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Build a Quiet Gaming System
ThinSkin writes "Armed with a newly discovered soundproofing foam, Loyd Case from ExtremeTech set out to build a quiet gaming rig that hits the sweet spot in both performance and silence. After choosing the right components and insulating the PC case, Loyd's silent PC weighed in at a shade under $2500, scored 5206 3DMarks, and is hardly audible from more than a meter away."
I dunno about you, but I really like to be within reach of my computer when I am playing...
I can do the same thing to any PC in just a few seconds with a can of "GREAT STUFF" foam.
MadOgre.com
Putting a gaming machine in a closed cupboard might not be such a good idea. It could eventually end up overheating.
One must not forget that all that foam will increase temperatures in the case as well as make it a pain to get back in the machine to replace\troubleshoot hardware issues. He should have gone with http://www.dynamat.com/ . Its much much thinner and won't retain the heat.
Click Click Bloody Click PANCAKES!
Now I can hear the explosions, gunshots and various other sound effects in peace!
Just get a long monitor cable, and a wireless keyboard and mouse. Then you can put your noisy little hot-air maker anywhere you want, as long as the monitor cable can reach.
...you could just use one huge heatsink: http://www.zalman.co.kr/eng/product/view.asp?idx=6 4&code=020
Unless you're working on a laptop, how many people work such that their EAR is within 1M of their PC?
I have built a fairly silent PC that, during normal operation, is barely audible. During gaming, it is not noticable with even moderate sound from the speakers at a medium volume, scores 7800 in 3DMark05, and cost $1800 (7 months ago). Today you could build it even cheaper:
Antec P180 Case (a sound-dampening, full size steel case built for heat management and airflow, using multiple tri-speed 120mm fans)
Antec TruPower 2 550 W power supply (in the P180 case, it goes down below, in a separate air flow chamber, so it stays pretty cool)
Athlon64 3700+. Best gaming price/performance at the time I built the system.
Stock heatsink/fan. This is where my noise comes from, and I was satisified; 32C/3000rpm idle, 44C/5500rpm at max load after 12 hours in an unvented, uncomfortably warm room.
Audigy 2 ZS. Cuz I like EAX, k?
eVGA GeForce 7800 GTX (nowadays, the 7900 GT is same performance but for $200 less than what I paid, and lower power/heat, and the 7900 GTX is more power for about $100 less and same power/heat)
2 matched Corsair TWINX 1-gig sticks
160 gig SATA-II Western Digital HD
Sony DVD-ROM (they make fairly quiet drives)
ASUS A8N-SLI Premium motherboard. Uses a heatpipe to move the chipset heat into the airflow coming off the CPU. Works fine. No noisy motherboard chipset fans.
It isn't silent, but its quiet enough. If it's not running a game, I can only tell it's on if I concentrate and listen for it. If the window is open (I'm not on a busy street), the ambient outside noise drowns it out entirely.
Hunt your preferred prey at Aliens vs Predator MUD. Join the war at avpmud.com port 4000
That sounds pretty far away. What about if you're closer, like say within 3 feet or so? ;-)
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
You can create a realtivly silent gaming PC for under a grand. I built an amd 3400+, 1gig ram, ATI 9800 pro video, and a silent case for not that much money over a year ago (def under a grand), and using MS' game machine analyzer it rates in the top 3% of gaming PCs.
Why do all these "game machine" and "media center" how-to guides build such expensive computers? The day where the average gamer or home computer user spends $2000-2500 on a computer is a decade ago.
How many 3D Marks Intel iMac gets (or will get when someone hacks drivers)? It's super silent and cheaper than that...
Just to turn his speakers off?
EpiAdv - if you like Pokey the Penguin, try this comic!
...is quiet enough to do music recording in the same room as it. It's fast enough to play most current games at reasonable framerates. It's a four year old Dell with a newer pro-spec soundcard and cheap nvidia fanless graphics card, and is whisper quiet now. When I first got it, it was totally silent except for the DVD drive sometimes whirring a bit. I literally couldn't tell it was turned on. I think the big slow fan is getting old, so it does make some noise now.
Where is everyone else getting their hideously noisy jet-engine PCs from? Or am I just lucky?
Game dev and music blog
It's not that expensive for a kit anymore, cuts noise out of the picture completely, and is much more effecient to boot. http://compreviews.about.com/od/cpus/a/LiquidCooli ng.htm I don't know why more people don't use it.
