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A Silent PC Solution?
An anonymous reader writes "Fed up with the monotonous whirring emanating from your PC? Well for once, someone with an actual knowledge of acoustics demonstrates what can be done AND backs it up with measurements!"
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Just buy a laptop, run it in powersaving mode all the time, plug it into a monitor, keyboard and mouse. You'll never know the difference. I got sick of transferring files between locations (work, second office, home, laptop) so I just have gone laptop only and only fire up my home PC for video games.
Start with the Case - Aluminum is the best but really expensive a cheapo person would make a case out of wood (im sure your going to do this one).
Next the Case Fans - yeah you can buy those fancy isolators, better yet use silicon to "glue" the fans to the outlets.
Hard Drive - Noisy little beast you can actually have it free hanging in the pc or use zip ties to isolate it from the case. Or you can sandwich it in between two thick sheets of copper or aluminum (wouldn't use wood here) and put bolts at the corners and tighten lightly.
CPU cooler - hmm can't use the fans from a hair drier, any other ideas?
The Actual Fans - ball bearing last longer and are a little more expensive, better go with the sleeve bearings because they are quieter. Also if the fan gets noisy peel the off sticker (half way so you can re-stick it) on back and drop some 3n1 oil in the hole.
Placement - get the computer off of the desktop and put it into a ventilated box. I have been thinking about building a small box with a regular household box fan on the back having a solenoid start the fan when the computer is on.
73 units (low-noise case fans, 40 pounds)
5.5 units (low-noise power supply, 90 pounds)
9.6 units (CPU/GPU cooling, 75 pounds)
5.2 units (acoustic materials and HD enclosure, 128 pounds)
5.8 units (resistors on case fans, 0 pounds)
1.3 units (remaining)
So, by far the most bang for the bucks is in the case fans (with resistors), accounting for 79% of the noise. The worst deal is the acoustic materials and HD enclosure, which cost a whopping 128 pounds for only 5% of the total noise.
Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
I didn't read the article cos it was already trodden on by the time I got there.
/linitx.org
but I built a fanless PC for less than $300 using a Mini-itx mother board, it's quite good.
I installed the 17cmx17cm mainboard in the cardboard box it came in. It's small and quiet... I should've bought a quieter hard drive though.
Useful links:
linitx.com
mini-itx.com
via.com.tw
I think I must've missed why this is news.
I've built a couple audio work stations where I was stuck constructing a machine where the PC and disk were in the recording booth. Bloody propriety card/connectors would not let me move the machines out of the room.
Anyhow.. I watercooled the disk, CPU, chipset, and power supply. No fans and the SCSI drives were enclosed well enough the 'audiophile' found the ambient noise acceptable. (I did not hear anything) Since I was not using any of the overclocking peltier kits, the coolant ran just above room temperature so I did not have any condensation issues a lot of people have. The copper tubing piped to another room where it dumped the heat. Worked great, though you did not move it around.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
search google for "undervolting". it worked for me - i undervolted an old amd t-bird 1.3ghz to 1.3 volts at 1ghz. i have no fan on the cpu or on the bridge. check "athcool" for linux, my computer stays under 70 centigrade and is _may_ more silent :-)
Sheesh - you'd think active noise cancellation hardware would be cheaper... (Not to mention way, way, cooler!) Er - as in "gadget-like cool", not temperature cool.
I put my pc case in another room using extension cables. Door closed. I dont hear a thing!
I have a week-old G5 dualie, which replaced a convection cooled Sage iMac (around the same general era as your Grape, maybe slightly later.) What blows my mind is that the G5 is quieter than the iMac. The G5 has a much quieter hard disk, and the low-speed fans are really, really quiet.
Brilliant engineering.
I was tired of all the noise from my machine and bought one of the HUSH ATX machines from Hush Technologies (from Logic Supply) and I'm very happy with it. It's extremely quiet; the only noise I can ever hear is a very slight one from the hard drive occasionaly. No fans at all.
