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Tom's Reviews Expensive, Noiseless Case
hakker writes "Toms Hardware Guide is running a review of a new case that claims it provides noiseless computing. The TNN 500A case from Zalman Tech is fanless (including PSU), and uses a bunch of heatpipes to move heat outside of the case from sources inside the system. Potentially costing as much as $1400, how much is your peace and quiet worth?"
$1400 would sure buy a lot of Lord of the Rings DVD's or a lot of hookers. Since I am on Slashdot, you know they will be robotic hookers.
...unless you're running one of these :)
$1400 for a quiet PC or $1400 for a bunch of strippers and beer.. decisions, decisions..
(\_/)
(O.o) This is Bunny. (> <)
I know as a college student that a quiet atmosphere while doing work is valuable. The question for most would be, is it $1,400 worth. I *know* that I could not afford that while trying to pay tuition, renting a house, and feeding myself. Somethings are necessary, and some are just...not. Now, if someone gave that to me as a gift or something, no way i would complain :)
Jeff
As expensive as that case is, it sure is gonna be quiet. It'd be months before I could afford to buy anything to put in it that made noise.
for $1400 I'll rent the apartment next to mine, put the computer over there, leave the air conditioning on, drill a hole in the wall, and run my cables to it through the wall while leaving my monitor, keyboard, and mouse in my apartment... and still come out ahead!
For $1400, you could buy two Linux licenses from SCO.
Sears carries one for $600... And thouugh you'll need a tad more square footage to put it, it's ripe for some great extreme case mods.
Heil Sig! -Rob
Fanless cases running VIA EPIA chipsets and cpus have been available for some time and are quite useful, especially when running operating systems that allow one to stick a huge monitor in front of them, a keyboard, a 3-button mouse and connect to the massively parralel machines in the quite noisy, but lovely air conditioned, server room.
I can't run Quake on one of these, but then again it's research we're talking about -- if I wanted games I'd buy a PS2.
The only fan I have is, funnily enough, on my video card.
> Potentially costing as much as $1400, how much is your
> peace and quiet worth?
I'd value it highly, but not that high. Almost all of my computing life has been spent around equipment with fans, drives or printers that clatter whirr hum or otherwise make other white noise underneath. That's stretching back to the late 1970s.
On a few occasions I've had a chance to use an entirely silent machine, one of which was a 700MHz iMac belonging to a dear friend, who has since sold it on for a G4 model. When I used it however, the sound from the HD was undiscernable, and with no fan inside it was genuinely silent. Browsing online and emailing while it was raining gently outside was an experience, at my own desk I often have no idea it's been raining for hours as I've been working with the white noise from at least two PC cases.
If I could have genuine silence again, I would. I'm considering putting all the noisy components in another room and cabling through the wall for the KVM.
The silence is well worth it. Perhaps if I won the lottery I'd invest in $1400 per case for it, but not on my current salary.
nude macgirls webcam
my room sound's eerily quite without it. Besides, the noise helps droun out my roomates, always a plus.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
My box is located in my bedroom, and I have an assload of fans.
I recently discovered that I can't sleep without the computer running. I actually find the noise pleasant.
I wouldn't shell out 1400 bucks for insomnia.
~To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation. -Yann Martel
Perhaps if you could retrofit a Mac motherboard into it...
Could someone fill me in on the background of "silence". How many dBs is silent?
[blue] - The Ministry of Information approved this message...
After loading up my case with 8 fans to control the heat from an excessive amount of drives, I placed some soundproofing paneling on the inside. From there, I ran KVM cables about 10 feet or so to a closet. I close the door on that side, but the hatch to the attic is cracked just a bit to keep the closet cool. Of course, it's not *completely* noiseless, but pretty damn close. Only costs were for the KVM cables, and maybe a couple of bucks a month for the warm air that leaks into the attic. And I'd certainly rather spend that $1400 on a trip to Mexico, or something to that effect.
this should be great for recording engineers trying to keep their studios as quiet as possible. you dont realize just how much ambient noise there is arround you until you step into a mix room of a recording studio, its an alien experience.
I want 2D games back.
If I wanted to put my computer in my Closet, what would be the easiest way of allowing me to connect my monitor / keyboard / usb goodies[toothbrush :D] at my desk, about 10-20ft away.
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...in three easy steps.
