Slashdot Mirror
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."
to build your own PC and put it inside of a sound insulating box that you made? My computer is very fast, and I refuse to trade performance for an expensive way to try and get it quieter. The other solution is to shut off the computer at night. Really. The LED's and whir of the harddrive annoy me at night.
I'm probably at the karma cap. Mod up a funny troll instead, it lightens the mood
I want a decent video card (say an ATI 9800 XT or equiv.) and a decent speed processor (say a Prescott 3.2 Ghz or equiv.)... From what I've read, I can kiss the noiseless part of the system good bye if that's what I want... The heatpipes need to be cooled, and at close to 200 watts of heat dissipation for just the CPU and GPU, I'm not so sure their solution will work fanless...
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
I switched recently to a Soekris net4801 with a 2.5" harddrive as my main ADSL router, Postfix, Cyrus/IMAP, and thttpd server, running FreeBSD 5.2.1.
One of the main reasons was the noise of the PC being always on. Of course, the other reason was to save (a lot of) power. Now, my desktop PC is still not silent, but it's great to be able to turn if off before going to bed.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
I mean, laptops have already had this technology for years (battery versus wall power), although it is often is fairly proprietary, if it works at all.
For the 9 out of 10 times when I just want web surfing & audio streaming at home, I'd like to run at 20% of my 2 GHz and turn down the fans. After all, when you're trying to set a mood with Soma FM, who needs blaring screaming fans going?
Nothing is so smiple that it can't get screwed up.
This is an excellent advance in the use of PCs as appliances.
Compare a PC to a TV. To use the TV, you just turn your eyes towards the screen and click the remote. Within a few seconds, it's on and you're lulled into its endless mediocre entertainment and corporate propaganda dimension.
PCs with internet access are much more interesting. But you have to be at your PC desk, assuming a posture of office environment productivity. Then turn on the PC and wait, and wait, for the 'boot' process. Yes, twenty, thirty seconds go by, you're still waiting. Screen after screen of garbage text goes by. It's like bringing the Defence Department on-line. Compare the PC to a Commodore 64 (an 8-bit first-generation home-computer from the mid-1980s). With that machine, you flipped the on/off switch, and the computer was on within seconds, ready to do a rather limited number of things, but with no waiting. (You did wait to load files from the floppy drive - about 3 minutes to load 25K bytes).
So after minutes, your PC is finally UP! and ready to go. Click on the telephone access, wait another minute or so before the internet connection is 'established'. Wait...and...wait.
Oh yes, you can buy 24 telephone internet connection service, but it is very expensive. Especially compared to a television as an entertainment medium.
Still waiting? System crashed and needed 're-booting' yet? Is there one little weird-ass little program that has tripled your power-on boot time for no good reason and you can't figure out what program it is?
Are your ears hurting yet from all the white noise from all the powerful machinery creating the 'new information age' next to the desk?
Anyway, the whole point is that PCs have a long way to go from this 'Data Control, IBM, Science Is Mankind's Brother' 1960's mainframe mentality before they can be as advanced as a television set or a clock radio as a home appliance/entertainment device.
But making them quiet is a big and welcome step in that direction. A single step in a thousand mile journey.
Now how about starting to work on an OFF switch? You know, push the button and the machine goes off? Now? Within one second? Goes from using amps of power to microamps? Is it really that hard to do, guys? You'all put a man on the moon.. how about an instant OFF switch on the PC?
With an external box, you can use serious sound-dampening foam, and you have the space to use large, low-rpm fans, rather than small, speedy fans which generate a lot more sound. Also, all air channels can be designed non-straight, with extra insulating foam, thus dampening out most or all of the sound from the fans.
I have a sound box like that, and it is a marvel. A desktop machine that unaided sounds like an Airbus taking off turns into a comfortable whirr that is barely audible at all when it is placed beneath the desk.
"removable Drive Bays" - or, as the rest of the world calls them, CD's: The box has an ingenious invention called "door" which opens at the twist of a small latch. This gives full frontal nudity^H^H^H^Haccess to the drives.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
I just use a pair of noise-canceling headphones...cheaper solution and I can move them from machine to machine.
Does anyone read the articles anymore???
"There are only two backing plate slots for expansion cards and they are both occupied. One is filled by the graphics card ? an ATI Radeon 9600XT with D-SUB and DVI connectors, while the other is filled with a digital TV tuner card."
"Hiding under the CPU heatsink was a 2.6GHz Pentium 4, but Hush has now dropped this chip from its range and will be offering a 2.8GHz Pentium 4 instead."
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.
A silent PC is indeed a nice thing to have but what infuriates me, sometimes more than the noise itself, is having to wait for a PC to boot. Why can't somebody make a desktop PC that instantly (or almost instantly) powers up to its previous state? Surely one can use very low power battery back memory to store the system's state when the power is turned off, and then restore it when the power is restored. Does this technology exist?
At least one water-cooled power supply exists. A small magnetic impeller-based submersible aquarium powerhead pump has plenty of head and used with an external reservoir will be nearly silent (as the pump is immersed.) I just need to lap my homemade (well, shop-made on a bridgeport 2.5D vertical mill, but I made it) water block and I'll be ready to start water cooling. My reservoir is some knockoff tupperware :)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I have been interested in a silent system for awhile, although I don't really have the money. Zalman made the TNN 500A which is the same concept as this case, giant heat sinks with heat pipes. However the Zalman has plenty of room, supports ATX P4 3GHz or more, top ATI/Nvidia graphics chips, Tomshardware has a review. Other than weight I see no advantage with the Hush system. Price? Hush $3,069.45 USD Zalman $1199.99 USD. My no money is with Zalman.
Of course, could always make a computer without hard-disks or optical drives.
Use compact flash to hold the os and core applications. CF cards can be connected to an ide port with a simple adapter, so you should be able to boot right off the CF card with any system. I imagine most of the silent PC market will be either purpose-built systems (streaming audio players, dvd/divx players, firewall/router/access-point, etc) or web/e-mail terminals. Both of these should easily fit in a 512MB to 1GB CF card. When a drive is needed, simply plug in a USB or Firewire hard-disk, optical drive or flash drive.
Come test your mettle in the world of Alter Aeon!
With a good video/audio distribution plan (hopefully one that incorporates 2-way remote IR), it doesn't actually matter how loud my PC is...it's in another room (along with all my other AV equipment; which also distribute their signals to multiple TVs.
I mean, making a silent PC is kinda like making a silent Central HVAC unit...(nobody steal my idea now...)