Someone save me from this sanity.
YOu don't need FX-57 or 7900GTX to play the latest games; if he choices mid-range products they will produce less heat, and can be cooled easily without extra noise. CPU cooler choice is outdated model, CNPS7700 is old, CNPS9500/9700 is better choice, and there are tons of alternatives which offer even better performance/noise ratios like Scythe Ninja to name one. The choice of case is "okay", Antec's own P150 would be much more suited though. at $2000 this silent system is hardly budget friendly; too many expensive parts. My route to silence was posted on /. last year: http://www.madshrimps.be/gotoartik.php?articID=286
Yeah, but how do you breathe?
-
Inventor of the term 'pardon my French'.
When I first saw this article the first thing that popped into my head was DYNAMAT. Though the Antec solution w/ foam is pretty cool. But what about the dust that would collect in the foam? EWW.
A couple drawbacks with Dynamat - it ain't cheap, so it would cost more than the foam kit, but you could build a quiet box much cheaper than $2500 anyway, so that probably isn't a huge consideration.
I've used Dynamat in my car, and it is also kinda tough to work with. For best results you have to warm it for fitting, and that means you're working with a sheet of sticky play-doh. And you would think cutting it with an xacto knife or razor would be cake, but again, it's tricky.
Unfortunately, Dynamat probably would likely retain some ambient heat in the case just like the foam. To what degree though? *shrug*
One last thought - Dynamat is typically used in much louder, more dynamic volume environments - your car with a thumpin system on a street with potholes. Seems like Dynamat is more for serious vibration dampening vs. ambient dampening. Then again, I haven't coated my car's interior walls or hood w/ Dynamat, so what do I know?
People, a meter is only 3 feet. Correct me if I'm long, but standard cables start around 1.5-2m in length. No special setup necessary, certainly no need to hide the machine, and any suggestion that a meter would somehow be inconvenient is ludicrous unless you like to wear your computer as a HAT while you use it.
Umm... as far as i know, the AcoustiPack foam has been around since at least 2004 if not longer.
So much for "newly discovered".
Spend 40 bucks at radio shack and get a Sound Pressure Level meter and give me the DB readings
DB Reading with no equiptment on, normal to the plane of your ear, at ear height. You get the picture
I always thought of Creationism as the Raving Right's version of the Loony Left's Anthropogenic Global Warming-brightmal
uh, they used a Sonata II case (which is better than the Sonata, P180's better though) and a Seasonic PSU (which is better than any PSU Antec offers as far as noise goes, Phantom 300 excluded, and even then...).
Doesn't make the system any less half assed though, the rad sucks (come on, Zalman 7700 Al/Cu? there is like an thousand better rads, ditto for using the stock Zalman fan), the FX-57 is stupid, the WD drives are far from silent, ...
Good pick on the OTES motherboard and the 7900 cooling system is not *that* bad (far better than what the 6k generation used to have)
I still fail to see why slashdot accepts advertisement from gaming websites though, if the editors want to promote silent rigs they should mention SPCR's articles on the subject, not ET's.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
DId you know a high quality(really high quality) sounds systems will allow you to talk at a normal level while cranking the music up?
Unless the noises you want to hear are from the same range of freq. as the music, the system should not interfere with them. If it does it should not be labled high quality.
OTOH, we live in an age where 'gold' connectors, db rating, and speaker distortion seem to be the hall mark of quality sound systmes.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The only thing I have to say about this is:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/
I'm stunned it hasn't been mentioned already. It's pretty much the only place that you can take their computer noise information seriously and has a great community as well. Everything from very reliably sound tested retail parts to crazy do-it-yourself projects (including shoving it in a cupboard) are intelligently talked about there. I know this sounds like an ad but go there yourself, you'll see.
1. 35 and overs lose 3db hearing with each passing decade.
2. Farsightedness makes them sit back 1" further each year.
3. They have more money to spend than younger people do.
"Why not just pick up an Antec Sonata case. It's only about a $100 and it sounds like it's alot quieter than this half assed setup."
