Building a Dead Silent PC

Jouster writes "The folks over at HardCoreWare.net have finally lost it. They built a PC that's well over twenty times quieter than their comparison PC (40 dB versus 65). And it's no sluggard, either: P4 2.80 GHz, 7200 RPM hard drive and--get this!--an overclocked to the max GeForce4 Ti 4200! The only fan in the entire system is in the PSU."

Comments

Sound from the computer

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can hear the sound from your computer its a sign that your music is way to low

Re:Sound from the computer

[sahala]

Noisy computer? I just turn my speakers off.

Re:Sound from the computer

[hype7]

If you can hear the sound from your computer its a sign that your music is way to low

my recommendation for a mod that will make the computer "dead" silent - take out the power supply

-- james

Re:20 times quieter?

[Maniakes]

Decibels are a logarithmic scale. 80 dB is ten times as loud as 70 dB. 65 dB is actually 10*10^.5 = 31.6 times quieter than 80 dB.

Not as loud, but its still a space heater

[jeramybsmith]

Those who forget the apple are doomed to reinvent it. Apple has been using large heatsink, air flow design, etc for ever since the blueg3 to keep there from being too many fans in the system.

However, an Apple still puts out much less heat overall and I notice the article didnt even try to find a quiet cdrom. I have 2 in my PC and both are loud as the dickens.

Re:Not as loud, but its still a space heater

[Natalie's Hot Grits]

"Those who forget the apple are doomed to reinvent it. Apple has been using large heatsink"

Who said Apple invented large heatsinks,airflow design, etc?

I have been using large heatsinks, low powered quiet ducted fans, and passive coolers since the pentium days. My current machine has an 80x80mm heatsink with copper base embedded in it with an 80mm silent fan and its cooling an athlon XP 2100. The rest of my system is setup such that I have minimal airflow for the required cooling. Ducted air, large heatsinks, copper bases, etc etc..

People have known about large heatsinks, passive cooling, etc way way way before Apple Computer started making PC's with passive heatsinks on it.

Also, your post is irrelevant considering that Gateway, Dell, HP, Compaq has been doing the exact same thing in (many) of their systems as well for years. (check out dell optiplex, Gateway E-series, I dont know the compaq models, but I have seen some like this).

Then consider the G4 cube. it was fanless, nice innovation. But then they put a loud as hell hard drive in it, the power switch went off intermittently due to overheating (it was heat sensitive) and they put a fan in it anyway when they put the 3D Video cards in it. (this video card fan was like a 40mm fan spinning fast as hell and it was not very quiet at all, all on top of a very very small heatsink which had plenty of room to be larger)

Next, you are going to tell me that Apple invented thermodynamics? Please. Don't try to pretend Apple invented everything. They didn't. And they are far far far FAR from the ppl who started making silent PCs. Everyone has been making silence (and mostly, reduced noise) since the begining of cooling weather it be for cars, power lines, space shuttles, oil pipes, computers, whatever.

Re:Not as loud, but its still a space heater

[lkeagle]

That's great... now will someone PLEASE make a CRT without that damned high frequency whine? ;-)

My TV can be more annoying than my computer with all the fans at full blast!

~Loren

Re:Not as loud, but its still a space heater

[John_Booty]

I notice the article didnt even try to find a quiet cdrom. I have 2 in my PC and both are loud as the dickens.

But how often are they spinning? The actual amount of time my CD-ROMs are spinning is probably and average of a few minutes a day... I probably spend an average of 20 total minutes a WEEK installing/ripping/burning, and the optical drives are silent the rest of the time.

If you're gaming, I suppose the drive would be spinning much more often, but then you've usually got the game music/sfx playing fairly loudly anyway :P

Re:Not as loud, but its still a space heater

[catwh0re]

I was going to write exactly this. Because low end apples are often used in the class room, they are one of the quietest and temperature coolest PC's available. There is nothing worse than being in a room with 25 noisy cheap PC's buzzing away. Interestingly, you'll notice Apple have been using quiet keyboards and drives for alot longer than other mainstream manufacturers. E.G. a cube is virtually silent, however change the HD to a foreign type and you'll find that you can now hear the HD cranking away.

Re:Not as loud, but its still a space heater

[Joseph Vigneau]

And what aboutthe floppy drive? Those things are rarely used these days, but can be terribly noisy.

Easy: take it out. Since last year, I've been building PCs sans floppy drives. IMO, floppies have very little use these days; files are regularly larger than 1.4 (or 2.8) MB, making floppies pretty useless. Most modern BIOSes can boot directly from CDROM. I've been using USB flash drives (a friend has a "pen" style, I like to use Compact Flash w/ a USB adapter), they're faster, and to the topic, make no noise whatsoever.

I remeber taking over the lab to download the 20+ floppies for Slackware back in '93...

Re:Not as loud, but its still a space heater

[Jouster]

*phew* I'm glad someone else hears it, too.

It drives me nutty.

Jouster

Re:Not as loud, but its still a space heater

[Natalie's Hot Grits]

"Apple has been making quiet computers since before the Mac came out. That would be before Gateway, Dell and Compaq were even in existance (not to mention Pentiums)."

Before the pentium, x86 PC's didn't have fans in them. If they did, it was 1 very slow fan in the PSU. IIRC, most of the pre-Mac apple PSU's also contained fans in them. If you like, I will go through the apple parts database and find all the models that contain fans. But I'm not at work now, so it will have to be later. So your point is irrelevant. Back then, cooling and noise was a non issue, and we didn't have 300-400W going through our computers. Fans were slow, small, and didn't push much air, thus noise was not an issue.

Yes, my first hand computer knowledge starts around the intel 386, that doesn't mean I don't know anything about old PC's (Personal Computers, I don't mean x86 here). My 386 had 1 fan; it was in the PSU. So it was just as quiet as the apples.

Re:Not as loud, but its still a space heater

[0x0d0a]

Of course, then we get into the Timex Sinclair and friends...

Re:A great accomplishment

[pompomtom]

"Always too loud"????

My atari 1040ST is silent.

silence overrated?

[mackstann]

i used to always strive to quiet my computer more and more, undervolting fans to 7v or 5v, i had my p233 absolutely SILENT, except for the loud hard drive.

but now, building my new system, i have 4 moderate (sound) volume fans, but they really dont bother me. they produce a calm whir, and they're actually kind of soothing at night :P

but the whole silent pc thing isnt all that hard, really. just put in some panaflo L1A's (undervolted if necessary), a seagate barracuda IV, and you are good to go. i dont see why people go to such extremes, for little to no improvement.

Re:silence overrated?

[packeteer]

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.

Re:silence overrated?

[packeteer]

You could attatch some logic chips to this baybus. Use the serial port to output a signal. I know you cant find software to output your temp/status out the serial port. Then depending on the signal control the fans.

Re:silence overrated?

[Zathrus]

i dont see why people go to such extremes, for little to no improvement.

It's called the noise floor, and while it may not matter much to you in standard computing environments, it matters a lot in non-standard ones. Like if you're building a home theater PC. If your PC runs at 40 dB then forget hearing anything below that -- which can be either quiet passages in music (classical or rock - both have 'em) or downkeyed scenes in movies. Turning the volume of the system up isn't an option unless you want to constantly change the volume during a movie so you don't lose your hearing during action/climactic scenes.

Additionally any noise like a PC can interfere with subtle nuances in music or movies, which is equally bad. With a 20 dB noise floor you may be able to hear sound queues for things you can't hear with a 40 dB noise floor.

So it's not little to no improvement - it can be pretty substantial in the right environment. Personally I'm looking to build my next PC to be quieter, not because it's going to be a HTPC, but because I'm tired of having an absurdly loud PC. I'm not going to take it to extremes, but I will try to purchase quieter components.

Re:20 times quieter?

[Karora]

Please explain how something can be 20x quieter...

Decibels is a logarithmic scale.

So 10db is 10x (power), 20db is 100x and so on.

This might seem like they are understating the case, but in general 10db is considered to sound like "a doubling in volume" so a difference of 40db is roughly 2 to the 4th or 16x.

