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.

Comments

Hard Disk Noise

[rf0]

Looking over the specs this would be really quite however apart from the hard disk/CD Rom access. As such me being a geek would like to see a versions that could boot over the network and run everything from Ram. OK prehaps its over kill but if you remove all the mechanical bits then your should have somethnig truly quite and very reliable.

I know for a fact that the Via MB are good. I bought one from Mini-ITX and have had it running solidly for about 2 months. No crashes. Nothing. Very Impressed

Rus

Re:Hard Disk Noise

[CvD]

You should try the Maxtor DiamondMAX 9 Plus with liquid bearings series. It is amazingly silent too. You have to put your head next to the case to hear it purring softly while doing an updatedb (heavy disk activity) for example. Very cool. Now I only need to silence my PSU and CPU fans. :-)

Cheers!

Costyn.

Re:Hard Disk Noise

[October_30th]

solid state powersupply

Which can be a problem. I've got EPIA M series combination and I could not use Seagate's 200GB drive in the box because spinning it up took too much power causing the boot process to hang. A 80GB drive works just fine and the 200GB one boots perfectly using a standard 300W power source.

9/10 but not for the review

[matthew.thompson]

The machine looks great and the hardware seems to be extremely well put together but the review misses out on a few key areas.

It's acknowledged that the unit would look great in a lounge or on a hi-fi rack. But nowhere is the video output from the composite and S-Video outputs mentioned.

How easy would it be to get a remote control up and running with the unit? What's the sound quality like? Can the unit drive a high end sound card with the power supply that's supplied?

These are the questions I want answered.

Music Studios

[locarecords.com]

This is the kind of computer that is needed in Music studios and for the life of me I can't understand why Apple G4's have to sound like a Tornado taking off.

You'd think that creatives would be the ones Apple would identify as wanting the quiet to think and contemplate.

However buying a PC feels like a real step backwards for me. I am totally socialised to using Mac's in music and now that Logic is no longer supported on the PC it is even harder to consider the switch.

The sooner PCs get silent (like the blessed iMacs) the better...

IPX and VIA

[tacocat]

I've been watching computers waiting for a combination of:

• Small form factor
• Very Low Power consumption
• Low Price

Much of this has been driven based on the realization that, with the exception of gaming, there is really no practicaly need for the incredible power consumption and heat dissapation of the high end COTS systems. When you consider it, the COTS systems today are very poorly designed because they are entirely dependant upon high speed fans to keep themselves from self distruction. This makes for an a-stable product which happens to be horribly loud and in a social sense, isn't scalable (you can't have 4 of these sitting in a room).

Following this new realization that no one really needs a multi GHz processor for surfing, email, servers, and most all of their coding then the idea of a 30 Watt silent processor has some real appeal.

VIA, with thei EPIA and the Mini-ITX motherboards are poised for some real advances on the user community. While not as power independent as a notebook PC, they can be arguable as portable and certainly more convenient for the desktop cube-ville environment.

The other avenue for computer users to move in is the LSTP thin-client workstations like the jammin products. These are small devices with USB, PS/2 ports on the front. This is a new direction

Not intending to get prophetic here, but I really believe that there is need for a product which has a thin-client architecture with the goal of providing only interfaces:

• USB ports, 2-4
• Firewire

With the possibility of providing a single floppy drive or CD-RW and S-Video ports as well. But nothing more is really needed at the user desktop interface anymore. Unfortunately I haven't really seen anything like this at a sane price. I did see a few products which are mini-ITX motherboards installed at the back of flat panels for a single unit. Very wonderful, but not for $1500!!! Everything else would be retained at a single point of access at the server or at a "super station" which might have additional devicees (like CD-RW, S-Video)

These are all really excellent devices. Now if someone would please sent me the $300 necessary to buy one I would be very happy! I have a lot of noise in my office.

Re:I guess so, heh

[oPless]

Appears to be back. Apparently the content managment system they run there decided to back off for a bit :-)

Not suprising with a load avg of 78.29 / 58.63 / 42.64 :) (and rising)

Not bad really, knowing what a slashdotting is like. lots of mysql threads too.

Re:Apple had some of the first truly 'silent' desk

[Dylan Zimmerman]

And that is exactly why Apple should re-release the G4 cube. If they keep the specs where they were when they canceled it with the possible exception of adding Bluetooth and other more modern options, they would have a pretty good media hub that doesn't cost too much and runs with no fans.

As long as they only use lower end G4s or the PPC 970 clocked pretty low, they should be able to get away with convection. As long as they don't use too many newer parts, the price should be low enough to rival iMac sales.