Building a Silent, Air-Cooled System

A reader:"Tired of those whining fans? Want some piece and quiet when working on your PC? Water cooling can be too expensive and too complicated to install, why not just stick to air cooling? This article describes how you can remove PC noise without turning the inside of your PC case into a small oven. Follow the road to silence while keeping an eye on the system temperature."

Comments

Seagte Barracuda Hard Drives

[bigtallmofo]

I know that they're selling some lower-end models now, but every Seagate Barracuda hard drive I've ever purchased is far quieter than comparable hard drives. I have been using them exclusively for a few years now and really enjoy the PEACE and quiet.

Re:Seagte Barracuda Hard Drives

[DustyShadow]

That's interesting because I have a Barracuda and it's probably the loudest drive that I've ever owned...

Re:Seagte Barracuda Hard Drives

[Cthefuture]

Yeah, me too. They are the quietest 3.5" drives out there. There are quieter 2.5" drives, but they lack space and performance.

What I hate about all drives, even the Seagate's, is they every few minutes they go into some self check mode or something. I have no idea what the drive is doing, but it gets louder. This is not disk access, it's like when the drive has been mostly idle for several minutes it starts doing something (internal checks or something?). It's annoyingly loud though.

Re:Seagte Barracuda Hard Drives

[Electronik]

Seagate make the quietest, most reliable drives I know of. I specify them in all my audio (recording studio) computers. Not one (touch wood) failure in 6 years.

If your computer is scanning the drives, make sure you have fast search turned OFF in XP, it will try to index your HDD everytime it 'thinks' you aren't needing to access the drive. Also check for spyware and all the usual nonsense running in the background.

Finaly, you can suspend your HDD or use sleeves to stop the drive transmitting the vibrations to the case. The case can act a little like a guitar body and amplify the grinding sounds.

Re:Seagte Barracuda Hard Drives

[MightyMartian]

The Barracudas must have changed. I have an old SCSI at home that sounds like an F16 on takeoff.

Re:Seagte Barracuda Hard Drives

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah this is the feature called STIR. During idle times the drive will go into self test to try and predict a premature failure. This feature is always on and cannot be toggled off.

AND THIS SUCKS, becouse the noise is damn irritating. I use this script to keep my seagate drives quiet (executed after bootup)

#!/bin/sh
while true
do
echo `date` > /mnt/sda1/.keepalive
echo `date` > /mnt/sdb1/.keepalive
sleep 30
done /Björn

Re:Seagte Barracuda Hard Drives

[Anonymous Coward]

Forgot:

You also need the sync option in fstab for this to work best /dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdb1 vfat noauto,user,sync,dirsync,noexec,uid=1000,gid=1000, fmask=111 0 0

will make the file be written to disk immediately, stopping the "idle noise" crap

Re:Seagte Barracuda Hard Drives

[Xeleema]

What I hate about all drives, even the Seagate's, is they every few minutes they go into some self check mode or something. I have no idea what the drive is doing, but it gets louder. This is not disk access, it's like when the drive has been mostly idle for several minutes it starts doing something (internal checks or something?). It's annoyingly loud though.

Sounds like the Sleep Time for IDE access is set too low. Hard drive access doesn't have to happen to wake up the drive, any IDE access could trigger it. Chech your BIOS.

Re:Seagte Barracuda Hard Drives

[steeef]

I suggest you take a look at Samsung's SpinPoint drives. They're all the rage with Quiet PC enthusiasts (such as those at Silent PC Review). Barracuda's are quiet (I've got two V's right now), but they're certainly still audible, especially as they get older and the bearings wear. Apparently SpinPoints are quieter than Barracudas (at least initially).

Re:Seagte Barracuda Hard Drives

[Ptur]

Don't know why this is posted here, the guys at http://www.silentpcreview.com/ are working on this for years!

FYI, I'll soon be building a noiseless AMD A64-3500+ for our living room. Once you've read the articles at SilentPCReview, no problem.

BTW, the Seagate barracuda's are no longer the quiet drives they used to be, since their acoustic managment software has been disabled (pending a lawsuit I think)

Peter

Re:Seagte Barracuda Hard Drives

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a Quantum Biogfoot 2.5GB. It's not particularly fast, nor quiet, nor even extremely reliable. It does look cool, though, and If I had two I could fit them both in one 5.25" hard drive bay of the old server case I have in the basement. (The case has no 3.5" hard drive bays. The floppy bays don't have screw holes that work for standard 3.5" hard drives.

Re:Seagte Barracuda Hard Drives

[Anonymous Coward]

and you just can't beat the 5 year warranty on Seagates OEM drives.

Re:Seagte Barracuda Hard Drives

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Won't that kill the performance? I like my drives to be write cached.

Re:Seagte Barracuda Hard Drives

[Anonymous Coward]

You need one with the liquid bearing thingies to be quiet. Mine are very quiet but an older SCSI one I have is really loud.

Re:Seagte Barracuda Hard Drives

[operagost]

A 1999 SCSI Barracuda has about as much in common with a 2005 ATA Barracuda as a 1965 Mustang has with a 2005. They look similar in some ways and have the same name, that's all.

Re:Seagte Barracuda Hard Drives

[zerocool^]

Finaly, you can suspend your HDD or use sleeves to stop the drive transmitting the vibrations to the case. The case can act a little like a guitar body and amplify the grinding sounds.

You can get a new antec case, specifically the sonata, which comes with rubber shock mounts for the hard drives. Also has a 120mm fan for quiet operation.

Now only if there were a decent LPGA775 quiet aftermarket fan...

Re:Seagte Barracuda Hard Drives

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. It might be better just to do a manual flush:

#!/bin/sh
while true
do
echo `date` > /mnt/sda1/.keepalive
echo `date` > /mnt/sdb1/.keepalive
sync
sleep 30
done

Re:Seagte Barracuda Hard Drives

[X0563511]

I took apart an ancient (but still perfectly functional, but small) seagate apart recently. The things are built like tanks, and extremely precicely it seems as well.

Good quality drives.

Re:Seagte Barracuda Hard Drives

[X0563511]

OT, but whats the html tag for the space character that isn't removed from the browser? (ie i want the -- Chinese Proverb part of my sig to be indented 10 spaces)

Re:Seagte Barracuda Hard Drives

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget to set swap in Windows at a fixed size. Windows has a nasty habbit of adjusting swap space.

Re:Seagte Barracuda Hard Drives

[mrtom852]

My drive is suspended with some elastic which is tied through the screw holes in a 5.25 bay. None of the vibration gets through to the case and it is surprisingly sturdy. Definately worth doing!

And yes, I'm another who only buys Seagate.

Re:Seagte Barracuda Hard Drives

[X0563511]

Duct tape. :)

Re:Seagte Barracuda Hard Drives

[Anonymous Coward]

That is probably one of the older non fluid-filled bearing models. The newer models are essentially silent. A barracuda from 1999 is definately loud.

Re:Seagte Barracuda Hard Drives

[Anonymous Coward]

That is, an ampersand, nbsp, semicolon, no space between them.

Re:Seagte Barracuda Hard Drives

[DustyShadow]

I'll have to check up on the details about mine. I've had it about a year so I've forgotten the details about it by now. It is a SATA drive though and I don't think it was a cheap model.

Re:Seagte Barracuda Hard Drives

[Slack3r78]

At our shop we use nothing but Samsung and Seagate drives, and in my experience, the Samsungs are almost always quieter. The Seagates are certainly near-silent in comparison to Maxtors, or worse still, WD, but there's still some occassional seek noise.

My system at home has two 160GB Samsung drives in it (One PATA, one SATA and about a year and a half newer) and I can't remember *ever* hearing HD noise out of it. I'm using an Antec SLK-3700BQE case, and by far the biggest noise out of the system is my 60mm AMD retail box fan, which I'm looking at replacing with a lower RPM 80mm.

Re:Seagte Barracuda Hard Drives

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought a Seagate Barracude V SATA hard disk about a year ago, and it is one of the loudest drives I have owned. It's pretty quiet at idle, but that's about it. I replaced it with a Samsung, which is the quietest drive I have ever owned.

Re:Seagte Barracuda Hard Drives

[X0563511]

Well, it works outside of slashdot. Thanks!

Too bad it is simply removed when i try to add it to my sig.

Re:Seagte Barracuda Hard Drives

[Anonymous Coward]

Sitting right next to seven of the 7200.7 revision Barracudas, and can't hear a damn thing.

Re:Seagte Barracuda Hard Drives

[tacocat]

There is a size limit, but I don't remember exactly what it is. I have several 80GB drives that are great. I have a 200GB drive that periodically clicks for about 10 seconds and then stops. There is a cut-off on this behavior. I'm not sure, it might be at 160GB.

I first found this posted on the internet on the general topic of TiVO Hacks and what to watch out for. Seagate Barracuda's are popular with silent PC people and Tivo users, but there are a number of comments on the 200GB plus sizes.

Re:Seagte Barracuda Hard Drives

[the.Ceph]

Additionally all Seagate drives come with a 5 or 6 year warranty. Can't beat that.

Re:Seagte Barracuda Hard Drives

[jovlinger]

I have a couple of the samsung 160s. Cheap and silent.

As for reliability, don't know. Haven't died on me yet...

*knocks on wood*

I'm hoping the low noise and low heat implies that they won't wear out too quickly.

Re:Seagte Barracuda Hard Drives

[Anonymous Coward]

probably will affect performance. in my case the drives are in external enclosures connected to the computer by USB2, so sync is a good idea anyway in this case i think

Re:Seagte Barracuda Hard Drives

[badasscat]

That's interesting because I have a Barracuda and it's probably the loudest drive that I've ever owned...

It depends on the model. I have a 7100.7 (or whatever it's called) and it does not support acoustic management. It has noticeable seek noise. The versions that became famous for quietness (the IV and V) were the previous versions to mine - these did support AM.

Meanwhile, all other manufacturers have started using FDB motors just like Seagate does, so the whine is gone, and if your drive supports acoustic management (almost all do, though you may need to download a utility to access it), then it very likely can be virtually silent too. There is no inherent advantage that the Barracuda models have in acoustics.

In addition to my Barracuda, I also have two Maxtor Diamondmax Plus 9's and a Western Digital Performer 40 (this came with my TiVo but has been repurposed in my PC - you can't buy this drive separately). All three of these drives are quieter than my Barracuda with acoustic management set to "quiet" - in fact, one of the Maxtors is dead silent, and the other is so quiet I have to put my ear right up next to it to hear seeks. (There is a slight variation between the two units, even though they are the same model and capacity.)

I will say that one of my Maxtors was ear-splittingly loud when I first purchased it - ironically (or maybe not), it was the retail version. My other Maxtor was OEM. The retail drive was set to "performance" out of the box, whereas the OEM drive was already set to "quiet". Maybe this is by design, as Maxtor is obviously positioning these drives for different markets, but it has obviously led to a different reputation for Maxtor than Seagate has, despite Maxtor's drives being capable (like almost everybody else) of total silence.

The loudest part of most PC's other than the hard drive (which doesn't need to be loud at all) is the power supply. I've gone through a half dozen PSU's looking for a quiet one that's also beefy enough for my systems - I finally ordered an ironically-named Seasonic Super Tornado 350 today. Most people don't consider the PSU as a major source of noise - or if they do, they don't think they can do anything about it - but having swapped out enough of these things for one reason or another, I can vouch for the fact that not only is there a significant variation between PSU's in the volume of noise, they also can significantly affect the quality of noise from your PC. Right now I am using an Enermax PSU in one system and an Antec in another - both highly-rated PSU's from a power and build quality standpoint - but they both sound awful. They are not particularly loud (though they're louder than any other component I have), but they both emit sort of a low-pitched "buzzing" noise (it's not case vibration - I've checked - it's just the sound of the fans they're using), which I find extremely annoying. If you're looking to silence your PC, I'd recommend starting with the PSU.

Of course, most hardcore PC users really go overboard with fans too - I admit to having six case fans in one of my PC's (mainly for show, they're LED fans), but they're almost always turned down to minimum with a fan controller. Not silent, but not loud either. In my HTPC, I have three 80mm fans, one of which is disconnected, the others turned down to minimum using built-in manual fan controls. I have no stability or temperature problems with this machine at all, and except for the PSU (that's being replaced), it's very quiet.

Re:Seagte Barracuda Hard Drives

[teeker]

I remember reading something about something called "thermal calibration" that most (all?) modern HDs do...as they heat/cool, the platters expand/contract, and by checking the location of a few known patterns on the disk, it can esitmate head position better, making seeks faster...

That's what I've always thought those noises were...

Re:Seagte Barracuda Hard Drives

[loose electron]

Right now the most reliable drives come from Western Digital.

Having worked for Seagate/WD/Quantum/Maxtor/IBM (yeah silicon valley migrant farm worker type) ***right now*** WD produces the best drives. Seagate quality leaves lots to be desired. Circa 1995-2000 Quantum had the best quality, but that has gone away due to cost cutting.

Opinion is my own, yeah, but its based upon being inside these companies, not just using their products.

Re:Seagte Barracuda Hard Drives

[Anonymous Coward]

A silent, air-cooled system???

That's called the wind, and it's been around for years.

Hmmm.... (runs out to patent office)

Re:Seagte Barracuda Hard Drives

[toadlife]

"Circa 1995-2000 Quantum had the best quality, but that has gone away due to cost cutting."

I think Quantums quality went down the tube a bit before 2000. We used to buy Gateway machines here at work, and they used Quantum drives. Between 1999 and 2001 we had up to a 90% failure rate within three years with certain Quantum "Fireball" models. Fireball was an appropriate name because their chipsets would literaly explode and flames would protrude form them. On one occasion I was lucky enough to have the case open when one of them went bad. A 2 inch wide bright blue fireball came out of one of the chips on the bottom of the drive right before my eyes. It reminded me of a welding torch. If it wasn't a chipset failure it was a machanical failure. Either way the Quantums in our computers allways died.

When I heard that Maxtor had bought out Quantum, and subsequently saw a couple of new Maxtors models with chips on the bottom that said "Quantum" on them, I decided not to buy Maxtors any more.

Re:Seagte Barracuda Hard Drives

[syukton]

Fan? why use a fan? I think you mean "decent LPGA775 quiet aftermarket cooler"

http://thermaltake.com/coolers/4in1heatpipe/cl-p 00 71SonicTower/cl-p0071.htm

Re:Seagte Barracuda Hard Drives

[HD Webdev]

If your computer is scanning the drives, make sure you have fast search turned OFF in XP, it will try to index your HDD everytime it 'thinks' you aren't needing to access the drive. Also check for spyware and all the usual nonsense running in the background.

That is one of the first services I shut off on XP boxes I build. Indexing is even worse when the box is on a local network, It'll index network shares and such which often confuses windows (recursive link shares on other computers can do this). Indexing make the primary drive start making when it really doesn't need to:

msconfig.exe --} SERVICES --} and uncheck "Indexing Service" instead of just shutting off indexing for different drives because network shares would still be indexed.

Re:Seagte Barracuda Hard Drives

[rikkards]

That's funny. I have two Maxtor 80G SATA drives in Raid 0 that seem to do the same thing. Every couple of days for about 10 seconds the drives will thrash especially in a game. (no it isn't swapping memory)

Re:Seagte Barracuda Hard Drives

[TopherC]

I agree, www.silentpcreview.com does have a lot of good advice. But like any review site, they only cover a small fraction of the current hardware available that is marketed to the quiet PC crowd.

I spent some time and money last month going through that site and working to quiet my PC down. I set up a new PC to be always-on in a corner of my dining room. The location was dictated by cable access and wi-fi reception. (It's running Gentoo Linux and is serving as a gateway/firewall, records radio shows, web server, etc.) The dining room has hard floors, and the PC noise was absolutely unbearable at first. Now it's just about as loud as the 700W APC UPS it's on, which is noticeable in that room but not at all obnoxious.

