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A Truly Silent Desktop PC
boris writes "The first in a series of turnkey systems seem to be coming through the fence from Hush Technologies. The systems weigh in a little expensive but look to be incredible quality. This is according to the review over at HEXUS.net who have a heap of photos up of the unit as well as an article. Is this finally the step to having a true PC in every living room? HTPC here we come!" These EPIAs are everywhere now; we mentioned the M-100 the other day; less-expensive ready-built systems (in various configurations) are available from SolarPC, too.
If you're going to have no drive, the best solution is probably something like the NCD thin clients.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Ah, but they're using the Seagates for a reason. They run quiet enough that you'll hardly hear them. The slight noise tends to fade into the background.
It mentions S-video and 6.1 sound. At least in their pdf order form.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
You can hear a faint whir from the fans if you place your ear next to the system, but otherwise they are completely silent.
Furthermore, they are extremely inexpensive. The latest deal on slickdeals.net was a $340 Pentium 4 2.53GHz system with 256MB PC2700 RAM, a 16X DVD-ROM or a 48X CD-RW, 30GB hard drive and 32MB Rage (in an AGP slot so it's upgradable) Slickdeals went so far as to say "You cannot build your own system for less then this."
I see no reason to spend more money on an underpowered EPIA silent system when a Dell can be had for significantly cheaper.
Yeah, but IBMs drives can be made to run silent too. All you need to do is tweak it a bit using their drive tools: http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/download.htm
Sure there is a bit of a performance hit, but it saves a fortune on sound proofing.
Managed to get this before the site disspeared
ntroduction
Possibly the area of greatest interest in the Computing world at present is the Small Form Factor (SFF) PC. They are perfect for a multitude of uses from a replacement for your main pc all the way to a Home Theater PC (HTPC). They have great flexibility due to their size, allowing many new designs to be considered. New to this market are Hush Technologies and they have approached the SFF with one thing in mind, total silence.
They have created a completely passively cooled MiniITX based PC which does away with most of the sources of noise in a normal system and encloses it in a beautifullooking aluminium case. Let's have a look at how good it is in the flesh.
What are the specifications of this PC?
* Via Epia-M 9000: Featuring a 933Mhz VIA C3 CPU
* 256MB of Crucial PC2100 DDR RAM
* 80Gb Seagate Barracuda Hard Disk
* TEAC DVD/CDRW Combo drive
* Morex 55w Power Supply (PSU)
* Dimensions: 37 x36 x 6cm (w,d,h)
* Case material: Aluminium
* Form Factor: MiniITX
The specifications of the system are interesting, the inclusion of the TEAC combo drive is great and the large hard disk allows plenty of storage. I'd prefer 512MB of RAM but 256MB is adequate for the majority of its intended uses. The hard disc itself is renowned for its low noise. It's not totally silent but a lot better than many fixed disks out there. It sacrifices some performance for this but is generally no slouch. Hush provides plenty of options so you can specify the right system for your needs.
I think I should start this review by explaining just what MiniITX form factor motherboards are. The form factor was originally proposed by VIA to be an ultra small form factor, smaller than the FlexATX and MicroATX form factors that were the smallest at the time. The original MiniITX boards were feature rich boards with a CPU soldered onto the board. This was cheap to produce as there was no discrete packaging cost for the integrated processor.
The specifications of the MiniITX form factor state that the board may not be bigger than 170mm x 170mm. As you can see this is tiny when compared to the normal ATX standard.
VIA also aimed to have very low heat output from the MiniITX so it would be more suitable in systems like the Hush. Some of the VIA EPIA series models are passively cooled but unfortunately these are the less powerful models. The higher powered boards require a small heatsink with a 40mm fan and these fans can often be quite noisy so Hush set out to combine the faster EPIA models with a passive cooling system.
Cheap UK and US VPS
First Impressions
First impressions count for a lot and with the Hush I wasn't disappointed, the system came in a well packaged and protected box. Opening up the box for the first time I was very surprised when I took the Hush out, it was a very solid piece of metal giving an impression of excellent build quality. The cooling fins on the sides are especially sturdy chunks of aluminium.
