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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?
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
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
Soundproofing would most likely involve closing up all possible places where sound (as well as air) could escape... I think you've just defeated the purpose of air cooling.
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
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.
Yeah, Apple.
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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
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.
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
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.
Yes, and it's dirt cheap and easy.
1 - build a wooden case that allows you to slide the computer into it with about 2 inches of space all around. insulate the box with sonex. or hospital bed padding (same stuff, and loads cheaper.) make the door out of plexiglass, 2 layers spaced about 1/4 inch apart and not parallel to each other (I.E. a slant on the inside pane.
on the back you add 2 ducts, one high, and one low. duct these with dryer vent outside the room and place a blower on the out vent, a small filter on the in vent ( the in must be in the building, the out can be vented outside.)
Voila, 100% silent PC god enought for a recording both (well that's what we use in our sound booth. the equipment registers no sound change at the microphones with the computers in the box on or off. or with the blower on or off. and a human cant tell either.)
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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
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.
Thanks in advance.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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.
Go grab some DynaMat. Check out their site, I was surprised to see they actually have a "computers" section.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
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?
Yes, you just need to add noise-dampening panels to the sides of the case.
A lot of the noise you hear when the case is closed is the case resonating at the 1/2, 1 and 2 * wavelengths of the sound coming off of the cooling equipment (the fans tend to put off white noise of many wavelengths).
You just gotta make sure you aren't obstructing the airflow. I'm going to do this myself, and on my case, you can put panels on the left and right, top and bottom without obstructing airflow. Front and back have to remain unblocked, although the front is possible to do too if room is left where the built-in vent areas are. Worse designed cases may make this impossible.
The stuff I'm going to use goes for about $4 per square foot, and is about 1/4 inch thick.
If you can't get this type of noise-reducing panel from your local computer retailer, go to a hardware store and get drop ceiling tile, as thin as possible (preferably 1/4 inch if they make it), cut it to size, and glue it into your panels.
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.
A little note, the stuff I'm using is the "V-block VB-2" paneling.
Just search for that on Yahoo for more information.
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.
Adding stiffening material of one kind or another
to the case components which can act as acoustic
membranes (i.e. loudspeakers) can reduce or kill
a good portion of high-frequency vibration noise.
That's the most irritating noise for most folks.
I have more rotating disk spindles than box fans
or cpu coolers. The disks contribute hugely
to the background buzz. Mounting the disks
on rubber grommets and vibration-damping the
supporting structure does help. Now that we're
slowly converting to disk trays (each with a fan),
it seems easier to apply damping to the disks
as part of the tray assembly via foam/rubber
standoffs.
A technically better cooling solution that's less of a
challenge than water cooling involves pumping
cold air through the box. The cool air source and air pump are in a noisy equipment
room or outside the building. The pressurized
air is pushed into the computer box and pulled
out. Using cold air means less air total flow is
needed.
I saw this technique implemented years ago
- it was astonishingly effective: you couldn't
tell the equipment was powered up.
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?
If I'm going to trick a blonde into putting her lips on something, it ain't going to be my computer!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Some parts that went into my machine:
314-15-9265
Because there are many times where a simple misspelling can change an entire meaning. especially on the net where there is no visual cues.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I have yet to hear an airplane hangar make any noise. Now, the aircraft IN the hanger can get quite loud.
If you can nitpic, I can nitpic.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I hope their product works better than their web designer.
I just love when half the links are to "file:C:\My Computer".
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.
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.
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."
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.
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!
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.