1. Antec Performance One P160 case.
2. Nexus PSU, fans and CPU heatsink and fan.
3. Samsung SpinPoint series of HDDs.
Zalman's products aren't bad but, IMHO, Nexus' are superior.
Oh, and either ditch the jet engine that masquerades as a graphics card with something quieter or replace its fan too.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
The American Tinnitus Association has a wealth of information regarding hearing and tinnitus. It's well worth your hearing to do whatever you can to prevent hearing loss or damage.
I've suffered with tinnitus for years, and have changed fans several times looking for something quieter. It's amazing the amount of noise the average fan produces, and it would be well worth it to me to quieten down the office even more.
Of course, all those years going to rock concerts at the Grande in Detroit probably didn't help either.
Pete Carr Owner Chatmag.com
I have a totally silent workstation.
:).
;)
I've got a empty room besides mine, and some months ago I got the idea of putting the computer in the other room (while having the monitor, keyboard, mouse etc in my room). So I drilled a hole in the wall, and bought extension cables for the monitor, keyboard and usb. On my end I've put a USB-hub, so my extension cable give me four usb inputs (nice if you've got memory card readers, joysticks etc). I've been thinking about buying an USB2 CD-writer, but since I already own a cd-writer it seemed like a better idea to somehow get my cd-writer inside my room. I managed to get an IDE-cable through the wall, and I now only have to reach a little to use the cdrom drive. I've also put an own power switch on my side (extended), so that I don't have to leave the room to restart my computer.
I tried putting the computer back, just to check the difference. It's huge!
Because I have my workstation in the same room as I sleep, I can set some downloads for the night (eg. Linux ISOs) -- and sleep
Cost: ~60 bucks. (usb hub included)
Value: Great!
Heatsinks without fans? Does anybody still do those? One box I have here pulls about 70 watts per CPU using aluminum wide-fin sinks and *no* fans. The HDD noise is greater. FWIW cost-wise I picked it up on E-bay a couple years ago for $150 USD. And no, performance does *not* suck for day-to-day desktop apps (sorry, not a gamer). Does anybody still design shiznit like that?
C|N>K
Even better if you don't need all the power is to pick up a used PIII system from Dell or HP. They are even more quiet machines than the P4's, and have plenty of power for most tasks. Right now I'm sitting in front of a 866Mhz HP Vectra, and hum from this old 15" monitor is louder than the computer.
If you want a truely silent PC, then you will need one of these flash drives. It will cost you a shit-load of money, but it's a solution non the less. Check them out here http://www.m-sys.com/
Life is not for the lazy.
...if you're an audio engineer, video producer, or run a studio. A case like this allows you to work with instruments and other devices, while editing the sound live, with easy access to your monitor/keyboard. This is particularly useful for those who operate recording studios as a side business, out of their home or office space... or people trying to develop their own music, semi-professionally.
People who know how to do this can start up their business without spending well over $1,400 building a soundproof room. For full-blown recording studios, this is a no-brainer. They probably wouldn't think twice about spending double that to keep the sound engineer from getting distracted and/or missing sound details just because of a noisy fan.
You know those sweet looking cars you see in auto show reports? Those one-offs designed to get people excited about the manufacturer and looking at its other models? Ever try to buy one? They're frickin' expensive. A concept of a $15,000 vehicle will set you back six figures.
That's what this case is, a concept. It's a limited run designed to get the money of early adopters, get people excited about the manufacturer and looking at its other products, and test the market viability of such a product.
It's very cool, I want one but can't afford one, have looked over their other products (well-priced nice stuff and I'll probably get one of their quiet CPU HSFs), and look forward to this case hitting the $100-$200 price range where I'll be able to afford it.
As far as Zalman is concerned with me, they have a success in a $1400 case. Crazy, huh?
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
My noiseless case was about $150, thankyouverymuch.
After years of trying to build and buy quiet PCs I
finally stumbled upon a Dell 400SC. That thing is
super quiet and super cheap. I have a few of them.
You can pick one up for about $399 and most of the
time there is a $100 rebate on them that brings the
price down to $299. Free shipping too.
Oh and I do have the completely silent VIA based
mini-ITX system also that I boot over the network.
But it aint fast. I end up using my Dells most of
the time. They are not as quiet as the VIA, but
they are *very* quiet.
Here is the unofficial FAQ with
tonnes of more information for those interested.
