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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!
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.
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
I use quietpc in the UK, but they have a Canadian outlet too. As far as the UK operation is concerned I recommend it highly.
Hmmmm. Links dead. Assuming that's his server, too, I think he ripped out more than just some trivial fans and motors...
http://www.quietpc.ca/
I will trade you 2 dozen for one good, old fashoned, normal-flow toilet (banned in the US for several years).
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."
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"
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
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.
I just bought some 60mm Vantec Stealth fans from:
www.e-compuvision.com
No problems at all, & they shipped in a couple of days.
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!
Until you upgraded to a C-64 and bought the floppy drive that accomodated it. You know the sound that a bum makes when he tries to clear his throat? Yeah, that's your C-64's floppy drive loading Flight Simulator for the next two minutes.
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.
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').
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
Just so you know, extra noise coming from fans isn't ALWAYS from the dust (however a lot tends to be). A little oil in the fan goes a long way. Some fans just don't hold up to being run all the time, and putting some oil on them helps to extend their life and make them quieter :)
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.
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)?
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.
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Here you go! Check out the Panaflo Lows and Vantec stealth fans. Overall, this place has tons of really excellent gear. These people are based in Toronto and I have ordered from them several times. Highly recommended.
Two minutes? You never had a C64 with a floppy drive, did you?