Fiddle with a few db more and you can easily justify "20x quieter."

I have to wonder......

[idiotnot]

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.

Re:I have to wonder......

[Moofie]

Radiant heat transfer is on the order of 10-100x less effective than convective cooling (like with a moving airflow). Radiant transfer varies as the fourth power of temperature, and does not turn significant until you get to temperatures that would a) fry any component you can name and b) give you a really good burn when you accidentally brush it with your leg.

So the window, apart from looking stupid, doesn't really hurt anything. : ) 'Cept the faraday cage.

Re:I have to wonder......

[Rolo Tomasi]

Semiconductors aren't that sensitive to moderate heat, in the way that it would destroy them; if they get too hot, you will just have system crashes, random resets, etc. (as if that isn't bad enough).

No, but heat kills bearings. So, the hard drive will probably be the first component to fail, especially with today's sensitive drives.

Another mid-term problem would be the electrolytic caps. They will dry up over time, which will introduce sporadic instability/reboots at first, and you'll be driven mad searching for the cause. Almost impossible to detect without special equipment, i.e. an ESR meter.

So, if you want a silent PC, you'd be better off buying cool components in the first place. It's just too much of a hassle (and expensive) trying to silently and reliably cool high power CPUs and graphics cards.

Re:I have to wonder......

[idiotnot]

I thought so, but how come people rarely do so? Or never hear about anybody doing it anyways. Isn't quality of life an important thing or is "more power, ARR ARR ARR" the mantra today?

Then again, why am I asking that to bunch of rowdy /. geeky crowd?

Ehh....not all of us are like that. Me, I'm more concerned with having stable hardware so that if the system crashes, I can pretty much be sure it's software (I've been messing around with the Hurd lately....).

The Athlon, frankly, I haven't used much, seeing as how it's not at my house at the moment. I intend to use it as my everyday desktop when it's finished its role away from home.

FWIW, my main desktop machine at home right now is a G3/350. Not exactly an ARR ARR ARR 1337 speed deamon, y'know? It is quiet, but not much more than the PIII it replaced.

Re:I have to wonder......

[nexthec]

and electrolytic cap is a capacitor constructed with an oil as the dialectric, as oppsed to paper, this allows for a much greater range of use. They can be found in your PSU, on your motherboard, and probably on your harddrive. In general Capacitors store charge, however they do much more than that, the can be used with an opamp to make filters, to do intergration/derivation and a multitude of other neat things. Take a circuits class or 4 and you learn some neat stuff

Re:I have to wonder......

[Jouster]

My personal box is an T-Bird 1.2 bought when the 1.4 had just come out, and I run it downclocked to 900 MHz, with 768 MB of PC 133 CAS3 downclocked to PC100 CAS2.

Of course, I did this for the heat, not for the noise. It's incredible what happens to a dorm room over the course of even one night processing {d.net,UD,Prime95} WU's with the door closed.

Jouster
(Story Author)

Re:I have to wonder......

[timeOday]

Ah yes, just what people said 2 1/2 years ago when I overclocked my Celeron 566 to 850 (assuming the heating issues of passive cooling are similar to those of overclocking).

The cpu is still running fine, and a search of competed ebay auctions shows the value of the CPU is down to $15-$25.

In other words, if the life has been shortened, who cares?

Re:I have to wonder......

[SectoidRandom]

If you have heard some of the "sock CPU fan's and graphics card coolers" out there you may change your mind.. I recently read a round-up of Geforce 4600's, the loudest ones (MSI & Leadtek i think) were close to 50db!! Think about it, your average vacuum cleaner is somewhere in the 50's! :(

Could you seriously sleep with one of those things on? Personally I wont anymore, I have a similar rig to this one, although there are so many more things that can be done to reduce noise even further. Actually all his claims in the article about being a "silent pc" are rediculous, 40dBA is pretty noisy to me! I only wish I could measure mine, still it's too noisy for me but with only two 'silent-fans' in the whole thing it's pretty close to "silent".

Quiet PC?

[The Original Yama]

Yeah, it's called putting a PC in another room and accessing it via vnc/ssh. You won't hear a thing.

Re:Quiet PC?

[slantyyz]

Which brings up the age old question:

If a PC screams in a room and nobody hears it, does it still make a noise?

Re:Quiet PC?

[buswolley]

Bad Idea.

We know, we all depend on the vast amounts of computer noise to cover our exclamations when we find some really good pr0n.

Re:Quiet PC?

[Jouster]

Well, I use a diskless, ROMless, fanless TexTronix X Terminal. Admittedly, it's terribly vulnerable to hacking (in fact, it's the same model Mitnick SYN-flooded when he hacked Shinomura), but if you keep it all on a separate network from your net connection, you're fine.

And meantime, you get to learn how to configure NFS so it can load its OS on boot! Ooh, pretty!

Jouster

Re:Quiet PC?

[Jouster]

NFS on a private network is the definition of secure. ANYTHING on a private network is.

And I haven't experienced any "flaking", despite it being run on a RedHat 7.3 box. Have you had bad experiences you can share?

Jouster
(Story Author)

Longevity? Hardware Burnout?

[beowulf_26]

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.

Re:Longevity? Hardware Burnout?

[LordSah]

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.

Re:Longevity? Hardware Burnout?

[Jucius Maximus]

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

Last May or June I invested in some good cooling equipment and reduced the sound level of my system by about 20 dB. Frankly my solution is not as elegant or inexpensive as this guy but at least the machine is more portable and you don't need access to a wood shop.

I replaced the noisy-as-hell stock heatsink (coller master or whatnot) on my CPU with an Alpha 8045 and artic silver 3 thermal compound and then put a vantec stealth fan* on top of it. The great thing is that this HS is 80mmx80mm so you can use an 80mm fan as opposed to the standard 60mm fan. This means that it's possible to get greater airflow with lower speeds and thus lower noise.

I also replaced my other case fans with Vantec Stealths and got some light machine oil and lubed up all the fans' bearings to eliminate any tiny fan noises.

At an overall cost of CAD$120 or so, my box actually runs cooler than before and I don't get headaches when working.

My one mistake was usnig a slot loading DVD drive because the slot lets noise from inside the machine get out easily.

*Yes, I know that Panaflos are cheaper and only a tiny bit less well performing.

Re:Longevity? Hardware Burnout?

[LordSah]

The box is maybe 24" wide, and 36" deep. It fits under one side of my desk fine. I work just like I did before, but now in silence.

Most Apple products have been silent.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

[ericdano]

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!

Re:Most Apple products have been silent.

[tbmaddux]

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

A nitpick: G4 Cube has no fan, although you can add an 80mm fan to it very easily. Mount points for the fan are already there, and the fan will blow air out the cube's "chimmney."

Most of the fan noise in the DP QS 2002 machine is in the power supply. This also appears to be true for the MDD PowerMac G4s, although their main fan is variable-speed and can get loud, like the PowerBook G4's CPU fan.

Re:Most Apple products have been silent.

[drinkypoo]

All of the Macintosh II products (II, IIc, IIcx, IIci, IIfx) have a noisy-ass fan in their power supply. I still have a IIci, I put netbsd on it and then stopped doing anything with it. Still, it works okay, if slow. It's still faster than my first dedicated Unix system, a Sun 3/260 (25mhz 68020 rather than the IIci's 25mhz 68030).

USB is fine for non-realtime work but not so hot for any kind of realtime anything. Of course, most sound cards are crap for realtime anyway.

Re:20 times quieter?

[Roosey]

It's a logarithmic scale. The volume of the sound goes up ten times for every ten decibels. Here's some math and a comparison chart.

I can think of one idea to get even cooler

[Navaash Fenwylde]

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

[XaXXon]

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...

Uhh... it's a passive heatsink. It's a piece of metal that sits there. Tough to get much cooler..

Re:I can think of one idea to get even cooler

[Jeppe Salvesen]

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

Re:I can think of one idea to get even cooler

[Shelled]

Those are some gigantic heatsinks.

