Building a Dead Silent PC

I have to wonder...... by idiotnot · 2002-10-20 19:30 · Score: 5, Interesting

exactly what this will do to component life. As you can see from the graphs they posted, the CPU and graphics card do run noticably hotter than with the stock cooling.

To me, the small amount of noise created by a the stock CPU fan and graphics card cooler are worth the bit of extra noise.

A very quiet case fan might be a good addition to this to help draw heat out of the case. That big plastic window doesn't help add anything to radiational cooling from the case, either.

And my athlon isn't *that* noisy, especially when it's tucked away underneat the desk.

Longevity? Hardware Burnout? by beowulf_26 · 2002-10-20 19:31 · Score: 5, Interesting

I think it's great that these guys did this, and I'm quite impressed at the hardware statistics and performance for such a quiet system. Although, there is a conspicuous lack of one element from the whole article...

Longevity.

While I've been desperately wanting a completely quiet computer that runs decently for some time now, I don't have the money to invest in a solution that is going to last only for a year or so. I guess I wish these guys had done more extended testing of their system.

Has any other /.er made a comparable system? How has it lasted?

Maybe I'm just a skeptic, but an overclocked GeForce 4 Ti with no active cooling makes me anxious, and somewhat hesitant.

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Re:Longevity? Hardware Burnout? by LordSah · 2002-10-20 19:51 · Score: 5, Interesting

My solution to making my PC quite was very simple: I built a big-ass sound-insulating box for it. The box itself is made of particle board, lined with acoustic ceiling tile and carpet. I cut fan holes in the side of my original case, and mounted three fans to blow directly onto the CPU, memory and graphic board.

The fans on the side of my case pull in air from a 20" long carpet-lined duct--it acts a lot like a car muffler. The air moves through, but the carpet absorbs nearly all the sound (the sound needs to make two 90 degree turns to escape the air channel). There is a similar duct in the back of the case for outgoing air.

My 'new' case has more airflow than the computer originally had, so my internal temps are only a little higher than they used to be. I built the box with a weekend and ~$25. Now I can leave my computer on all the time without making my ears ring. If you've got access to a wood shop, it's a very effective way to make a quiet PC.

Most Apple products have been silent. by Anonymous Coward · 2002-10-20 19:31 · Score: 5, Interesting

Most Apple products have been silent.

Its one of the main reasons people like to buy them.

Even some of the G4s (cube) keep the fan off unless critical.

powerbooks are similarlysilent unless emergency fans kick in.

The balance of other modesl, such as imac are designed with columnar "chimney effect" air flow out the tops.

And many famous apples have no fan at all whatsoever, not even on powersupply : Apple II, IIe, IIc, IIgs

Many musicians like the newer macs with sampler gear because they don't have to worry about systyem sound so much.

External D/A in usb allows noise free amplification far from motherboard on most all mac models in last 3.5 years.

Mac lovers hate noise it sems.

I wish dual cpu AMDs could be made much quieter.

Re:Most Apple products have been silent. by ericdano · 2002-10-20 19:39 · Score: 3, Interesting

My G4 Cube is great. It is silent except for a very very slight hard drive head noise. I installed a 120 Gig hard drive for use in recording. My mics never pick up computer noise. They sometimes get the AC when it's on.

The new iMacs (those lamp ones) are practically silent. Even some of the old iMacs are real quiet.

This article was great! I'm considering upgrading my PC at home (loud 600Mhz Pentium III), and this would be something to look into!

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I can think of one idea to get even cooler by Navaash+Fenwylde · 2002-10-20 19:33 · Score: 5, Interesting

Those are some gigantic heatsinks. The processor heatsink alone is frigheting enough. But there does seem to be one solution that can be even quieter and can cool both Pentiums AND Athlons...

Water cooling!

It's certainly different, using water to carry off and circulate the heat. Obviously, it requires a large degree of trust, as one leak can short out your entire system in a heartbeat. I've been around these beasts, and they certainly seem quiet enough.

I imagine they would be great for overclockers :D

Re:I can think of one idea to get even cooler by divide+overflow · 2002-10-20 20:39 · Score: 2, Interesting

>I have to wonder whether there are any liquids around that will cool a system without short-circuiting it if it spills out?

How about a refrigerant like R134A? It it commonly used in air conditioners and refrigerators. Of course they are using it as part of a phase change refrigeration system.

Old news by Maniakes · 2002-10-20 19:33 · Score: 5, Interesting

The PowerMac G4 cube (bottom of page 4, "Noise characteristics") was only 31 dB. That's 2,512 times quiter than this "silent" PC.

