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Melamine Ceiling Tiles and the Quiet PC
Delta Screemer writes "What good are ceiling tiles when it comes to making a computer quieter? Well,
Max Page of FrostyTech has found a use for 'Melamine Foam Sound Absorbing
Ceiling Tiles' as a cheap way of lowering the noise a computer produces. By
lining the insides of a computer with these $3 24"x24" industrial office
panels he was able to quiet a computer by several dBA. That
may not sound like much (pun intended), but when you compare the price of these
melamine foam panel to products like Dynamat the price
difference is substantial."
It lets me know things are working correctly.
A silent hard drive is a dead hard drive.
A silent fan is a dead fan.
Give me as many physical clues to the health of the machines, if you please.
I have been pwned because my
I used to have a annoying loud PC in my bedroom and it was very difficult to sleep with it on, so what I did was to place it in the basement and use it as a terminal server.
For my bedroom I built myself a not-so-dumb terminal. I used a VIA processor based motherboard and run it diskless.
All I did was fit a CD-ROM so I could boot a minial homebrew Linux based on knoppix and Morphix. Once booted up it logs in automatically and launches Rdesktop which allows me to login to my server in the basement over 802.11b.
This works great and I sleep much better now!
Bethanie: Whore...
Fan Whore
And here, laugh, it's relevant
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
My DELL Optiplex GX260 is dead quiet. You can't even tell that it is on. They did an excellent job making it quiet.
My previous DELL was a noisy s.o.b.
My home computer (AMD 2200XP and Antec case like the one in the article) is pretty quiet, after i down-voltaged all the fans, replaced both the CPU and northbridge fans with big copper heatsinks, underclocked the cpu to minimum, seagate baracudda drive, but it still makes noise.
In comparison, this DELL is dead silent. I can not tell that the machine is on, even a few inches away, while I am at the office. It only makes noise if I use the DVD/CDROM drive.
-mark
IMO the best site for any information on running quiet and fast.
Soundproofing your case produces results, but the biggest bang for the buck is definitely replacing the PSU.
I built a TV PC and I was annoyed by the hovercraft-like PSU, so I invested in a silent PSU. There are lots of custom quiet PSUs recommended here, but you pay for the styling and mods.
For me, the most economical approach was to pay $50 for a standard Fortron/Sparkle PSU with inside-case 120mm fan intake. There's a review of it at Tom's.
After the PSU replacement and replacement of the PC case, the PSU is literally inaudible. The loudest ambient noise in the apartment now comes from the fridge compressor in the kitchen one room over.
It's a minimal system though, an underclocked XP2400, a single hard drive. If and when I put in some more drives, I may line the case with soundproofing...
Da Blog
Has anybody (other then Apple) been able to use convection for cooling lately? My friend has a G4 Cube, and the only thing you can hear is the clicking of an already quiet Segate Barracuda IV. I believed it managed to suck air in from the bottom to the top via some difference of temperature in the heat sink?
I always envied that computer for it's silence. I don't like to use headphones, so a silent computer has always been a good thing.
Ok, the truth is that it doesn't really run silently, but you won't hear a damn thing. Modify a desk by removing some drawers from it to make enough space for your computer to sit inside. Drill a hole at the top for the wires. A monitor, keyboard, speakers and rat are all you need on top of the desk. The best insulator is air, and there's air around the computer inside the desk. If you need to access the CD-ROM drive or something, set it up so that in place of the drawers, there is a door you can open. This has other uses, like physical layer security. You could put a lock on the damn thing or simply make it so inconspicuous (by putting a shoddy computer case next to the monitor that doesn't do anything) to fool anyone who might otherwise jack your comp. It is so silent that nobody will ever even know it is there.
You could go further, if you're like me and you've kept every old computer you've ever had. Put them in a walk-in closet and run a network cable to your desk. Run applications on all the computers and access them all from the one on your desk, via X, VNC, or other software. When your friends come over, they'll think your computer is 10 times as fast as it actually is since you can run tons of applications all at once and they all seem to operate at full speed. Little do they know that you've actually got 10 computers (or however many) doing the work. Even at work we don't put computers out of commission and continue using them to run old applications, and new ones that don't use up 200% of system resources in order to display stupid useless graphics.
Both of you are wrong
read this
http://www.audio-logic.com/html/power.html
I follow the SDK and GDN principles.. Spelling Dont Kount, Grammer Dont Neither
This stuff is designed to control acoustics within a room, and requires a double wall / airspace barrier to be effective. I would wager you'd get the same, if not more, sound absorption from throwing a doubled up blanket around the case - hey, you'd still even get the equally dumb reduction in thermal transfer and increase in overheating.
I have 7 computers up and running, 5 of them being in the same room, one in the garage and one in my sons room.
I'm here to tell you that the noise and the heat is more than I can stand. So, I scored a twin door soda display cooler from a drive in grocery store for CHEAP. It was broken and has a bullet hole in it from a robbery attempt. But, it LOOKS good. It's 6.5' tall, 5' wide and 3' deep. It's got a dozen heavy duty adjustable shelves plus internal and external 48" flourescent light fixtures. The doors are self closing, double paned glass.
Well, I stripped out the compressor and all the other cooling things. Now I have a HUGE, insulated sound proof box that is big enough to put ALL of my computers into including my laserjet and other heat producing devices.
pic of cooler stripped all the way down
pic 2 of cooler stripped all the way down
I pulled the doors off and seperated the double panes of glass and removed the "COKE" logos,
pic of one door before removing logos
Now I'm going to apply my own "etched glass" appliques that suit my tastes, I'm sanding the outer cabinet down and priming it so I can put a nice paint job on it and shortly I'll have a giant soundproof box for my pc's..
I'm going to put vents in the bottom rear and baffle and filter them to keep the sound in and and the dust out. In the top I'm going to cut a four inch diameter hole and run a PVC duct through the top of the cabinet and through my ceiling into my attic. With a small, super quiet 4" fan to help exhaust the hot air, my computer room will stay nice and cool and my air conditioner will not have to work nearly so hard as it does now.
In the winter I'll divert the exhaust into the computer room to assist the central heater..
And to top it all off, I'm going to put a few cold cathode lights in it just for a nice effect. The internal 48" flourescent light I'll leave in there to light it up when I have to pull a rack out to work on something...
My biggest problem now is figuring out how to get it into the house. I can take some door frames out but I don't know if it will turn the corners or not..
I've recently built a power amplifier with a practically sealed case with plenty of metal. The case itself is the heat sink, so there's no need to have any dusty air wandering inside. Of course audio devices don't usually need fans, but it's basically the same idea anyway. The next computer I build will hopefully have passive cooling in a similar fashion, and of course a fanless power supply.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.