Gigantic, yes. Massive, no. Those large, very thin copper sheets appear to lack the mass required to move much heat.

Re:I can think of one idea to get even cooler

[Moofie]

No.

Heat exchangers want to maximize surface area, not mass. You are trying to present the maximum surface to the surrounding airflow, cooling by convection. More mass would simply be a thermal battery, storing heat on the processor. The thin heat sink fins actually remove heat from the processor by transferring it to the surrounding air.

Re:I can think of one idea to get even cooler

[divide overflow]

>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.

Re:I can think of one idea to get even cooler

[ColaMan]

R134A is good except that it boils at -30 deg C, and its pressure to stay liquid at room / processor temp is about 70psi. It won't short your board out if it leaks, but the frost that'll be generated if you get leak liquid R134A out will.

Re:I can think of one idea to get even cooler

[Rolo Tomasi]

There's one more aspect to that. When you have very thin, long fins, like the Zalman heatsinks do, the thermal conductivity is too low for the heat to be transfered all the way to the tips. From what I can see on the photos, these heatsinks are not as efficient as they could be. IMHO the optimal heatsink would have a tree-like structure, whith thick 'stems' conducting the heat to many thin, but reasonably short 'leaves'. The Arkua coolers seem to somewhat follow this approach.

Re:I can think of one idea to get even cooler

[WhaDaYaKnow]

Or this Calm PC

Doesn't support the fastest CPU's but it's as silent as silence gets.

I've been running it for a while now and I love it.

Re:I can think of one idea to get even cooler

[Jeppe Salvesen]

We rule that out, then. I don't want my computer to short out if I lose power. How about the oil the other guy mentioned? Do we have oil with the right viscosity? Alcohol boils at 60-70C. That's too low, in my estimation.

Re:I can think of one idea to get even cooler

[jafuser]

What would be really great is a water cooling system *bus* which connects water cooling from several PCs all to a line that runs outdoors or somewhere where my A/C isn't going to run all the time due to all of the computers. Has anyone heard of a complex system like this?

Re:I can think of one idea to get even cooler

[Shelled]

You need mass and surface area to carry heat away from the processor die.

Re:I can think of one idea to get even cooler

[timeOday]

Distilled water?

Re:I can think of one idea to get even cooler

[Moofie]

Well, if you can invent a massless heat sink, you can sell me the patent and I'll buy you lunch forever. Promise. Won't be a very good heat sink, but I bet I can find some other uses for it.

OF COURSE you need mass. But the MASS doesn't MOVE the heat. It only STORES it. The reason to use copper is because it has excellent thermal conduction properties, moving the heat away from the processor towards the fins. Just having a big ol' block o' copper at the bottom of the heat sink isn't going to improve its effectiveness.

Re:I can think of one idea to get even cooler

[ari_j]

Artificial blood, circa 50 years ago. Although the fluid, designed primarily for military use, proved ineffective as a blood substitute, Cray found that it was very conductive of heat but not conductive of electricity, and used it to cool the early liquid-cooled Cray computers. But you'll wanna try freon, or something.

Re:I can think of one idea to get even cooler

[InnovATIONS]

I have been looking at watercooling designs, particularly one that could be used to move the heat outside of the house since my home office has TWO P4 noise/heat makers in it. Two questions I hoped that someone could answer are. 1. Is there a practical way of water-cooling the PSU? 2. has anybody considered placing the hard disk inside some sort of water jacket? I am envisioning some sort of double-walled polybag that the drive would slide into, much like is often done for shipping now.

Re:I can think of one idea to get even cooler

[edunbar93]

Replace the water with a non-conducting oil (and most are) and Ta-da, your faith in water retention need not exist. One lunatic even submerged his entire kit in castor oil, which just goes to prove that it won't roast everything. :)

Old news

[Maniakes]

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

Re:Old news

[ericdano]

Yes, the Cube is a great machine. I'm curious as to what the noise level is if you install a 1 Ghz G4 via Sonnet or Powerlogix. I hear those require a fan :-(

Re:Old news

[Mike Schiraldi]

I'm having trouble with the math -- i know that it's a log scale, so:

10^3.1 = 1,258

10^4.0 = 10,000

10,000 / 1258 = 7.94, not 2512.

Am i doing something wrong?

Re:Old news

[marauder404]

2,512 times quieter than the 65 dB machine:

10^3.1 = 1,259
10^6.5 = 3,162,277

3,162,277 / 1,259 = 2,512

Re:Old news

[Maniakes]

My mistake. I was thinking 65 dB was the quiet PC, and the standard was 80. Teach me to rely on my short term memory. Your math looks right to me.

Re:Old news

[Jucius Maximus]

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

Check your math. 31db not even 1/10th as loud to human ears than 40 db. (But still it is quieter.)

Re:Old news

[Jucius Maximus]

"Check your math. 31db not even 1/10th as loud to human ears than 40 db. (But still it is quieter.)"

Sorry, I didn't realise that you were comparing it to the 65 dB as opposed to the 40dB.

67C?

[Anonymous Coward]

That seems a little high for a CPU temp, Ive always heard that you wanna keep it under 60C at worst, usually under 50C though.

Of course, you can probably drop the temps by lowering the voltage to the CPU and underclocking it.

Great news for Beowulf clustering

[Anonymous Coward]

According to my calculations, you can now cluster 100,000,000 PCs before their combined noise level reaches the threshold of pain!

Re:Great news for Beowulf clustering

[edunbar93]

Heh. You can fix that problem entirely by removing *all* the fans and just rack-mounting the suckers without cases inside a freezer. Preferably a meat locker around 200 sq ft. Then all your cooling needs are met with one unit. :)

Confusing headline...

[Angron]

My first thought was "Isn't a dead computer already silent?"

-A

Re:Confusing headline...

[valmont]

[haleyjoel]

*clinching blanket and pulling it towards face*
"I can hear dead boxen".

[/haleyjoel]

I don't buy that

[Anonymous Coward]

The scale is logarithmic because *hearing* is logarithmic. This '20x quieter' has more to do with sound pressure than what a human being would say.

Already been done

[cscx]

See here -- it's GOT to be silent.

Also, ever hear of that new lampy thing called an 'iMac'?? Yeah, they're silent.

Re:Already been done

[Jouster]

iMacs, the old ones without fans, are no longer in production. I'm not sure if iLamps have fans or not. In either... case..., they don't have OC'd video cards and are much more expensive than the solution in this story.

Your link was previously featured on /., but, IIRC, it runs at 200 MHz--hardly the kind of speed you'd get when ordering a brand-new Dell.

My story, on the other hand, highlights the possibilities for extensive, passive cooling in a modern machine (in fact, its specs are well above those of the two-month-old Dell on which I am typing this).

The reason the story is impressive is that he managed to take a machine that any of us would be proud to have next to our desks, and reduce it to ONE FAN. Putting tons of foam around an MMX/200 doesn't exactly compare.

Jouster

Re:Already been done

[cscx]

Dude, chill, I was just adding a little spice to the conversation! =)

Google Cache

[babycakes]

here

Noise Cancelling Case

[peel]

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

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Re:Noise Cancelling Case

[Fourier]

Unfortunately, general noise cancellation in three dimensions is a much more difficult problem than noise cancellation at a point or two (e.g. headphones).

Re:Noise Cancelling Case

[alistair]

"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"

Actually many years ago I did try reversing speaker wires at a party and did notice a reduction of around 50% in the base due to an effect called "blowing up your speaker".

I can't say for certain this was simply due to reversing the speaker leads, I was using far more powerful amps than the speakers were rated for but this is one experiment I won't be rushing to try at home.

Re:A great accomplishment

[strictnein]

my commodore 64 is so silent is actually creates a quiet hole

this is similar to a black hole, except for that it absorbs all sound, instead of light, and no sound can escape from it. It's very scary really and it's truly something that must be heard to be seen... or something... uhmm... yes

So what?

[jpmorgan]

So some guys with a website bought a bunch of large heatsinks from other companies, built a computer that uses almost entirely passive computing and we're expected to do what? Commend them on their innovative use of a credit card? ;)

And it's not like super-quiet computers haven't been done before. Yawn. Boring.

