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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."
Turn any regular computer into a noiseless one by turning it off.
...I prefer a system that runs with enough heat and fans that I don't have to pay heating as well as the electric for my computer.
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.
Hard Drives make Noise. CD-Roms make noise. Floppies make noise. A noiseless computer is impossible because anything with a motor will make noise.
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
..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.
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.
So get a SSD drive from M-Systems (www.m-sys.com) They come in IDE and SCSI format. Oh...and don't complain about the price. If you want a solution to the noise problem, here it is. ;)
Life is not for the lazy.
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.
I'm sure it's been mentioned before but if you really want a "noisless" computer just buy a laptop.
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.
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.
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'm not sure if I want a computer that the review lables as ripe for a museum!
who | grep -i blond | date cd ~; unzip; touch; strip; finger; mount; gasp; yes; uptime; umount; sleep
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.
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.'"