I've seen some of the nicest and well built cases in my time but this was something else. This PC would would look perfect next to a video or DVD player. The colour of this particular example wasn't something to write home about, but it was bearable and seeing as you get a choice of colours it's not really an issue. Overall I was very impressed by the system and had good hopes for the performance of it.
The Case
People who know me know will know I'm a case person, that I'm a sucker for a nice looking aluminium case and with the Hush I'm blown away. The pictures of the case really don't do it justice, it's the highest quality case I've yet come across and that includes all the Coolermasters. The fins at the side are very solid and they make a very entertaining noise when you run your hands across them that can get addictive. At the front it's very clean looking, nothing destroys the clean lines unless it's essential to the function. In terms of switch gear and LED's there is only the bare minimum. The power switch is a Bulgin vandal resistant number with blue lighting and those of you in the Modding community will know that these are some of the best looking switches out there. The button action requires a firm push and the switch feedback isn't the greatest but the blue glow the switch makes up for it in spades. The switch means that no power LED is required as the blue glow shows instantly that it's on. This is quite important as the case is so silent, you cant tell its on by listening. Above the switch is a tiny hole for the hard disk LED which is red in colour, I'd have preferred a blue LED but that's just me being fussy.
From the pictures you can see that the optical drive at the front is not your normal 5.25 drive, rather it's a laptop style one taking up a lot less room, thus allowing the case to be lower in profile. The drive is painted to make the drive fit in perfectly with the case and it's very good to see that Hush have thought of these little details, many manufacturers would just throw a beige or black drive in without thinking.
In terms of case access on this system, things are different to nearly all cases. The top panel is held in by 6 bolts. These aren't normal bolts but have two small holes on the head. They require a special tool to loosen them but that said, it's very easy to loosen them and Hush provides the correct tool with retail versions of the system for those needing/wanting to tinker or just look at the insides of the system.
On the bottom of the case there are four very sturdy looking feet with small circular rubber pads on the base. This means you can put the case anywhere without fear of marking the surface. If you have multiple Hush PC's you could even stack them on top of each other.
The Back of the Case
Turning the case round to look at the back you can see the ports are located in a nice ATX blanking plate, there is also a PCI slot (Note there is an option to have two), an extra 2 USB Ports and an extra 2 firewire ports. At the right of these is the input port for the Power Supply. Again, as with the rest of the case, it's very neatly laid out and well built. You can see that this is also Hush Serial Number S001 its always nice to see you have the first of something.
Power Supply
Again as with other parts of this system the Power supply isn't your normal type. In keeping with the passive cooling ethos Hush have used a Morex 55 watt power supply. This consists of an internal circuit board with no cooling and an external laptop style brick which connects to the case via a small connector and then to the plu
Now with the VIA EPIA M-9000 being the basis of the system it's not going to be great as a gaming rig, so I wasn't expecting huge power out of this system. Here at Hexus we have recently reviewed the EPIA M-9000 in a full and complete review so for a more specific review of the board look at it here. The specifications of the board mean that its aimed at being a complete solution containing on-board graphics and on-board sound along with lots of other goodies.
What are the specifications of the Via Epia 9000
* Processor
* VIA C3/EDEN EBGA Processor 933Mhz
* Chipset
* VIA CLE266 North Bridge
* VT8235 South Bridge
* System Memory
* 1 DDR266 DIMM socket
* Up to 1GB memory size
* VGA
* Integrated VIA CastleRock AGP graphics with MPEG-2 decoder
* Expansion Slots
* 1 X PCI
* Onboard IDE
* 2 X UltraDMA 133/100/66 Connector
* Onboard Floppy
* 1 x FDD Connector
* Onboard LAN
* VIA VT6103 10/100 Base-T Ethernet PHY
* Onboard Audio
* VIA VT1616 6 channel AC'97 Codec
* Onboard TV Out
* VIA VT1622 TV out
* Onboard 1394
* VIA VT6307S IEEE 1394 Firewire
* Onboard I/O Connectors
* 1 USB connectors for 2 additional USB 2.0 ports
* 2 1394 connectors for 2 1394 ports
* Front-panel audio connectors (Mic and Line Out)
* CD Audio-in connector
* SIR connector
* CIR connector
* Wake-on-LAN, Wake-on-Ring
On the recent mini-ITX boards, there is one RCA connector for either coaxial SP/DIF or composite video out, with an internal jumper to switch between the outputs. This can be switched on the fly while the system is running, BTW.