Re:So what?

[Jouster]

If this is your position on such issues, I suppose you don't care about the latest ASCI supercomputer--I mean, nothing new is happening, people are just spending money.

Personally, I think the ability to simulate a cubic foot of reality in real time at the subatomic level is pretty impressive. And I think the ability to run UT 2003 with only one fan is pretty impressive, too.

Jouster
(Story Author)

Standard Issue

[BoBaBrain]

My PC has a button on the front that eliminates noise completely. It eliminates those annoying lights on the case too...

Re:Standard Issue

[BoBaBrain]

I have to agree. What really gets me though are LCDs on laptops. Pointless.
<br>
<br>
Unfortunately I'm not a mac user myself, but I have to admire their case design.

Re:Standard Issue

[the way, what're you]

Your comment is certainly fanny,

Freudian slap?

Re:Standard Issue

[mgblst]

I suggest you use it next time you decide to post.

It will eliminate annoying posts as well!!

Re:Standard Issue

[BoBaBrain]

If we don't provide "annoying posts", who will?

Some PCs are quiet anyway

[NewtonsLaw]

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.

obligatory post

[valmont]

imagine a paradoxally silently humming, mysteriously stealth, decibel absorbing, reality distorting beowulf cluster of those.

Re:obligatory post

[fritter]

"Look how well it renders the steam coming off of those grits!"

Totally silent PC

[shepd]

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.

Quiet?

[e8johan]

I used to work for having a silent computer but now I've put away the computer in a closet, done some cabeling and I don't have to worry. (The closet is quite big, and chilly since it is on an outside wall that is badly insulated). Actually, clothes also dampen sound really well...

totally silent hard drives

[nounderscores]

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.

Cool...

[Alien Being]

This one goes to -11.

Re:Cool...

[Jouster]

I don't get it.

Jouster

Re:Cool...

[Jouster]

Nope, wasn't joking. Thanks for clearing it up.

Jouster

Sympathetic to their Cause

[tchueh]

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:Sympathetic to their Cause

[tanveer1979]

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.

Thats all huh, I had the cops coming coz neighbors though i was digging up for oil everytime I put in the CD

Re:Sympathetic to their Cause

[ColaMan]

85dB for 8 hours is the current occupational health and safety limit in Australia - any more than that and you risk hearing damage.

If your computer is 85dB or louder, you would most certainly have noticed it by now. For example :

With my noisemeter on in my loungeroom with the TV going at a 'normal' volume , it's 72dB.
In the car , stereo up loud , it's about 90-95dB
At work, around some operating crushers (loud enough to make you go "ow!" and out fingers in ears) it's around 105-110 dB.

It only takes a few hours of 90+ dB noise/music to damage your hearing permanently (or at least 'stun' it for a few days afterwards)

Think about it when you've got the headphones on and up LOUD.

I wonder.....

[tanveer1979]

Why do they need to go to such extremes, my PC can go down to 0dB.. all I have to do is push the power button ;-)

Re:I wonder.....

[xercist]

Actually, dB is a logarithmic scale, so 0dB is not actually *zero* like you assume, as 10^0 == 1. You could have something that was at -1dB which would be quieter than that. On this scale, "complete silence" really doesn't exist. It all depends on how sensitive your measuring device is.

deciBells

[cosyne]

I'm not sure where this 20x quieter thing comes from, but generally. a 10dB increase in sound output is considered "twice as loud." Note that a 3dB increase is twice as much energy (well, 3.0something, but close enough). Similarly, -3dB is the "half power point."

Re:deciBells

[Maniakes]

I'm not sure where this 20x quieter thing comes from, but generally. a 10dB increase in sound output is considered "twice as loud." Note that a 3dB increase is twice as much energy (well, 3.0something, but close enough). Similarly, -3dB is the "half power point."

Your physics teacher will tell you that 10 dB is a 10x difference in the intensity of a sound wave.

Your psychology teacher, or your friendly local audiophile, will tell you that a 10x difference in wave intensity is only a 2x difference in perceived loudness.

Most slashdotters, geeks that we are, payed more attention in our physics classes. As a result, I forgot about the perception issue until just now.

I am currently listening to 128 kbps mp3s on a $25 pair of headphones. Whether or not I am an audiophile is left as a exercise to the reader.

Re:deciBells

[Jouster]

The 20x came from a mixing of the "+10 dB = twice as loud to the ear" and "+10 dB = twice the pressure".

It was late. Sorry.

I meant to say, "over 100 times quieter" (since that sounds more impressive), but I can't even get get away with that. :^P Ah well.

Jouster

Re:20 times quieter?

[packeteer]

This is also why radio antannea can be measured in decibles. They reproduce the signal X times as powerful. Thats why a the price differance between a 20 decible antannnnea and a 22 decible antannea is more than 10-20. Also this is why you have to be careful when buying speakers. You might not think its worth another $100 to go from 112 to 114 decibles but thats much louder.

Silent PC?

[cosyne]

So it can't scream in pain when it gets /.ed?

Closet PC...

[rsborg]

A friend of mine had a great idea... which I eventually used... a closet PC.

For those of you with the advantage of having a closet in your room (ie, not living in a college dorm), just putting a door (sliding or closing) between yourself and your beast can probably reduce your PC to fanless levels (I barely hear my monitor more than my PC in da closet).

My PC: Athlon 900 w/stock fan, 4x80GB IDE drives, geforce2mx video, 300W PS + LOTS of fans

Challenges:
1) ACPI on my mobo sucks, and I can't resume with my wireless keyboard as easy as I'd like to
2) CDRW/DVD drives are still on the unit; I'd like to replace them with firewire/usb2 external devices, but haven't had the cash to do it.

Im interested in knowing if anyone else has opted for this low-tech, low-noise solution?

Re:Closet PC...

[larien]

Which is fine, if you can keep enough airflow in the closet. If you can't, you'll just keep generating heat in that closet and it'll start to overheat.

Re:Closet PC...

[CvD]

What the heck do you need 4x80 GBs for??? Can anyone collect that much pr0n?

i couldn't do that for my system

[Critical_]

i am running an aging dual p3-500 (slot 1) system. while it may not have the sheer processing power as the newest high end chips, the disk system employs 10k rpm ultra2 drives. The system is LOUD in its full tower case. there are two problems with it...

1) power supply fan is very loud

2) the hard drives sit in fan-lined carts for easy removal. so not only do i hear the high pitched noise of the disks spinning but the fans cooling them.

I have tried pulling the fans off those 10k drives and i started hearing weird noises from the drives. My conclusion? i need fans on them period.

maybe there is a better way to cool them, any ideas would be nice. (and no pulling them out of the system is not an option)

Misguiding headline

[JohnnyBigodes]

After reading the headline, I thought "cool, another one of those 'some guy blasted a PC into oblivion' page with pictures of bullets puncturing the case". Well, served as an incenting to read up the article...

Never Intefere

[buswolley]

The whir of my computer never inteferes with my very important work at Slashdot.

What do I do? I am the Mayor, of Course.

Fanless PC PSU - THAT would be news

[Brother52]

CPUs and cases without fans are not very rare among brandname boxes (Compaq, for example), but I've yet to see a fanless PC PSU.

Is it really that hard make? I don't mind it to be heavier or more expensive - the reliability (no moving parts) and noise level are much more important in a lot of cases (pun intended :)

I was thinking about building one myself: old-style with a huge transformer, but then I heard that some powerful ATX PSUs can have their fans disconnected under reduced load. Can anyone clarify?

Re:Fanless PC PSU - THAT would be news

[shepd]

This site has a link to a 300 W fanless ATX PSU. And a lot of other really good links too.

Re:Fanless PC PSU - THAT would be news

[ZigMonty]

The early macs didn't have a PSU fan. They got real hot too ;)

Re:Fanless PC PSU - THAT would be news

[e-Alex]

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).

Re:Fanless PC PSU - THAT would be news

[Jouster]

For the benefit of those with reduced thresholds, I repost the parent (which is currently at Score: 0). Please mod parent, not this post.

