A PC Case with External Power Supply?

aralin asks: "I am building a new home server (web server, email, source code repository, ...) and don't really need that much performance, but would like to make it ultra quiet. I have found some quiet, one platter harddrives and can get a lower-end graphics card without a fan. I underclock the CPU so it never really needs cooling, besides the load on the computer will be quite low, most of the time. What I cannot get around easily is the power supply. They are quite noisy and the quiet ones are really expensive. I'm just not going to put half of my budget on a power supply. Do you know any company that manufactures PC cases with external power supply or do you know any other cheap solution to a quiet PC?" "So, I recently looked at the Mac Mini and it got me thinking, why couldn't PCs have an external power supply, like the Mac Mini or notebooks. Would it be so hard to make a case like that? It could be even smaller than the typical Mini-ITX cases, and with all the bricks from routers and external harddrives and other devices, I wouldn't mind one more lying around in exchange for the bliss of absolutely quiet PC in my bedroom."

Comments

look at the mini-itx power supplies

[(H)elix1]

You can get an external power brick just like a laptop. Normal ATX connection, usually lower watts.

Antec P180

[Matt Perry]

do you know any other cheap solution to a quiet PC?

You don't list what your budget is so I don't know what cheap means to you. Since you mention any other solution, I'd go for a quite case and look at the Antec P180. You can always put in a new quiet power supply later. I bought this case several weeks ago for $120 and was really impressed by how quiet it is.

Here's a photo tour. A small review. A larger review.

You also might want to ask on the forums at Silent PC review. There are people there who have a lot of experience building silent PCs and will be able to let you know if there is an external power supply that would fit your requirements.

Antec Sonata 2, $100-$120

[lucm]

You get a good, quiet PSU with the case, and there is even a knob where you can set the fan speed. The hd are mounted on rubber washers, not directly on metal, so even at full spin they are not noisy. You also get a heat duct that drains the cpu heat outside the case.

The Sonata 2 ships with one 120mm fan, I advise you to add a second (plenty of sockets on the case). Big fans turn slowly, which is less noisy.

This is what I have at home, and if you unplug the blue leds there is no way to tell if the power is on unless you put your hand behind the psu fan.

This being said, I advise you to always put the psu at the top of your list when you buy a pc. Good, reliable power will give your hd a longer life.

The Mac Mini is a Personal Computer (PC)

[bergeron76]

If you mean a Windows OS PC, you don't have a lot of options. You said you underclock your current "PC", so you don't need high performance. If you speak Linux, pick up an embedded box - like a gumstix.

If you're a gameboy and need a superfast_quiet_windows_pc_that_mom_wont_hear_late _at_night you're stuck with the hardware that MSFT offers.

[ Please insert another coin to continue... ]

We make exactly this type of case..

[xtal]

I got sick of not having what you described, so I partnered with a company to make them. (obviously I have a commercial interest).

You can see one of our cases reviewed on EPIAcenter.com right now.. I think it's pretty close to what you want, and if it isn't, a few minutes on the phone can have it customized any way you want.

Boot off flash and NFS mount a partition to a server in another room and you have your perfectly silent PC.

The power supply is a hybrid; get a DC/DC converter from a company like mini-box.com, then get one of their external notebook-style power adapters.

You used the key words yourself

[Andy Dodd]

You mentioned Mini-ITX in your article... Have you looked AT ALL into products designed to be used with Mini-ITX boards? There are numerous ATX compliant power supplies that operate using DC/DC conversion and only need a single 12V input, and most vendors that sell such DC/DC power supplies (such as mini-box.com) also sell high-wattage 12V supplies too.

Re:Then why not the Mac Mini?

[dorkygeek]

Nice try, except with a logitech "mac comptaible" USB keyboard ***NONE*** of the keyboard shortcuts work with the mac-mini. Not "hold C" or "alt-option-o-f" or the many others. Not a single one. You probably need a blessed official Apple keyboard or something.

I'v investigated this issue a bit, and as it looks, there are indeed some problems with non-Apple keyboards at the low level, i.e. when you want to interact with OF at boot. Some Logitech keyboards seem to work though (besides the Apple ones of course).

