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Completely Silent Media PC
Kez writes "Zalman's first completely fanless PC case, the TNN 500 was an impressive piece of engineering, but it was very bulky. Aiming their new chassis at those looking to build multimedia PCs and who don't want noisy fans to spoil their experience, the TNN 300 is smaller than its predecessor. From the Hexus.net review: 'It's a niche product that will appeal, in no uncertain terms, to a select bunch of users that value silence above all else. If you happen to be one of them, the TNN 300 is a pretty unique product that will appeal to you.'"
The amount of articles on silent PCs is getting tedious - does someone on the ed. team have shares in a relevant company or something?
AT&ROFLMAO
I never really noticed how much noise my PC was making until I finally turned it off!
Engineering and the Ultimate
Newer mode = smaller number! I can't remember the last product I saw that on.
Still, silent computers really are the way forward. Who wants fans buzzing at you non-stop? The noisiest components in a PC should be the HD and the optical drive.
No... I don't mean use an IBM Deathstar and wait for the click of doom, either.
How will I know when I walk into a room that my pc is on if I can't hear fans humming?
With a silent media PC would you at least be able to use closed captioning so you know what is going on?
Unless you can hear that high pitched whine of a black label Delta fan.
-Certified TechnoWeinie
Sometimes, when the lights goes out, you can really hear what it is like to be in total silence. The refrigerator stops running, the air conditioners stop running. The computer fans and drives stop spinning, and suddenly you're thrust into this silence that is eerily uncomfortable.
When the power comes on and all those once-dead appliances roar to life, it is like stepping back to reality.
I personally can't stand to be somewhere without sound. I can appreciate sound kept to a minimum, but there has to be some indication that things are running, in my opinion. So that when things do eventually expire, that it's not until days later when the CPU has melted itself into the motherboard that I find out the cooling system broke just as silently as it ran.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
This is wonderful. I have an HTPC in my living room, but it is enclosed in a cheap MATX case with 3 small case fans, plus the CPU fan. Since I don't like turning it off (thus preventing me from recording TV programs), the sound of the fans is just something I've learned to live with. However, with a case like this, I could enjoy my expensive home theatre setup just that much more.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
...you can hear their servers grinding to halt!
Another selling point is that the dust collection is kept to a minimum, and there's no need to worry about dust getting stuck in the most crucial areas like the fans or heat sinks.
FTFS:
It's a product that will appeal to a select bunch of users that value silence above all else. If you happen to be one of them, it will appeal to you."
Yes, if happen to be one of the people to whom it will appeal, then it will appeal to you.
Hmm.
It seems the linked site has decided to demonstrate its ultra-silent page server after being slashdotted.
My first attempt was to build a stylish case with large fans, quiet hard drives, and a massive heat sink for the CPU. It worked fairly well, though the CD drive was incredibly loud in comparison.
My second attempt was far more successful. The CPU is in another room, with a hole in the wall for cables. This is a far better approach as the only noise I hear is the quiet hum of the monitor.
There's one down side, of course. I have to walk through a couple doorways to put in a CD, though that's a fairly rare occurrence these days. If I was really hardcore I'd have a USB CD-ROM drive next to the monitor to solve that problem. Still, it's probably good to get me out of my chair from time to time.
A not-direct quote FTFS:
It's a product that will appeal to a select bunch of users that value silence above all else. If you happen to be one of them, it will appeal to you."
Yes, if you happen to be one of the people to whom it will appeal, then it will appeal to you.
If you happen to be one of them, the TNN 300 is a pretty unique product that will appeal to you.
Sorry to be the annoying English teacher from 9th grade here but something can't be "pretty unique" or "very unique". It's either unique or it isn't. Yes, informally it can be used with an adverbial modifier but that doesn't mean it's proper English.
£1,000 for a cooling system??
How about buy an air conditioner, make a gigantic computer case, put the former in the latter, and keep both outside of your house, wiring the needed appliances right back to your room. a perfect silent solution in LESS than £1,000 !.
Just because the computer is fanless doesn't mean it is completely silent. After all, it still has a harddrive right?