There are actually several fanless PSUs I know of. There's the TKPower one (available from Silicon Acoustics.

Then there are the two Engelking PSUs, of which the first still has a fan that kicks in when the temperature of its heatsink exceeds 45C. The second one can be water-cooled and is available from Aqua-Computer in that configuration.

Finally, there's the Deltatronic PSU and the soon-to-be-released RSG one.

Re:20 times quieter?

[Anonymous Coward]

sound is measured in terms of power intensity... W/m^2 and is converted into decibels by taking the logarithm to base 10 and multiplying by 10... i.e., 10 log_10 (X)... so 3 dB is a doubling in sound intensity (not 2 dB)

Cruesoe doesn't need a fan

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

mixed record

[g4dget]

powerbooks are similarlysilent unless emergency fans kick in.

It's not an "emergency fan" if it runs pretty regularly during normal operation. And it does. And it is noisy, at least on my 1 year old Titanium Powerbook.

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

I don't know which "newer macs" you are talking about, but some of the newer dual processor machines are very noisy, worse than most PCs.

Apple has made some really quiet machines. Among G3 and G4 machines, the older iMacs were really quiet, and some of the towers were moderately quiet. But overall, Apple's record is pretty mixed. So, don't go out buying just any old Apple expecting it to be quiet.

My take on a Quiet PC

[gbsallery]

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.

Re:20 times quieter?

[Graff]

Please explain how something can be 20x quieter...how does this math work?

It doesn't. Something can't be 20 times less than something else. You can either have something which is 1/20 as quiet as something else or something which is 20 times LOUDER than something else. It is complete nonsense to talk about something being 20 times less or 20 times quieter.

This is a common mistake which people make, you can see it all the time even in professional settings. You will often see people saying stuff like, "This will be three times less costly than other solutions." It's a sad state of affairs but I think that math skills are seriously deteriorating.

So THATs why...

[Shalome]

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.

Re:So THATs why...

[Shalome]

Dude, how the hell should I know what my dad did with his computers? I was like 8!

Who tests these claims?

[krazyninja]

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) ??

Silence!

[Deton8]

I'd accept a few degrees hotter silicon for the huge reliability boost of getting rid of the fans on the processor and graphics card (MTBF circa 15,000 hours in the real world contrary to their b.s. specs, divided by two since there are two of the little bastards). Your remaining fan in the PSU case needs a fan rotation alarm on it, and if unattended, some kind of thermal shut-off or redundant fan. One nice trick for quiet fans is to use one much bigger than you need and then run it at a slower speed. Another tip is to mount the disk drive and fans on Sorbothane standoffs, and maybe stick a couple of slabs of Sorbothane on the walls of the PC case. One quibble with the article -- for best cooling, you want as small a case as possible, not as big as possible. The objective should be to maximize the velocity of the airflow over the heatsinks, and you do this by constricting the space around them. One innovative way this has been done is through the use of engineering foams like E-PAC which allows the designer to create engineered air ducting which forces the airflow over the parts where it is needed. Some other people have asked why the PSU fan is necessary -- having just gone through CE and UL testing on one of my products, you can't imagine the kind of pain the test lab would make you go through if you took the PSU fan out of the PSU case. It's only a practical proposal for a major corporation with a lot of money and time to throw at it.

Re:Silence!

[Tidan]

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. :)

PowerMac G4s are often oud

[AHumbleOpinion]

Those who forget the apple are doomed to reinvent it. Apple has been using large heatsink, air flow design, etc for ever since the blueg3 to keep there from being too many fans in the system

That is a bit misleading. While the number of fans is reduced recent PowerMac G4s are pretty damn loud, louder than handbuilt from cheapest available parts PCs I have sitting in the same room. Some Macs may be silent (well, when idle) but the expandable and higher performing Macs that are more comparable to PCs are not.

Re:20 times quieter?

[johnburton]

I don't think it's sad, it's just evolution of language. I think that it fairly clear what it means and it can be more convenient to phrase things that way so even if it's not the traditional way to say something it's a decent enough innovation. It has nothing to do with math skills, it's to do with English language usage, and that changes all the time.

Re:Missing the point

[jkramar]

This is horribly offtopic, but seemingly necessary.

Logarithmic or not, it doesn't matter. You can't be x times quieter than something. Its not possible. You can be x times louder, but not quieter. Ignoring negatives, x * y is always going to be a larger than either x or y. It really drives me nuts how people misuse that term. You'd think a geek site would be capable of using mathematics terms correctly.

That is incorrect. x*y is not necessarily larger than either x or y, because either can be between 0 and 1. Furthermore, "x times quieter" is equivalent to "1/x times louder", usually. Expressions such as these can hardly be considered mathematics terms.

Now, why did I reply to that?

Silent iMacs and Monster Heat Sinks

[Aqua OS X]

The slot loading "original" iMac (aka the gum drop) had(has) no fans, quite hardware, and vents on the top of the case. I don't quite know if Apple's eMacs and LCD iMacs have a similar set up, however I'd bet that they have fans.

Nevertheless, Apple still strives to build fairly quiet boxes when ever possible. I mean hey, look at the fan to heat sink ratio in this box: http://www.apple.com/hardware/gallery/pmg4_august2 002_480.html Honestly, I've never seen a bigger heat sink within a consumer PC. One could fry 10 strips of bacon on that beast.

Re:Silent iMacs and Monster Heat Sinks

[ianscot]

Really? My 17" iMac must have one too, then... I've never noticed it, not even once, not in a month or so.

(Hooking up my sister's old firewire external drive the other day, it was amazing to realize how obnoxious a fan really is. I'm spoiled by the silent computer now.)

Re:Silent iMacs and Monster Heat Sinks

[Jouster]

I wonder if NeXT machines had fans. It's well known that Steve Jobs has problems with fans (not the people, though).

Hmm, haven't spotted one yet....

Jouster

Re:Silent iMacs and Monster Heat Sinks

[MouseR]

Yes, NeXT machines had fans.

My Color Slab (aka, neXT Station Color) has a fan that blows air out from underneath the machine through the magnesium casing which has fins molded in, making the entire machine it's own heat sync. The noise coming out of that machine is average.

My NeXT Cube, however, has a central rear-mounted 4" fans that suck air from the front of the machine, from above the hard drives and through the power supply. The mother board is on the side, next to the Dimension video board. They don't generate much heat, but air circulation within the cubic magnesium enclosure is enough to keep the machine somewhat cool. But the fan is noisy. Mind you, not as much as it's aging drive (which I'll have to replace at some point).

Re:Silent iMacs and Monster Heat Sinks

[MouseR]

I should have looked at the pictures before completing my previous reply.

The NeXT Cube fan is mounted on the back plate of the computer. it is connected with a rubber spring cord (much like keyboards). You can see that spring cord in one of the shots, but not the fan.

The cord can easily be disconnected.

Re:can't use flash drives

[terrencefw]

forget rotating disk drives. Get a mobo with RAID and a bunch of totally solid state flash hard drives [sandisk.com]. 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 [sandisk.com]... suddenly everything else seems small.

Yeah... but flash drives have a limited number of write operations. They're find for digital cameras and the like, where they'll only get written on a few thousand times, but once you tried to run a full OS on them, you'd reach their limit and your data would start to disappear. They're great though on things like Linux/BSD router boxes where you can have the OS on a read-only disk.

Cube Quieter? Well, lets go buy some [sarcasm]

[AHumbleOpinion]

The Cube was a fine attempt at a pro level iMac but it is a dead product, not really comparable to things you can actually go out and buy today. If you want to open the field to dead products then the "news" is much older than the Mac or Apple.

Re:20 times quieter?

[Graff]

It has nothing to do with math skills, it's to do with English language usage, and that changes all the time.

OK, so English skills are deteriorating also! :)

Actually, I do a lot of tutoring for k-12 students as well as running an education program for a local Boys & Girls Club. I have spoken to many educators and they are pretty much all worried about the decreasing skills of our youth. I know that languages change over time, but many youth are not able to communicate effectively and have severe reading problems. These problems seem to be going much deeper than a simple change in language and they also seem to be manifesting in other disciplines.