I like the sound of fans in my computer, it's reasurring. I know that everything is working properly. Now, when it gets a high workload, the fans speed up. If I'm not doing anything to it at the time, I'll look to what's causing it. Or, for example, if I turn it on, and the fans spin up, but nothing else does. Noise has become a diagnostic tool of sorts. Now, I've heard my share of windtunnel cases (not my computers, other peoples), but I've never owned a computer considerably louder than my P-166. I use my Dell as white noise when I sleep too. (the second quietest computer I own is my Dell XPS, that model has 5 fans in it, though you wouldn't know by listening to it)(don't flame me over that either, I build my own computers in most cases, but in this case it was $400 cheaper than building my own (seriously!), gotta love gotapex and Dell e-mail coupons, but I'm getting off track)
It's not worth the cost in my opinion. Especially not that $1400 monetary cost, but the loss of my fans as diagnostic tools is too much.
Instead of spending $1400, how about assembling a case around a fanless Antec Phantom 350 power supply?
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
i sent my noisy pc along with $999 to some guy in india named Haji, who will be doing my computer work for me for as long as i live. not only is it quiet, i have $401 left over for hookers and beer.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
For probably the same amount as that case, you can buy yourself a Vapochill, which will undoubtedly drop the temperature to around -5 to 5 degrees F. Of course, it still has fans and hard drives and optical drives, but you could create a case for your case. Using the same methods to make ported speaker enclosures, you can create a windy path for the sound to slowly leak out. Sorta like how Bose WaveRadio's work, except using eggcrate foam in the inner paths to dissipate the noise, rather than channel it out into beautiful, beautiful noise. Cheaper, cooler, and sexier, because you made it yourself.
I recently got the Optiplex SX270 from Dell, which costs about $500, and was impressed with how virtually silent it is (not to mention the small footprint). And of course you could always pick up a second hand Cube :-)
Impossible is nothing.
Every one of the newer flat panel iMacs I've used has been pretty much dead silent while running. If I was ready to spend $1400 for quiet computing, I'd rather get a whole machine for around that price than just a case for one!
I just built a computer for a guitar-playing colleague who uses his box to mix/record music professionally. It's a well-cooled P4 (with 2gigs of pc3200, CL2 RAM to hold some of the larger samples)... but he had to disable some of the fans because his musical ear could pick up the white noise in the background of his recordings.
I agree... professional audiophiles will pay that amount easily. In my experience, when someone does music for a living, their ear is often able to pick out those subtle imperfections in a recording. For an environment/person like that, noisy fans are a liability.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
I find fan noise very pleasant. While at work, because of the whir of fans around me, It completely masks out the ringing in my ears. It's only when I get to the quietness at home do I notice them ringing again.
I very much doubt the db level of computer fans can come close to further damaging the inner ear..... Unless you're using one of These
When I consider the noise my wife would make if I spent $1,400 on a case, my current case is quieter.
These guys have been selling this for a long time:
http://www.calmpc.com/. There biggest problem may be the lack of distribution in the US, but ordering from Korea went very smooth in my experience.
OK, maybe this doesn't support a 4GHz P4, but I'm running a 1 GHz PIII in one of these with a high end ATI video card and using CompactFlash for a harddrive.
There's special heat dispensers for the power supply, CPU and graphics card.
It's just amazing. You hit the power on button and nothing happens. Then all of a sudden, there's video, and the OS starts booting. You stick your head in the enclosure and you can just hear NOFFINK.
Hmm.... generally true, but the fans in the G5 spin according to heat/processor load. It's not a "guaranteed quiet" machine so much as it's a "normally quiet" machine.
For something like a recording studio, this could pose problems because they might put the CPU under high load with virtual instruments and such, and suddenly have the fans speed up - making it noisier at just the wrong time.
The G5's are also suffering from other noise issues. Many (my dual 2Ghz G5 included) suffer from electrical chirping sounds coming from the motherboard or power supply. It's sort of a "cricket chirping" noise you hear when the CPU is crunching on data (such as uncompressing files). It's not a loud noise, mind you, but it's audible and could get annoying in a very quiet room.
In my experience, the flat panel iMacs are actually the most quiet machines Apple makes right now.
- Evercase 4252 case: $37. About as un-cool looking as you can get, but it has good airflow and the openings on the front are baffled a bit to keep it quiet.
- Fortron 300W PS: $24 A no-name brand. But it uses a 12cm fan instead of the usual 8cm ones, so it can turn more slowly (and quietly) and still move enough air.