* case: Evercase GC4292: inexpensive steel case with no P/S and can handle a 120mm case fan.
* P/S: 300W Seasonic supersilencer -- has a very quiet fan, I really like it.
* CPU fan: Arctic Cooling Copper Silent 2 TC -- I'm very happy with this too, barely audible with case open.
* VGA fan: Zalman VF700-ALCU Ultra quiet fan -- Another winner, though the RAM heatsinks were unnecessary (I'm not overclocking) and didn't even all fit without compromising the main heatsink's contact with the chipset.
* I mounted the HDD with rubber grommets. The case's HDD bay supports these but I had a hard time finding the kit to go with it. I'm still looking for more grommets. I believe that this helped substantially, but I don't have test equipment and I swapped hard drives at the same time. The old drive without grommets was a prominent noise source, and now I don't hear it except when the head is seeking. I don't remember the brand/model, but I think it's a Maxtor 5200RPM, 200G drive.
* I am still struggling with a quiet case fan. This is now the only component I can really hear with the case closed up. I tried two Antec variable-speed fans with thermistors on them, one 90mm and the other 120mm. I'm currently using the 90mm fan because the 120mm fan has a louder and more annoying pitched hum. I like the fan speed control idea in this article.

I also bought the Antec noisekiller kit in a whim, but it was difficult to use and I don't think it really helped any. I was hoping for drive mounting screws and grommets, but they were not included.

Re:Seagte Barracuda Hard Drives

[silvwolf]

That still remains one of the oddest calls from a user that I've taken.. "My computer was just smoking for a few seconds and made this terrible smell."

Take it apart and I see a small hole burned through one of the chips on the Fireball. It was a Gateway too.

Think that was towards the last half of 2000..

Re:Seagte Barracuda Hard Drives

[Ptur]

Also: sometimes one has to buy what is available... I had a hard time looking for a Seasonic P/S in Europe (I live in Belgium), so I setteled with a Nexus.
I also selected a fanless VGA card...
Don't know where you live, but there are quite some dedicated case-mod shops here, they sell supersilent fans and stuff. I'd go for a 120mm fan anyway, as it can run slower for the same amount of air...
And about the HD: I'm going to buy (today at noon) a Samsung SP1614C, it's supposed to be very silent. I guess you already browsed the SilentPCReview forums about HD suspension and such?

Re:Seagte Barracuda Hard Drives

[AaronLawrence]

Slightly OT, but that Samsung page is a classic "what now" page for me. A large set of seemingly identical hard drives with no guide as to what I'd want, other than some vague marketing speak .

Re:Seagte Barracuda Hard Drives

[unitron]

" Seagate make the...most reliable drives I know of."

Does that include the re-labeled Conners?

Re:Seagte Barracuda Hard Drives

[loose electron]

that was the Hitachi Power drive IC that provides the power for both the motor and the servo.

It was a POS with no margin in the design.

Re:Seagte Barracuda Hard Drives

[cortana]

FYI, quietpc.com have an excellent selection of hardware, including PSUs. They trade all over the world, too!

IME the loudest things in a computer are the tiny graphics card, and motherboard chipset fans. They have to spin faster to shift the same amount of air; I ripped mine off my graphics card and replaced it with an 80mm case fan, and the computer is a lot quieter. I'm replacing the whole thing with a GV-N68128DH (passively cooled GeForce 6800!) soon though, for even more golden silence.

Of course, at the end of the day, noise is caused by motion. If I could afford it, I'd load up with a fanless PSU and solid state hard drives. :)

.... How?

[Anonymous Coward]

All that heat has to go somewhere....

If you can't do it very well with fans and such, how can you expect to do it with even less?

Better yet...

[Avyakata]

If only they could silence my roommate's snoring...

Re:Better yet...

[over_exposed]

Use a pillow - fast, free, fun!

Re:Better yet...

[Anonymous Coward]

Noisier the better, I don't want to hear my mom shouting at me to get off the PC.

Re:Better yet...

[chman]

I wish I only snored... I woke myself up last night laughing in my sleep. Apparantely it's kinda dangerous.

Re:Better yet...

[Anonymous Coward]

You can solve this with the installation of the proper hard drive, preferably done ballistically and from a distance.

Re:Better yet...

[Anonymous Coward]

You can definitely do that. Snoring is one of the symptoms of Sleep Apnea, from which I suffer. So here you go:

http://www.cpap-pro.com/Sleep better now!

AC#98y95332

Re:Better yet...

[Ahnteis]

This is when having a white/brown/grey noise-producing computer is a PLUS.

Get a non-irritating fan noise going and it tends to "quiet" all other noise.

This reminds me

[bogaboga]

This reminds me of the [old] VW Beetle http://www.edmunds.com/media/reviews/generations/v w.beetle/1955.vw.beetle.500.jpg. This machine was air cooled. I do not know whether todys beetle is air cooled too.

Re:This reminds me

[Enigma_Man]

It's not. VWs haven't been air-cooled since the 80s (unless you buy a Bug from Mexico, where they are still made new today).

-Jesse

Re:This reminds me

[cowboy_ein]

No, they are not air cooled.

Re:This reminds me

[Weh]

Yeah, beatles are very silent, especially since John and George are dead

Re:This reminds me

[schnikies79]

Their not. Engines are in the front and they are water cooled.

Dayton

Re:This reminds me

[Anonymous Cowpat]

read: actually a Golf with a different outer cover. Last I heard it was built on a Golf chassis and all.
I personally love the roar of the aircooled VW's, but I prefer the camper van, mostly just because my parents used to own one

Re:This reminds me

[tie_guy_matt]

No, today's VW beetles ARE NOT air cooled. No one knows how to make an air cooled engine that can meet today's pollution and gas mileage requirements. When an engine is air-cooled then the temperature of the engine is not regulated -- and will likely be much lower than one would like (since the same car has to be driven in cold as well as very warm climates.) When the engine is cold then the gas will not be completely combusted and you will end up spewing nasty carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons out the tail pipe. Until recently they sold them in countries that didn't have such stiff pollution requirements but they even stopped doing that. Could you have an air cooled SUV though? Since when it comes to SUV's no one seems to care about pollution, or how much oil they are wasting, just so they don't have to drive a minivan (even though minivans are cheaper and better in almost every way.)

Re:This reminds me

[Weh]

SUV's spend their lives on congested highways, stop, go traffic is not very good for an aircooled engine.

Re:This reminds me

[foobsr]

Until 1997, the Porsche 911 was air-cooled as well.

CC.

Re:This reminds me

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure as heck didn't make them quiet though . . .

What I've found works best (both in beetles and computers) is the aftermarket insulation. It's not a fanless system, but it is cheap and effective.

Re:This reminds me

[macmania]

No, the new beetle is no longer air-cooled.

Re:This reminds me

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot Paul. He was the first to go...They even continued recording stuff after he died.

Re:This reminds me

[fred fleenblat]

FYI, the Volkwagen New Beetle, the one that looks like this, is water cooled.

Re:This reminds me

[Parker703]

Wow, your post seemed well written, and informative, until you started spouting your anti-suv venom. A shame. Oh well.

Re:This reminds me

[operagost]

Did it have a flower paint job and smell like reefer?

Re:This reminds me

[Anonymous Coward]

Hogwash!

The VW Beetle had a large fan that sucked in cool air from the top inlets through the wide bladed block and out the bottom.

Worked very well in places like Miami, Phoenix, Mexico City and most of South America.

Many people looked for this car *BECAUSE* of it's reliability.

The other poster is wrong also, a properly maintained VW Beetle would pass the smog tests that were given (at least in Florida).

Oh, and my old VW was a semi-auto that had a neat clutch modification so that you didn't need to know how to use a clutch. Ok, I admit that the AC unit didn't work as promised though :)

Re:This reminds me

[Politburo]

Well he did go a bit far, but he is essentially correct. SUVs are subject to the requirements of "light trucks" which are less stringent than "car" standards.

Re:This reminds me

[Moofie]

Is his point not dead on? Are SUVs not exempted from passenger car legislation because of the fiction that they're "work vehicles"?

I don't have any problem if you want to drive an SUV (or a pickup truck, or a big-ass van, or whatever). I do have a problem if you buy a vehicle that's not designed with proper-height bumpers and good crash engineering. Body-on-frame vehicles are bad at not killing passengers in vehicles that they hit.

I don't care how you want your vehicle to be shaped. I DO care about how it's engineered for (my) crash safety, and that is not a level playing field right now.

Re:This reminds me

[Parker703]

There is quite a difference between crash safety and environmental concerns.

Re:This reminds me

[Moofie]

Agreed. So what?

Re:This reminds me

[tie_guy_matt]

I am sorry if you felt I went a bit far, it is hard to hide my hatred of those things, but I was posing a question. Because the mileage, pollution control, and safety of those things are not as tightly controlled is it possible to make an air-cooled version? Bring back the old micro-bus as an SUV? Maybe it is possible but there isn't really a market for them so no one is producing them.

Just an aside if you care about your money, your planet, or your safety then I would think about buying another vehicle. If you want a large vehicle then, like I said, minivans are better in almost every way. You can even buy a minivan with all wheel drive. I was reading recently (probably dig up the link if asked or you can just google it) that the nhtsa recently said that the ratio of fatal crashes versus registered vehicles is higher for SUV's than for any other vehicle (and lowest for the before mentioned minivans.)

Re:This reminds me

[SethJohnson]

As an earlier poster mentioned, Porsche made aircooled 911's until 1996. 1997 saw the introduction of the first liquid-cooled 911s. US govt. emissions requirements haven't changed all that much in the past 8 years.

Re:This reminds me

[orasio]

Here's a more recent descendant.
Porsche 911 993
http://www.pistonheads.com/porsche/default.asp?sto ryId=7403

Re:This reminds me

[harrkev]

This machine was air cooled. I do not know whether todys beetle is air cooled too.

For the new version, they wanted to overclock it, so air-cooling was not up to the job.

Water-cooling was then tried, but they found that the pabst fan was not up to the job. They even tried a panaflow, but no good. Even the Vantec Tornado was not enough. The crazy guys at VW heard about the "radiator fan" thingy and gave it a shot -- and it worked!

Expect to see phase-change cooling next year, when the bump up the speeds again.

Re:This reminds me

[tie_guy_matt]

Calm down! I think the last person was trying to be +1 funny!

And yes compared to cars of their day the old beetles were reliable, got better gas mileage, and because of their size may have been more green. BTW another reason why they were discontinued in the US was that they couldn't meet safety standards without a massive re-design.

My questions are:
Sure they were reliable, got good mileage, and were greener than cars of the day but what about when compared to todays cars? Could a VW pass the pollution standards for new cars in say California? Why did VW need to come up with fuel injected beetles years before other small cars needed this option to meet the mileage and pollution standards of the day? I liked the old beetle too but there is a reason why they are no longer made.

Re:This reminds me

[modecx]

VAG (Volkswagen Audi Group) recycles lots and lots of their engineering, from the chassis to electronics, engines blocks, and misc. parts.

Every chassis they make spans multiple makes and often model years. The VAG MK4(3..2.. etc) chassis fits Golf, Jetta, Beetle, Audi TT, A3, S3. There's also chassis that is for use with their VR6 engine, aptly called the VR6 MK4.

The VW Beetle, Jetta, Audi A3, S3, TT all basically have the same guts, with minor changes in engine (displacement and cylinder heads) powertrain, the rest is cosmetic and features.

Re:This reminds me

[tie_guy_matt]

Don't forget there is quite a price difference between the 911 and the beetle. Maybe they could have worked to make the beetle pass 1996 safety and emission standards but that would surely call for a huge design change and a lot more money. Put enough money into something and it is amazing what can happen. Would there be a market for the beetle if it were no longer cheep? It was MUCH easier to just take another small VW car with a water cooled engine and just make it look like a beetle.

Re:This reminds me

[sg3235]

Too bad my mini-van won't pull my trailer. That's why I have a Suburban. Of course, most people who spew forth their SUV hatred won't acknowledge that there are legit reasons to have one.

Re:This reminds me

[The-Perl-CD-Bookshel]

Guess what? *YOUR* air cooled too! scary eh?

Re:This reminds me

[tie_guy_matt]

How big is you trailer? The Ford Crown Vicroria and Chevy astro both have body on frame construction meaning they can pull more than you average car. You might also get away with a full sized van.

A lot of people who say their reasons for owning an SUV are legit are wrong. If you do have a real reason to own an SUV than I would be even more pissed off at people who buy them because they are cool. Because they are so popular their prices have risen and risen making it harder for the (very few) people who actually need one to buy one. And with these people abusing the rules it makes it more likely (although maybe not right at the moment with the republicans in charge of EVERYTHING) that the rules may one day change. Meaining that it will be harder to find something to tow your trailer.

Re:This reminds me

[cornjones]

Great idea, other than the fact that I have seen no less than 3 old beetles on fire. guess air cooling doesn't cut it in warm weather (last one was in vegas in june, 115 deg f.)

ej

Re:This reminds me

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad my mini-van won't pull my trailer. That's why I have a Suburban. Of course, most people who spew forth their SUV hatred won't acknowledge that there are legit reasons to have one.

Because obviously you have legit reasons to own that big ass boat, or what?

Re:This reminds me

[really?]

Nah, no relation to the hot air, just a poorly maintained car.

Year ago, 1982 to be precise, I put quite a few thousand km on an air coled VW van bouncing around western Africa. Heat was almost never an issue for the engine. Why almost? Because a couple/few times there was so much mud on the heads that they no longer managed to dump enough heat. Haven't been to Vegas in a couple years, but somehow I doubt the roads have gotten as bad as they were in the Northern part of Uganda in 1982.

Re:This reminds me

[sg3235]

Ok, so now everyone has to clear their hobbies with you? And, no, it's not a boat. You have no idea what I have, but you're damn sure you're able to pass judgement. I see why you posted as AC.

Re:This reminds me

[sg3235]

Anything that is big enough to pull my trailer will get the same gas mileage that my SUV gets. I wanted a full sized van, but it had to be a 3500 (Chevy) to have the appropriate tow rating and then it wouldn't fit in my garage. Even if it would, the mpg was the same, so do you still think that I should have opted for that? If so, I'd be curious as to why? I know I haven't heard anyone railing against the big pickup trucks or the full sized vans that get the same mileage. Why is that?

Eggs? or Britney?

[RonUSMC]

Reducing temperature and reducing sound... Well then how will I cook eggs or drowned out the Britney Spears from the next office over.

Re:Eggs? or Britney?

[Anonymous Coward]

Britney Spears works in your office?

Air cooling is fine, until....

[Kenja]

Air cooling and silent computers are fine until you start adding storage. I have one computer with a 10k RPM RAID-5 setup and another with twelve IDE drives. You just cant make such systems quite and passively cooled. Unless you cast them in a big block of aluminum or somthing, and then they would heat up the room.

Re:Air cooling is fine, until....

[Anonymous Coward]

Fan or not, they will still heat up the room.

Re:Air cooling is fine, until....

[networkBoy]

Unless you duct and exhaust the air to the outside, it will still heat the room, with or without fans ;-)
-nB

Re:Air cooling is fine, until....

[Anonymous Coward]

I think most people would like a quite desktop pc and believe it or not (I know some /.ers will have a hard time believing it) a setup with 12 IDE drives is not that common for a Joe User desktop pc.

Re:Air cooling is fine, until....

[Omega697]

If you have 12 IDE drives you can't seriously have quiet as a major priority. :o)

Re:Air cooling is fine, until....

[over_exposed]

No no no, see... If you have air blowing over a hot object (a heatsink), the heat gets taken away from that object and then it rides those cirrents of air out into the cosmos, never to appear again! But if you radiate the heat away passively through a giant block of aluminum, the room gets really hot. Don't you know anything about thermodynamics?

Re:Air cooling is fine, until....

[sgant]

I don't care much for quiet, I'm more into keeping everything cool, and if that means that it's not quiet, then so be it.

Check into the Coolermaster CM/Stacker with it's drive bays and 4-in-3 Device Module that can be removed and big 120mm fans placed into the front of a stack of 3 5.25 drives. You can add more 4-in-3 modules with fans if you wish. Not to mention the Cross Flow Fan that blows air across the entire motherboard.

Loud? Not as bad as you would think. The bigger the fans btw the less they have to turn to generate the same airflow as a 90 or 80mm fan. But some may find the fans too much, which is why I keep mine under the computer table. I hardly notice it...but your milage may vary.

Re:Air cooling is fine, until....

[Anonymous Coward]

"I have one computer with a 10k RPM RAID-5 setup and another with twelve IDE drives."