It's not the end of the world yet, but something does need to be done now in order to guarantee that the younger generations are able to cope in "the real world". (And not just on that vapid MTV show either...)

Today's off-topic discussion is brought to you by the number 5 and the letter E...

Re:20 times quieter?

[nathanh]

Decibels is a logarithmic scale.

Yes.

So 10db is 10x (power), 20db is 100x and so on.

Yes.

This might seem like they are understating the case, but in general 10db is considered to sound like "a doubling in volume" so a difference of 40db is roughly 2 to the 4th or 16x.

No. 3dB is a doubling in volume. The relevant formula is dB = 10 log(P/P0). You got the 10x and 20x right so I'm guessing you just typoed.

More hardcore than hardcoreware

[juventasone]

The guys at Silent PC Review would scoff at the "hardcoreness" of hardcoreware.net when it comes to silencing PCs. After being on their mailing list for a year, I can tell you that they're waaay ahead of these guys in every aspect of PC silencing, many of which I've implemented myself.

Why no sealed case?

[PsyQ]

I've been using an acoustically sealed case from Noise Control. I really can't hear my PC anymore.

I also use one of Noise Control's modified Enermax PSUs and a Silverado CPU cooler. That's all I did to my PC to make it quiet, everything else is stock. A quiet case seems to be the most logical (and least expensive) first step if you ask me. If you can still hear any of your components after you've put them behind 2 cm of noise blocking fluffy stuff, you can start replacing noisy those one by one until the noise stops.

Noise Control now has their own fan control circuitry and new modified PSUs come with it built-in. Also, they have hard drive cages that catch vibrations before they reach your case. With all of that equipment it should be easy to quiet any PC.

Re:20 times quieter?

[Seahawk]

mod this one down plz!!!

+10db is twice as loud to the human ear!

So the 65 db down to 40 db should be something like 5-6 times less loud to the human ear!

Its the energy that is 10 times as big when you go up 10db!

Example:
A 10W stereo plays x db
A similar stereo with 100W plays x + 10 db
A similar stereo with 1000W plays x + 20 db

I don't know if I'd like this

[lewp]

I've become rather used to the rhythmic hum of my PCs (there are four in this room) while I sleep. Sure, I had to get a voltage regulator for the 6000-something RPM fan on my Athlon XP's heatsink (even I have limits), but I didn't turn it down too far. Hell, none of my PCs even have cases on them besides the laptop.

Of course, on the rare occasions when members of the opposite sex have slept in this room (Gasp! It has happened. Recently, even!) I have gotten more than one complaint about the noise and turned my boxen off. I just chalk it up to the fact that the girls don't tend to be geeks, which isn't such a bad thing :).

Re:20 times quieter?

[Maniakes]

+10db is twice as loud to the human ear!

You're right, but I'm not wrong. For a full explanation

Language

[j_w_d]

Not that this changes the actual logic, but I think these problems arise from poor language skills rather than poor math skills. After all, I have seen few if any "/."rs complain about a barbarism like "architected" substituted for "design." And I've encountered cross-eyed confusion as some illerate tries to work out why "trialling" is wrong but "testing" is OK.

Re:Language

[j_w_d]

Apparently I can't spell "illiterate" either.

Re:Language

[Jouster]

I'd like to note that my story was submitted sans spelling errors, and my comments are always properly capitalized and always use appropriate punctuation. How many /.'ers do you know that follow those rules, let alone others?

"Twenty times quieter" is a generally-accepted shortening of "one-twentieth of the volume".

Jouster
(Story Author)

My silent PC

[chocolatei]

My PC is underclocked with an overspec'ed PSU and hence there are zero fans. With 1G of cache memory the harddisk never spins up. The loudest thing is the monitor - it clicks when changing res. and hisses slightly, sort of like a very distant stream. I don't know what that is in dB but then it is quieter than ambient noise.

I've built a dead silent PC.

[N Monkey]

It's not difficult to achieve.

Due to a hard disk error, my home PC is both dead and silent.

Re:20 times quieter?

[packeteer]

HAHA its so true. I just read another post i was goign to reply to but saw you so let me go off here. The wattage of a stereo doesn't matter. Its does matter in that its part of the equation but not the total measurement. I have seen peizo electric and other speakers that run off fractions of a watt that can put out over a hundred decibles. I hate all this crap about "i have a 500w stereo, oh yah well mines 600w". Some speakers can make it up to 130dB but will start to distort at 110dB, where as some wont distort up to 115dB but can only go to 125dB. Which one would you rather have? Im tired of people doing stupid things with speakers. Running 1kw systems in their drunks using $5 cables that have way over acceptable limits of capacitance. And dont even start on capacitors they sell for subs in your trunk. Thats just total bullshit. When the sub runs out of power its because of impedance on the line most likely from bad connections (solder em if you really want good sound) or just plain bad wires (10 gauge wont cut it). Personally im going to stick with my mono radio output and take the $1000 i saved and do something better.

A few nights ago I awoke in my sleep

[Kasmiur]

As soon as I woke I knew something was wrong. And looked around my room. Noticed it was darker than usual. After turning on the bedroom light I looked and saw my pc was off. Then I found out the power went out in the middle of the night. If it wernt for my pc and my wakeing up I could have been late for work.

I actually find the gentle hum and whirl of my pc comforting. along with the blinking yellow light and the faint green glow it gives my room.

Annoyed by the computer fans? Here's the solution.

[Cheese Cracker]

Buy a ticket to a heavy metal concert. Make sure to mention that you must get a place near one of the
speaker batteries. After the concert you go home to your dear computer and do some programming...
You won't hear much of your computer fan for the coming 24 hours.

Re:Missing the point

[hatchet]

It's just figure of speech. It's same for faster slower. We say car A is 3 times slower than car B. Which is(or may seem) incorrect, but we use it anyway. We should say car A is one third as fast as car B.
So it doesn't matter how we say it.. as long as listener understands it.

Re:20 times quieter?

[Godwin O'Hitler]

Exactly. It's a language quirk that entered into usage while nobody was paying attention and there's nothing anyone can do about it now. Is a razor blade that is "twice as thin" the same as one that is half as thick? We have units for measuring thickness (mm, etc.) but what unit do we have for measuring thinness? or quietness for that matter?
Here's another perspective, if something is twenty times quieter, how quiet is something that is one time quieter? Logically, shouldn't "one time quieter" mean just plain silent?

DANGEROUSLY heavy heatsink!

[mosschops]

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.

Could be quieter..

[Fweeky]

The Barracuda V is actually somewhat quieter than the Barracuda IV they used.

Use the extra leeway to add a few fans; don't forget, if everything's running close to their design limits now, it'll probably get hairy if you have a hot summer.

Plus it's really a good idea to keep components like HD's fairly cool. Let them fry and you risk reducing the service life of the drive and increasing the chances of data loss. You at least want reliable storage, right?

Also, you should be careful with that huge-ass Zalman cooler. They're very heavy, and will happily tear off the socket if you happen to move the machine anywhere. The full Cu version is about 200g heavier than AMD's maximum recommended weight.

0 dB..

[paranoic]

is the softest sound a normal person can hear.

ESR meter

[extra88]

Almost impossible to detect without special equipment, i.e. an ESR meter.

If you do decide to get one, just remember not to put it next to your RMS meter. they'll both get totally out of whack.

40 dB? That's supposed to be quiet?

[naasking]

Using the components from QuietPC you can achieve less than 30 dB. You can't even hear this level in a quiet room.

Hmmm... in reading the article, they mention that the sound readings were taken right next to the power supply, so that may be why they are so high.

Contain PC in a box

[TheVidiot]

What about putting a noisy PC inside some sound-absorbing case (with good air flow). Wouldn't that be much easier? Does anyone have any experience with this model?

Thanks!

Re:20 times quieter?

[Arker]

So is this just a convention in English? If I understand correctly, only increases in size are quantifiable in language.