The Sonata is disappointingly not so quiet. The Antec P-150 is quieter off the shelf. I'm in the unfortunate position of needing to use a PC within reach of a piano. In that environment, it's amazing how loud and distracting "-27dB" can be.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
"Doesn't make the system any less half assed though, the rad sucks (come on, Zalman 7700 Al/Cu? there is like an thousand better rads, ditto for using the stock Zalman fan), the FX-57 is stupid, the WD drives are far from silent, ...:
It would have been useful to me, had you suggested what would be better.
The Zalman 7's are the quietest fansinks I know about. I found Samsung SP drives to be surprisingly quiet, not even considering how cheap they are. Also, none of my applications require anything from a video card except 2-D desktop, and they need to not interfere with audio or USB.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I use a snorkel.
~S
> A fishtank filled with silicone oil works better. Complete silence.
How much that weigh? How does it smell?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I don't know about that these days. Those huge heatpipe coolers seem to be pretty good. I haven't used them myself, as I am a fan of H2O as well, but I was impressed by some of the c/w numbers ive seen lately. Though processor heatsinks are approaching the size of water cooling systems as well :)
:x
Unless the noises you want to hear are from the same range of freq. as the music, the system should not interfere with them.
Thanks for the tip, John Cage. Unfortunately, most of us normal folk like to listen to music that actually covers the frequency range used by human voice, since it includes low, medium, and high frequency instruments, and, oh yeah, human voices.
> Why not grab the cheaper components and shove the machine in a cupboard?
I can't find 10 meter vga and usb cables.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Why don't you put the powerfull PC in another room, and use a less powerfull (and quiter) one next to the piano and use VNC.
Maybe you can use an mac mini? Not that I am a Mac head, only that they are supposed to be silent.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Every single workstation in the comp sci lab at the University has the monitor on top of the actual computer case. A 1m radius sphere around it would intersect with anyone's head.
When I sit at a desktop at home, my head is between 70 and 90cm from 2 computer towers, both of which are on my desk next to my monitor.
Do you know that a metre is 100cm, or 3 and 1/3rd feet?
I don't know of any people who have their PC cases far away from their monitors, and I don't know of any people who sit more than 1 metre from their monitor (it makes it hard to read the contents!).
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Here's how my adventures with cooling went with my Athlon64 3200+
... goddammit (and many expletives more colorful than that). So I took off the side panel, and replaced all those fans (except of course the CPU cooler) with:
Zalman CPU cooler: $40
Side intake fan: came with the case.
Extra intake fan: $8
Double-wide slot fan: $20
Front intake fan assembly: $20
After all that, it was still overheating
6" clip-on fan: $15
Clipped it to the top of the case and pointed it inward. Works perfectly. Quieter too. Not winning any beauty contests, but at least it stops locking up. Also, assuming you haven't done what I did, it's a very good idea to blow the dust off your CPU heatsink or get a filter so you don't get dust
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
I don't know about anyone else, but I can barely hear my computer and I'm about 2 feet away from it. (It sits on my desk, not 2 feet away in a cupboard or something). It just uses quiet fans. This is also a stock mid-level machine, I haven't done any upgrades to it, cooling systems or otherwise.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
It's quiet, but not the heat measurements are deceiving.
I also have a Sonata II case, with a very quiet Vantec PSU, a relatively quiet Radeon 9600XT, and the same heatsink. Difference: Athlon XP 2800+ cpu, Maxtor SATA drives, no sound-absorbing foam etc. When I turn all my fans on minimum, I quite literally can't hear my computer, and this is without the sound-absorbing foam.
Yes, my computer also idles somewhere around ~50C.
But on high load? The temperature can go as high as +70C when watching a movie, and even up to 80C when compiling (yes, I run Gentoo) under "aggressive" bios settings.
This is not very satisfactory. I'm convinced that the foam would only make matters worse (since sound isn't a problem as it is). Normally, I run it on medium fan settings -- you can hear it humm quietly, but it's not distracting.
I highly recommend the Sonata II case and Vantec power supplies, but don't expect low temperatures with low sound.
- shazow
Note that foam generally does a pretty good job of absorbing sound reflection, but what many folks don't understand is that it's fairly poor at dealing with sound transmission. It helps a lot that computer noise tends to be relatively high frequency, which foam is better at absorbing. As an example, an attempt to dampen out upstairs neighbors' footsteps using acoustic foam is an expensive way to do nothing. Especially as all acoustic foam is less effective the lower the frequency of the sound.