Since s-video has its own connector, you can have both coaxial SP/DIF multichannel digital audio and s-video out.
What is Mini ITX Form Factor?
I think I should start this review by explaining just what MiniITX form factor motherboards are. The form factor was originally proposed by VIA to be an ultra small form factor, smaller than the FlexATX and MicroATX form factors that were the smallest at the time. The original MiniITX boards were feature rich boards with a CPU soldered onto the board. This was cheap to produce as there was no discrete packaging cost for the integrated processor.
The specifications of the MiniITX form factor state that the board may not be bigger than 170mm x 170mm. As you can see this is tiny when compared to the normal ATX standard.
VIA also aimed to have very low heat output from the MiniITX so it would be more suitable in systems like the Hush. Some of the VIA EPIA series models are passively cooled but unfortunately these are the less powerful models. The higher powered boards require a small heatsink with a 40mm fan and these fans can often be quite noisy so Hush set out to combine the faster EPIA models with a passive cooling system.
Gaming Performance
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Now I thought what would happen if someone wanted to use the Hush as an occasional gaming rig, how would they get on? I tried the Hush out in Quake 3 Arena 1.32 which is going to be a major test for any on-board graphics. Playing at the very lowest resolution available, the game was playable but on a large monitor or it's going to look horrific at 640x480. It was a bit slow but only when there was lots of action on the screen. I then tried out some timedemo's to give it a big test and I used very intense demo's where lots happens and here are the results:
* Fastest (Resolution: 512x384) = 17.7 FPS
* Normal (Resolution: 640x480) = 13.6 FPS
* High Quality (Resolution: 800x600) = 13.6 FPS
So these are all well below the 30fps threshold so it's not going to be any more than an emergency gaming rig. To test it out further I fired up 3d Mark 2001 but the results were far from sparkling:
Performance Conclusion
In summation the performance is not going to win any awards, anything that requires serious CPU or graphical grunt is not possible due to the lack of processing muscle. It's going to be ok for DivX or DVD playback however.
The colour of the case is difficult to describe being somewhere between silver and brown. Its not the nicest colour I have to say, but it's bearable. That said there are many colour options open to you as you can see from this pic taken by Nigel Prescott at Cebit. To give you an idea of the colour of this specific hush it's the 3rd from bottom on that picture. Personally I would go for the black or the silve and which ever you prefer the most, they are certainly the most striking of the options.
Pricing Structure.
Note Prices in pounds approximate and include VAT.
Prices as of 1st April 2003
* Hush Mini ITX PC - Via Epia-M 9000, 128MB DDR RAM,
40GB Seagate Barracuda HDD, TEAC Slimline CD-ROM.
Features 933Mhz VIA C3 CPU, VIA CLE266 Chipset,
32MB Integrated VIA "CastleRock" Graphics with MPEG
2 Decoder, 4 x USB 2.0 Ports, 2 X IEEE 1394 Firewire
Ports, S-Video out, 6-channel audio, 1 Full length
PCI slot, 10/100 Base-T Ethernet, TV-Out, Serial,
Parallel, Mouse and Keyboard
645 Euro's (£446.49)
* Colour option - Silver or Black
Free
* Upgrade to 256MB RAM
25 Euro's (£17.31)
* Upgrade to 512MB RAM
80 Euro's (£55.38)
* Upgrade to 1GB RAM
POA
* TEAC DVD/CDRW Combo Slim-line Upgrade
90 Euro's (£62.30)
* Upgrade to 60GB HDD Seagate Barracuda
25 Euro's (£17.31)
* Upgrade to 80GB HDD Seagate Barracuda
40 Euro's (£27.69)
* Upgrade to 120GB HDD Seagate Barracuda
80 Euro's (£55.38)
* Windows XP Home Pre-installed
100 Euro's (£69.22)
* Windows XP Professional Pre-installed
175 Euro's (£121.14)
* Delivery - Germany
25 Euro's (£17.31)
* Delivery - Europe
55 Euro's (£38.07)
* Delivery - Rest of World
POA
Conclusion
Pro's
* Looks very nice, would look great in the lounge
* Very well built
* Quite light and easy to carry
* Completely passively cooled
* Cooling is most efficient
* Well laid out internally
* Comes pre built so easy to setup
* Small so it doesn't take up much space
* Blue power button looks excellent
* Some nice colour options available
* Quietest solution around at present
Con's
* System performance not great
It's just a shame the EPIA-M's onboard mpeg 2 decoder still has no linux.support. It's not at all obvious that this is the case looking at VIA's website. And there are a lot of people upset about this on the VIA forums.