--------------
Expectations are the mother of all sorrow
Anyone who's been to a car audio store knows what the amplifiers look like. Their entire case is one big heat sink. Plus, the use more electricity than a PC. Yet they don't need a fan.
I've been waiting for case manufacturers to turn the case into a big heat sink. If the audio folks can do it, why not the computer people?
A media computer however doesn't really need a high-power 3d card. So it doesn't need a £1000 case either. A next-gen console will be less than half the price and probably serve well as a media computer including gaming.
A totally fanless media computer, or a quite noisy gaming computer can be built for a fraction of the price.
Here are some alternative reviews and piccies while the site is slashdoted: dutch site, uk site, toms hw, japan.
ok its a google search, but usefull
My other Sig is very funny.
There's link to shameless plug "review site" but no link to product itself. Not even in the sidebar thing on top.
Here it is.
Just drop the innards of the computer (minus the hard drive of course) in an aquarium full of oil
Technoli
Put noisy computer somewhere else. (In a closet) Run cord to tv. -or- put computer with no hd that boots from lan by tv and use "network" to connect to noisy tv.
link
TIAEAE!
For a media PC, I'd want a 44 cm or 19" wide pizza box, not a tower.
And it still looks like a PC: way too fussy and with blanked-off plastic panels, instead of a metal front plate like other A/V components
Why would you bother with that? The Hush PC (no affiliation) looks much better for most silent applications, especially HTPC - it's small, (the case in the article looked huge) it looks good and it's silent. Shame it looks like it's hard to upgrade, not to mention massively expensive. And, contrary to TFA's claims, it has been around for a few years now.
Off-topic? Clicking on parent, I see the topic to this post is one about the use of unique as a non-absolute qualifier. Now this post is an excerpt from a particularly popular book among the local crowd modified to fit the subject of varying the qualifier which is indeed absolute under correct circumstances. We've established that this post is in fact on topic, with respect to the parent. Now, whether the parent itself is off topic, funny, flamebait, etc, does not affect this post in the least. By comparing the absolute position of every posts' content to the summary, I would venture a guess that around 90% of all posts would be off topic. Try again, loyal moderator.
Not really a mirror, but some pics from this case are at anantech. They took them while visting Computex.
Just wanted to mention it since zalman.com and hexus.net are currently down.
--> Insert Funny Sig Here
If you want a silent Pc then simply do what we did in the computing industry in the 70's and 80's put the computer in a box with the air vented to a fan in another room. recording studio's do this all the time. we use dryer vent to duct the air from and away the box. using a simple booster duct vent fans in the other room.
other advantages are you can use disposable HVAC filters on the intake so the Pc is almost perfectly clean all the time.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Our audio environments are so suffused with fans and other hums that our bodies are adapted to these sounds. Without them the soundscape feels empty and eerie. Think of it as an extension of chronic industrial disease, however. Case studies in the Sahel discovered that 70 year-olds showed no significant hearing loss, due to typically healthy blood and an extremely quiet environment.
Some of that deep discomfort people feel when they're camping away from honking traffic is also due to ideology that's sunk down into the bones over a few industrial generations. Silence, not just quiet but really quiet, is deathlike, an absence of life, an absence of civilization. It's dangerous.
Interesting how I can always hear these "silent" computers. It really is relative.
Damn those pesky terrorists
I have a Cube sitting here from years ago with not a fan in it, and with a barracuda hard drive, the thing is silent.
There were hundreds of computers with one or no fans back in "the day" where megahertz was what really counted, not gigahertz. Hard drives WERE the loudest part.
Now we seem to have left all that behind in the name of going faster. My LCIII can still check mail, and I can still do graphic design on my cube.
I like my lower power bill and quieter room.
Quiet!? Give me a computer that sputters to life when I press the power button. A computer with a deep rumble when the hard drive is being read. Give me noise!
believing the big bang requires a certain amount of supernatural faith
Hush is immeasurably more sexy than that piece of junk. Then again what do you expect from this kind of article, clearly it's just advertising disguised as news.
My media PC has been stone silent ever since I switched from oss to alsa.
Either a thing is unique or it isn't. There aren't comparative levels of unique. How much more unlike anything else can one thing which is unlike any other thing be than some other thing which is also unlike any other thing?