Umm that doesn't sound right... lots of things besides increases in size are quantifiable in language... I must be misunderstanding you here.

Saying x is twenty times as a large as y or that y is one twentieth as large as x is correct, but to say that y is twenty times as small as x or that x is a twentieth as small as y is incorrect. All four phrases mean the same thing, but the latter two are unacceptable. Is this accurate? Please let me know, as I do enjoy semantics. :)

Hrmm... essentially correct. 'Times' here refers to multiplication, it's quite common to say 'twenty times smaller' but it is technically incorrect, if you multiply something smaller you multiply by a fraction, 'one-twentieth the size' (i.e. multiply by (1/20=.05)) would be correct. But it's a fairly obscure point that most people seem to just ignore.

Re:20 times quieter?

[arkanes]

People have been worrying over the "decreasing skills of our youth" for the last 400 years, at least. The evolution of language and communication is always percieved as a decrease. This is not to say that AOL kiddies talking in single letters, upper case, 26 point pink and maroon letters doesn't make me grind my teeth with rage, but *your* idea of "communicate effectively" and the your great-grandchilds will probably be rather different. As an example, a couple hundered years ago, anyone who wanted to be taken seriously in academics(any field) HAD to be fluent in (at least) Latin. Now, hardly anyone uses it. A couple hundered years from now, probably even fewer. Remember, all these kids who you think won't be able to manage in the real world can talk to each other just fine. 40 years from now, YOU will be the one who can't communicate..

OT: Re:20 times quieter?

[Marc2k]

But it's a fairly obscure point that most people seem to just ignore.

I do agree with your logic, however saying "twenty times larger" is a form mathematical slang to begin with. Are we multiplying 20 by the integerial value of the string "larger"? Well, no. The multiplication by fractions to describe a smaller quantity is quite lucid, but we're not really talking about strict mathematics anymore, so it really becomes a matter of whether or not you want to adhere to the conventions of the notation from whence your phrase descended. Keeping that in mind, it becomes more of a question of which is proper in English grammar.

a friend did that in college

[AssFace]

When I was a senior ('99), a friend of mine did that with his system. At the time that was a PIII (maybe a high end PII, don't recall) and the main difference then was just a quiet power supply.

it was really quiet, but then, we listened to music most of the time anyway, so it didn't matter.

I always have my computers (at least two) going all the time, and I don't leave the cases on (never have), so mine are pretty loud, but cheap and fast :)
After graduating college, I didn't have my computers up and going for a month and had trouble sleeping it was so quiet.

Now in my apartment, my systems are out in the living room, and my gf hates the noise, so I tend to actually turn them off most of the time now (gasp!), so I would actually love to setup a quiet system like this.
Although I'm not likely going to be doing it until I move later (to Bermuda) seeing as I don't really want to bother with shipping anything beyond the hard drives that I have in my current systems and then sell the rest on craigslist.

Also - if you don't need to do gaming (sounds funny to say "need" in that statement), then a laptop is another alternative to having a very quiet system - I have always been impressed with how quiet the Sony Vaios are (Viao? whatever)

Re:Quiet PC? Yes, diskless client!

[CvD]

You can make a diskless client to access the noisy PC. I did that for a while couple years back. Dunno why I stopped... having your / partition over a 100 mbit/s network is still kinda slow compared to IDE.

Anyway, you have an image on a floppy which has a kernel on it, which then looks over the network to mount an NFS partition and boot the rest of the OS. You put /sbin/hdparm -y /dev/hda in your rc.local and your HD switches off.

This was when the PSU fan was the only fan in my computer (Pentium 200) and it was load adjusting, so it'd speed up with more load. After the HD shut off, everything became wonderfully silent. :-)

Cheers!

CvD.

Re:Missing the point

[Jouster]

That's easy: because "over twenty times quieter" doesn't sound as stilted as "less than one-twentieth of the former volume". ;),
Jouster
(Story author)

Re:20 times quieter?

[Jouster]

That still falls under "well over twenty times", doesn't it?

Admittedly, I screwed up my math; I meant to claim "well over one hundred times", but it was late.

Jouster

Where are you measuring from? dB or dBA?

[TibbonZero]

Well, this is really gonna depend on what you are measuring and where you are measuring it from.
To say that a Jet Aircraft is 140dB is meaningless. 140dB at almost any frequency would hurt alot, and probably cause a bit of damage after a few minutes. I know that there are jets taking off from Logan right now but, for some reason I am not losing my hearing. It all depends where you measure it from. There isn't a standard distance.

So quiet PC could be measuring from farther away (and because of the inverse square law, it would get 10 dB quieter pretty fast).

Another thing that nothing here is mentioning is dB @ a freqency @ a distance, or if it's dBA @ a distance. Your ears wouldn't be able to hear 50dB @ 40hz, let alone 30dB @ 80 hz. You could hear 30dB at 2000hz though. dBA is a weighting of multiple bands, and is another beast altogether.

Another thing is if you are measuring the sound right beside the power supply, you are screwing your measurements anyway. It's acting as a Plane Source if r So basically, move the mic a few feet away, not right up on the thing.

I am personally wondering if they used a good measurement system, or just a radioshack thing...

Screwed up with tags

[TibbonZero]

Crap, I just messed up a whole paragraph because I didn't preview and the 's messed it up. Grr. Basically you want the measuring distance (r) to be a b r (where a and b are the dimensions of the object creating sound), because the sound attenuates according to the inverse square law then (6db/doubling of distance)... I had more, but I really screwed it up with the tags...

Explanation of log

[Jucius Maximus]

Here, once and for all, is a log scale mathematics explanation. I'm still a student so I remember something about it:

Sound level is how loud a sound is to human ears. It can be measured in dB and an increase of 10 dB sounds ten times louder to human ears.
Sound intensity measures the energy of the sound, often in W/m^2. (Watts per metre squared.) If you multiply the sound intensity by the face area of your eardrum, you'll get the number of Joules per second (W = J/s) that your ear is perceiving. This scale is linear with human hearing perception, so double the intensity means it sounds twice is loud.

The Equation:
B = 10log(I/Io)

B = sound level in dB
I = sound intensity in W/m^2
Io = sound floor of human hearing, Io = 1x10^-12 W/m^2

So, doing the math, 40dB = 1.0 x 10^-8 W/m^2.

And 31 dB = 1.26x10^-9 dB

So therefore, 40 dB is 7.94 times more intense, and therefore 7.94 times louder to human ears.

(7.94 = 1.0 x 10^-8 / 1.26x10^-9 )

Note: the previous poster's comment about one being 2,512 times quieter than the other was for different values, and this information does not override that person's (correct) calculation.

Thank you, and have a nice day :-)

Dude, get a Dell!

[mrm677]

Like Dell or not, they make some of the quietest Wintel machines there are.

Re: harddrive still make noise

[Jouster]

Actually, laptop hard drives run at 4200 RPMs.

Except for mine, that is! :)

Jouster
(Story Author)

DarkPC

[Webmoth]

Yet another story about a quiet PC. Ho-hum.

What I want is a dark PC. All the glowing, flashing, red, blue, green, yellow LEDs on my computer and assorted peripherals are becoming extremely annoying. Of course I'll tell you why.

My PC is in my bedroom. I don't have an office. I can't park it in the garage. That's because I'm renting a room and the guy whose house it is won't let me put it anywhere else. The problem arises when I lay down to bed at night. I turn off the light and the room doesn't get dark!

With nearly 50 LEDs, fluorescent displays, and neon lights between my computers, monitor, keyboards, KVM switch, printers, hub, switch, power strip, clock radio, ad nauseum, it's so bright you could grow plants. Since I sleep best in total darkness, well, you see the problem. (BTW, it's not the noise that bothers my sleep. I have a fan running all night long to mask out other noises.)

I've been resorting to just turning everything off at night. But this is a rather inconvenient solution: what if I wake up in the middle of the night (probably because all those LEDs are annoying me) and I just have to get up and log on to get that Slashdot First Post?

