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.'"

Comments

Silent Media PC

[CPUgrind]

With a silent media PC would you at least be able to use closed captioning so you know what is going on?

Re:Silent Media PC

[justforaday]

Mine uses Cage's 4:33 as it's startup sound.

When the power goes out

[ReformedExCon]

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.

Re:When the power goes out

[2nd Post!]

That's almost the opposite of me. You don't really notice how noisy your life is until you go out and take a hike in the middle of a forest. No road noise, no freeways/expressways, no fans, no hum of lights or electronics, no buzz of compressors and no creaking of houses and water pipes.

It's like being totally comfortable, like being submerged in warm water with the lights off, and no external stressors. Only the occasional bird, the sound of the ground underfoot, and the rustle of the wind keeps you company.

After an experience like that, I am bugged by the hiss of the hard drive on my otherwise silent laptop, the sound of the freeway in the background, the buzz of fans in the kitchen. It's why I want my next computer to run fanless, and with enough ram to never spin up the harddrive.

Also:

[imstanny]

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.

Department of repetitive redundancy department...

[shreevatsa]

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.

Alternative reviews

[flurdy]

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

what? no link?

[dostick]

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.

Overrated..

[chewy_2000]

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.

Habituation, boiled frogs, etc.

[gobbo]

Habituation happens when a stimulus is so consistent that it interferes with sensitivity to our environment, so we filter that, for instance, flat-line sound out, it becomes part of the baseline condition, a new version of silence in a way.

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.

Re:My attempts for a silent PC

[Itchy Rich]

A 10-metre DVI cable and a USB repeater cable are much cheaper than one of these cases

You're missing the hidden cost there. A quiet PC case is much cheaper than buying another room.