I'm sure the article was not talking about systems like those. Just because the old VW Beetle was air-cooled, that doesn't mean you can build an air-cooled Hummer.

"Unless you cast them in a big block of aluminum or somthing, and then they would heat up the room."

The practicality of such a scheme aside, I fail to see how encasing something in Aluminum would cause it to generate more heat.

Re:Air cooling is fine, until....

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like Bogodynamics to me.

Re:Air cooling is fine, until....

[WormholeFiend]

I can confirm this.

I have a (formerly unused) room, where I put the computer case, and fed the (slightly extended) wires through a hole in the wall.

I haven't turned on the thermostat in that room all winter, and every once in a while, I even had to vent the heat out, either to the rest of my home or outside.

Go AMD Athlon!

Re:Air cooling is fine, until....

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the solutions I've been kicking around is to replace my main computer with a silent mini-ITX system. I've been thinking about the storage problem, and I think the best solution is probably to set up a file server somewhere else in the house.

File servers don't need that much computer power, so a cheap mini-ITX would probably do the trick. Something like this, in fact:

http://www.mini-itx.com/projects/tera-itx/

Re:Air cooling is fine, until....

[hackstraw]

I have one computer with a 10k RPM RAID-5 setup and another with twelve IDE drives.

Most people have 10 to 11 fewer drives than you do.

Re:Air cooling is fine, until....

[bfizzle]

It wouldn't generate more heat... but parent and grandparent are both mistaken.

The heat is there no matter what you do. You can only dispate it. So if you use a giant heat sink like grandparent suggests or fans you get the same result. The room around the computer will heat up.

Re:Air cooling is fine, until....

[operagost]

Performance can't be a priority either, unless you have like six IDE controllers in there (or at least three multi-port SATA adapters).

Re:Air cooling is fine, until....

[StormMan]

Perhaps you don't understand thermodynamics. The only way that the room your computer is in doesn't heat when you cool it is if you vent the heat from the computer into a different room or outside. Heat NEVER disappears "into the cosmos, never to appear again". Heat must go somewhere, and usually that somewhere is in the room where you're computer resides.

StormMan

Re:Air cooling is fine, until....

[Anonymous Coward]

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=joke

Re:Air cooling is fine, until....

[angle_slam]

How do you even find a case that will fit 12 IDE drives?

I use more storage than most. I just built a computer with a 200 GB hard drive. After more testing is done and I'm ready to make it my new computer, I'm probably going to add 2 more 300 GB hard drives. Maybe even a 300 GB and a 400 GB. But I have no idea what I would do with 12 drives. (unless they are all 10 GB hard drives ;-) .

Re:Air cooling is fine, until....

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you hear that loud crack? That was a joke going over your head at Mach 5.

Re:Air cooling is fine, until....

[slacktide]

Too bad we can't moderate (-1, Dumbass).

Re:Air cooling is fine, until....

[orasio]

You must be new here

Re:Air cooling is fine, until....

[prophet5590]

that doesn't mean you can build an air-cooled Hummer.

The Hummer is based of of the military Humvee, right? Those are air-cooled (Humvees, that is). Or at least they were.

I'm not saying that it means a 18K RPM RAID-5 could be air-cooled; I'm just saying that you probably could build an air-cooled Hummer.

Re:Air cooling is fine, until....

[rs79]

"How do you even find a case that will fit 12 IDE drives?"

The answer, of course to any question that starts "where do yo find" is "ebay".

But...

Go to pricewatch.com. Click on "cases". They list them with up to 17 drive bays.

Re:Air cooling is fine, until....

[cloudmaster]

I just picked up an Enermax CS-718 case. The whole front is a giant vent, and there's a giant knowb on the front that'll adjust the speed of 4 fans (2 of those are the front and rear 120MM fans). There's a knob on teh power supply to adjust the speed, too, and the supply will magically bump the speed up if it gets too hot. The thing's pretty quiet, and the nifty wind tunnel thing (remember the two 120mm fans? The blow through a tunnel over the processors) keeps the system plenty cool.

Also, it's about the nicest case design I've ever used - the drives all install with really nice rails, the edges are all round, and the case looks pretty neat. I recommend it (though, it costs $200 from newegg, and more elsewhere). I coudl do without the LED fans, and should probably replace the fans with some Vantec Stealths like I generally do, but it's just fine as-is for now.

Re:Air cooling is fine, until....

[TeleoMan]

Well now, that's all fine-and-dandy like sauer candy, BUT I think what you *really* need is one those fancy-fangled heat-pipe systems like the Vaio's use.

That's some quiet shiat!

Re:Air cooling is fine, until....

[archen]

this is one

Re:Air cooling is fine, until....

[StormMan]

New to Slashdot, no. New to the community, yes.

LTSP works for me

[hax4bux]

I took a old PII box, removed the hard drive, bought big heat sinks and use it as a X-terminal. Boot it via LTSP, works great. Keep hot, noisy servers out in the garage. Life is good.

Re:LTSP works for me

[fm6]

X terminals are so 90s!

Re:LTSP works for me

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, that works fine until you need to play a game or use 3D/CAD software.

Re:LTSP works for me

[Anonymous Coward]

You just need FAST networking.

My brother works clustered computers. He explained how on these computers the local hard drive transfer is too slow, so they have fast network hardware so the server with the fast storage can do all the hard drive read/write.

Yes, I asked, and 40GB/sec - 100GB/sec local hard drive access was too slow.

So buy more expensive fans?

[eln]

That was a lot of words just to tell me to go out and buy a lot of expensive third party cooling systems. I was hoping for more of a hack approach, not just replacing everything with its more expensive, silent counterpart.

Re:So buy more expensive fans?

[TheViffer]

So true. To sum up the article "Some fans are quieter then others."

There are so many things that it did not cover like slow moving 120mm fans move way more air then high rpm 80mm fans. How about using cases with minimal vents located only where air is needed to be took in or pushed out of the system. Cutting away with a pair of tin snips or a Dremel those "molded" fan guards and replacing them with super thin wire fan guards.

Not a lot of content in this article.

Re:So buy more expensive fans?

[LurkerXXX]

How many words was it? The site is now dead. I guess he didn't have enough cooling in his machine to take a slashdoting ;)

Re:So buy more expensive fans?

[jmke]

it's actually meant to be a guide to see what products are out there for silencing your PC; nobody is preventing you from hitting www.google.com with a few howto search strings!

Re:So buy more expensive fans?

[josh2112]

For something under 5 bucks, try making a power supply fan muffler. I made one out of cardboard and masking tape and covered the inside with $1.99 roll of adhesive-backed weatherstripping from Home Depot. It really cuts the whooshing-air noise down to a low hum, and only raises the inside case temperature 1 or 2 degrees.

Re:So buy more expensive fans?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was hoping for more of a hack approach, not just replacing everything with its more expensive, silent counterpart.

The Mac Mini is only $499. That isn't too expensive considering what you get for the money.

Re:So buy more expensive fans?

[rs79]

"many words was it? The site is now dead."

The fans failed.

I had a stock Athlon fan fail this week. Less than 4 mos old. The chip lasted about 8 minutes. *poof*.

Note to self: no matter how cheap you get the computer for, get a good fan.

You Don't

[jnetsurfer]

You Don't. Just disable all the fans and, hey, who cares about a little extra heat?

Then things will run really quiet... that is, until the smoke detectors start going off...

Isolation

[stecoop]

All the money I have spent on quieting a noisy computer can be saved by accepting simple facts that moving object cause noise. Accept that and you are in the first phase on knowing what to do. You have to isolate the moving components from the room you are in.

For me the best solution is having the cases in the desk cabinet. In the cabinet you can isolate the vibration of a blower(squirrel cage fan) and use dryer vent tubing to suck in cool air and blow out hot air from the case. The blower I got is a dismantled desktop fan from Wally World that has two squirrel cages I picked up for 10 bucks. It runs on 110v so I have to turn it on when I use it. One day I'll get fancy and have a relay to automatically turn it on and it has 3 speeds via a turn nob that I could hook up a temperature senor to automatically select the correct speed. This doesn't totally isolate the noise from the room but I can add baffling to help. And it is so cheap.

Re:Isolation

[OAB_X]

Or you can just buy a cheapo pair of ear plugs for 2 dollars or so. It wont make a sound (ok, it will, but you cant hear it, or anything for that matter).

Re:Isolation

[conteXXt]

Would you post that squirrel cage part number or identifier for me.

Need a sc type blower for another project and this sounds ideal.

Thanks in Advance.

Re:Isolation

[operagost]

What???

Re:Isolation

[JaxGator75]

I likes my squirrels to be Free Range...

/quite OT

Re:Isolation

[stecoop]

The small ones that I used aren't online. Here is a big one but it'll give you an idea of what I tore appart. Go to the store inperson to see the size of the small one that put out like 400cmfs with virtually no noise. Keep in mind that most of these are thermally protected but I bet you cant get years of contiuous duty out of them.

Re:Isolation

[OAB_X]

If you have earplugs, it dosnt matter how loud your system is, you wont be able to hear it.

Re:Isolation

[ezzzD55J]

I think parent was trying to be funny.. :) I thought it was pretty funny.

Old news

[Electronik]

I have been modding my PC's to be quiet for years - there is no need for any computer to sound like a leaf blower. Check out Silent PC Review for more info!

I like the noise

[jasper-la]

There are a couple of sounds I really like, and one of them is the sound of a computer. I'll never buy those sound reducing products. Ok, if it's for in a livingroom...but not in mine!

obligatory...

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, the COMPUTER silently air cools YOU.

Re:obligatory...

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought in Soviet Russia the Computer sliently air WARMS you.........

Or save yourself a bundle of time

[Anonymous Coward]

...and just buy a BTX case with quiet fans.

Arg

[Neil Blender]

I am not taking advice from anyone who writes on a website with such poor design and color scheme that I can't even read it. I guess it's self fulfilling.

hire some proof readers

[der_hexer]

I had to stop reading after the first two paragraphs due to the incredibly poor use of the english language.

Re:hire some proof readers

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking of the enlish language, "proofreader" is one word, not two.

Re:hire some proof readers

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking of the enlish language, "proofreader" is one word, not two.

Enlish? Never heard of it.

Re:hire some proof readers

[Drooling Iguana]

Thank you for that very informative piece of information regarding the Enlish language. Now I'll be all set if I ever decide to go to Enland.

Re:hire some proof readers

[mabinogi]

There might well be a single word he could have used to save himself a character, but "Hire some proof readers" is still a perfectly valid English sentence that contains only English words, all correctly spelt (unless I've typoed them in the process) and that has pretty much the same meaning as "Hire some proofreaders."

Maxtor HDDs also very quiet

[codergeek42]

I've got a Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 (120 GB, ATA/133, 8 MB cache) and it's whisper quiet and very fast.

Maybe he should have gone with water cooling...

[matth1jd]

...his server's gonna be toast. Not even that many comments and it's starting to get really slow.

Re:Maybe he should have gone with water cooling...

[MudButt]

...his server's gonna be toast. Not even that many comments and it's starting to get really slow.

It's called getting slash-raped. =)

Wow, it's slow.

[PxM]

If it does stop, here is the mirrordot link.

That said, what impresses me is that they pulled it off with an A64 3200.

--
Free iPod? Try a free Mac Mini
Or a free Nintendo DS, GC, PS2, Xbox
Wired article as proof

Re:Wow, it's slow.

[joschm0]

That link only let you read the first page. Any links there, including the next page link go back to the original site.

Slashdotted

[Adrilla]

Seems to me that they've built a silent website too.

Re:Slashdotted

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it's silent like in a tomb.

Re:Slashdotted

[Anonymous Coward]

I can hear the cooling system burning from here

Well...

[elid]

...you could always try this.

Re:Well...

[Zinho]

Cooling with liquid Nitrogen: fun to do if you don't care if it fails, but I wouldn't do it with a machine I cared about. Not only do you run the risk of running out of coolant, you also run the risk of getting a catastrophic change in boiling mode on the Nitrogen.

Ever drop water on a really hot pan and watch it skitter around instead of boiling off immediately? Transfer too much heat through that interface and the Nitrogen will start acting like that as well. The result will probably be immedate heat failure of the chip, since it's not cooling off fast enough anymore.

I don't know if the research has been done on Nitrogen to see where that transition point is, but I wouldn't start a project like this without knowing for sure that I wasn't going to cross it.

Simple: Powerbook + Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting this from a DebianPPC Powerbook. Can't get any better. :)

I sure am.

[Tackhead]

> Tired of those whining fans?

Yeah. Every freakin' day. Wake up. Kick groupie chicks out of bed. Go to Slashdot. Post something. Sign autographs. Click Reload. Select tonight's groupie chicks from my inbound mail. Recompile kernel. Refuse offer of cocaine snort from nearby pair of rackmounted systems. Touch, finger, grep, mount, fsck, reboot. No, I don't have time for your sister. Reload, and post again.

Man, I tell ya, it's a long way to the top if you wanna rock 'n' roll.

Re:I sure am.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, if you really were tired of whining fans, you wouldn't be reading Slashdot...

Re:I sure am.

[sh00z]

I didn't realize that CleverNickName had a second user account.

Re:I sure am.

[Anonymous Coward]

> I didn't realize that CleverNickName had a second user account.

Nope, that's not him. But (+6 Obscure and Sidesplittingly funny) for the idea. Engage!

Re:I sure am.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wil Wheaton fanboys are worse than your typical celeb worshiping idiots.

silent pc? yeah right.

[sshore]

Sigh. Same old advice. Bigger heatsinks, bigger fans, slower speeds.. Each time I see an article like this, I hope that it's actually going to be about a silent PC - passive cooling, solid state storage. But no.. it's always how to make a quieter PC. Always with the same steps. It's like these sites run these articles just to sell the banner impressions. Move along. Nothing to see here.

Re:silent pc? yeah right.

[steeef]

The article should have been entitled "Building a Quiet, Air-Cooled System". Running a PC always involves heat, and their must always be a mechanism for removing that heat. The more passive cooling devices you have in your machine, the more heat needs to be removed from the case quickly. Granted you could run a system that doesn't create a lot of heat, but today's high-powered PCs normally do. Water cooling can certainly be quieter than air cooling, but it still isn't completely silent (yet?).

Re:silent pc? yeah right.

[fyoder]

Seconded. I've spent a lot trying for a silent pc using a standard case with air cooling and am coming to the conclusion that it isn't possible.

That said, anyone with a noisy PC will likely be pleased with the reduction in noise simply by getting a serious sized heat sink with a slow fan, and speed regulation on fans to get them to the lowest speed possible for what is judged to be acceptable temperatures.

Beyond that, further obsessing on the pursuit of silence is just money spent for very little improvement. And watch out for things like accoustic padding and fanless power supplies. It's really pointless if the modification leads to heat increases leads to having to up the case fan speed! (Duh, yes, I am stupid enough to have had to learn that from experience).

Re:silent pc? yeah right.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've significantly reduced fan noise by turning them off and putting an Ionic Breeze(tm) into my case.

It's quiet alright. Only cost something like 5 payments of $69.95 plus $49.95 shipping & handling.

Re:silent pc? yeah right.

[nicknicknick]

If you're tired of the same old ideas, here's a one I don't think I've seen before that I've been planning on trying. Feel free to give it a shot and tell me how it works:
1.) go to Homedepot/lowes & buy tub of mastic sealant from the HVAC isle.
2.) take out motherboard, disks, and power supply
3.) apply mastic liberally to all internal surfaces (making sure to not hide any mounting holes you'll need)
4.) when dry, reassemble computer
5.) apply mastic to external surfaces (metal ones at least)

Mastic dries but retains elasticicty and should provide very good sound dampening. You can apply it with your bare hands and it rinses easily with water as long as you don't let it dry.

I've tried that acoustic foam stuff, and for the results I got I consider it a complete rip off. A small tub of mastic I think costs something shy of 10 dollars.

If you want to take things a step further you could get additional dampening by increasing the mass of the sheet metal case. To do this you could use the wet mastic as glue to attach whatever suitable dense/heavy objects you have lying around. Spare flooring tiles, plywood, drywall, dinner plates. Something acoustically dead would be preferred but probably anything would be helpful. Do not make the mistake of confusing acoustically dead with just plain dead.

Re:silent pc? yeah right.

