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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?"
...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. (> <)
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!
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
> 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.
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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
...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
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!
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.
The AC is actually right, most humans can hear sounds down to about 0 decibels. It's no accident that it's scaled that way.
The decibel scale is logarithmic, which means a 70dB sound has 10 times the intensity of a 60dB sound. If you double the intensity, on the decibel scale you only go up 3db. So put 2 30dB case fans in a computer, and the total from them would be 33dB, not 60dB.
It's also possible to have sounds in the negative decibel range, it's just we can't hear them.
When I consider the noise my wife would make if I spent $1,400 on a case, my current case is quieter.
To answer the question more directly, 28dB is considered the noise level of a quiet room, so less than that is accepted as "silent." If you see a dB(A), the (A) means that an A-weighted filter was used with the dB meter. reference