Slashdot Mirror
Building the Ultimate Silent PC
TRH writes "You had a post not long ago about building a totally quiet PC, I came across this article on Rabid Hardware where the author had another approach for quieting down a PC, through ripping out fans, motors and replacing heat sinks with sound deadener material. Funny read, especially from a site that's known in the modding world for being a little off-the-wall to begin with." Finally, the silent PC you crave, and for a change, this one won't cost you a fortune.
I hate it when there's no noise. Without that, and my lights burnt out, I can never tell if the wonky parts are still going!
Someone PLEASE post a link to a reputable site that has QUIET fans (CPU fans, projector fans, powersupply fans) that can be bought in Canada! PLEASE!!!
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
So all you need is to build a Beowulf cluster of Vic-20s.
Quiet PCs are easy. There's lots that you can do to make your PC quieter.
Instructions on how to make a quieter mother-in-law? I'd really like to see that.
Anyone else have a crazy Korean mother-in-law? You know what I mean!
"It's a tarp!" -- Dyslexic Admiral Ackbar
Also the tapping of the keys really annoyed me. So eventually I told him to sort it out or else, because I wasn't getting sleep and I was working as a receptionist at the time so needed it. He found a way to dampen the noise using some sort of cloth that was very effective, and he "lowclocked" it he said so that it didn't get as hot?
I really had to tell him to do a lot of things like that to keep noise down, it's a real shame. But now I have a computer job and I find it is really universal that they make this noise.
Anyway, I hope I didn't push him too hard. he left me, eventually, but I don't think it was over the computer. it was because he didn't like my candles (I am Catholic and Scottish).
I wish I hadn't told him to do that now, I could do with a really powerful computer for my computing course at college. It would help a lot, and I miss him.
So my point is, be careful about computer noise. it can cause a lot of tension and problems in a relationship, as I found out to my cost, beyond just headaches.
Thanks, Margot. :o)
--Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The
I have found that my PC runs silently when I play my illegally gotten mp3's at ear crunching loud volumes. Preferrably "System of a Down" or "Tool" although I have been known to play the soundtrack from "Fiddler on a Roof" or "The Fantasticks" also.
10/21/2002: Netscape innaugurates Mozilla open source project!
10/20/2002: Windows NT 4.0 released!
10/19/2002: DEC changes name to Digital, and/or vice versa!
10/18/2002: Altair home computer released!
10/17/2002: New "Multics" project aims to revolutionize operating systems!
10/16/2002: New "high level" programming language Fortran promises to revolutionize number-crunching!
10/15/2002: This just in: Renowned mathematician Alan Turing found dead!
10/14/2002: HITLER INVADES CZECHOSLOVAKIA!
10/13/2002: Council of Trent adjourns!
10/12/2002: EMPEROR DIOCLETIAN ACCEDES TO THRONE!
10/11/2002: Orgmph discover fire! Fire good! Cook meat!
"Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive" -- hey, that's me!
is the one at the store that I can't afford. All I hear is a little voice that says, "buy me, buy me". It might just be in my head.
currently my computer sounds like a shopvac that is running all the time. without that noise, how would i be able to sleep at night?
THERE IS NO DATA. THERE IS O
No kidding. People that complain about their computer's noise are the same ones that stand in front of microwave ovens yelling "HURRY!"
Best Windows Freeware
Hmmmm. Links dead. Assuming that's his server, too, I think he ripped out more than just some trivial fans and motors...
Doncha hate it when respondents don't read the article first? Even more so, when it's posted in the wrong section.
It's a joke, and should have been posted in the humor section.
An excerpt:
"CD-ROMs are relatively easy to secure. Once we remove the motors (3! Tray, spinny motor and the wee one that moves the optics back and forth), the rest is child's play. I doubt this Lite-On drive will make much electronic vibration afterwards, but I'm also removing any chips that have the potential to create noise, just to be safe."
You'd have to do that to keep the Wake on Lan signals from getting through. Oh, and unplug the phone line from the modem as well.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
And I just took my old pastachio-green commode to teh dump last week. Not that you'd want a 20-year old toilet with all the hard water stains that go with it.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
dynamat was never meant to reduce noise its meant stop the pannels in your car vibrating, and it does it very well, but one roll is never enought you need about £200 worth of dynamat to do a small eruo hatchback properly so it aint exactly cheap.
Burt "Out of my mind back in 5 minutes"
I guess drummers would go for this soulution. They like to hit things.
Then you start recording, you can't get a good take because its 90 degrees, this is california and its sweltering inside cuz you had to turn off the AC, you're sweating and out of breath ... on the 25th take you remember those albums you played on in highschool and the freezing studio you recorded in ... god what you would give ... on the 30th take you squeak out something you can live with, you can fix the nasty bits in auto-tune right? :)
It's not glorious, but its all worth in when the track comes together :)
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
That should make it extremely quiet, don't you think? Eventually... once the fire trucks leave, it should be pretty darn quiet...