[mrchaotica]

Water cooling can certainly be quieter than air cooling, but it still isn't completely silent (yet?).

It depends on the size of the radiator. Use one made for a car, and maybe you'll be able to get away without putting a fan on it...

Re:silent pc? yeah right.

[FleaPlus]

If you've got $1250 to spend, there's the Zalman Totally No Noise Computer Case. It's reportedly "the world's first absolutely noiseless and fanless computer case," using heatpipes for passive cooling. It basically uses the entire case as a giant heatsink.

Not sure what you'd do about the hard drives, though.

Re:silent pc? yeah right.

[rs79]

"Sigh. Same old advice. Bigger heatsinks, bigger fans, slower speeds.. Each time I see an article like this, I hope that it's actually going to be about a silent PC - passive cooling, solid state storage. But no."

WHAT?!? I CAN'T HEAR YOU.

Some Macs are silent.

Re:silent pc? yeah right.

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope that it's actually going to be about a silent PC - passive cooling, solid state storage.

Well, I've been 'building' entirely silent PCs for a couple of years. I can say it's more of a pain in the ass/wallet then one would initially think.

First, I bought a CalmPC. That company seems to have gone under, and it only supported a lower end CPU at the time. I ran it with a P3-1Ghz, which was fine for a lot of things. There were no moving parts; they used a funny convection cooling system. The PSU/CPU/VGA were all cooled this way.

Well, the 'funny' convection system shat on itself and basically destroyed one motherboard a couple of days ago.

So I just ordered a Zalman TNN system. When all is said and done, it's not _that_ much more expensive (well, ok, it's like $1200.- for case+PSU), plus I think it looks cool. At least not like a PC, so it will look better with the AV equipment.

That enclosure takes care of everything, except storage. For storage I would love to use remote network boot (e.g. have a server in the garage), but alas, Windows XP Media Center (yeah yeah, go ahead, flame me) can't do it except with some mighty expensive software (BXP). So I'm using CompactFlash. I actually booted WinXP MC 2005 from a 2GB CF card last night for the first time. It's a little slow while booting/loading apps, but other than that, seems to work fine.

I don't think there's a way to do completely solid-state on the cheap. There's just a lot of heat to dissapate and that requires custom parts. If you look at the heatsink-panels on the TNN enclosure, you get an idea. You can maybe get a heatpipe system and transfer the heat from the CPU to your own giant heatsink, and then get a fanless PSU. But it'd still be expensive.

Re:silent pc? yeah right.

[EvanED]

You'd still need the pump. Makes a very small amount of noise.

Re:silent pc? yeah right.

[mrchaotica]

That's true, but I think it'd be negligible (where "negligible" is defined as "quieter than the hard drive")

Re:silent pc? yeah right.

[EvanED]

Oh, I agree. I just thought since the entire thread was about the distinction between silent and very quiet I'd bring that up ;-)

Re:silent pc? yeah right.

[8Complex]

I bet you could immerse the pump in a tank of the radiator and drown out a good 98% of it's noise, though. Well, so long as either the pump is sealed, or the fluid used is non-electrically-conductive.

Re:silent pc? yeah right.

[Anonymous Coward]

absolutely noiseless... until the cdrom spins up. Do I get my money back?

Re:silent pc? yeah right.

[mrchaotica]

Oh, okay then. Carry on!

Re:silent pc? yeah right.

[EvanED]

Zalman's Reserator I think has the pump submerged, and a couple others do as well. This doesn't even have a fan on the resevoir.

This looks like it might be the nicest watercooling kit I've seen, though it has a price tag to match (Newegg - $238).

MY fans ...

[dcarey]

A reader:"Tired of those whining fans? Want some piece and quiet when working on your PC?

Well *I* for one never get tired of my fans, even when they whine or ask repeatedly for autographs.

I do however forbid them to come near my linux box, so I usually have some peace and quiet there.

Re:MY fans ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm so sorry for that comment ... it's Friday ... I'm feeling sarcastic and have some karma to burn ... please don't take away my geek card ...

Re:MY fans ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Who the Hell are you?

We don't care what some anonymous flunkey has to say, WE WANT DCAREY!

Re:MY fans ...

[Anonymous Coward]

That was meh ... posted anonymously .. i don't want to abuse teh karma system

keke thx

dc

Re:.... How?

[VolciMaster]

Well, Apple's been doing it with their G5 PowerMacs... not removing the fans completely, but they sure are quiet. Madshrimps is being really sluggish right now.

Isn't Intel's new BTX form factor also supposed to help with cooling, but moving the hot components away from each other so that fewer fans need to be used? I'm not a fluid mechanics expert, but with good channeling, and a sturdy enough current of air around the case from the room's ventillation system, such a silent system doesn't seem that far-fetched.

Transmeta-based machines also have no cooling fans. Of course, the Transmeta processors are also a lot less demanding power consumers.

Economical - Slowing Fans

[jeffkjo1]

This article talks about using a fan speed controller to slow down your fans and thus, reduce noise. I accomplished the same thing, without spending any extra money.

I converted my fans to run on 7 volts. All you have to do is switch the order of the wires around on the molex power connector. It's really easy:
http://www.dslwebserver.com/main/fr_index.html?/ma in/5-7-adapter.html

I didn't experience any increase in temperature, but the noise level in my case went down specifically.

Re:Economical - Slowing Fans

[Johnboi Waltune]

You can also place a resistor inline with the fan's power connector. Even easier. The fan gets less power and spins slower and quieter. Zalman fans even come with a resistor.

http://www.zalmanusa.com/usa/product/view.asp?id x= 30&code=016

Re:Economical - Slowing Fans

[Anonymous Coward]

the 7 volt trick works great, I have I think 5 (who can count that high) fans in my system and you can barely hear it. Runs pretty cool once I learned how to make the air flow properly.

Re:Economical - Slowing Fans

[jmke]

thank you, will look into adding that info to the article after the weekend when /. has died down a bit.

Re:Economical - Slowing Fans

[Jeff DeMaagd]

A power resistor may be easier, but all it does is just waste power to drop the voltage and current. Powering directly off the legs of a switching PSU is more efficient.

Re:Economical - Slowing Fans

[Ahnteis]

The downside is that you don't have the ability to pump the fans up for an especially CPU hungry task. :(

I personally went for the automatic fan controller (3 fan plugs + 3 temp probes) because I don't want to be bothered.

$30 wasn't that huge an investment.

Re:Economical - Slowing Fans

[Johnboi Waltune]

Yeah, I just looked at my electric bill and it's six cents more this month. Why weren't you there to warn me, Jeff??! WHY?!?! OH GOD WHY?!?!?!

Re:Economical - Slowing Fans

[Buttonius]

I converted my fans to run on 7 volts. All you have to do is switch the order of the wires around on the molex power connector. It's really easy:

Until, of course, one of your fan motors shorts out and connects 12 Volts to circuitry that is supposed to run on 5 Volts. Folks, that kind of damage is not covered by your warranty...

Re:Economical - Slowing Fans

[muckdog]

Is the resistor mounted outside the case? Since the energy that is lost with a resistor is converted to heat energy it seem to partially defeat the purpose of the fan if it is mounted inside the case.

Re:Economical - Slowing Fans

[Anonymous Coward]

I stopped reading when I read that using 7volts gets me less than 3dB(50%) noise reduction - I can get a comparible reduction putting a book between me and the computer. Call me when you work out how to get a 60dB reduction.

Re:Economical - Slowing Fans

[Johnboi Waltune]

It's just a tiny resistor that you put inline with the fan's power cable, so it's inside the case. Yeah, I bet you're slightly increasing heat inside the case, but if you're slowing down your fans in the first place... that's probably a tradeoff you've already decided to make.

Re:Economical - Slowing Fans

[Mattintosh]

Better yet, put a thermistor inline with the fan. As the temperature goes up, resistance goes down and fan speed will go up. Obviously, the reverse is also true.

Finding the right temperature-to-resistance curve would be necessary, but once you find it, you could make a metric(or imperial, either one) fuckton of money selling it to enthusiasts for $20 (which is about $19.50 gross profit once you factor in the price of the thermistor, the molex connectors, and the wire... if you were making an inline device for any fan).

Working in HVAC, we use various types for various systems. The most common one I work with uses a Precon (old, defunct brand) "curve 2", and has a reference point of 10K-ohm at 77degF. It goes down to about 2K-ohm at 120degF and up to 25K-ohm at 30degF.

Hm...

[MXK]

I think their server overheated...

OT: VW Beetle

[jawtheshark]

where they are still made new today

Sorry, but they stopped making them in 2003.

the joy of recycling

[justforaday]

I'll recycle my comment from the last /. article on this subject...

summary: use low noise/silent parts in your computer

Slashdotted: Bye, bye,bye,bye,buy: a mirror,mirror

[NRAdude]

The first picture I got from that article was the accursed visage of n'Sync. Thanks for the warning. I only was able to read the first two pages and to sum up the study and workmanship is an accurate measurement of <i>db</i> noise rating at various levels of RPM of case fans. The article recommends you buy a FAN CONTROLLER, because a computer doesn't need a FAN revolving at full RPM to remain cool; and I believe that to be the articles conclusion with having only read three pages before slashdot effect. Here are the quotes;

-------
Case fans at half speed:

Let's start of with the easiest of manipulations: reducing the speed of the two case fans should silence the system a bit, without losing too much cooling power.

Each fan's rotation speed was cut in half using the Aerogate II fan controller:
(number between () is compared to default configuration)

Noise measurement: 37.1dBA (-2)

CPU: 56 (-1)
System: 38 (+4)
PWM: 47 (+1)
HDD: 36 (+7)
RAM: 39 (+1)
VGA: 59.5 (+2)
Top: 34.5 (+1.5)
Bottom: 35 (+4)

Reducing the airflow inside you can see some changes; the hard drive's temp raises quite a bit, the other components only become a few degrees warmer. CPU actually becomes 1&#176;C cooler, this is within the margin of error though, and it's quite possible that the two case fans were disrupting the airflow towards the CPU's fan.

Case fans at zero speed:

Now let's see how the system does without any case fans running:
(number between () is compared to default configuration)

Noise measurement: 36.8dBA (-2.3)

CPU: 57 (0)
System: 41 (+7)
PWM: 47 (+1)
HDD: 38 (+9)
RAM: 40.1 (+2.1)
VGA: 61.5 (+4)
Top: 36.5 (+3.5)
Bottom: 38 (+7)

The noise doesn't decrease a lot when compared to the system running with the case fans running at half speed. The temperatures however increase quite a bit, closing in on +10&#176;C for the HDD.

Conclusion: a fan controller should be near the top of your purchase list

Cost of the modification: $15-$70 depending on your needs.

Madshrimps (c)

Adding a fan controller can help reduce the noise generated the system's case fans effectively without affecting temperature a lot. Even a little bit of airflow proves to be much better then none at all. You can go all out and buy a fan controller with all the bells and whistles (memory card readers, LCD display, and allow control through software in Windows) or stick with a more modest model which features a series of knobs which control the fan's speed.

Tired of those whining fans?

[deuist]

Tired of those whining fans?

I sure am!

-- Michael Jackson

Re:Tired of those whining fans?

[Anonymous Coward]

Aren't you supposed to be in court?
Oh that's right, "Back problems" again.

Could be fanless with proper design.

[G4from128k]

As much as people hated the old Mac Cube, it does illustrate that proper thermal design can provide passive cooling. A specially design PC motherboard, CPU, GPU, and PSU could be built around a heat-convecting chimney -- the more power needed, the taller the chimney. Of course, it would be hard to do this with off-the-shelf modules, but if a design-oriented company wanted a fanless PC, they could do it.

Re:Could be fanless with proper design.

[Ahnteis]

There's a (full sized) PC case specially designed for this.

[goes looking]
Ahhh.. here it is.

You can of course, build quieter by using slower parts, but that may be too much of a trade-off for some people.

Its not that hard...

[cr0y]

....To make a system quiet, To make it DEAD quiet is harder, however if you just want a gentle hum instead of a giant roar, do the following

-Get a good psu (just got a X-Connect, dual fan, very very quiet)
-Buy a few new 80mm case fans, or clean and oil the ones you have.

I was amazed at how quiet I could get my system (which has 4x case fans, 2x video card fans + the one on the card) 2 in my power supply and one on my processor) With a little dusting and some WD-40.

Re:Its not that hard...

[confuted]

To make it DEAD quiet, turn it off.

obligatory nit-pick

[kebes]

the summary says: Want some piece and quiet...

But I think there is a difference between piece and peace. Maybe they meant to say: Want a piece of peace and some quiet...

Re:obligatory nit-pick

[bigt_littleodd]

Reminds me of the old joke:

Husband: "All I want is peace and quiet."

Wife (amazed): "Really?"

Husband: "Yes. Just give me a piece and I'll be quiet."

:-)

A quiet (silent) PC

[mollog]

Big (120mm) fans, controllable CPU fan, quiet case, and Segate Barracuda hard disk drives. 7200.7 My next computer build will use a laptop processor because they run so much cooler.

I'm confused

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought in Korea it was only old people who welcomed our new air cooled overlords?

I agree

[toadlife]

I had use Maxtors and they sounded like turbojets when they were powered up. After hearing of Maxtor's idiotic decision to integrate Quantum technology into their products, it was time for me to choose a different brand. At work the systems we have been buying come with Seagate drives, and I have noticed that they are extremely quiet - and pretty reliable to boot.

I just bought three Seagates and now I can hear my fans instead of my drives when I fire up my computer.

Re:I agree

[Anonymous Coward]

"pretty reliable to boot"

Are some drives more reliable to boot, and others more reliable once the computer is booted?

In this industry you learn something new every day/

Re:I agree

[operagost]

For someone who only cares about noise, Quantum technology might be a bad thing. But Quantum made some of the fastest SCSI disks in the world. Noisy, but fast. Last time I checked, most people like speed.

Re:I agree

[Anonymous Coward]

Good for a server room, not so good to sit next to.

Screw that...

[jmrobinson]

...Just submedge the whole damn thing!!! http://www.teamamd64.com/submergedpc/

Re:.... How?

[L0C0loco]

It is called convection. Good, open, free air flow combined with a suitably shaped and oriented heat exchanger should work.

Personally, I just bought the Mac Mini. It has a fan, but I can't hear it over the ticking of the clock I have on the wall. It is very quiet.

Article all on one page

[athakur999]

Here's a link to the printable version with all of the article on one page:

http://www.madshrimps.be/printart.php?articID=286

Some advice from someone who just did it

[kneecarrot]

It was time for me to upgrade my home machine a few months ago so I decided to go the extra mile and reduce the noise. It was much easier than I thought to get something far more quiet than a stock machine. The key is to carefully evaluate each component you are planning on including. Go to the manufacturers websites and look for a decibel rating. It is much easier to silence a machine if the parts you select are already some of the quietest in their class. Often, several products (for example, hard drives) in same price range will have wildly different noise ratings.

When I first plugged in my new machine I was impressed by the sound but not blown away. A few weeks later I plugged in my old machine and my mouth literally dropped open at how loud it was.

Re:Some advice from someone who just did it

[Anonymous Coward]

I also did it but it's long ago.

Re:Some advice from someone who just did it

[legirons]

"The key is to carefully evaluate each component you are planning on including. Go to the manufacturers websites and look for a decibel rating."

Then add 20dB to the manufacturer's claim to get a rough idea of the true noise level.

And look for the small print "20dB... at 10 metres, from the side, while idle and/or underclocked. 1dB = 10.24bel. Actual formatted noise may vary."

Re:Some advice from someone who just did it

[krunchyfrog]

I got something similar: My PC is in my laundry room, and through the wall I ran a S-video cable for my Nvidia, some sound cables and the USB pod for my Gyration keyboard & mouse. I switch my TV to Video1 and do my stuff. Sure, it's 640x480, but that's better than nothing, since there's *no* room for a desktop pc in the appartment.

Slashdotted

[lbmouse]

I don't think that passive air cooling is going to save their server right about now.

Great timing

[josh2112]

I've been researching this all week; I want to make my main desktop computer (which is in my bedroom and has an amazingly loud power supply fan) into an always-on Linux server. Now as soon as the Slashdot herd moves on to something else I'll actually be able to RTFA...