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Noise Cancelling Case by peel · 2002-10-20 19:41 · Score: 4, Interesting

It seems to me that someone would have come up with a noise cancelling method by now. You know, something similar to the technology utilized by some headphones such as these by Aiwa. Basically you could sample the sound inside the case then invert the wave, and then play it back through a case speaker. Viola! Instant nose reduction. This would also dynamically address other noisy things such as cd-rom drives. Just an idea to make millions. -peel

p.s.- If you don't understand how this works you can also try it out with your home stereo and a song with a lot of base. Take your speakers and aim them at each other then take one of the sets of wires and switch the positive and the negative. You will notice the sound of the bass reduces dramatically due to an effect called phasing.

Re:Noise Cancelling Case by Anonymous Coward · 2002-10-20 19:47 · Score: 3, Interesting

I don't know if that would work well, I think that noise cancelling headphones are effective because of their close proximity to your ears. I don't think you would be able to get the speaker in the case so that it would be out of phase in all places in and around the case because there are some tricky acoustic things going on. Although, it would still be kind of cool because as you moved around the case you would be able to hear the case sound go in and out of phase!

Some PCs are quiet anyway by NewtonsLaw · 2002-10-20 19:52 · Score: 3, Interesting

In the process of building a PC-based PVR I was worried that the noise of a PC might be distracting when placed next to a TV set in the family room.

I needn't have worried. The PC I'm using is a 1.8GHz P4 with a 7200 RPM Seagate HD, Sony CDR/RW and DVD drives plus a top-spec video card.

The noise of the hard drive seeking when doing time-shift is about the only barely audible sound -- and you can only hear that if you mute the TV.

Some PCs are just very quiet anyway.

In my office I have two tower systems and two mini-tower systems with a total of 8HDs, 4 PSUs and 4 video cards. Once again, the loudest noise used to be the clicking of my IBM Deskstar drive until it died (yeah, mine too) and now there's just a very gentle white noise from the air being blown around by all those fans. It's certainly not noisy.

Just choosing your hardware properly will likely negate any need to take special care to cut noise levels.

Totally silent PC by shepd · 2002-10-20 19:56 · Score: 4, Interesting

Even more quiet than some Macs.

Buy a mobo with a VIA CPU on it. Take off 486 CPU Fan/HS combo. Replace with a large heatsink. Build/buy P/S with no fan (VIA CPUs take very little power, so building one is not hard for someone with some electronics knowledge). Load up O/S through the network, put in a lot of RAM, no hard drive.

There. Totally silent PC. And it probably only cost you $200 CDN. Wow. Hard to believe, huh?

Even VIA themselves know their CPU rules for this. Stop using Intel/AMD if you want quiet and lower power, with enough horses to power most modern OSes.

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totally silent hard drives by nounderscores · 2002-10-20 19:58 · Score: 2, Interesting

forget rotating disk drives. Get a mobo with RAID and a bunch of totally solid state flash hard drives. they're electrically identical to laptop hard drives, so a $25 adaptor will allow them to be used in place of any old IDE hard drive in your RAID, but you'll have to change the "I" in the acronym from "Inexpensive" to "Independent", if you know what I mean.

On the other hand if you think about the performance you'd get from the right kind of RAID where the individual "disks" have specs like these... suddenly everything else seems small.

Sympathetic to their Cause by tchueh · 2002-10-20 20:00 · Score: 4, Interesting

After sitting next to my computer for the past couple years, I almost believe that the noise coming from it has seriously hindered my hearing. It's hard for me to hear people whispering to me, and sometimes I can't even hear my profs in lectures.

This is one of the main reasons that I'll look toward a "silent" pc with decent performance, rather than a "Tweaked out" pc that'll make me deaf before I'm 30.

I gotta hand it to the guys at Hardcoreware.net. They went all the way with this, which is something i'd like to do...

Well, either that or just buy a Mac.

Re:silence overrated? by packeteer · 2002-10-20 20:16 · Score: 3, Interesting

I just bought one of These baybuses. They work like a charm and REALLY get things quite. They undervoltage your fans at the flick on a switch which is perfect for sleeping and when your gaming you turn the sound up and the fans on. Its very easy to setup and looks very smooth. Its very fun to show my friend my computer. It looks like im starting an airplane as i flip on rows of switches and hear the fans fire up. With over a dozen fans and multiple screamer 7200 hard drives and cd-r's it can get noisy. Yet when i want to it runs at a very quite hum in teh corner which is kinda nice when im sleeping. Also i set the last switch to control the internal lights so i dont have to use an awkward switch for the cold cathodes.