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
What you must realize, though, is that Dynamat is not designed to reduce noise. It is designed, like so many other car audio products, to separate fools from their money.
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside a dog it's too dark to read. - Groucho Marx
Actually, it's more about sound level variations
I sleep about 1 meter from my home server. Every time the general level of sound changes sharply (even if at low volume), I wake up. Momentarily. Let me tell you, 10+ "Micro-wakenings" per night will do you no good!
Possible fix: REMOVE all ability to vary fan speed! And to park disks! And perhaps even to slow processor.
I choose to remain celibate, like my father and his father before him.
1. Rip out fans and heat sinks
2. Put some sound dampening dynamat over fan and heat sink holes
3. Put back together
4. Turn on... wait a few seconds
5. Extinguish flames
6. Go to store.apple.com and buy a Mac
You can either spend ~USD120.00 for 39ft2 of Dynamat or you can get the same effect with materials like B-Quiet Extreme and get 50ft2 for USD85.00.
I'm not affiliated with them, I just hate seeing people spend a ton of money on something that has an equal quality, lesser-priced alternative.
Maybe this is the solution that many musicians have been waiting for.
Did you even read the article? It's a joke:
"I cut a piece of Dynamat the size of the CPU, and stuck it on the CPU. Not only can dynamat run at peak performance without any fan whatsoever, but also it insulates to prevent nasty CPU vibration."
And if you weren't sharp enough to catch that, it says "humour" in the fscking URL, for christ's sake.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
you need an hour of silence!
Who are you, John Cage?
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
I am currently working on a water cooled PC. However I would like to move the powersupply out to another location. Can anyone see a problem with 20 foot long extremely well shielded low resistance power supply cables? The box will be alluminum with TONS of vents, but no fans in a room with 65 degree farenheit ambient tempature. And yes, even the harddrive is water cooled, in its own airtight enclosure. (still kept cool by water)
Sigs? We don't need no stinking sigs!
Possible fix: REMOVE all ability to vary fan speed! And to park disks! And perhaps even to slow processor.
or.... Don't sleep 1 meter from your server!
It was a Compaq.
I wasn't dating her for her brains.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Not really an issue for home musicians...
Take a simple recording app like cool edit pro.
before your recording session record 1 second of silence (you not talking,singing,farting,playing,etc...) then save that, then record your track... then simply subtract the 1 second sample from the rest of the track with the filter tool and it sounds like you recorded in a closet full of coats. (except for any room reverb.. no fan/pc/ambient room noise.)
Hell I even set the furnace in the house to run the fan all the time during recording so that It doesnt cycle on/off during the track...that way I can easily remove it's noise.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
He did that. He also removed all motors, chips and heatsinks. He sealed vast portions of the system under thick rubber-plastic. He used powertools like a carpendry jigsaw to rip apart the powersupply, and then sealed the whole unit into a single block.
It was a joke. I didn't get to the end of the article, but I'm curious if it had enough complete circuts to have power go through it so it could catch fire.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
This is not the solution that many musicians have been waiting for, this is the solution the RIAA has been waiting for.
You do all these things to your computer and the RIAA won't have to worry about independent musicians anymore, because your computer will go *p00f!
(If this is a troll, it is Physics Genius level troll. :)
dynamat does in fact work... it is designed to reduce vibrations that cause resonance noise. I.E. those idiots that drivearound with so much BASS cranking that it sounds like their car is rattling apart.. Dynamat get's rid of that noise by deadining the panel it is on.
only serious and real car stero installs use dynamat... and they still do to this day. it's a staple in any car audio system that is designed to sound awesome.. want yours to sound better? add dynamat and it will reduce panel vibration and increase SPL. (Show me one SPL winner that doesnt have Dynamat in his car.)
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
ACTUALLY, I WAS A CARRIER DECK ATTENDANT IN THE NAVY FOR 10 YEARS.
It is clear that this can only be good for open source.
I know this article is a joke but there is a very real solution to the noise and form factor problems. It's via's mini-itx motherboards.
Check out mini-itx.com the boards are low heat, low noise and fairly powerful (500-700 mhz). They are perfectly suitable for a media box, router, or low end linux/windows workstation. All parts included they whole things comes in at under $500 usd. That's pretty reasonable, and the site has a greate many interesting links about projects (like the one I think is cool, the computer in a cigar-box, the 'Hummidor64').