Use a older PC

[darthgnu]

For my mythtvTV computer, im using a K6-2 500 Mhz with a PVR-350, I can hear the hard drives once in a while but otherwise it is dead quiet.

Coralized link

[Anonymous Coward]

Enjoy.

31.7db isn't silent

[sjbe]

While I'm impressed that they actually bothered to measure the sound coming from their case, their final measurement of 31.7db hardly counts as silent. In fact I personally regard that as fairly noisy, though I'm perhaps pickier than most. Realistically how much noise one can tolerate is a personal thing. If it bothers you it's too loud no matter what the acoustic measurements might tell you. And what bothers me might not bother you. I have just listened carefully to my machine and whichever component made the most noise got replaced.

The only way to have a truly silent case is to have no fans and an idle hard drive. If that isn't possible fans like Pabst 8412 NGL are the next best thing. They don't move much air but they're very quiet. And a better solution IMO than the hard drive enclosures which drive up heat and reduce reliability is vibration isolators combined with a naturally quiet drive like Seagates. There are some fanless and semi-fanless (doesn't run unless it gets hot) power supplies out there like the SilentMaxx Semifanless. And replace those stupd 60mm fans that they insist on using for CPUs and GPUs with big headsinks and/or heatpipes. Also install neoprene or other washers and use rubber to deaden case vibrations. Home Depot is a great source for a lot of this stuff.

Re:31.7db isn't silent

[jmke]

the dBA meter used is not a $2000 model; but rather a $200 model. It lowest readout is 30dBA, in the test room with all PCs turned off it measures 30dBA.

final measurement of 31dBA could not be heard; so basically at 60cm I could not hear the difference between PC on/off.

if you look up noise levels and rating, you'll see at 30dBA is VERY low, and that 30dBA can only be accurately measured in a sound studio with high end equipment:)

Re:31.7db isn't silent

[Malc]

That's some body evidence that suggests continuous background white noise is actually quite stressfull. Some people might not even be aware that they're feeling stressed! I don't necessarily notice my computer when it's on, but I do when I turn the power off. Then I get a feeling of relief. Some people seem to think white noise (e.g. air conditioning) helps them relax, but I prefer silence. Perhaps one component of it is that white noise is continuously applying real physical pressure to the ears.

Re:31.7db isn't silent

[gzunk]

I've got tinnitus, Even when it's completely silent I hear a high pitched whine - because of that, computer hum doesn't bother me in the slightest...

Re:31.7db isn't silent

[beaststwo]

Right! These cats are geting all worked up about 1-3dB decreases for each change. Don't they know that the ear is a logarithmic device? It generally takes about 10dB of change to be preceived by most people. -7dB would hardly be noticable!

I took a homebrew machine which was so loud it could be heard across the house, moved it into an Antec Sonata case, changed the CPU cooler with an Artic Cooling Temprature-controlled unit and now you can hardly hear it sitting next to it. You can hear the ceiling fans, but not the PC. Must be at least a 20dB decrease. That's what I consider significant!

Re:31.7db isn't silent

[bigg_nate]

Right! These cats are geting all worked up about 1-3dB decreases for each change. Don't they know that the ear is a logarithmic device? It generally takes about 10dB of change to be preceived by most people. -7dB would hardly be noticable!

7 dB is certainly noticeable -- most people describe 1 dB as the smallest audible difference, 3 dB as the smallest significant difference, and 10 dB as about doubling or halving the volume. And technically, if every increase of 10 dB multiplies the intensity by 10 and the perceived volume by 2, then the ear uses a power scale, not a logarithmic scale.

Re:31.7db isn't silent

[Sabalon]

Same hear - thank you 80's heavy metal concerts.

Re:31.7db isn't silent

[cloudmaster]

The ear uses a logarithmic scale - the fellow who refers to cats posting on /. is just confused, probably due to having not quite all of the information needed...

Re:31.7db isn't silent

[bigg_nate]

The decibel scale is logarithmic. So if the ear also used a logarithmic scale, perceived volume would be directly proportional to decibel level. This is clearly not the case: 160 dB sounds far more than twice as loud as 80 dB.

Instead, whenever intensity increases by a factor of 10, volume increases by a factor of 2. This implies that perceived volume is proportional to (intensity) ^ (log10(2)).

Re:31.7db isn't silent

[cloudmaster]

Our sense of hearing is roughly logarithmic. The decibel scale reflects that. 1dB is roughly the minimum change in volume of a fixed-frequency source discerenable by a trained, healthy ear, while 3Db is commonly accepted as the general change that's barely perceptible. Don't confuse absolute changes in intensity with changes in dB.

Re:31.7db isn't silent

[bigg_nate]

I understand that the dB scale is logarithmic in intensity. But I think you're confusing changes in dB with changes in perceived volume.

To make it a little more precise, let's do some algebra. Let V(I) be the perceived volume at intensity I. Assuming you agree that every 10 dB increase doubles perceived volume, the equality V(10 * I) = 2 * V(I) should always hold.

Now, you're asserting that volume is logarithmic in intensity; in other words, V(I) = k * log(I). Let's test out the equality:

V(10*I) = k * (log(10*I)) = k*log(10) + k*log(I) = V(10) + V(I)

which isn't the result we want.

On the other hand, I'm asserting that V(I) = k * I^(log_10(2)). Then,

V(10*I) = k * (10*I)^(log_10(2)) = k * 10^(log_10(2)) * I^(log_10(2)) = k * 2 * I^(log_10(2)) = 2 * V(I)

which is exactly what we were looking for.

Re:31.7db isn't silent

[cloudmaster]

I merely stated that a 1dB change is the minimum perceivable change in volume, and that the ear's sensitivity corresponds to the decibel scale's logarithmic nature. You use a logarithmic scale (like the dB scale) to get a linear representation of something that grows exponentially. Therefore, what I said, and what you appear to agree with, is that V(I) = k*I^n. Letting n = "log base 10 of the desired volume increase" to allow a 10-fold increase in power resulting in a doubling of volume is fine. We agree on that, but maybe are not agreeing on terminology.

So, given that power must grow exponentially in order to result in a linear growth of volume, the ear's *sensitivity* must be decreasing at the same rate that power requirments increase. If the ear's sensitivity to signal strength was linear, then the dB scale would be linear. But it's not. The ear's sensitivity decreases as signal strength increases. The ear's sensitivity graph would exhibit logarithmic growth. Ergo, the ear's sensitivity relative to signal strength, and therefore the perceived volume of a signal, is logarithmic. Which is what I've been saying.

This is why we have a dB scale, rather than just quoting the absolute power (amplitude times frequency) of a wave. Because the ear doesn't respond linearly, we need a scale that provides linear growth. The dB scale does just that - provides growth of about 1dB for every preceptible increase in volume. A side effect of the dB scale's log base 10 nature (which, remember, is based on the ear's logarithmic sensitivity) is that, every 10dB increase requires in a 10x increase in power, but results in a mere 2x increase in perceived volume.

Red October

[Ibiwan]

If only I could adapt the 'caterpillar' drive described in The Hunt For Red October to cool my system... totally silent, but requires a nuclear reactor for power and separate cooling for the electromagnets... (details stolen from Knick)

Re:Red October

[Anonymous Coward]

But it makes that "farting" noise every few mins, its so rude.

Re:Red October

[ifishfortorque]

They used a magnetohydrodynamic drive to push the ions in the seawater out the back of the sub with perpendicular magnetic and electric fields. The U.S. Navy is actually still working with this technology. You don't need electromagnets or lots of power; some large permanent magnets and rectified AC from your wall would work OK. So you could, in theory, make a pump for a water-cooled system using a MHD, and it would have no moving parts, but the magnetic field required (my friend and I built a fairly weak one for science fair and it took two 1.2T NdFeB magnets) might make the computer silent but not useable.

Re:Red October

[LWATCDR]

The problem with that is you would want de ionized water in your cooling system if possible. Distilled water is commonly used.
Since we are the sub idea anyway. Why not go for a natural circulation system like the Ohio Class uses.
Just out the main tank above the cpu and use convection?

Re:Red October

[ifishfortorque]

Sorry; my last post was unclear. Such a submarine would use an MHD as a drive system, not for cooling. The sub would take the water in towards her bows; seawater contains ions, so the two fields would accelerate these ions towards the stern of the sub where the water is allowed to exhaust. It really would require no moving parts, and I can't think how a sub like this would generate a back-pressure wave like Jones hears in the movie/book. It would make the sub really vulnerable to magnetic anomaly detectors though.

Re:Red October

[LWATCDR]

Yes it would. It would also tend to leave a trail of chlorine bubbles as well.
In the book they uses a something closer to an achemides screw in a duct I think.

Re:Red October

[Techie_Steve]

The technology applied to "Lifters" could be applied as to move air silently with an electric field. not sure if it has been tried, but it isn't very efficient. for information on lifter technology see http://jnaudin.free.fr/lifters/main.htm

Coralized link

[Anonymous Coward]

Enjoy

How about...

[Anonymous Coward]

an Apple G5. They are very quiet and well engineeredhttp://www.idsa.org/idea/idea2004/g294.h tm.

Mirrordot only has the first page

[Maddog Batty]

Anybody got links for mirrors of the other pages?

Micropolis hard drives also quiet

[metamatic]

Micropolis hard drives were always very quiet too--they'd go clunk and stop making even the faintest whirring noises...

Re:Micropolis hard drives also quiet

[mollog]

LOL, I'd forgotten about Micropolis disk drives. Yeah, we'd run them non-stop for months. Then when we'd shut down site power for maintenance, the heads would stick to the media as they cooled off - presto - 40% failure rate.

Re:Micropolis hard drives also quiet

[tmasssey]

Don't remind me! :(

I bought a 4GB Micropolis SCSI hard drive. I had it running in a "file server" (just a second PC) in the basement. It kept crashing in the Adaptec SCSI driver. I thought I was having a problem with the SCSI controller. Turns out that the drive was dying, and causing the computer to crash.

Had the PC been nearby, I would have heard the mad clicking and eventually the grinding the drive would make, but I would just power cycle it, make sure the boot would start and go back upstairs. Until eventually, it wouldn't boot.

That drive stored all of my data on it. All of it. And no real backup. I was so desparate to get my data back that I sent my drive to a very reputable data recovery company: one that would use a special machine to read the platters, as opposed to companies that just put your platters into a sacrifical drive. However, there were some platters so badly chewed up that they would not risk their machine on them.

In the end, I lost all of my data, and the recovery people could get back zero of it. That was about the worst month of my professional career.

The moral of the story? 2 things: MAKE BACKUPS!!! (Duh!) and listening to your hardware is as important as any other diagnostic tool. I've used it a *number* of times...

There was a slightly happier ending to this story. About 2 months before I lost the drive I copied 90% of my business data to my notebook when I went to my brother's wedding. However, the notebook died while I was on that trip: it refused to boot. As it was an old notebook and I didn't use it much, I had forgotten about it. However, the data was stored on a separate partition from the OS. I booted off of a floppy and voila! There was my data! So, I only lost about 2 months of business data. My personal data was still toast, however...

Re:Micropolis hard drives also quiet

[Namlak]

Micropolis hard drives were always very quiet too--they'd go clunk and stop making even the faintest whirring noises...

Just like the company!

Doesn't take a rocket scientist...

[pla]

You have two approaches to making a quiet PC - Totally passive cooling, or big fans.

Assuming you need the second choice, you only need to know three things, in (usually) decreasing order of the amount of noise they make, to have a nearly-silent machine:

1. 120mm fans. Use them for everything except the CPU (and for that, still get the biggest you can physically mount to the heatsink... a 90mm running at 1500RPM buried inside the case won't cause too much racket, and will move more air than a 60mm running at 4000 RPM.
2. Hard drives make noise. Pick a quiet one. Invest in a baggie of small rubber grommets and use them on every screw you use. In fact, you might want to use them on as many screws as you can, anywhere in your computer.
3. Computers vibrate. Put nice thick felt stick-on pads (like the ones you use to protect hardwood floors from furniture) on the bottom of your case. You can even go one further and stick your PC in a sandbox (may seem like a wierd idea, but three inches of sand will totally stop vibrations from turning your desk into a great big resonant surface)... Just make sure the sand can't get into the case.

And for those of you who, like myself, have a machine or two loaded with cheap noisy IDE drives to use as a poor-man's fileserver... Two words: "Spare Room". You very rarely need to actually sit at a fileserver, so why not just stuff it in a room you never use? Or even a closet, but beware of dust and heat.

Re:Doesn't take a rocket scientist...

[justforaday]

Invest in a baggie of small rubber grommets and use them on every screw

This part can't be stressed enough! Although, you may want to get some of the larger rubber grommets depending on your needs...

Re:Doesn't take a rocket scientist...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a 120mm cooling my CPU at 1200 RPM. It's mildly overclocked but never gets hotter than 52C. Putting your computer in sand is a bit of a silly idea, I feel.....

Re:Doesn't take a rocket scientist...

[jgordon7]

"Hard drives make noise. Pick a quiet one. Invest in a baggie of small rubber grommets and use them on every screw you use. In fact, you might want to use them on as many screws as you can, anywhere in your computer."

I do not see how this would help? If the screw makes contact with the harddrive and makes direct contact with the case, having a piece of rubber around the screw will not prevent ANY transfer of energy into the case. Now if the actually use an isolator where you do not have ANY direct metal contact then yes it would help

Re:Doesn't take a rocket scientist...

[pla]

If the screw makes contact with the harddrive and makes direct contact with the case, having a piece of rubber around the screw will not prevent ANY transfer of energy into the case.

If you have a screw tightly fastened, that point of contact can't dissipate any energy. If you have it a little loose, however, simple inertia will transfer as little energy between the two points as possible. Without a gromet, though, that means the screws themselves will buzz like crazy, and possibly work their way out eventually (bad!). With grommets, you get the benefit of the interface dissipating most of the vibration, without the down side of screws buzzing and possibly falling out.

But yes, true isolation via "soft" parts would work much better - It also costs more and has a higher chance of mechanical failure (if a grommet disintigrates, you go back to a buzzing screw, rather than nothing at all holding the drive in place).

If not for heat, those little foam-rubber 3.5"-to-5.25" mounting kits would work wonderfully. But, wrap a drive in foam-rubber and see how long it takes to die...

Re:Doesn't take a rocket scientist...

[glitch13]

Some men are larger than others...

Re:Doesn't take a rocket scientist...

[Anonymous Coward]

And for those of you who, like myself, have a machine or two loaded with cheap noisy IDE drives to use as a poor-man's fileserver... Two words: "Spare Room". You very rarely need to actually sit at a fileserver, so why not just stuff it in a room you never use?

You insensitive clod - I live in the spare room.

Re:Doesn't take a rocket scientist...

[Anonymous Coward]

{120mm fans. Use them for everything except the CPU (and for that, still get the biggest you can physically mount to the heatsink... a 90mm running at 1500RPM buried inside the case won't cause too much racket, and will move more air than a 60mm running at 4000 RPM.}

oh, they have 120mm fans for CPUs now,
xp-120 and c7700. Those things are huge..

Re:Doesn't take a rocket scientist...

[Mattintosh]

Or buy an Antec case.

The SLK3700AMB addresses all 3 of these points. It comes with 120mm fans, it includes rubber grommets, and it has soft rubber feet on the bottom (made of the same type of rubber as the grommets). It's still quite possible to make it a noisy PC, and you can introduce other components that cause heavy vibration. Here are some of the other things to look out for:

- CD-ROM drives need grommets, but rarely have a place they will fit into. Additionally, many of them are on slide-rail systems that have NO padding around them. This is a good place to use that (thin) felt. Do not put it above or below the drive, however, as felt tends to insulate, allowing heat to build up.

- Plastic trim will vibrate and make rattling noises. If minor manufacturing defects are causing it to make noise, either add some of that magical felt (HA!) or glue it on (if you know you won't ever have to remove it).

- The CPU fan freqently causes more noise and vibration than all the other parts of the case combined. A big, heavy copper heatsink may sound like a good idea, but the more it weighs, the more vibration it's going to cause once there's a fan swinging around on top of it (or actually, on the side of it).

- If you decide a spare room is the answer, make sure it's properly ventilated. A burning PC igniting the drapes turns into a rather noisy item in a hurry. The fire engine sirens alone are enough to wake the dead.