OTOH I may have found a solution to your problem: before you reboot to boot from the non-MacOS X install medium (i.e. Debian, *BSD, whatever), open a shell in OS X and type:

% nvram auto-boot?="false"

This will automatically drop you into the OF console after power-up or reboot. (See excerpt of dW article below.)

Frankly I'm not impressed by a computer lacking a BIOS [or monitor of some sort]. Even my 8051 board has startup software to help use it...

BS, OpenFirmware IS a BIOS, it just has another name! And you can use OF just fine! In fact, it's quite advanced when comaper to a PC-style BIOS.

From An embedded view of the Mac Mini, Part 1:

Many people assume that, since the Mac doesn't display a prompt to enter a PC-style BIOS, it's not configurable. In fact, it's quite the opposite: the Mac's boot firmware is years more advanced than PC boot firmware. It has a command prompt which is a full-featured Forth interpreter. Open Firmware needs some kind of console. On older Macs, you could use a serial port, but the Mini doesn't have serial ports, so Open Firmware connects to the keyboard and display by default. The display has to be some kind of VGA display. The video output won't work properly until the system's fully booted, because the boot firmware doesn't know about video refresh rates. If you went ahead and got into Open Firmware without knowing this, just type mac-boot to cause it to boot up. Open Firmware is also useful for ejecting stuck CDs; the Mini has no eject button. The trick is to get into Open Firmware and type eject cd.

In the long run, you might want a way not to use a display. Displays chew up power, and if you're using the machine in an embedded project, you may not have any actual use for one. You're in luck: Open Firmware can be configured to run over the network! All recent Macs, including the Mini, support this. Apple's Tech Note 2004 (see Resources) discusses the procedure for setting this up. This does require an ethernet connection: you can't use the wireless network to do it.

A few other likely things to do at the Open Firmware console are disabling auto-booting (setenv auto-boot? false), or setting the machine to verbose boot mode (setenv boot-args -v). Verbose boot mode will be familiar to experienced UNIX users, who have probably been wondering where the familiar and comforting string of console messages have been going all this time.

Verbose booting is most useful if you're trying to debug driver problems that occur early in the boot. You can also tell the machine to go into verbose boot mode by holding down command-V.

Re:Then why not the Mac Mini?

[dorkygeek]

In a shell on MacOS X:

% nvram auto-boot?="false"

This disables auto-booting and will drop you into the OF console after power-up or reboot.

HTH

Try a Shuttle Zen

[Wwolmack]

Shuttle's ST62K has an external power supply, and uses socket 478 cpus:

Review at Silent PC Review
Shuttle Product Page

$215 at Newegg

Re:Try a Shuttle Zen

[Propaganda13]

Don't forget the PentiumM based SD11G5
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article274-page1.htm l

or you could get a 150W PSU and DC-DC Converter Kit to make your own power brick setup from http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=10#dcdc

SilenX

[dFaust]

You could check out SilenX. While their PSUs can get pricey, a 300W model can be had for $59.95 and is rated at 14dba. That's under load... not under load the fan can run even quieter. That puts the SilenX's loudest at being nearly 3x quieter than the Zalman mentioned in another post when the Zalman is running at it's quitest. The Zalman can reach up to 30dba, which is something like 32x louder than 14dba.

I've only owned SilenX's fans, but I'm EXTREMELY pleased with them. A 92mm 14dba fan and 120mm 14dba fan (~17dba combined) quieted my system considerably while actually lowering temps. I haven't tried their PSUs, but I'm expecting one any day now and have read plenty of great reviews of them.

Re:SilenX

[__aanmdr9234]

SilenX doesn't perform as advertised for most people. Add in their high cost and extremely deceptive dB ratings, I'd avoid them like the plague. No 120mm fan hits 14dba unless it's been heavily undervolted. Nexus fans are considered the gold standard for silent cooling and they operate at 22 dB. Personally, I'd suggest buying any branded PSU (preferably Antec) that operates off a 120mm fan. Run it for a while and see how it goes for you. If it's too loud, replace the existing fan with a Nexus/Yate Loon. If it's too loud still, undervolt to 5v or 7v and it'll be completely inaudible at just a few feet away. If the nexus fans are too pricey, look around for Yate Loon 120mm fans. They manufacture for Nexus and typically sell for half as much and offer the same build quality if you can find them.