- couldn't figure out why all my silentPC sites had all gone down :D
My idea is to have two layers of glass (or something else waterproof) with damp sand in between, possibily using water or homebrew alcohol
^ this liquid then evaporates
Picture of the idea:
pic
Prose and links:
txt
More:
directory
A blog I run for the wealth
I've tried a lot of things and spent a lot of money to quiet my older computers. But when I bought a Dell, (Poweredge 400SC), boy, were they *quiet*! The fans are low-speed, the drives are mounted on rubber mounts, and the power supplies are quiet. All for $250 including tax and shipping. That's a complete system for a price of a barebone. Even their cheapest (2400) models are very quiet. (I've got one). So I don't notice my computers anymore, even sleeping in the same room.
It goes to show, a little thought in case design can pay off handsomely, and without costing a lot of money.
In Soviet Russia, articles before post read *you*!
I'm seeing the value in a very-very-quiet-if-not-silent computer more all the time. I spend a lot of time doing production on live recordings, and just lately, the noise has been getting to me more than usual, making it hard to determine what's background noise on the recording, and what's fan noise from the (ill-placed) CPU reflecting back at me from the corner behind the desk. I could definitely improved things by shuffling the setup around, but it wouldn't really be workable to put the CPU under the table with all the wire-swapping and disc-exchanging I do (not to mention the local cat population milling around amongst the wires).
All of which is to say, 'depends on your application.'
I run a fan in our room at night as it is. I started doing this in college because if I didn't, I'd never get any sleep. The fan would drown out all the noise from people coming and going in the dorm.
I just continued this on. Of course now, I suppose if someone were to break into my house I'd never hear it...but that's why I have my dog...vicious little blighter that he is.
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
Newer version of VNC have starting using video driver hooks for up performance. I was always a fan of VNC for my windows boxes (free!), but always hated how slow it was. With this new driver hook stuff, it works just as well as Remote Desktop, I think. It's about 90% the speed of sitting at the real machine.
Anyways, because the driver hook is part of the base VNC code, all of the VNC derivatives have it (TightVNC, Ultr@VNC, etc).
I'd check it out.
When I built my latest desktop box, I went for a Antec Sonata which is MUCH quieter than my old system. In fact, even with it sitting on my desk next to my monitors, I hardly hear it - just a little drive whine.
:-)
Unfortunately my house is in the middle of major renovation, so my office is temporarily located in the basement. Now I have all the noise from the water heater (power vent) and boiler. My new office design has the systems in a back-open cubbie under the desk with a smoked-glass door (kinda like a stereo cabinet.) That should all but eliminate the remaining noise. It's too bad most periphereals have such short cables.
My noisy servers are in another basement room - one with 4' thick granite walls so it stays nice and cool year round (and a higher humidity level for less static.) I don't hear them at all
actually one of the first things you notice after working a week in a really quiet environment is how damn noisy the rest fo the world is. I spent 2 weeks in a remote rural location helping a guy build his recording studio in his vacation home. insane amounts of sound insolation and sound isolation on the studio walls, celing and floor for a studio that is located in a spot where the most noise is at most a few geese flying overhead. it's a place where I have been woke up at night because the STARS were too bright shining through the bedroom window.... and by the time I left could finally make out the bark of the dog at the nearest neighbors 5 miles away in the early morning that he mentioned to me on day one.
returning to the city, I could not sleep for weeks, and I was highly irritated by the drastic difference in background noise levels. There it was almost zero DB at 10pm outside... the kind of silence you feel and that makes you notice that you can hear the amount of noise your head makes.
now, mentioning that, I am in a server room with 4 machines right now, 6 72" tall server racks sitting there full of blade severs with a couple of the newer big servers sounding like vaccuum cleaners running. I also have 4 TV's on right now with the sound on to different levels.
but, when you get used to quiet, you crave it and curse the noise of civilization.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.