Re:Doesn't take a rocket scientist...

[Anonymous Coward]

I took this guy's advice and put my PC in a sandbox. It was silent until my cat got her tail stuck in the fan while taking a dump.

Re:Doesn't take a rocket scientist...

[pipingguy]

120mm fans.

Right, move more air at lower velocity.

Yea-and whatever happened to neutral jouranlism?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the text, btw. I don't need to remember who N Synk was. All the "studies" are pushing some product. What, can't anyone document building a noise sampler or a controller with solid-state to regulate fans? What, is this all part of the "conspiracy" to convert the United States into a consumer nation incapable of anything worthy being made in America? It looks like it; simple things like a mounted fan regulator are trivial to design a schematic and assemble, without buying somthing made in Taiwan with Neon Light Technology(TM)...awe!

I don't know about...

[kdougherty]

I don't know about some "piece" and quiet, but I'll surely settle for some peace and quiet.

Re:I don't know about...

[CPUgrind]

I would settle for a "piece"! Piece: Vulgar Slang. A sexually attractive person.

Re:.... How?

[jbarket]

Silent air cooling doesn't mean the removal of fans. There are a lot of simple tricks--for example a 120mm fan at very low speeds will be extremely quiet, and may push nearly as much air as an 80mm that's going at a roaring speed.

Of course, the simplest thing to do is buy new fans that have close to the same cfm rating while having a lower dbA rating.

My home machine is just on the other side of silent (excluding one annoying 80mm fan that's literally custom built into the steel frame of the case at a weird angle), and I have no problems keeping my Athlon64 3000+ @ 2529 with my load temps in the mid-40s.

If you want a really good example of this, look up the Arctic Cooler Silencer series. They do a better job of cooling the outrageously hot GPUs that are out now, and they're so quiet it's hard to tell if it's running or not.

If you have the money....

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.zalmanusa.com/usa/product/view.asp?idx= 64&code=020

A completely fanless case capable of handling up to an A64 3400+

huh

[Turn-X Alphonse]

I happen to like the noise of my fan.. Infact it's gotten to the point where my room is weird and disturbing without the PC on..

Piece of what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some piece? Piece of what?

Don't quiet the noise, change it.

[CPUgrind]

I prefer to attach playing cards to my fans so that the sound is modified from a whir to a vroom. Very Much like my BMX when I was a boy.

how does parent get +4 insightful

[rejecting]

Obviously brain damaged.

Niveus/Hush - the way to go

[dnadig]

Heatsink cases are really the best way to deal with this, as anyone over at avsforum will tell you. Get the heat away, then just stick splines all over.

http://www.niveusmedia.com/

Very nice.

Rip out the grill

[ryanvm]

One tip that I discovered for quieting a PSU (Power Supply Unit) fan that I *never* see anywhere is removing the grill near the fan blades. It makes a huge difference.

In a quest to silence my P166 router, I ended up doing the following:

• Underclock the CPU and remove the fan and heatsink and replace with a large passive heatsink.
• Add a resistor to the PSU fan to lower the voltage and slow it down.
• Added rubber vibration dampers to the mounting points for the PSU fan. (This was worthless.)

During these experiments I discovered that the PSU fan was almost silent when the PSU was disassembled, but quite noisy when everything was put back together. I ended up removing the ring shaped grill on the PSU with a hacksaw and the noise is now imperceptible. Of course you have to be careful when you reach your hand around to the back of the computer or you'll get a playful little bite from the plastic blades.

Re:Rip out the grill

[mollog]

Good ideas here, and most of them free or very cheap. I, too, remove or cut off all grills. Also, adding a plenum (spacer) between the fan and the CPU's heat sink will help. You can use an old fan as a plenum by removing the inner fan and using the outer shell to put a spacer between the fan and the heat sink.

Re:Rip out the grill

[morcheeba]

playful little bite from the plastic blades.

It'll be playful if you just touch the blades, but if you make it through the fan, there is probably a large heatsink right behind it with lots of voltage on it. Chances are that some other part of your finger or hand will be on the grounded part, so the shock won't go through your heart, but it'll really toast the end of your finger well.

Perhaps a thin but strong grill would be useful? Or a larger grill at a further distance?

Re:Rip out the grill

[moonbender]

Or maybe you just don't do that. Not an option with kids or other pets around, of course. ;)

Re:Rip out the grill

[morcheeba]

I worked on an embedded computer that we custom-built. My boss decided to save the $10 for the power supply cover and figured we'd have our machine shop turn out something prettier. We were all careful engineers... Well, the cover never got done, but everyone on the team got shocked exactly once. It was severe enough (120VDC + 120VAC= ~300v peak-peak) that the memory of the first time prevented it happening again.

well, actually I was the only one shocked twice, but it's not because I'm a slow learner -- it's because I worked on it the most. Yeah, that's what I keep telling myself :-)

Re:Rip out the grill

[ErikZ]

Seriously, how the hell is this a problem?

Do you have to put warnings on drills so the user realizes that excruciating pain means he should stop drilling into his skull?

Re:Rip out the grill

[morcheeba]

It's a matter of intrinsic safety. Yeah, I could glue razor blades on all my light switches if I always remember to actuate them carefully... but I'd be crazy to do so. You expect the operation of a light switch to be intrinsically safe.

A drill is a power tool and you don't expect that the operation of its switch is intrinsically safe because there are mechanical consequences. But, if you removed the insulation from the drill's wiring, you've still got an electrocution hazard that even the most careful drill operator will be unlikely to avoid.

So, summary... don't create hazards when you can prevent them. And, just because you can't make a safe drill doesn't mean that you can lower the bar for safety and make all other products equally dangerous.

Re:Rip out the grill

[ErikZ]

It's not even close to the same thing.

To get an electrical shock you have to stick your finger though a spinning blade. This is not easy, and anyone with the ability to feel pain will draw back almost instantly upon touching the fan.

A better analogy would be a razor blade sitting in a cup of acid. With no reason at all to stick your finger in the acid.

Re:Rip out the grill

[evilviper]

Of course you have to be careful when you reach your hand around to the back of the computer or you'll get a playful little bite from the plastic blades.

Good god, what TERRIBLE advice!

Look, first of all, and most important, even when your computer is completely turned off, there is at least 100 volts of power going to a bare metal connector, just about an inch next to your power supply fan. So, if your PSU fan doesn't get in your way (perhaps when the system is off) you've got a good chance of stumbling upon that live 100+volt wire, and though it's not too likely that you'll be killed, you're sure to have very, very serious damage to your hand. The fuse can't possibly protect you either, as the bare wire in question is right where the cord goes into the PSU, before it goes through the fuse or anything else.

Not quite as serious, but still important, those 80mm fans are more dangerous than they seem. Usually a nice sharp tip on the very end of each fin, which more easily cuts through the air, as well as your finger. Getting serious bruises is common. What's more, the tip of your finger is sure to be the first into the fan blades, so if you're just a bit unlucky, the nice sharp tip of that blade might slip right under your finger nail, and try it's best to keep on going... Taking it from "playful little bite" to "blinding pain".

But besides that, there's no reason for you not to use an 80mm wire fan-guard. They are completely round, so there's very little chance it would cause any noise, and more importantly, your PSU doesn't need to be the serious safety hazard that it is, just to cut down on noise. They only cost $1.

Re:Rip out the grill

[morcheeba]

yeah, but the blade has the mass of a popsicle stick. if you approach it slowly, you'll pull back. But if you just unknowningly jam your finger in (like if you reach around and try to pull the whole case forward), you'll make it through. If it was a more substantial fan then (surprisingly!) I'd think it was safer.

I'll go with your razor blade/cup of acid analogy. If you don't see it on your chair and accidently sit on it, you're screwed. No reason needed. But I see your point... it's just that I don't think that the blade is enough of a deterrent in some foreseeable cases.

(p.s. nice debate)

Sound sensitive are we?

[DrinkingIllini]

Why does this actually bother people to the point where they need to worry about it? Right now I'm sitting in a computer lab with about 50 Sun workstations humming along and I have yet to become inconvenienced by them. Apparently they sound like jackhammers to most /.ers, but I just don't get it.

Re:Sound sensitive are we?

[MrP-(at work)]

Try sleeping in that datacenter I don't mind the pcs at work either, but the one near my bed with the pulsing high pitched moans and whirls gets annoying

Re:Sound sensitive are we?

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to be like you, had an SGI workstation and a couple of PCs in my bedroom. Then something changed a couple of years back. Now I can't stand the hum of my Linux box (in a separate room) and have to hibernate it at night or even when I am thinking hard. Yes, sound sensitivity is a huge huge problem and it is hard to explain it to someone who does not feel it themselves.

Is there anyone else out there who did not use to be soun sensitive, but changed ? I'd be interested in hearing what might have triggered the change.

Re:Sound sensitive are we?

[Chyeld]

Workplaces are normally noisy, so the addition your workstations are making is little.

Home environments are normally tomb silent outside intentional noise like the TV, children, or music. Your workstations _would_ seem like jackhammers in that scenario.

Re:Sound sensitive are we?

[plover]

Your bed emits pulsing high pitched moans and whirls?

Man, you must be doing something right!

Re:Sound sensitive are we?

[plover]

Something that surprised me greatly was to slip on a pair of Bose active noice-cancelling headphones in our office environment, and turn them on. I had no idea just how loud the office is until I had a standard to measure it against.

Yes, you're right -- without such a standard, the noise "fades" into the background. That doesn't mean it's not loud. It just means you're either used to it, or you've already damaged your hearing.

Sustained noise above 85db requires ear protection, according to OSHA. It's not a "regulatory burden", either -- it's about protecting the only set of ears you'll ever grow. Most computer labs and dinosaur pens I've been in are pretty borderline on the noise level thing.

Re:Sound sensitive are we?

[Anonymous Coward]

> the one near my bed with the pulsing high pitched moans and whirls gets annoying

You should look into getting a new girlfriend.

Re:Sound sensitive are we?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anybody have any recommendations for sound level meters to use when toying around with quieting down a PC? Most meters I've seen only go down to about 30dB minimum, which seems just a tad too high. Anything more sensitive out there going down to 20 or 15, preferably with digital output?

Thanks already!

Tired of those whining fans?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not as much as my whining wife.

Media server

[mollog]

Actually, this issue is important for a media server. A media server will want lots of disk storage, a fast processor, and a trick video card that probably needs a fan, too. Because a media server will likely be in the room with the video display, it needs to be as quiet as you an manage.

how to tweak the diamond max to be silent

[Bad Ad]

the maxtor diamond max is loud as fuck until you download hitachis (?????) feature tool. link http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm

Re:.... How?

[Brando_Calrisean]

Or that bloody clock is too loud!

Re:Yea-and whatever happened to neutral jouranlism

[NRAdude]

Excellent show of courage, friend! Consider my strategy for confronting conspiracies: deny that one exists until it becomes violent beyond the control and scope of law.

After all, everyone in commercie is willing to agree that there is no conspiracy when it is a tendered matter of Civil War (oxy-moron); when there is no competition to view, the void is filed with those willing to remove it. If the United States doesn't manufacture its own products, then foreigners always will aggresively fill those positions to the capacity and 'nary the record shows that lost venue will return to the Americans. Consider farming; most family-owned farming is being destroyed by Department of Agriculture agents in favor of corporatized high-volume cattle concentration centers; whereas, none of the venue lost by families may ever return to them if the matter is approached by more families entering the line of work. It's a fight to the death! Never give up, while you still have the chance! Why do you suppose there are so many restrictions and licensing and taxing being forced into the United States? Simple; when good people surrender any small matter, that tradition is ruled licentious for it not being performed. And considering, this surely doesn't affect my thoughts as being a free country when a corporation outnumbers family-owned. Almost checkmate?

Silly people

[nurd68]

Yes, the Barracuda's changed.

- Seagate invented this "Fluid Dyamic Bearing" technology. As I understand it, rather than standard roller/ball bearings, an oil-like fluid is used so that the rotating shaft builds up pressure within a containing sleeve, similar to what happens with various drivetrain components in cars.

- The Seagate Barracuda IV drives pioneered using this technology about 4 years ago.

- Seagate licensed this technology to Maxtor.

- Other people may use it now, not sure.

- Just about all Seagate and Maxtor drives in the past 5 years use this technology.

- Yes, Seagate drives are typically more expensive, but they have a reputation for extensive testing and high reliability. (I'm not saying it's accurate or inaccurate, just that this is the rep - substantiated by the fact that most non-IBM servers used Seagate drives, though this has changed in recent years.)

- I run a mixture of Maxtor and Seagate drives, all with this technology, and have never had an issue with them.

Re:Silly people

[mollog]

Actually, Hewlett-Packard was designing this hydro-dynamic bearing into their disk drives in the late 1980's.

Re:Silly people

[nurd68]

In the late 1980's, I wasn't even a teenager. :-)

Feel old yet?

Just goes to show that so many good ideas are shelved, just to be ressurected or reinvented years later.

Re:Silly people

[io-waiter]

The first seagate drive to have fluidbearings was the first 7200rpm drive released 97/98 and it was hot as hell.

Re:Silly people

[Slack3r78]

Actually, it's silly to say any drive manufacturer 'invented' fluid bearings. First example that pops to my mind is their use in turbo and supercharging applications for decades now. :-)

Re:Silly people

[Twanfox]

To add to problems, I have seen many HP (Toshiba drives) laptop drives suffer from oil bearing failures due to their inability to disipate heat. It is thought that there may be issues using high performance (7200 RPM) drives with these oil bearings since, with the faster speed and higher temps that they reach, it may degrade the oil faster and cause the platters to shudder more easily once the oil fails.

Re:Silly people

[unitron]

" In the late 1980's, I wasn't even a teenager. :-)"

A lot of us weren't teenagers in the '80s.

Or perhaps I should say "were no longer teenagers". :-)

I always want a piece when I'm working on my compu

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh!.... You meant peace. Nevermind then.

wha~?

[blew_fantom]

Want some piece and quiet when working on your PC?

no, but i would like some PEACE and quiet...

Re:wha~?

[Torqued]

No. This is the /. crowd - they need all the help they can get in getting a piece...

Minimal noise, minimal cost, maximal power

[Tyrdium]

I built myself a new, quiet computer over the summer. It's aircooled, and the price premium (over a noisy system) was only about $50-$100. Here's how I did it (using advice from SilentPCReview:

• CPU fan: Zalman CNPS7000A-AlCu (best one out at the time, around $30)
• Case: Antec SLK3700-BQE (again, best one out at the time, around $70 including reasonably quiet PSU and quiet 120 mm fan (especially at 5V))
• Hard drive: Samsung SP1614C (very quiet 7200 RPM, 160 GB SATA hard drive, also comes in IDE variant SP1614N, around $100)
• GPU cooling: NV Silencer 5 (added aftermarket as soon as it was available, around $30)

The rig has: A64 3000+, 1 GB PC3200, 160 GB HD, 6800GT. All it needs for cooling are the PSU, case, CPU, and GPU fans. By far, the loudest component is the NV Silencer 5. When I was using a passively-cooled GeForce 2 (waiting for the 6800GT to be reasonably available), the system was almost completely silent. If I had wanted to spend more, I could've made it absolutely inaudible, but it wasn't worth it to me. Building a quiet system is actually very easy and cheap, assuming you're buying all-new parts anyway.

Not quite silent but...

[Particle010]

What I did was buy 4 low RPM fans from Papst, a manually adjustable CPU fan, and a power supply with a manually adjustable fan (enermax). I use the papst fans on 100% intake, so I have lots of positive air flow. I removed one of the front panels at the top of the case, and I can feel lots of exhaust. Under full load, the CPU (p4) doesn't increase temperature too much. The case is quiet enough that I can hear myself breathing. It's very nice.

On a side note, I've experienced that with positive airflow (mine is 80% intake fans, 20% exhaust fans), the dust level inside the case is really trivial. It's a huge difference than when I used less than 50% exhaust. I've decided to make all of my airflow positive (minus the power supply) from now on.

Quiet, cool, and less dust. It's a win-win for me.