Seasonic S12 series

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

You really can't beat the Seasonic S12 series. Extremely low noise (silent for most purposes under normal conditions), clean power, high-efficency (less heat / wasted power), active PFC (easier on the power lines), auto 120/240 voltage.

The S12 comes in a 330W version that should be fine for your PC. It runs around $55-$65 on the 'Egg or other online stores.

Pair it with a nice case (Antec 3000SLK or perhaps P180), a decent CPU heatsink (Scythe Ninja, Zalman, or a number of others), and a decent mobo/GPU (no fan), and a nice drive (Samsung is the best, Maxtor/Seagate/WD FDB drives can be pretty quiet as well), and you have a nice quiet system.

Check out http://silentpcreview.com/

Heres one

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.elx.com.au/item/ELS1003?elx=1f17efed434 e93da647a378f0068385f

Morex

[TeknoHog]

I have a Morex 80 W PSU, with a laptop-style 12 volt adapter outside the case. Inside the case there's a circuitboard that generates the other voltages. No fans in either part. Bought mine from www.hrt.de, and I've used it to power both an EPIA board and a Pentium III ATX system with equal success.

The main limitation with these PSUs is the number of drives you can use. This Morex has only one connector for desktop optical and hard drives (and a couple of smaller connectors for floppy and mobile drives), but I've managed to use a HD and a DVDRW drive with a dual adapter. On the other hand, if you need more power, I think Morex makes these for up to 200 W.

Re:Then why not the Mac Mini?

[amper]

As a diehard Mac user, I've been mulling over buying a couple/few mini's myself for just this reason. I haven't been able to find anything remotly equivalent on the x86 side, but I might go ahead and build a couple of PC's out of standard components anyway. The OS's I plan to run are OpenBSD, Fedora Core, and Mac OS X/Mac OS X Server (have many machines available for this). Here's what I came up with:

Antec SLK1650B case w/350W supply: $100 at CDW
Intel BOXD915GAGLK motherboard: $145 at CDW
Intel Celeron 2.53 GHz CPU: $110 at CDW
Kingston 256MB memory: $35 at Kingston
Sony 52x CD-ROM: $25 at CDW
Seagate 40GB Barracuda HDD: $65 at CDW

for a grand total of about $480, compared to the Mac mini's $499 in a minimal config.

Using the PC parts I get:

Standard 3.5" HDD (faster than Mac mini 2.5" drive)
x86 compatibility (less of an issue nowadays with good PPC distros available, and Apple going to x86 shortly)
Easy repairability (compared to Mac mini)
Gigabit Ethernet (not *really* needed, but why not?)
PCI slots
4 SATA ports

Using Mac mini's, I get:

Smaller form factor (by a huge margin), lower power requirements (probably--need to do more investigation of Pentium M systems))
Mac OS X compatibility (less of an issue nowadays with Apple going x86 shortly)
Big company support (may be an advantage for some people)

Right now, for me, the big issue is the repairability, so I'm probably going the PC route right now. All my main desktops are still Mac OS X, however. YMMV. Of course, I won't be buying anything until after Macworld SF...

Dumpster Diving

[j()nty]

I use an old desktop PC to do this job. I salvaged it from an office. Hardware is:

• Compaq Deskpro EN Small-Form-Factor. The SFF matters because the regular EN can be noisy.
• PIII 800MHz
• 256MB RAM
• Built in Intel graphics, 1024x768 16 bit colour
• Built in Intel NIC, 100Mb/s
• 3 PCI slots for whatever else you want to add
• New 200GB Seagate drive
• New DVD RW

This runs my email, internal web server, internal DNS and DHCP, file server, print spooler, version control, and so on. It never even notices the load from 3 concurrent users.

The Deskpro EN SFF has just one, small fan in the power supply. The Seagate drive is nice and quiet.

I am sat 1 metre from the machine as I write this, the rest of the house is silent, and all I can hear is a low whirring noise from the fan. The central heating radiator in the other corner of the room makes more noise.

• Pull on your old jeans and get into those dumpsters
• Visit your local tip if they have a section for recycling electronics
• Search eBay where you should get a similar machine for maybe $100. You will have to replace HD and DVD.