I CAN'T HEAR A DAMN THING WITH THIS SERVER BESIDE ME
(I sincerely apologise for this crap below. The joke simply doesn't work if I don't type it in all caps)
Avoiding lameness filter
Avoiding lameness filter
Avoiding lameness filter
Avoiding lameness filter
Avoiding lameness filter
Avoiding lameness filter
Avoiding lameness filter
Avoiding lameness filter
Avoiding lameness filter
Avoiding lameness filter
Avoiding lameness filter
Avoiding lameness filter
Avoiding lameness filter
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
Yet another /.'ing. Mirrors up at Earlham College and at UW-Madison.
Be warned that I am planning on taking down the UW-Madison server for repairs and upgrades later tonight, so Earlham is probably your best bet.
The real ultimate silent PC.
Erik
I know most of the machines around my house have started to get noticibly loud fan noise. I'm
guessing that if I took the time to shut them down and give the fans a good cleaning, it would
cut the noise out by half or more.
It's cheaper than a new super quiet power supply too
before your recording session record 1 second of silence (you not talking,singing,farting,playing,etc...) then save that, then record your track... then simply subtract the 1 second sample from the rest of the track with the filter tool and it sounds like you recorded in a closet full of coats. (except for any room reverb.. no fan/pc/ambient room noise.)
While noise reduction filters are a useful tool for cleaning up audio, it is a really bad idea to depend on using them for entire recordings on a regular basis.
Basically what you're doing is FFT'ing out those frequencies wherever they exist. So even though you're getting rid of the noise, the effect is still like running a bunch of parametric EQs over the parts you *do* like.
That's the reason that studios still pay for soundproofing instead of just using an FFT filter plugin and doing what you suggest.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
Not true! This is valid information on how to improve your computer!
For other great advice, check out Datadocktorn (approx. "The Computer Docktor"). They have great guides on how to make your computer plenty better. Especially check out the disk defraggle section. The minimizing tutorial is also very helpful. I never realized that I cut just saw off those wasteful parts of my motherboard and fit the whole thing in a much smaller case!
I choose to remain celibate, like my father and his father before him.
seriously, i lined the door of my antec SOHO case with it and it noticably cut down on the ambient noise given off by the system. im even running 3 case fans, 2 psu fans, 1 cpu fan and 1 gpu fan. trust me it works, its almost as silent as the G4 400 sitting next to it.
I want 2D games back.
I'll start by explaining I know this is a joke.
However, it did remind me of a british Company that used to make PC's back in the early eighties, I can't quite remmember their name.
They put the power supply in the monitor, which has enough fanless vantilation, and thus did not need the power fan in the main case. The CPU's of those days did not require fans so it was a completely quiet setting.
However, one of the first FUD rumours was spread that this was somehow wrong, so they put a useless fan circulating air inside the main case to make noise. Those who had a clue, ripped off the power supply of that fan.
Anyhow, wouldn't it be possible to just put the power supply in the monitor or such, and thus eliminate the main source of noise (the big power fan)?
Nope, I'm an independant artist. My silence has soul, heart, and is in touch in a way that can't be captured by corporate sellout silence :D
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
Maybe I should put up a page for the LOUDEST PC on the planet? Ok, I know truthfully I would never get anywhere near some designs, but I bet I could get things pretty loud by installing some heavy-duty, chop-off-your-fingers steel 120V axial cooling fans (15,000cfm baby!)... heh...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
All that soundproofing stuff is too complicated. On my computer I just reversed the polarity on the clock generator so it runs at negative 1.7 GHz. Now my cpu runs cold instead of hot and I don't need any pesky cooling fans.
This space intentionally left blank.
"How about Beowulf of Palm Pilot PDAs?"
I know you probably meant that as funny, but I bet you anything there's somebody working on a solid-state server.
My coworkers and I were going to get Apache running on a Zaurus and place a 'Hello World' page on the net for Slashdot to see. We were beat by about a week when somebody got HTTP running on a PocketPC. Doh.
Put electrical tape on the back of your license plate, it works like a charm. The same goes for all those gaps between the plastic shit.
Of course, if your car is a rusty pos like mine was, there isn't much you can do. With 2 12" subs in isobaric loading, even the crap under my hood started vibrating.
The license plate thing is kinda of a pet peeve of mine as iI see a lot of people who had not problem spending $500 on amps and speakers but can't spend five minutes to keep their car from sounding like shit.
Life is too short to proofread.
all your pc are belong to us
If so, tell him that I said hello.
My silence has soul, heart, and is in touch in a way that can't be captured by corporate sellout silence
You're an idiot.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
It was a joke
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
I know a couple who are Irish. He's prodestant, she's catholic. Whenever they argue, she blows up his car.
Anything like that?
This is funny?
How about if we replace the prodestant (sic) with an American, the catholic with someone who's Islamic and the car with his office building.
Still funny now? Yeah, I didn't think so.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
All I had to do was rip out the power supply, and the thing hasn't made a peep since.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.