The only type of adjectives that apply to the word unique are those indicating either confirmation ("...truly unique...") or negation ("...not unique..."); there is no such thing as fairly unique, very unique, or even most unique.
Copy editing is a lost art in the 21st century.
Wasn't Apple's G4 Cube silent, or nearly silent? Pretty sure it had no CPU fan (many people complained about the heat). That was one of the strong points of the PPC chips IIRC, its relatively cool operating temperature.
rooooar
welcome to 2003..
m an/zalman.html
http://www.teschke.de/heatpipes/Neues/Gehause/Zal
Except for its mostly-quiet hdd and optical, the Mac Mini is basically silent. We run a couple in my office and even when I put my head next to the Mac Minis, the other computers sitting across the room (a Compaq EVO D500 workstation and a Dell PowerEdge 700 server are each louder).
I'm surprised Apple hasn't released a media-edition Mac Mini... I'd pay $300 extra to get one with an integrated TV tuner, AM/FM receiver, some additional A/V inputs/outputs, and TIVO/MythTV-like software.
I seem to recall another article too because this thing is way old:
3 9
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/08/20/07582
HJ
As Abe Lincoln said: "People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like."
I am not a crackpot.
So you want to impress me with a fanless computer? Hah! My C=64 doesn't even need heat sinks. That's what I call progress!
I used to use an Apple G4 cube and a PowerBook (G3 Pismo) on my desk at work and I loved how quiet they were. I traded them for a G5 last year and the increase in noise is marked. It has a noticeable impact on my ability to concentrate. Some people, like me, are just sensitive to noise. We are the market that this product is aimed at.
when you can get a silent Athlon 64 in a tiny Shuttle XPC SN85G4. I bought one bundled with an Athlon 64 3000+ and it's quietest, fastest desktop I've ever owned. Suse justs hums along silently on this thing. The proprietary Shuttle cooling system is silent and effective. The DVDRW is the loudest thing on this system. Outpost.com is selling the deal I got for $379 Add memory, hard drive, CDROM, and the 64 bit OS of your choice (Suse is flawless) and you're in business.
This guy is way out there
- use of heat transfer technology to migrate the energy from these components to the outside case / heatsinks
- a shift to a new technology, like totally asynchronous.
- a complete rethink of the "rectangular box" PC design and enclosed circuitry
Heat piping and liquid cooling has been done. U of Manchester has developed an async version of the ARM. Good luck getting anyone to bite on, and invest in, doing things very different.Next problem is what you do with a very hot case. It's got to be placed where it can radiate the heat. I'm not sure, but crammed into a corner under a desk might not be the best place.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
MOD PARENT UP ^^ MIRROR
It will be news once they have a silent server. My office is right near the servers, and those lovely Proliant's just don't know how to keep it quiet.
Fanless servers... the untapped not niche market.
http://www.zalman.co.kr/
XJS*C4JDBQADN1.NSBN3*2IDNEN*GTUBE-STANDARD-ANTI-U
Yet another article with a review of yet another PC case. This is marketing, folks, not news.
And this case happens to be butt-ugly -- which would be fine in a hidden, rack-mounted media center, but I sure wouldn't want it in my living room!
Absurdity: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion. -- Ambrose Bierce
Wouldn't that make it hard to hear the dialog from the movies?
Of course given the quality of most movies these days you may be on to something.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
Why the hell are these things so expensive, someone please release a cheap one that doesn't cost more than all the other components combined.
i =2434&p=8
http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?
Save yourself a bunch of money and get a cheap VIA EPIA board and pop it in a nice tiny HiFi unit friendly case like a Travla C137 http://www.travla.com/Products/products.html
A 486 can to MP3 comfortably. A fanless 800Mhz C3-Nehemiah can do mpeg2 & 4 comfortably, and with the mpeg2 and 4 hardware acceleration features of the Via CN400 northbridges' built in graphic chip, it can do it with pleanty of spare juice to do background work like streaming digital terrestial video streams from the TV Tuner cards to the hard disk, or playing mame!
That TNN300 thing looks hideous and would be completely out of place in most living rooms.