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Cruesoe doesn't need a fan by Anonymous Coward · 2002-10-20 20:39 · Score: 4, Interesting

As far as I know, the Transmeta Cruesoe CPU doesn't need a CPU fan, so it would be a good candidate for a silent PC.

My take on a Quiet PC by gbsallery · 2002-10-20 20:52 · Score: 3, Interesting

Bah, I'm sure my PC is at least as quiet as theirs. Again, the PSU fan is the only fan turning in the system. The rest of it is water-cooled through an extremely bodge-tastic radiator, like this.

As I'm using a decent pump, this is completely silent. And it looks scary.

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So THATs why... by Shalome · 2002-10-20 21:00 · Score: 3, Interesting

When I was a kid, we had an Apple II. Went on vacation in the summer, turned off the AC for a week. Came back, dead computer. Reason, according to the Apple tech? "Heat."

So dad bought an Apple IIc. Same thing happened. Bought another Apple IIc. Same damn thing. They couldn't take the southern US summers -- the heat and humidity were too much for 'em!

Dad switched to PCs shortly after... the first PC he ever bough (a Compaq) still runs.

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Who tests these claims? by krazyninja · 2002-10-20 21:04 · Score: 4, Interesting

Is there any standard way/method of testing these claims that every vendor/organisation makes? For instance, I can think of a number of ways in which this claim can be twisted: Ambient sound, position/location of the computers, position of measurement, calibration of the dB meter, temperature of the air measured at various instants of time, material on which the computers stand, consistency of readings, etc etc...Who validates all these claims? How can we truly believe these "cheapass" claims (in the same words of the author) ??

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Re:Fanless PC PSU - THAT would be news by e-Alex · 2002-10-20 22:08 · Score: 3, Interesting

Here in Germany you can buy a PSU that uses passive cooling. It is manufactured by Engelking Elektronik and rated at 300 watts. Although there is one fan built in, it only kicks in at 45C. Further specs can be found here. Unfortunately, it is quite expensive at about 220 euros (1 euro ~ 1 dollar).

DANGEROUSLY heavy heatsink! by mosschops · 2002-10-20 23:40 · Score: 3, Interesting

The full-copper version of the Zalman P4 heatsink weighs 898g (that's about 2.1 pounds). That's nearly TWICE what Intel recommend as the maximum weight for a P4 heatsink. Moving the PC around with the heatsink attached could cause serious damage.

Zalman also do an alternative P4 fan, which still uses the copper base but is made mainly of Alumin(i)um. It weighs in at just 400g, which is much safer. It doesn't cool quite as well, but I believe it still does a very good job. The ~2700rpm fan supplied with the heatsink is pretty much inaudible anyway - I've got one in my system, and I'm very fussy about PC noise.

Re:Silence! by Tidan · 2002-10-21 01:13 · Score: 3, Interesting

for best cooling, you want as small a case as possible, not as big as possible

Actually... I don't think we're looking at improving heat transfer via forced air, so a smaller case would not help. The mode of heat transport in this application is mainly free convection and not forced convection.

As we all know from Intro to Heat Transfer, the transition to turbulence occurs at a Rayleigh number of 10^9. This number is related to physical properties of air, and is proportional to (vertical length)^3. Turbulence from free convection will improve heat transfer immensly. The longer your vertical plate is (taller case), the larger your region of turbulent flow will be, which leads to improved heat transfer, and cooler components.

I too, am a rocket scientist. :)

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Wow!! They created an IBM!!! by Hyped01 · 2002-10-21 15:19 · Score: 3, Interesting

This is no major feat. This is so NOT a feat, that it's amazingly NOT one.

I own 5 IBM Intellistation M Pro workstations (Netfinity Servers by another name). They are dual CPU beasts that support (mostly externally - only 6 internal bays) 29 SCSI (UW2) and 4 EIDE (ATA100). They contain 3 massive case fans, one massive power supply fans and the CPU fans.

With the stock fans and a quiet hard drive, they are ungodly quiet. You can barely hear them with your ear on the case. With the stock drive, they are a little louder... a whopping 43 decibels with *2* XEON processors.

With a well selected drive and CPU fans (only 1 was the stock IBM fan so I had to find a silent one for the 2nd CPU), it drops below the 40 mark at 1.5 feet distance.

Oh... and just for those disbelievers, here's the pdf's to the manuals for the slightly louder of the Intellistations (I have 3 models... but this is the only one I could find online...)

M Pro

- Rob

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