Remember the PowerMac G4 Cube? Aside from all of its brouhaha on price, lack of expansions, etc., it was 8 inches square and was a fanless convection cooled machine (and still is, for those of us who still use them!), and 1-2 years before any of these fanless mini-itx form factor machines.
It really is perfect as an iTunes console/DVR at the side of the TV, but priced well above using one for that purpose at the time.
As evidence of a near-identical form factor, folks have managed to cram mini-itx motherboards inside its case.
Similar to these mini-itx style boxes, the G4 Cube had internal hard drive and CD-ROM noise, but with NetBoot (or some optical FireWire repeaters and a hard drive in another room) you could run the sucker completely silent.
The only fan that was in Apple original designs was the video card fan for the ATI Radeon graphics cards (Rage 128s were fanless). Unsupported Radeon upgrades were fanless. Most upgrades these days to honk up the processor to a 1GHz+G4 single or dualie add in an 80cm fan at the base of the unit to push air through. Similarly with GF3s or other video cards put inside this case...convection alone isn't enough to cool the chips. Fans and noise will probably be the price of powerful machines in small form factors for some time to come given that minimal heat dissipation is not a primary design goal of high-end CPUs and GPUs.
Another review can be found on the this website (bear in mind that they sell the Hush though). A comparison of the M and V series boards, including comparative benchmarks for video playback, can be found here.
Personally I intend to wait until Hush produce a new model based on the M series.
Never, ever lose a file again. Ever.
If you have a noisy MDD, make sure you check out Apple's Power Mac G4 Power Supply Exchange Program.
The replacement power supply/fans are quite a bit quieter, and the kit is pretty easy to install.
Nae bother
You can get a similar system put with P4 (up to 2.53 GHz) from:
Signum Data
That make more sense to me as a desktop, as you get much more CPU power. But I admit that it might look better without a floppy drive.
I've got a Mini-itx board and solid state powersupply.
The only thing that makes any noise at all is the disk.
Its a seagate IV, which also uses FDB bearing ('liquid bearings') I too previously thought this disk was 'amazing' and 'silent', but you'd be amazed how noisy something sounds when there is no other noise around...
Even the electrical hum from my monitor is deafening now!
Hi gents, I've just been told that we got slashdotted , I see you have been making server admins quake in their boots as usual.
:)
I've tried to read any questions people had , the main one I see is that I didnt address the TV out function , I've linked to our full review of the epia 9000 as this contains the infomation etc , I didnt want to go over old ground.
I've review lots of things now and this was the first thing to come through the door that blew me away. Even the pc hating girlfriend liked it.
Re the hard disc a IBM will never be as silent as the Seagate , I've used those utitilties they just effect seek noise not the annoying whine.
Any questions just ask I will try to answer them
here's the prices in the UK which will be more accurate as thats where the hush pricing is based
:)
Epia £116.33
128mb ram £34.08
hdd £74.03
Slim cd £54.05
Morex PSU £46.41
Total: £324.90
All taken from minitx.com where they are selling the hush at present
The hush price is £499.38
So that leaves £175 for the case the heatsink the cabling etc
I've had cases that were well over £250 and the hush case is better than them
That's got to be the noisiest component left in it then surely? Unless it's not a 60mm..
A couple of months ago I decided to silence my machine. I nipped to QuietPC.comand got a Zalman silent heatsink for my GPU, 2 quiet case fans and a SilentDrive(tm) to enclose (and silence) my hard-disk. I already had a quiet enough PSU and a Zalman Flower on my 1800+.
