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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."
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.
Never overestimate the end user. -jeramy b. smith
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."
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.
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...
/.er made a comparable system? How has it lasted?
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
Maybe I'm just a skeptic, but an overclocked GeForce 4 Ti with no active cooling makes me anxious, and somewhat hesitant.
--I hate big sigs.
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.
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.
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
The PowerMac G4 cube (bottom of page 4, "Noise characteristics") was only 31 dB. That's 2,512 times quiter than this "silent" PC.
A legparnasom tele van angolnaval.
According to my calculations, you can now cluster 100,000,000 PCs before their combined noise level reaches the threshold of pain!
My PC has a button on the front that eliminates noise completely. It eliminates those annoying lights on the case too...
I am a Karma Library.
This one goes to -11.
*clinching blanket and pulling it towards face*
"I can hear dead boxen".
[/haleyjoel]
Extraordinary Vacations. Exceptional Prices
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?
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.
A legparnasom tele van angolnaval.
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.
Sapere aude!
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.
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.
2 002_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.
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_august
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
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.
--
grep "xercist"
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.
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.
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
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.
-THIS SPACE FOR RENT!
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 :-)