I just got a ASUS DiGiMatrix, it's not only silent but it fits in with my stereo components. I just got it and haven't worked out all the features but it's been working well as a normal component in my network running headless without an issue. All the software is Windoze so I put XP Pro on it and manage it from my linux box w/ Terminal Services. Take a look.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
Doesn't account for the fan noise from the room fans you have to point at the case to keep it cool. Not to mention the air conditioner running more.
Both Thermaltake and Silverstone make good fanless PSU's and CPU coolers. I'm not talking water cooling either, just fanless, with huge heat fins and heat pipes. You're going to pay about $100 for each of these items. So then the only thing left making noise is the hard drive... and for that, just switch to a seagate which are probably the quietest.
Not that hard people.
Meh.
There are ways, not including convection, to move air without fans. Heck, The Sharper Image advertises theirs every day. And it would even help keep dust out of your PC.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
According to the article, the PC generates "literally no noise" and you have to put your ear right up next to the case to hear it.
This is apparently the Orwellian definition of "literally", where it is used with the meaning of "not literally".
My old and entirely fanless iMac DV SE runs Tiger perfectly adequately. The only noise is from the new Seagate Barracuda HD, which isn't the noisiest of drives. My G4 (see http://g4noise.com/ - even with 5HDs - is much quieter than my single-drive HP PC which is just unbearably loud.
But my system has onboard hardware-assistend MPEG-decoding. It also has built-in TV out, both NTSC and S-Video. So it works perfectly as a standard-definition media PC -- and the CPU never breathes hard with this type of usage. In fact, mine runs exclusively as a Myth TV front end. And it works great!
The motherboard is availble for about $150.
Fanless cases are available for about $180. (I use the former case and can atest to its utter silence. My system boots over the net and has no local drives. So when I mean utter silence, that's exactly what I mean.)
So, if I had my choice between spending £999 vs $400 for a Myth TV-type system, I would go with the latter. Again.
Evolution is a fact. Darwinism is a joke.
I guess for those who silence really is golden, this is pretty cool. But $1100 for a case? that's nuts. I'll stick with my antec sonata and zalman fans, thank you very much LOL. The amd64, 1GB memory, mobo, disk drives, cables and antec case were around $800 LOL.
Also what of the mobos that have built in fans (a la abit OTES)? that would sort of negate any benefit the $1100 is buying for you.
Some you can't disconnect or the mobo won't run.
l8,
AC
I've been waiting a looooong time for a PC capable of handling completely silent media. I guess until now we have not had the necessary technology. These are exciting times! Charlie Chaplin would be amazed if he were alive today.
As far as what to do with the hot case. Car audio amplifiers aren't always mounted in the friendliest of environments. I've seen them under seats and I had a truck where they were mounted on the wall behind the front seat.
i have never heard a hard drive that was even near completely silent. both my xbox and my HD cable box / DVR have no moving fans, but i can hear their hard drives across the living room, sometimes even with the TV on.
When the guy who wrote the article title realizes that there's other things making noise inside the case than fans.
I'm not saying that a fanless case doesn't have interest, I spent a lot of time tuning a HTPC to function quietly without overheating, so I get the point. This case isn't a solution in my opinion because it's far too large to be useful anywhere other than under a desk, where you most likely wouldn't care so much about noise.
i happen to enjoy the sound of my pc. it'd be too strange without it.
the human mind is a computer, and emotions are its virus.
It's all in specifying the right components. Shock mount the hard drives, use a solid HTPC case, a good cooler like the Zallman aluminum/copper model with its variable speed fan, a silent power supply *with fan* like the Seasonic Super Tornado, and you'll have a totally silent PC *and* decent air-flow. Mine sits in an oak entertainment center and people stand right next to it and don't realize it's even on unless they see the LED on the front. Best thing of all, unlike the case in the article, mine doesn't "look" like a PC thinks to the HTPC case.
If your worried about the sound of the fan on your PC for multimedia, you obviously dont have a loud enough speaker setup. 500+ Watts all the way
It's amazing, the hoops you people will jump through to make your PC more Mac-like.
I'm not looking forward to the next two years of articles raving about how cool Vista's Spotlight-esque search function is.