Distributed Noise Abatement

[Doc Ruby]

I put the noisy, centralized servers, with their HDs and fans, into a closet with a fan that is away from the people in my home. I put multimedia terminals (audio only for now) in places like the bedroom, library and livingroom, on silent iPaqs. They run Familiar, a Debian-based distro, and make no noise - and are much more power-efficient than their less "mobile" cousins. The system will be more complete when my MythTV server is sending video to a cheap, fanless PII notebook with touchscreen.

This seems like a weaselly way to get "silent" computing, but it's really a way to use distributed multiprocessing on a network for consumer-friendly personal apps. Which are nice and quiet, and use less power, while being more convenient, than more powerful centralized computers which need cooling and more power. The apartment is the computer!

Coralize?

[Milican]

How about when we attack some poor website who obviously does not have resources for a slashdotting... maybe some of the FP people could coralize the link. I mean... the technology is out there. They even have plugins for Firefox and IE.

BTW, I give mod points to whoever coralizes a link first...

JOhn

It's possible

[Anonymous Coward]

AFAIK it's just voltage across a fluid. I think the fluid has to be conductive though.

We get used to things over time

[wyoung76]

The same food over many days starts tasting the same, the same colour gets boring, and the same sounds eventually get ignored. If you had a choice between a room of 50 Sun workstations which didn't make a perceptible sound compared to the one you're currently in, which would it be? (I'm assuming that you even know what a silent or quiet room is like ;)

Spray Cool

[mla_anderson]

Saw these guys demoing at ESC on Wednesday. It was pretty intersting. I was walking up to the AMD booth and saw a blade rack with blue LEDs and what appeared to be steam inside. That was enough to make me think, "what the hell?" Then as I walked up I could see there were three dual Athalon 64 blades in the rack, all were powered up and none had heat sinks or fans. On top of that there were nozzles spraying a fluid onto the boards and CPUs. The fluid was dripping off the boards and being collected below. They say the system can cool up to 25KW without fans or heat sinks.

Re:Spray Cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes, when I'm not careful, I end up spraying fluid inside my case too. It doesn't seem to cool it very well though. It just sizzles and gives off this horrible salty smell...

Re:Spray Cool

[flaming-opus]

Phase-change (spray-evaporative) cooling is the best available technology for removing heat from a very hot surface. They us it in the Cray X1 supercomputer by spray an electrically non-conducting flourocarbon onto the chip surface. The fluid evaporates and is sucked out by a high speed vacume. Flourinert is not really appropriate for home use, as it can turn into phosgene gas if heated too hot (a building fire or electrical short).

I think spraycool and cray announced a patent cross-licensing deal a couple years ago. I'm very impressed that they are selling into the blade-server space, as it indicates that they've really brought the price down. However I don't think they are likely to be quiet. There are no fans or heat sinks on the processors, but the fluid is in a closed-loop system. Thus the heat needs to go somewhere. Probably they have one large heat exchanger per rack, which feeds into the sprayers for a dozen or more blade servers. If they're selling into the server market, quiet isn't a selling point anyway.

Spray cooling is also used in some industrial processes, though often water is used, as electrical conduictivity isn't a real big issue. (power plants for example)

Re:Spray Cool

[Humorously_Inept]

The fluid was probably Fluorinert (manufactured by 3M). Cray, among others I'm sure, used direct-die Fluorinert cooling for a while and may still in some models. I have a video clip where they show off the system. Basically, they have a jacket with nozzles in it that sprays a fine mist of Fluorinert directly onto their multi-die CPUs. A manifold then collects the evaporated Fluorinert for condensation and reuse.

Ultimately, something has to cool the Fluorinert so I doubt that fans, pumps and the like can be entirely eliminated. They're just moved elsewhere.

Re:Spray Cool

[mla_anderson]

It was definately using a pump and fan. But since this was on a trade show floor it was difficult to judge how noisy the system was.

Re:Spray Cool

[Mattintosh]

Spray cooling is used in every refrigerant-based A/C unit ever. Compress a gas into a liquid, remove as much heat as you can, then let it evaporate and enjoy the cool breeze as it removes all the heat from the surrounding air.

Works for water too, but not as well. It's a process called "direct expansion" (or DX, in the HVAC industry), and it has many uses. Refrigerant for cooling air, refrigerant for chilled water, and if you use chilled water, you usually heat water in a separate loop, so you need a cooling tower. A cooling tower is a big basin with a spray nozzle at the top and a drain out the bottom. Most of them have fans on them these days.

Basically, any evaporation process is going to cool the surrounding materials. And in this case, you do sweat it.

omg

[Anonymous Coward]

shut the hell up with the soviet russian jokes. theyre not funny anymore.

BYO vs. Mac mini

[alispguru]

Would one of you people who glories in generating prices for BYO systems price their silent configuration and compare it to the cost of a Mac mini, which is damn quiet out of the box?

Just curious...

Re:BYO vs. Mac mini

[EvanED]

And which one do you get to customize to your heart's delight, and which one will give you a better system?

Just courious...

Hot?

[Bobman1235]

He took some initial measurements in the article, and at its LOUDEST, which I assume means "best cooled", he measured his CPU at FIFTY-SEVEN degrees C. That's pretty warm - my AMD at home runs at mid-40's at full-load, with a stock heat sink. I mean, 57? Are A64's that warm?

Re:Hot?

[Ahnteis]

His environment ambient temperature may be higher.

Google "tinitus"

[hax4bux]

In my wasted youth I spent much time in the machine room, and wondered why people complained about the noise. Besides, I need access to the system console in those days.

25 years later, I hear a persistant whistle that never stops, diagnosed as tinitus. Doctor says that most people in the "developed" world suffer from this in one way or another from all the noise exposure. I'm pretty sure this is from all my time in the machine room, since I didn't have access to an iPod back in the day.

Simply put

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want a silent computer... get a Macintosh!

My Rig

[whitelabrat]

Ok. Here's my original setup:

Generic CompUSA case (fugly)
CoolMAX (ha!) CT-400 power supply
Boxed AMD 2400+ (with stock fan)
3 hard drives.
Sapphire Radeon 6600 Pro.
Other miscellaneous bits and pieces.

Here's how I got it cool and quiet:
- Bought a bunch of Zalman FanMasters to control fan speeds.
- Replaced stock CPU heatsink with Zalman's CNPS6000-Cu. Very quiet!
- A Pabst case fan at 7v added to the case. Not much to hear.
- HD drive enclosures for noisy hard drives.
- Superglued a piece of carpet to the removable panel on the case. A nice shade of pink. Hey it's all I could find in my Grandma's basement! :\
- Rewired Power supply fans through FanMasters.
- Rewired stock POS fan on VGA card to v7. Still cool and much more quiet.

I was hoping to replace the Power Supply fan with something quieter, but I'd rather save the $$$. Rubber drive mounts for fans and HD's could make things more quiet. Same for some good rubber feet for the case.

Baddly written article

[Sleepindog]

When they turned off the case fan completely the HDD went up 9 dgrees to 38, which they said was quite high, or seomthing of the sort. then after installing some 3rd party cooling device and truning off the case fan the HDD was also up 9 degrees, but this time the temps are well within operating standards...

umm, what?

its the same damn temp minus the money for the magic '3rd party cooling device' unless the temps are wrong, they are saying two almost polar opposite things about same result...

Free tech support

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it should be.

Then when Joe user wants me to help upgrade their PC and they give me their old hardware I get 12 hard drives. Bonus!

Silly people-Board silly.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maxtor's usually go out because of the board, not the mechanics itself.

Just remove PC noise!

[noidentity]

This article describes how you can remove PC noise without turning the inside of your PC case into a small oven.

OK, I've got my PC case open but I'm not finding anything called "PC noise". Is it a PCI card, or some custom dealie elsewhere on the motherboard?

Wow, talk about dated

[rjung2k]

"Tired of those whining fans? Want some piece and quiet when working on your PC? Water cooling can be too expensive and too complicated to install, why not just stick to air cooling?"

Yeah, like the way my iMac did back in '98.

Re:Wow, talk about dated

[drsmithy]

But with substantially more performance.

Three problems: Heat, Power, and Noise

[n2rjt]

My home's Linux server is too loud, so I put it in a closet, with monitor/keyboard/mouse/USB lines coming through a the wall into the main room.
The main room is nice and quiet (and cool), but the closet is still loud and quite warm. Plus, the computer definitely uses lots of power, costing money each month.
I want a server that approaches the heat problem by running with low power. I want big disks and fast I/O on my server, but the CPU doesn't have to breathe fire.
My gaming and/or development computer, on the other hand, needs to breathe fire, but doesn't need to be available 24/7. That computer wants to be low-noise, but can be high-power.

Language Nazi!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know - I find it kind of distracting to be getting a piece while I'm working on my PC ...

The case for BLING!

[Colin Smith]

Well, in terms of thermal conductivity (W/m K):

(approx)

Diamond: 2500
Silver: 430
Gold: 320

There you go. You can tell your overclocker pals why they should be spending loads of money on getting hold of silver, diamond encrusted heatsinks, and why they are loser pussys if they don't. Hey, then you'd have a reason for those perspex panels and lights.

BTW. Diamonds feel cold to the touch because of their very high thermal conductivity. Air has a thermal conductivity of about 0.026, glass is around 1 hence double glazing. Water is around 0.6 and snow (depending on density) around 0.15 hence igloos. Copper bottomed pots etc etc.

Want to calculate how much heat you're losing through your walls and windows?

http://hypertextbook.com/physics/thermal/conduct io n/

Wattage = (k x A x (T(hot) - T(cold))) / Length (m)

k = coefficient
A = surface area (sq metres)
T(hot) = Temperature at the hot bit.
T(cold) = Temperature at the cold bit.
Length = The thickness of the material in metres.

My parents house had 2 rooms which were always cold, even with central heating on full blast. Big single glazed bay windows, losing somewhere around 10kW on cold days. Now fixed with very cheap DIY acrylic (perspex) sheet secondary glazing.

Piece and quiet

[Shotgun]

I'm always trying to get a piece and some quiet. But damn if she don't always on talking afterward.

Quieter computers

[rob_squared]

I'm deaf you insensitive clod! Seriously though, real men's computers should never go below 50dB.

Samsung beats Seagate

[SenorCitizen]

They do. Samsung's SP-series drives *are* a bit quieter than current-production Seagates. They're not native SATA, and only 80 GB per platter, but quiet and reliable.

The old Seagate Barracuda IV and V models were even quieter, but the 7200.7 is a bit noisier than the Samsungs. Check out StorageReview's database for a detailed comparison.

Quiet PC - Not that big a deal

[JSmooth]

I finally bit the bullet and replaced my crappy Dell with a custom built AMD. I did weeks of research to make sure I got as quiet a computer as possible. After all the reading I ending up buying a antec sonata case (no extra crap, just roomy and quiet), an AMD CPU with a Zalman Copper cooler.

I already had a 9800 radeon pro with the zalman heat sink and the sonata came with rubber mount cages for my hard drives.

The case is NOT silent but the only sound you hear is a quiet whisper of wind. The only whine comes when A cd/dvd is burning. The Hard drives only a quiet gurgle under heavy load.

Don't waste your time reading about this crap. Antec/Zalman/Newegg. Done.

Re:Quiet PC - Not that big a deal

[jmke]

"After all the reading"

"Don't waste your time reading about this crap"

uhm.. yeah; nice reasoning. :rolleyes:

Quite frankly, this article is close to useless

[MerlinTheWizard]

You learn that basically, you will spend lots of time and money just to drop the noise level a few dB's and with your system running at higher temperatures.

As for me, I've changed my stock Intel CPU fan for a Zalman 7700 Al-Cu and changed the case fans for Papst ones. The result was definitely encouraging, with the whole thing being less annoying to the ears that before. But it is nowhere near silent, still. So, I think this article's title is misleading to say the least. There is no way you can build a completely silent PC for now. Not with off-the-shelf parts anyway (you could always stick a giant passive heatsink to your CPU, with a part outside of the case, as with power amplifiers, and so on, but that's another story, and that would make your PC really huge and heavy).

*real* quiet PC.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://overklokking.no/art.php?artikkelid=12995&si de=1

fanless, HDDless (512Mb CF instead), slim slot DVD, Win98 (boooooo)

hosting on the air cooled system?

[lifes a cluster]

I think they may be hosting on the air cooled system - slashdotted

Quiet

[nixfixer]

Over about 6 months I spent about 100 UK pounds making my PC quiet - started with Zalman flower coolers, Seagate Barracudas suspended with cord, undervolted papst fans running at slower speeds (later replaced them with SilenX - the quietest I could find?) In the end I switched and bought an iMac G5.

Seagate deals

[NoData]

Yes, Seagate drives are typically more expensive

Outpost.com is almost perpetually running $50 rebates on all manners of Seagate drives over the past few weeks. I'm not affiliated, but I grabbed one a while back, just thought I'd pass it on.

OT: SUVs

[halltk1983]

The new Durango has AWD... so you can get that on an SUV, too. They also have a stability (anti-roll) controller, too. It makes it very stable, and actually less likely to roll that most minivans, and even some cars. SUV's are getting there. And the Hybrid Escape gets about 30-35 real-world MPG. So the mileage is there too.

Sorry for the OT, but Just because some are bad doesn't mean all are. For the record, I wouldn't drive an SUV, I like fast cars with poor gas mileage better. :-)

Re:OT: SUVs

[tie_guy_matt]

Yes credit where due -- some of them are getting better. There is a new batch of hybrid SUV's coming out. If you make a hybrid version of a car that gets good gas mileage already then you don't really get that much. A hybrid SUV? Now we are talking about gas savings. Also consumer reports said in their april auto adition that they think stability control, especially in SUV's (but also in cars) could maybe save more lives than seat belts or child safety seats. Of course John Q Public won't be getting the hybrid SUV or the stability control. He will probably stick to the good ole dangerous smog producing SUV that he thinks is SOOOO cool. Oil producing countries would like to thank you all!

I also agree that if you are going to waste gas you might as well do it in a sports car that is fun to drive :) Sports cars do have better safety features becuase they are classified as cars and they get better mileage too. The corvette actually gets respectable mileage if I recall. All this talk of air-cooled engines makes me want to get a mazda rx-8 even more. Not that the RX-8 is air cooled but the engine is quite unusual. Plus I just love saying "Wankel rotary engine!" I try to say it every change I get. As soon as I have 25 grand or so burning a whole in my pocket (which is reasonable for a sports car) I think I'll get one.

Re:OT: SUVs

[halltk1983]

My good friend just bought the 8. VERY highly recommended, and the mileage isn't toio shoddy either. He gets about 22-24, shifts normally at 6000 and always gets up and goes...

The easy way to go quiet...

[default luser]

Is to start with less power. But that doesn't mean you have to give up performance.

Winchester A64 cores as high as 3500+ have peak power usage 35w, and use 1/3 that when running Cool 'n Quiet. Pentium M cores also have low peak power usage and power management, but the price of entry is quite a bit higher.

This is in contrast to super high-end chips like the Athlon 65 FX and the P4 EE, which can use 90w or more at peak.

Be aware of how much a power hog your video card is. You can still play games on a quiet system, but you need to buy balanced performance. Keep in mind that the highest performance chips usually use older processes (.13 micron currently), and push 100w peak (!), while midrange chips usually push the process barrier and end up lower-power (for example, the GeForce 6600 series, or the Radeon x700 series). These cards typically peak at 50w or less, and idle at around 20-25w, not bad at all for their performance.

I've combined the above elements in an Antec Sonata case with only the stock 120mm exhaust fan, plus a Zalman 7000A for the CPU. The video card fan is audible, just a bit, but you can make that go away if it bothers you (there are lots of good third-party video coolers out there).

It's not THE FASTEST setup, but it's certainly no slouch. The best thing is, it doesn't cost that much, because you don't pay the premium of top-end performance parts or exotic cooling. It's affordable quiet performance computing.

Oh, a few side notes: carpeted floors and desks you can slide the machine under are really required for completely silent aircooling. If you have a hardwood floor, you're probably going to have to live with some minimum noise level.

Also, overclocking and mdding your case with thousands of fan holes does not mix with budget quiet computing. Then, you're talking watercooling.

None of that is neccesary...

[twifosp]

I went on a quest for a silent system a while back. I bought all the fancy heatsinks, quiet fans, and special PSU's. The more I bought, the more I thought about the noise and the more it bugged me. It became... a problem.