- Thermalright Heatsink: $39. Huge and a pain to install, but great heat transfer. Just make sure its weight doesn't rip the CPU socket off your motherboard.
- "Stealth" fans: 2 x $8. These are reasonably quiet and easy to find. The Panaflo fans are quieter but more expensive and hard to find.
- Fan speed control: $19. Ugly, but it works. I actually used two small, single-fan controls that dangle inside my case, but I can't find them online.
- Vibration absorption mats: $15. Dampens vibrations and covers annoying ventilation holes in the side of the case
That's what, $150? You can send the extra $1250 to me.The links are to Newegg just because I like them and it's easy to find things on their site. I'm not affiliated with them, ymmv, void where not prohibited, etc.
Or you can spend $1400.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Looks like he just whipped out a cheap digital camera and started snapping away, which is fine for your dime-a-dozen review site, but this is Tom's Hardware, which I'd argue is one of the largest review sites online (surprised they don't have a magazine yet). You'd think he could invest in a little better lighting or something, especially when it's a review of a product they have in office.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
A case that functions as a heat-sink is a brilliant idea. I do hope the idea if not the product takes off but for now I doubt any of us are reaching for our cheque books.
Personally, I gave up on the idea of swapping out noisy components for quieter, better-engineered replacements (expensive idea if you have multiple systems) and built my own box. The results are always better and you get way-kewl furniture as a bonus. 3/4-inch MDF is cheap, 3/4-inch birch isn't much more, and even if you double-wall the enclosure for a dead air layer (highly recommended), you'll shell out less than $100. The time? Skip tee vee for a night or two and pretend you're Norm -- plaid shirt required, of course.
Oh, and if you're living with rackmount equipment and need a solution, this centrifugal fan (read "bathroom) is probably the quietest in existence, moves lots of air, and works great either housed in a cabinet or installed in the ceiling of a small closet.
What is all this fascination with fanless cases? I always thought fans were an indication of how powerful your computer was, and therefore how cool you are. If your computer doesn't need enough fans to make it sound like a jet engine, well, then your computer just isn't doing anything worthwhile.
My computer has more fans than CleverNickName.
At first I thought it said "expensive, noisy case" and thought it was more about SCO...
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
Who needs a desk?
Nice comfy chair in the middle of an acoustically perfect room with a nice sound system.
Slot-load optical drive
Keyboard on a swing-out tray
Wireless mouse with a small mousing pad.
Big white wall
Projector
And before you go harping on price, we ARE talking about a $1400 computer case in this thread.....
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Probably much more likely than heatpipes, fans will fail one day, especially if they draw dust and vapors into the PC/server in some environments.
I would not want to be liable for a system that starts a fire rather than powering down after running for a while without cooling, e.g. as it fails to recognise a broken fan a few years down the road.
A case like Zalman's could be dropped at a client's site e.g. even at a petrol plant in the middle of a desert, without having to worry just as much - about travelling a long way for service every now and then, or about potential responsibilities for applying only second-best components which are bound to break in a possibly hazardous way some day.
Not that magically nothing's prone to go wrong anymore at all, but isn't it a good start that due to the absence of fans, you may spare yourself one nightmare?
SilentPCreview.com has reviews for "silent" PC parts(cases, CPU fans, power supplies, etc), and you can probably get some idea from them if you want to build a quiet system. I don't live in recording studio, so I don't think I would ever need this one to create 0db environment. My neighbors are obnoxiously noisy already, so what's the point?
Besides I've been using a laptop primarily and it's quiet enough (...duh) even without water cooling thingy. Laptop these days are not so expensive, you can get a good one for $1400 and less. Of course if you need to build a server, laptop won't work, but for 'home' use, laptop works good enough and is quiet.
Just get better parts. Set a quiet power supply, and fans. Then get something to dampen harddrive noise, get quiet processor and silent videocard heat sink, maybe throw some acoustic dampening foam on the case walls ans you should be able to bring the PC noise down around the background noise of the room. PRobably run you $200-$300 for the whole deal.
www.quietpc.com
www.silentmaxx.net
Two places to get you started.
There are cheaper solutions such as Hush ATX and the Hush ITX computers
Heat pipes are probably an unecessary overkill.