The result is that I can sleep in the same room as the box (my goal), but it isn't silent. When I lay my head down to rest and the house is quiet the hum from the remaining fans is very audible. However if you come into my room in the day, you can't tell its on unless you stop still and actively listen for it.
I've found that low frequency sounds are quite soporiferous. However the SilentDrive doesn't entirely mask the high pitched whine of my Maxtor 740DX (also the SilentDrive's build quality is absolute poo) and it is that sound that I hear quite clearly on those nights that I just can't quite get to sleep. Interestingly too, the resistor slowed Zalman casefans are far louder than the Enermax PSU fans. Does anyone know if I dare reduce the voltage on the case fans even more?
I have a coolermaster case, so I figured the sound gets transfered easily through the entire metal body. I was right; I made myself some rubber washers and isolated all the fans from the case and the difference in noise was very noticeable. So I figure I shouldn't have fallen in love with the sexy metallic sheen of the Coolermaster and bought the budget Dabs.com like I had originally planned ;)
All in all the Athlon idles at 38C and at 100% load it gets to about 51C, so I might deactivate the case fans and see how that goes.
Basically I was disapointed with the QuietPC products, they work ok, but they rip you off - the case fans were standard Zalmans, but on their site no brand is mentioned and all the products listed are overpriced. Also the results were not as good as I hoped.
But anyway back to the Radeon stock fan. Removing my NVidia 440MX stock fan was the most noticeable change I made! Zalman GPU passive coolers are pretty cheap. It may be worth checking them out if you want that little bit more silence for your dad's box.
I just built a system very similar to these, and it's a blast, but there are some problems. One is that the Morex 55W power supply seems to have some issues, particularly at boot-up, that can result in a hung system. Another is heat. The EPIA boards don't generate a lot, but they do generate some, and other components (e.g. hard disk) do too. VIA does not recommend running the M-9000 fanless; that's precisely why I bought an ME-6000, and the case does have two (very quiet) case fans, and I've still had a couple of lockups that might be attributable to heat. Other users at VIA Arena using the same mobo/case combination have reported very similar problems. Overall, there seems to be a growing feeling among the community of people who've actually bought them that systems built around these components might not be silent and stable at the same time. Pick one. :-( Maybe the next generation will be capable of running silently without these stability problems, and it's fine for a hobby project, but I couldn't really recommend this type of system for regular use.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
Every Apple II was completely silent, with those wonderful milk-carton-sized switching power supplies.
The coolest voice ever.
I picked up a 120G Seagate Barracuda IV for about $140. This drive is impressively quiet. I leave it running at night, and I can't hear it at all. I've had it running 24/7 for about eight months now.
The box makes less noise than my iMac, and it works well as a webserver, mailserver, printserver , and fileserver. It doesn't have the brushed aluminum look of the hush PC or the newer MB/CPU, but it's equally quiet and cost about $200 less.
here
The original iMacs had fans (my mum has one), it was a year or so later when the fan less ones came out (my auntie has one).
aedan
What you are mentionning is the fact that, IIRC, in order to keep things cool, VIA made the FPU run at half the speed of the rest of the CPU.
But things changed with the latest generation C3, codenamed "Nehemiah". Not only all of the silicon runs at the same speed (min. 1GHz), but it also has a hardware random number generator.
This last item was actually covered by a recent thread on SlashDot. Just search for it.
P.S.: my Linux-based firewall is running an 866MHz Ezra-T core C3 (the last generation before the Nehemiah) cooled by Zalman copper "flower" with just the case+PSU fans (case fan running half speed), with some Arctic Silver II thermal grease to finish things up. When I watched the cpu temp recently, this essentially passively cooled CPU was running at 25C, even while routing traffic for about half a dozen boxes on the local segment. To me, this is the perfect CPU for a low-noise, low-heat firewall.
I built a silent PC for my living room and here is how I reduced noise:
1. My PSU fan is silent. But I mean Silent. You don't hear it unless you stick you ear to it!!
2. I underclocked my CPU. Celeron 533@266, so no fan is needed.
3. I use a laptop HDD, which is very silent
4. I use a DVD-ROM drive that can be told not to spin over a certain speed. I use the "eject" command on linux to set it to whatever I want. 6X is totally silent.
That's it!
Write boring code, not shiny code!