I've considered some solutions, but they have problems. Black electrical tape comes to mind, but that's just plain ugly, and you can't see the flashing lights when you want to see them without peeling the tape off. I could go in with wire cutters and snip! off the leads. Too permanant. I might actually want to use those LEDs some day.

My dream (it's a daydream, since I can't sleep) is a circuit which could be set to dim or darken the lights on command, at a preset time, or when the screensaver kicks in. What makes it a little more difficult is that it would have to be adapted to each peripheral. (I'm sure someone will provide a link to Google. Ha ha. Beat you to it.)

Oh well, black tape it is.

Re:DarkPC

[MikeBabcock]

You mean the feature they've had on cars for years?

No, the computer industry's not that user-friendly yet :)

They haven't figured out that non-engineers use computers.

Building a Dead Silent PC

[Virtex]

The article's subject says is all. I would assume if the PC is dead, it would be silent as well.

vu*20 == 13db change

[Webmoth]

"...in general 10db is considered to sound like 'a doubling in volume'..."

Wrong again.

Mathematically, 10dB indicates a change by a factor of 10 (an order of magnitude) of the power. 3dB indicates a doubling. So 13dB is 20x.

A change of 13dB equates to a change in energy levels by a factor of 20.

That said, the human mind tends to comprehend a change of 10dB as a doubling (or halving) of loudness.

its been done

[brad3378]

> The only fan in the entire system is in the PSU.

My Gateway Destination with a 233 PII has that.
Its basically got a fan shroud that redirects the power supply's air over the processor's heatsink.

I'm attempting to duplicate the shroud idea using plexiglass scraps on my other computers.
Its such a simple concept. Why doesn't anybody sell kits to do this?

TKPower Fanless PSU

[Guppy]

Is it really that hard make? I don't mind it to be heavier or more expensive - the reliability (no moving parts) and noise level are much more important in a lot of cases (pun intended :)

Silicone Acoustics carries a 300 watt fanless PSU from TKPower. However, although the power output is standard ATX, the unit itself is not standard ATX sized, so the case will have to be modified for installation. There's a guide with instructions and pictures on the site for how this is done.

I was able to make a quiter PC....

[WeeLad]

just by allowing Windows to Search for the best driver for my soundcard.

Re:Variable speed.

[RatBastard]

While my noisiest system is my gaming rig, my server is second. My server is an old Pentium 233MMX with a Promise IDE controlloer pushing a a pair of mirrored 120GB drives, and a 4GB boot drive (biggest the motherboard chipset will drive). This system is on 24/7. It has three fans, the CPU fan, the PSU fan and a case fan at the rear to keep the drives cool.

I'm seriously considering a VIA C3 system with all passive cooling for this system.

They're available but read the fine print...

[jmichaelg]

Yeah, you can get fanless PSUs but watch out. TKpower's only delivers about 80 Watts sans fan. Neither it, nor the RSG RCP 300W-series fanless psu, are recommended for P4s. More here.

Bottom line, no one that I am aware of has delivered a fanless psu that is recommended for the P4.

Perhaps a psu engineer can comment on the following as I'm not sure I'm right. A psu running at 300W at 70% efficiency has to dump 30% of the 300W as heat. That's 90 watts that has to be gotten rid of - a lot to ask of a passively cooled psu. TKPower tries to do it by physically coupling their psu to the case.

Not true: Its less than 20 times quieter

[jelle]

20 times sound level in decibels is 20*log(20)/log(10)=26.02dB.... 65-40dB is less than 26dB, so it's not well over twenty times quieter

Re:Not true: Its less than 20 times quieter

[MikeBabcock]

Its just under 20 times quieter by a fraction. You could've worked out that fraction instead and shown us how anal-retentive you are instead ...

Re:Not true: Its less than 20 times quieter

[jelle]

Anal retentive Mike? The /. introduction claims 'well over twenty times quieter'. It's not saying 'twenty times quieter', or even just 'over twenty times quieter', no, Jouster is so enthousiastic that he writes 'well over'. It's like calling a $890 TV having a price of well over a thousand dollars.

"You could've worked out that fraction instead"

Anyways, if you can't calculate, 25dB is 10^(25/20)=17.8 times quieter, much less than twenty, and definitely not well over twenty.

What is this site turning into, news for people who cant calculate?

Re:WTF?

[packeteer]

It all depends on how close you are to the speaker. If you have speakers putting out 125dB obviously they wont be next to your keybaord. Soemthing like that is used to fill a whole room or house of music. Great to setup on the porch for a party or something.

Stuff and nonsense

[0x0d0a]

I think he means that saying "20x quieter" is nonsensical.

You should never say that something is "20x smaller" or "20x quieter". You can say "20x larger" or "20x louder".

You can say that something is only "one twentieth as loud", though.

Otherwise, you'd have -19 loudness units. :-)

Re:Stuff and nonsense

[Jouster]

Er, perhaps, but wouldn't it be a wee bit stilted to say "one-twentieth as loud"? Not to mention that, instead of this discussion, we'd get one on whether "one-twentieth" is hyphenated or not.

Ah well.

Jouster
(Story Author)

Wow!! They created an IBM!!!

[Hyped01]

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

Re:Wow!! They created an IBM!!!

[Kidbro]

Oh... and just for those disbelievers, here's the pdf's to the manuals for the slightly louder of the Intellistations

Nope:


HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2002 07:45:25 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.22 (Unix) PHP/4.0.6
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1

404 Not Found

Not Found
The requested URL /library/dokumentacja/6889uypc.pdf was not found on this server.

Apache/1.3.22 Server at www.asso.pl Port 80

Re:apples and oranges, decibels and sones

[nathanh]

3dB isn't a doubling in volume.

...in general 10db is considered to sound like "a doubling in volume"...

The parent poster wasn't talking about power. Volume, or how loud something appears to the senses, is measured in sones. 1 sone approximately equals 10 dB though that varies with the frequency and magnitude of the sound.

Volume and loudness are not the same thing. Sones are a measure of loudness and is dependent on the frequency components. Volume is a measurement of intensity and it is typically measured in watts per square meter. A frequency at 3kHz will sound louder than a frequency at 5kHz even if they are played at the same volume because the human ear is more sensitive to the "voice" range. So 3dB is a doubling in volume no matter what the frequency, while 10dB is a doubling in loudness for a given frequency. Thus my comment that the parent poster typoed: he meant loudness where he wrote volume. It looks like 4 of you made the same mistake when you "corrected" me :-)

But don't take my word for it. Good essay on sones and phons here

http://www.me.psu.edu/lamancusa/me458/3_human.pdf

And a description of volume here.

http://www.its.bldrdoc.gov/fs-1037/dir-039/_5840.h tm

Re:20 times quieter?

[Jouster]

Math skills are deteriorating, but not because I post a mathematically-incorrect colloquialism to /.. Math skills are deteriorating because those with a very high-level understanding of math created tools to remove the tedium of math of less complexity, and then those without the high-level understanding adopted these tools. Eliminate calculators from the world, make them available only to those that have "earned" them, and you'll have done something about deteriorating math skills.

As for my personal math skills, I can out-bitwise-manipulate anyone who cares to challenge me, and I have a decent understanding of single-variable calculus and an extensive understanding of theoretical physics.

As for my wording: you may, if you wish, lambast a poorly-written program for uninformative variable names or lack of comments. You may even note that the program takes an extra run through the compiler before producing machine code. But the reality is that, in human language and in computers, it is the final, parsed data that counts. So long as your parser is capable of handling the statement, which it obviously is based on your comment, the difference in the "source code" is completely unimportant.

All that said, thanks for calling me on it. I'm is always; trying to improve my's gRamerr, after all.

Jouster
(Story Author)

Re:20 times quieter?

[Jouster]

I don't feel like defending my intelligence, so let's just ignore that comment.

If you are able to decode the phrase, and those who are less intelligent can, as well, it would actually make sense to choose that phrase to ensure the maximum number of people would understand what I was trying to communicate.

Jouster

Re:20 times quieter?

[Arker]

"One-twentieth times the size"

Of course, but in that context it's so well understood that it needn't be said anymore.