Zero Sum (don't amount to much). [root@localhost]
Matter of fact, I really prefer to actually hear my fans and similar cooling stuff. That way, I'm not dependent on some temperature sensors that - in my case (pun intended)- fail all the time, because I just HEAR if something has gone wrong... ... thus creating a new style of IT-geekdom loosely connected to those car geeks out there ^_^
Screw the FSM - Real geeks believe in the Invisible Pink Unicorn
I have actually done this. ..., but these are nicely out of sight next to the tv set and you have 'em anyway... ah yes another cable for tv-out.. :)
pc in the hallway under the stairs. At first I only had 2 cables through the wall , one the monitor cable and 1 cable for the receptor of the wireless mouse and keyb.
I have added a webcam,serial cable for digital camera, sound out to stereo, fireware for video camera,
So the number of cables adds up but depending on your actual setup this is not a problem , just a bigger hole
Yes indeed, I have to get up to load a cd, but I have a completely silent pc ( only way to convince the wife it could go in the livingroom) wich is not an eyesore ( nice flatpanel) and The kids can't touch the buttons !
In evaluating the overall temperature cooling and performance of this chassis, we found the TNN 500A able to run at optimum cool temperatures when placed in roomy quarters with adequate ventilation, which provided for effective heat dissipation capability. In other words, we do not recommend placing the Zalman TNN 500A under a desk, or in the farthest corner of a desk butted up against the side of a desk or a wall. A better solution would be to place this unit in the middle of a desk, on top of a desk, or next to a desk in such a way that there is adequate airflow around both of the side panels, allowing for maximum heat dissipation.
We did encounter a problem with a temperature increase inside the chassis when the TNN 500A was placed too close to a floor heating vent in our test scenario. Placing it too close to the heating duct caused the internal temperature to rise (for obvious reasons), and this skewed the effectiveness of the side panel heat dissipation capabilities.
Still, during our testing we did not encounter any crashes or sub-par results in use.
This might be an issue in some college dorm setups ...
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Robosexuals!
pi = 3.141592653589793helpimtrappedinauniversefactory7
The COCOON enclosure seems like a better idea. While hideously expensive, it's still lower cost than this solution.
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
I own the 2ghz dual processor G5, and it's a really sweet machine. In fact, I'm typing this on it right now.
:-). Another factor, of course, is that it does in fact get my render done fast, so I never have to listen to it for very long.
I have it under my desk, and at this moment, it's just about noiseless. If I turn off my music, I can hear a slight whir and some HDD noise, but if I put the music back on or stop trying to hear it, it's totally inconspicuous.
But when I do rendering for my video projects, the fans turn up, and I can hear them clearly even over my music. I actually like the way they sound for the short time they're on; I guess it acts as some kind of reassurance that my computer is trying its best to get my render done quickly
Apple brand loyalty aside, I don't think it would be worth a $1,400 case to make my computer more quiet than the G5. On the other hand, I have no idea how much my G5 case would actually cost as a standalone unit. They're using some pretty pricey components in there.
D
You can get as close to silent as you need for a lot less than $1400, with an ordinary case, a Zalman fan, a quiet power supply, and a hard drive noise dampener. I did it for under $300. (Not counting the case, motherboard, and hard drive, which I recycled from my previous system.)
Unless you get under the desk and put your head next to the case, the only thing you can hear is the CD-RW drive when it's running. (Which makes it arguably quieter than the Zalman -- the Tom's Hardware reviewers stated they could still hear the Hard Drive.) My desktop is still a PIII, which made it easy, but it's also feasible for P4s. Look at the Silent PC Review site.
This case, even at this price, is *perfect* for industrial applications, and other applications that have a high amount of dust, soot, or other particulate matter in the air.
Since there are no fans, there is no requirement to circulate air *inside* the case, so the inside stays nice and clean - even in a very dirty environment.
Ever seen the inside of a PC that's been at a coal mining operation? Or at a volcanic research station? Or a military PC used outdoors in a dusty environment? They get pretty filthy inside very quickly, and it is this filth that causes fans to fail, and then the components to fail.
If someone uses this case to sell a packaged boxed PC solution for dirty air environments, it's a winner.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
This case first appeared on Slashdot last summer, linking to an article (auf Deutsch) with much better pictures.
Co-operation beats competition
Buy the processor with the highest frequency your money can buy, the best heat sink, and an adjustable speed cooler.
When you need silence, reboot, downclock the processor and turnoff the cooler.
A 3.2Ghz half at half frequency (that not means half speed) is still very fast.
You can also just use a high quality headphone
And those sound enginners might user their computers on a hot room, because air-conditioning make noise too.