to naturally flow ends up fucking up your cooling. More than a dozen models of Macs were designed this way and coupled with the fact the 603 disappated about 5 watts at the most made for a pretty quiet design overall, my PowerBook uses the same concept but instead of a heat sink it conducts heat into my lap. If you took a decent desktop chassis with a Tualatin P3, Celeron, or Via C3 you could probably get away with entirely passive cooling on the processor itself. As for the other noisy parts thats somebody else's problem.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
The auto-stepdown capability of the P4 is the first thing I've heard about Intel's latest CPUs to interest me away from AMD's, anyone have anecdotal experience of using a P4 for extended periods with passive heat dissipation? I'd *love* to set the CPU fan up on a switch (better yet, controlled via h/w so when I want to game, I run an app to turn the CPU fan on.)
I would not be suprised if computers came with variable-speed fans for CPU heat dissipation based on demand for lower power consumption.
The change wasn't associated with the introduction of FireWire to the iMac, if memory serves, but rather to the revision(codenamed "Kihei") that brought the slot-loading drive to the iMac.
I have both a Lime(266MHz) iMac, and an Indigo(500MHz) iMac in front of me, and the cases are noticeably different.
HAHAHAHAHA!
You called it "M$"
OMG dood that is so funny!
Yuo really showed that trool!
*sniff* It's the hilarious comments that always keep me coming back for more hits!!!
Dragging people kicking and screaming into reality since 1996.
Yes, the chips do run quieter. The mac's use a risc cpu. Which runs much cooler than a cisc (intel, amd ) chip. From what I gather it has to do with instructions sets and clock cycles of the cpu. While it might take multiple cycles to execute an instruction on a cisc chip. instructions for a risc take only one cycle. therefore they run cooler.
I've got an Athlon Classic [slot-a] 750 MHZ cpu.
I simply bought a triple fan that hooks nicely on the CPU. No heatsink, no grease.
Sometimes the case does get hot. But the simplest solution in my mind was to put my air purifier fan behind my case.
Now when I put my hand on the floppy drive I don't feel the warm air. Basically it's a small fan with a filter on the bottom. Now it doesn't have the filter and blows air right onto the power supply and the back of the case.
This is a homebuilt PC so you know not everything fits the way it should. I've got extra holes on the back of the case which could be used for extra serial ports or the like. I kinda' opened them and now the air flows right in.
The important note is that I've got the front 'case fan' blowing air OUT of the case. This way none of the hot air is built up into the case with no place to go.
Try my idea and blow some smoke into the air stream. With my current setup you can see some of the smoke coming out of the front of the case.
Get your Unix fortune now!
No.
/more/ instructions than the Pentium. RISC has become a marketing term and no longer really signifies any real-world difference between chips. That said, it is now rarely used as a marketing term because the RISC vs CISC debate has been dead since about mid-1999 or so. Neither method as a substantial advantage over the other. One executes more complete instructions per cycle but needs to execute more instructions to do the same thing.
.18 Micron transistors produce more heat than .25 micron transistors. Smaller transistors also allow lower voltage for stable operation.
Well, yes, the G4 does indeed run cooler, but you are incorrect as to why it runs cooler.
1) RISC/CISC has absolutely nothing to temperature. Alpha processors, for example, run hotter than most PC processors.
2) Temperature has nothing to do with instruction sets. It has alot to do with clock speed, but that is measurable only when comparing 2 chips of the exact same model.
3) RISC chips, which in a way don't technically exist, may execute most instructions in one clock cycle, but that is because the instructions are far simpler. It takes multiple instructions to do the work of an average single instruction on a CISC chip.
4) RISC = "Reduces Instruction Set Chip". The Motorola PowerPC 601 chip actually had
What really effects processor speed:
*Transistors switching state. Every time a transistor switches its state, it takes power and generates heat. Better designed processors try to reduce unneccessary switching. This is one method AMD used to reduce heat between the Athlon T-bird and AthlonXP.
*Voltage. Even at the same clock speed, increasing voltage linearly increases the power dissipation of the chip.
*Transistor size.
*Number of transistors. Obviously, more transistors switching means more heat.
*Several other factors.
The G4 processor runs cooler because it is a simpler, more efficient design with less transistors. Additionally, Intel compatible chips have to have quite a bit of extra logic (=more transistors) to deal with the ancient, aging x86 architecture quickly. Actually, modern processors like the Athlon break down instructions into smaller operations so could technically be called "RISC core" processors. Hmm.
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
1) Use external SCSI hard drives, put them in a closet or something. SCSI cables can be quite long, so this is actually pretty easy. You can even have very loud drives like the old Quantum Atlas 10K1 and not notice
2) The quietest hard drives are Seagate Barracuda ATA IV's. Check the noise comparisons on storagereview.com.
3) If you pump heat directly from heat sources out of the case, you can drastically reduce the number of fans. The only 2 items in a PC (other than the power supply) that typically need cooling are the CPU and video card. The vid card doesn't need noisy cooling, so you can deal with the CPU only. You can use a case like the Fong Kai FK-603 which funnels the output from the CPU fan directly out of the case, rather than lettign the hot air pass by the motherboard. You then need a grand total of 2 or three fans. 1 for the power supply, one for the CPU, and possible a small fan for the video card. Problem solved.
By the way, Dynamat doesn't do a thing for you unless your noise problems are caused by vibration rather than by spinning fans, hard disk platters, etc. It's also very expensive.
Hope this helps.
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
There have been a lot of discussion about quiet Athlon solutions, but what about the few of us who actually have p4:s? I invested a lot of money in a quiet system, but the P4 fan is driving me crazy! It's rated at 36 dB, and it is really very, very noisy. Does anyone know of a really quiet socket 478 p-IV cooling solution?
If the air temperature is 40 celcius then you need as much airflow as you can get (I have the box open and a 40 cm pedestal fan pointing at the drives) I have to put up with the noise. An air conditioner would drop the overall air temperature, remove the need for a couple of case fans and move a lot of the noise outside.
What would be useful are some charts of decibel levels for various products so we could compare them, not just see what the author thought was quiet.
my favourite trick is to drop the speed of a processor. I first did this for a customer in India, where the temp was over 50 Celcius ambient, but in testing I discovered that in ambient temperatures below 25 Celcius, it would run fine with only passive cooling (Athlon 800 clocked at 600). Still works today - if my fans ever fail, I simply downclock and carry on regardless. Downlclocking allows you to run stably at lower core voltages, too, increasing the life of the chip still further.
COURTESY WWW.M-W.COM
Main Entry:(2) hobby
Function: noun
[...]
: a pursuit outside one's regular occupation engaged in especially for relaxation
Personalized PC builders do it as a hobby, joe.
Oh the irony.. I defend Slashdot then lose karma.. ah well.
i had a pent celeron 400, and my friend who works at a commecrcial computer cupplier got an old pII 400 w/a dell heatsink, it was blue annodixed metal, measuring 7x2x4" about....with no fan. heatsink size isn't a real problem in a big case...bigger the heatsink, the bigger the surface area, the less need for a fan. i'd be more than happy to have an overpriced fannless heatsink on both my processor & power supply.
moox. for a new generation.