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No Noise PC Reviewed
Arne Anka writes "How about a no noise PC? Well, Hush has recently launched its ATX range, which takes a full ATX motherboard, decent speed processors and graphics card, but sticks to the main concept of producing no noise PCs. The chassis is made from solid aluminum heatsinks and the whole system is fitted with heatpipes. Have a look at TrustedReviews for the first online review of the Hush ATX."
Voodoo PC makes a high-performance gaming rig that's totally fanless, uses giant heat pipes integrated into the case for cooling. It's called the Rage F50.
Apparently it can cool damn near anything as far as CPUs and GPUs, including an Athlon FX-53 and a Geforce 6800gt and up to 2 Gig of ram. The only thing you'll hear is the drives while you frag.
..but I encourage everyone to remember Apple's old G4 Cube.
Cooled by convection, the core seems to 'hover' and the only noise-making devices in the whole computer are the hard drive and the optical drive.
Sadly, Apple didn't pursue the design. From a business standpoint, this was neccessary, the computer was almost as expensive as the towers, had no real expandibility, and Apple couldn't put a ramped up G4 in the Cube and keep it passively cooled.
Regardless, it's a Mac collector item, retains a large amount of its value despite being discontinued 3 or 4 years ago, and runs OSX beautifully.
This post brought to you by a G4 Cube and 17" Apple Studio Display. No PC ever looked this good, bay-bee.
Copy of the article here
Not sure what the submitter was smoking, but the Hush ATX has been around for a while now, and was reviewed in April by SilentPCReview.
After "TrustedReviews" recovers from the slashdotting I will have a look though...
This Like That - fun with words!
The site's /.-ed so I dunno how old that review is, but SilentPCReview has had a review of the Hush ATX since April now.
These would make great MythTv boxes if they had more pci slots. Currently there are only two. It would be nice to have two regular tuners and a digital tuner in the box. They could also add an irda port to the front. Also the thing weighs 15kg or approx. 33 pounds; not something you want to trip over in the dark.
the Hush Technologies website. includes their product lineup with lots of high-res pictures.
Steal This Sig
"Is a 9600 vs. a 9800 and a 2.8 vs. a 3.2 really that big a deal? Hell you could probably swap them out and it would still work fine."
Well, the 2.8 vs. 3.2 isn't a big deal at all. I don't know why the hell the grandparent wants a Prescott - they absolutely SUCK - 50% more power consumption and 5% lower performance per clock compared to Northwood.
I'm confused as to why this system doesn't use an Athlon 64, or, better yet, a Pentium-M. Both require less power and still offer great performance.
As for graphics, the 9600XT can't really stack up to the 9700Pro/9800Pro/9800XT series, let alone the 6800GT or X800XT. I don't know if a heatpipe setup would be feasable with a hotter card, but it would make a huge difference to us gamers.
For the 9800xt, try sapphire (sapphiretech.com). They make a line of "utlimate" Ati-based cards that use honkin' huge zalman heatsinks instead of fans, even for the high-endish chipsets.
Up until last week, my Athlon XP machine sounded like a vacuum cleaner. Between the two fans in my 400 watt power supply and the CPU fan buzzing at 7200 RPM, it was atrocious. I finally got around to purchasing a new ``quiet'' heatsink and fan (copper, ~2700 RPM), but unfortunately, my case was designed for an old slot P-III, which meant that the fan was almost flush against the bottom of my power supply (although there were slots in the side of the fan casing for air to come in through). I got I2C sensor support compiled into my kernel and watched as my CPU temp varied from 65 to 80 degrees Celsius (as I taxed my processor). Soon, paging errors started creeping in, and the kernel would send my applications into la-la land.
:-)
I weighed my options: new CPU heatsink/fan that leaves some room between it and the power supply, underclock my current CPU (going from 1690 to 1250 MHz lowered my CPU temp by 10 degrees C), or try a new case.
At that point, I ran to Fry's and picked up one of those Altec Sonata Quiet cases (the one with a fan in the back of the unit with the 30 dollar mail-in rebate). Lots of room above the CPU fan. Now the only noise I hear from my workstation comes from the hard drives, and my CPU runs at a cool 40 degrees Celsius! That's a 20 degree difference, just by getting a decent case. A quality case and power supply do wonders for keeping a system quiet, cool, and stable. Now I need to do something about those annoying blue LED's...
Oh, and TAA (This Ain't Astroturf). Really!
An unjust law is no law at all. - St. Augustine
Silent power supplies usually get too hot to be reliable without taking them out of the box altogether, but a very quiet PSU is well within your reach if you shop around. I have heard that Enermax makes a fairly quiet series. If that isn't enough you can open it up and replace the fan(probably the most dangerous computer mod you can do though since it'll still have charged capacitors)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/08/13/review_hus h_atx/
Barracudas are great in respect to noise. Samsung Spinpoints are even better. I have 4 160GB Spinpoints in various machines, and the only way I ever know they're working is when the HD LED on the case is on. They're as close to silent as I've ever had in a hard drive.
:-)
The SATA versions are slightly noisier though. I've noticed that if it's quiet enough, you can barely hear the head on the SATA drive seek on occassion.
They didn't used ordinary analog TV tuner. They used the one for digital TV (quite popular in Europe right now)
One that hath name thou can not otter
If they did that, the computer would probably weigh a ton, or close to it. Not to mention the cost. If I was a millionaire though, I would skip copper and go straight to solid silver. But that's just me.