After realizing that I couldn't have a completely silent machine that also ran cool enough for gaming... I had an epiphany. Move this blasted thing as far away as possible.

I dashed off to my local Frys and bought a USB 2.0 hub (which has since been replaced by a USB 2.0 and firewire combo) and 25 feet of USB extension cable. I ordered high quality 25 foot CRT extension cables from Belkin. I hand made a 25 foot speaker cable. And then I bought an external CDRW.

I then stuck all the noisy fans back inside the machine and stuck it in my closet and shut the door. Ahhhh... quiet. How does it run you ask? Cooler than it ever did with all of the quiet technology. Screw that noise, pun intended. I can't hear a damn thing unless my closet door is open and airflow has never been better. And as an added bonus, in the winter when I step out of the shower and head to my closet to get the days clothes, it feels quite a bit warmer in there :) At one point I had 2 computers running in there, and I did have to open up both cases and add a box fan blowing between them to move air. They both ran fine, never had heat issues, and never hear a damn thing.

Now all I have on my desk is a hub, various devices, a cdrw, and of course the keyboard and mouse. The foot print is smaller, the noise is gone, and since I never turn off my computer, I never have to get up to swap cds unless I want to do a direct copy. Which is rare, and worth the trade off.

Ahhhhh..... silence. Now, I can get back to uhh.... Playing computer games with loud noises.

A piece?

[Anonymous Coward]

...Want some piece and quiet when working on your PC?...

I want a piece, but I can assure you that it won't be quiet ;)

Mini-ITX?

[wsanders]

Can't wait to try one of these suckers out. See 3 articles up on main page:

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/11/1840 25 1&tid=137

Cheap

[Jozer99]

The cheapest way to do this is to add washers or some other absorbant material to all the places where any moving part contacts the case. The problem is most cases and drives are not designed with this extra space in mind, so it can be hard.

soundproofing quiet PC

[soundproofing.noise]

just thought i would post some more spam with a reference to my previous comment. on the exact same type of article posted very recently.

Silent hard drive

[claes]

Do the following real early in bootup, before system logging is started at least.

mkdir -p /dev/shm/tmp
chmod --reference=/tmp /dev/shm/tmp
mount --bind /dev/shm/tmp /tmp

mkdir -p /dev/shm/var/log
chmod --reference=/log /dev/shm/var/log
mount --bind /dev/shm/var/log /var/log

mkdir -p /dev/shm/var/run
chmod --reference=/var/run /dev/shm/var/run
mount --bind /dev/shm/var/run /var/run

mkdir -p /dev/shm/var/spool/fcron
chmod --reference=/var/spool/fcron /dev/shm/var/spool/fcron
mount --bind /dev/shm/var/spool/fcron /var/spool/fcron

#Need to create certain dirs...
mkdir /tmp/.ICE-unix
mkdir -p /var/run/hotplug
mkdir -p /var/log/news
mkdir -p /var/log/YaST2

And the following in the end

/sbin/hdparm -S 120 /dev/hda

Apple has been doing this for years ...

[compactable]

a la the cube. Sure it has problems, and sure it didn't sell well, however I choose to ignore these shortcomings so as to present Apple technology as years ahead of whatever the 1337 crowd is attempting this month, as is my right as a zealot

Try 0 db PC, *this* is silent

[advid.net]

Buy a real fanless like the one I bought ($380):

Neo case from lex system

I have 1GHz via proc, 3 eth, 2 usb (but usb 1.1), up to 512MB RAM, and sound.
Storage: I've chosen a very silent hard disk: seagate momentus 40GB 2.5" and Linux is tuned to spin down the drive: it only runs 15s every 10mn.
No CD/floppy drive: OS install with PXE and another PC on LAN.

You can have a real 0db system with LAN boot or using a compact flash for storage.
Of course network boot means another PC, noisy, but in another place ;-)

Believe me, I'm currently posting on Slashdot using this system, I really apreciate deep silence.

BTW, this is old news.

FAST MIRROR OF SITE

[agoodm]

Making a mirror right now, will hopefully give faster access to the site when its done tho it may take a while since the site is dead slow. You will get the thout will not steal images untill the mirroring finishes and the images are downloaded from my server. Give it an hour or two and it should be done. For me its bedtime The location is: http://files.photojerk.com/madshrimps/www.madshrim ps.be/ >> Alan

FAST MIRROR SITE

[agoodm]

Making a mirror right now, will hopefully give faster access to the site when its done tho it may take a while since the site is dead slow. You will get the thout will not steal images untill the mirroring finishes and the images are downloaded from my server. Give it an hour or two and it should be done. For me its bedtime The location is: http://files.photojerk.com/madshrimps/www.madshrim ps.be/ [photojerk.com] >> Alan

Moderators on drugs?

[Anonymous Coward]

That load of crap was given a +3? Hey moderators, how about actually reading posts before hitting the buttons?

Do the math, and you'll see that the power used by the resistor is tiny. If you want to run a 1W fan at 0.25W (by putting in a resistor that has the same resistance as the fan), your resistor will dissipate 0.25W. Are you really worried about a 1/4 of a Watt? I wish people would think before posting.

Re:Moderators on drugs?

[Kiryat Malachi]

Let's just be clear about one thing:

10 dB is *perceived* as roughly twice as loud. It's significantly more than twice as much acoustic energy.

Re:Moderators on drugs?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't know what you're talking about, why reply? It's 10 times the energy.

Re:Moderators on drugs?

[Kiryat Malachi]

Actually, not always. It depends on the quantities you're comparing; 10 dB can be either 10 times the logarithmic value (sound power quantities) or 20 times the value (SPL quantities). Further, when comparing to a reference intensity, the 20 factor is usually used, such that sound levels are nearly *always* given using a 20 factor to a reference. The 10 factor is rarely used, honestly, and for quantities measured in weighted SPL (like, for example, dBA) the 20 factor is used. If the 20 factor is used, 10 dB equals roughly 3.2 times the energy.

If you don't know what you're talking about, why reply?

My attempt at a silent PC

[seanismdotcom]

I was getting sick of my old 50lb Antec 830 case so I just recently bought...
Antec Solution SLK3700BQE
Thermalright XP-90 with a POS fan

Right away I reduced the voltage of the fan on the XP90 to 5v so it is running at half the RPM. It is considerably quieter and now the only thing I really hear is my Radeon 8500 fan and my hard drive.

Whats nice about that case is it comes with a farely quiet PSU and grommets for the hard drives so they dont touch the metal directly. I am currently trying to quiet down the radeon fan becuase it is I believe 25 dBa.

"Want some piece"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes please!

Moderators on drugs?

[Anonymous Coward]

That crap was given a +3? WTF!

> It generally takes about 10dB of change to be preceived by most people.

+10 dB is a huge difference. It is twice as loud. I can't believe the idiot moderators give this guy points for claiming that most people can't perceive something that is twice as loud. It's idiot posters and idiot moderators like this that are ruining slashdot. If you don't know anything about a topic, how about keeping your mouth shut and how about not moderating posts about the topic? Apparently that's too much to ask.

Cubes. I swear by them.

[jpellino]

We have 7 of these, bought the first week they were out.
Beat on by kids day after day for many years now.
Not a stitch of trouble with any of them.
In fact the only layer of Macs we've ever had that have not sent a unit to the shop.
Snappier with every release of OS X, the G4 even at those speeds takes anything iLife & iWork can throw at them.

Agreed

[EvanED]

At a time when low end drives got their warranties changed to 1 year, the 5 year warranty was the deciding factor when I got my latest hard drive.

It's not so much that I care that I can get it replaced if it fails in 4 1/2 years, 'cause a new drive wouldn't be that much, it's more that they trust their drives to last that long and thus I'm more comfortable trusting my data to their drives. (I do backups of important stuff every once in a while, but not *that* often, puls I'm always worried I'll forget something because I don't do anything near a full backup. I just go through folders I think have important stuff.)

Maybe this is a bit naive.

A silent PC the easy way:

[DMUTPeregrine]

Google shows plenty! A good pair of headphones work too.

How I got rid of noise (full detail)

[ElGanzoLoco]

Exchanged my "Windtunnel" Powermac G4 for a powerbook 12" last week.

SO QUIET ! SO DAMN SMALL! SO DAMN CUTE! :)

El Ganzo Loco

Thermalright and Zalman gear

[mparaz]

Some reviews.

Thermalright SI-97 for Socket A.

Zalman GPU heatpipes: ZM80C-HP and ZM80D-HP. Zalman GPU heatsinks with fans: VF700-Cu and VF700-AlCu.

Re:Spray Cool (OT)

[Anonymous Coward]

Off topic, but did you see that 3D display in the AMD booth based on the rotating LED screen? That was some REALLY cool stuff...

Fans biggest problem: moving parts

[Money for Nothin']

My biggest problem with fans is not that they're noisy, although they can be if you let dust build up in them and run them for too long (as is the case on my 14 month-old Toshiba laptop, in which the fan recently slowed down enough that the system shut down in preparation for impending overheating -- it's the only time that has ever happened).

My problem is that they are moving parts, and thus, more prone to failure than non-moving parts. I could run my old 486DX2/66 with a dead CPU fan at full-usage without damaging the CPU (at least not to the point where I noticed any problems while running Slackware on it) or overheating the system.

But I described my laptop's fan earlier. Also consider my desktop's Geforce4 Ti 4200 card. I replaced that sucker twice in 18 months (it literally happened both times in 9 month intervals!). Fortunately, PNY has a "lifetime warranty" on it, which I've been happy to make use of...

Yet, without a fan at all but some other no-moving-parts cooling system, PNY wouldn't have had to replace the whole card due to overheated chips.

What cooling system could that be? I have no idea; I'm not an expert on such things... :( But I'm all ears regardless, and I know I'm not alone...

SPAMMER has mirror

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope my post gets modded +4 informative. Then my spam will be seen by as many people as possible. Im so leet for making it look like a sig when it is way too much spam to fit in a real sig.
--
Free iPod? Try jacking off in a bag of Girl Scout cookies
Or masturbate to a pic of the Queen of England
Your rump is as big as the Queen's but twice as fragrant as proof

Another simple solution

[dying_sucks]

Another simple solution, especially if your fans are fairly old, is to oil them. The best way to know if they need it is if you notice they are louder that they used to be. All you have to do is pull the sticker of the motor, remove the rubber plug, put a few drops of oil in, replace the plug, and then you're set. Sometimes fans may get really noisy and stop running. You can usually revive them the same way if that happens.

Re:.... How?

[archen]

You know the sad thing is that "silent" cooling would be a lot easier if everyone would pull their head out of their asses and look at where their fans are pointed. Case fans all typically either drag air through or throw air against completely un-aerodynamic grills. CPU, VGA, mainboard - pretty much all of them mash air directly against a flat surface. This was fine during the days when you had mabye 2-3 small fans on your Pentium I, but now that demands are higher it's an obvious issue (aside from the fact that cheap fans themselves are made to just push air in rather poor designs).

After getting a system where I was completely satisfied with performance I realized how noisy it was and started to look at quieter solutions. One thing I didn't realize was that a cheap case has thinner metal and vibrates a LOT more. But my biggest mistake was getting a mainboard with a small fan on it. It's by far the noisiest component, and pretty much impossible to really quiet or replace with a quiet component =/ (I'll replace it with a new board once MSI comes out with an nForce board for socket 939 that has no fan). It sort of sucks because a lot of this stuff is hit and miss and you really don't know what you're in for until you actually listen to it yourself and that means you already bought it. Taking advice from people online is risky at best since it seems like a lot of deaf people like to make claims about components...

A fan free web server.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have made a fan free web server, makes no sound at all, no moving parts, no hard drive. check at the full info at http://homepage.ihug.co.nz/~robsonde/

Re:.... How?

[AaronLawrence]

Of course, the simplest thing to do is buy new fans that have close to the same cfm rating while having a lower dbA rating.

Do you really think that's possible? After looking around for a while, and buying a few, I came to the conclusion that besides really cheap models, most fans of the same size were similar in terms of noise. The solution is to go bigger and slower. It just so happens that many of the "silent" fans ship with a resistor :)

Thermo-controlled Fans

[evilviper]

The ideas everyone has about undervolting fans in NOT a good one. These are the kinds of things that will work perfectly while you are testing them, then when you actually have your computer setup and running, the cooling may become very inadequate. Fans are as loud and powerful as they are, to provide a margin of safety when the tempurature climbs to 90 degrees, and undervolting them to where they are just barely adequate has negative effects you might not notice until it's a hot day out, and you accidentally set something blocking an air intake...

The smart thing to do is use thermally-controlled fans. That way, it will be very, very silent when everything is cool, and just get a bit louder when extra cooling is necessary. There are many of them available, and I recomend Enemax's 80mm just because it's damn cheap ($35/10 free s+h @newegg), very quiet, and you might say it's geared for quiet, unlike Thermaltake's fans, which run at something like 80% of their full, ear-piercing speed, even when it's extremely cool.

Besides that, I also recomend getting an el-cheapo power supply, taking it apart, and replacing the stock fan with said Enermax 80mm fans. For about $3 and a few minutes stripping and twisting wires (or soldering 3-pin conectors, in my case) your $15 power supply can be just as quiet as an expensive Enermax PSU.

If your power supply is still noisy, you can cut-off the built-in fan-guard, and replace it with a $1 round wire-grill fan guard. In my own experience, this hasn't yeilded any reduction in noise, but perhaps I've just been lucky, and not bought any PSUs with poorly designed fan guards. Incidentally, quieter PSUs like Enermax come with wire-grill fan-guards, not the built-in, cut-out fan guards of cheap PSUs.

the Red Green solution...

[freezin fat guy]

Living in Canada I just duct tape my computer to the outside of the window and let mother nature do the cooling. In fact in January mother nature is a little too willing so I have to put a garbage can full of burning coal under the window. Best part is, I can open the window and let the coal fumes heat the house. Remember, if the women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy.

Re:.... How?

[jbarket]

Don't know where you're shopping, but have you taken a look at jab-tech.com? They've got a great selection of stuff like this for less.

There's actually a pretty wide range. If you're not looking to setup a fan controller or anything, Panaflo's are the way to go. The L1A series is whisper quiet, and still pushes a good deal of air. Their 120mms are huge too... really thick... I once had the misfortune of sticking my hand in the back of one while it was running full blast, and it nearly took off a couple of fingers.

Right now, I'm actually using Thermaltake fans though. A few of the models they sell come with the ability to have them run based on temperatures or by a manual controller. They can push a ton of air (72cfm for the 80mm at full blast), so they still perform well once you've turned them down until they're whisper quiet.

The Thermaltake Smart fans I'm using right now are something like 17dbA at the lowest setting. The ambient noise in my office is a little louder than that though, so I'm able to run it at about 1/3 up or so and it's still like a whisper.

However, you're still absolutely right about going bigger and slower. It's the essential solution. It's just possible to find the right brand that will allow you to move a little faster than the others and push a little more cfm without really increasing the noise.

Re:.... How?

[jbarket]

I'm curious what kind of grills you're actually looking into. I agree completely--I dremel out all of my stamped fan grills--but I tend to use less restrictive wire grills afterwards to keep myself/my cat from losing limbs. You only need to stick your hand in the back of a 120mm Panaflo M1A once to realize the importance of grills :D

More importantly however, I assume you mean the northbridge fan is what's making all the noise. I had that problem with my last motherboard. Even though I had the ability to turn down the fan speed on it with software, at the lowest speed the whine of a 40mm or 60mm (or whatever) fan was enough to stand out above the rest.

Here's a solution that's a lot cheaper than a new board: http://www.jab-tech.com/customer/product.php?produ ctid=1829&cat=93&page=1

It's Zalman's passive northbridge heatsink. Depending on where your northbridge is in reference to your CPU (and the size of your CPU cooler), it may be too tall--but you can definitely find something similar for less than 10$.

Good luck!

Don't understand the obession

[incog8723]

Why would you want your computer to be silent?? There are many components in the computer that need to be heard. The fan, the hard drive, the PC speaker. If you can't hear them, what are you going to do, touch them every once in a while, see if they're using energy? It's nice to NOT be deaf... I've never had a computer that made noise loud enough for me to beat the crap out of it and I've been using them for almost 30 years.