Get a Mac already. Sheesh!
people that value silence above else and still want a *media center pc* are a tough crowd to please
the antec aria cube case. http://www.antec.com/ec/productDetails.php?ProdID= 08130
i recently bought one with a miniatx board an a 3700+ athlon 64. its not completely silent but its quieter than the rest of the ambient noise in my house. you really have to put your head down by the case to hear anything from it. It also very easy to open and gives access to any part of the innards.
872835240
I realized this when my computer died on me one day. I never turn my PC off and that was the first time in months that my PC was off for the night. I couldn't not go to sleep that night. I got used to the noise so much that without it I kept tossing and turning the whole night.
The silence during the night creeped me out so much that I turned on my fan (in the middle of winter), took another blanket and only then was I able to sleep.
C'mon Slashdotters, how many times must we quiet/silent PC enthusiasts link it before you actually take a look and read what constitutes a silent PC? http://www.silentpcreview.com/
Losers choose to abuse the use of "loose".
My CS department let me borrow a completely silent computer for a semester. It really was a marvel. The cooling system used no fans - only heat sinks. I did a lot of programming on it, and would often shut down my other box and do my programming in complete silence.
Of course, the 8085 processor and only having 256 bytes of RAM kinda sucked...
"I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me" -Jesus (John 14:6)
Most "silent" coolers rely on case fans moving air through the case. Without that air movement the case temps gradually rise until the processor cooks.
And because of the skin effect, it helps a lot even to have copper cables coated with silver.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
It's actually impossible to find perfect silence. John Cage, I believe he was mentioned above, was obsessed with the concept of sound. He wrote papers after he spent time in chambers that were designed to block all sound perfectly. Lord knows how they did it but it eliminated all sound. He said, after emerging, that he still heard two tones. After some research it turned out to be his blood flowing and his nervous system running. You can't ever escape sound, you can only find what's quiet enough to make you happy.
Looks like you get a choice: quiet or safe.
Isn't that called drowning? Not very comfortable if you ask me.
RETURN without GOSUB in line 1050
I'm a big fan of the Apple ][ series of computers, in fact I own a ][+ and ][e.
Oh, you meant THAT kind of fan.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
I think 3. is one option which is going to come pretty soon now. A mobo+cpu is where the heat is coming from; a case design where the mobo is completely divorced from the rest of the components, propbably with the cpu/north/southbridge touching the case and the case being the heat-spreader is the way forwards.
The problem of course is the fact that differenbt mobo's place the cpu/bridges in different places. Enter CTX (instead of A/BTX)?
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
Sheesh, ruin a perfectly good subject line. :p
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Strangely enough, French is the second world language. Pilots must be able to speak either French or English with rudimentary proficiency. International air mail is frequently marked "Par Avion".
Despite being outnumbered greatly by Spanish speakers, French speaking countries are scattered all over the globe, with large concentrations in France, Africa, and the Pacific islands. English speakers are pretty much everywhere else. Spanish speaking countries are certainly more populous, but relegated to Spain and South and Central America, mostly (even there, Portugese is dominant in many areas).
How the French managed their language coup, I don't know.
Seriously, though, folks...
Computers can be completely silent. Most PDAs are. Not that you'd want to rely on that level of restriction for your intensive (ahem) computing tasks.
Then again, nothing is technically completely silent. Not above a temperature of absolute zero, anyway.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Silent:
I am a biker and I love bikes, I build bikes, I live bikes. But I hate the noise, so I'm trying to build a silent bike.
--or--
HTPC:
I have a bicycle, but I need more than just a bicycle, so I got into the latest area of custom bike building: Building a nice new motorbike, which has been custom modded into a bicycle.
yep, they tend to get silent fairly quickly. Sometimes they just don't start up, sometimes they make one final scream after being thrown against the wall, sometimes . . .
hawk
Grumble. It's completely silent PC cooling, not a completely silent PC. There's still a hard drive in there making noise.
Granted, it's really quiet, but it does not deserve the adjective "completely".
Still waiting for large-capacity flash-based drives on the cheap.
So your (bogus) correction should read:
The more I re-read your comment, the more I realize you weren't joking; you were actually seriously trying to correct me. Twit. As one of the sources I quoted in my previous response put it, "Another example of the oral transformation of language by people who don't read much."