In TFA, the foam primarily seems to be used to dampen internal reflections, making the case's sound reduction more effective. E.g. foaming the inside of the venting duct helps to reduce high frequency noise escaping from the duct. Clever.
A great solution that I've used over the years is to just shove the computer into a closet, or even into the basement if the space affords it. When scouting out new living spaces, the ability to keep computers out of earshot has often been a key decision maker for me. I even got my last landlord to let me put a 4" circular port for cable passage into a closet off of a finished basement for just such purposes. Air space in the port was filled with foam discs cut to size -- open air passage between the computers and your space is to be avoided. Worked great; computers in the closet were completely inaudible more than a foot from the cable port.
Fanned, Zalman's 9500, Thermalright's XP-120, XP-90 and XP-90c are much better (especially if you put Nexus fans on the XPs, good performances for very low noise), but the best cooling/noise ratio is obtained with Tower "Fanless" rads: Scythe's Ninja or Thermalright's HR-01, with a Nexus 120mm at 7-9V (virtually silent).
For the drives, if raw drives performances ain't an issue go with notebook (2.5") drives, for 3.5" go check SilentPCReview's drives guides.
Graphic card, if you only use 2D then it's a perfect setup for fanless cooling.
PSU, Seasonic's S12 430, 500 and 600 are among the bests you can find, they're extremely stable, reliable, silent and efficient (== the PSU is good for your computer, it doesn't make noise and it stays cool instead of heating your whole room and overheating the other components of the computer)
In general, if you're looking for silent stuff just head over to SPCR and see what they say.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
I spent the money and got good headphones, I can't hear my PC fans at all.
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
Well, it's is actually a lot more complex then that, but I didn't want to write a 4 page white paper.
/.? well done.
John Cage refrence on
I doubt any recorded music is the same as your voice.
There will be some overlap, and clear system you will still be able to talk at a normal level and hear.
Of course it requires a very good equalizer and someone who understands them, someone unlike you.
Now I didn't even go into the Fletcher-Munson Curve and Perceived Loudness, clipping drop-out, or pink noise range.
Ever go to a cinema with a high quality sounds system? every get annoyed at that guy 4 rows away for talking even though the movie sounds is loud?
This isn't just playback, it also requires a good sound engineer that to have done the recording. Most music sold have a good sound engineers.
During the 80's producer on coke would drive sound engineers crazy because they would want to increase the highs in the music because that thought it sounded better.
OTOH, you made a John Cage reference, therefore you are right.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Last year I bought my 15-year-old daughter a cheapo Dell for $450 that is virtually silent. There is plastic ducting inside the case that seems to achieve better cooling with lower airflow. It's the quietest desktop I've ever not heard. Though not a performance monster, it isn't a bad machine to begin with, and I imagine somebody who knew their hardware could beef up the specs for a lot less than $2500, and no foam.
Just saying.
Buy a gaming console. I can't hear my Xbox360 at 2 feet unless the dvdrom spins up.
I never mess with any of this silent PC stuff. I've got a Geforce 7800GTX paired with a Athlon X2 Oc'd to 260 FSB. For 80mm cooling I've got five Vantec Tornado Ex Fans all stuck on double 12v lines, each pushes about 100 CFM. As a sidemount I decided to put a Delta "The Extreme" 120mm Ulra-high CFM fan, this bad-boy is rated at 260 CFM and 62 dBA when on full speed.
:)
The smaller fans are each 56dBA - and an old sleeve bearing fan is apparently making a really loud screaching noise. My cat and dog don't like to sit in the same room but it's better that way, no dog hairs get sucked in.
The four way Raptor WD360GD 10,000 RPM RAID-5 setup isn't exactly quiet either.
Netbooks, they come with Linux or a $3 copy of Windows. Either way, Microsoft loses.
Ear plugs and head phones can be uncomfortable too.
I've seen several computers where they are literally the loudest device in a house short of a sound system, and it doesn't need to be that way. It doesn't even cost much to improve sound if you are conscious of the audible impact of component choices. A little bit of foam, a few adjustments here and there, sometimes costing a little bit more money, all without resorting to anything as drastic as drowning out the entire outside world.
While nowhere close to silent, it still is very quite. The Kingwin Aquastar AS-3000(http://www.kingwin.com/pdut_detail.asp?Lin eID=&CateID=53&ID=249) is installed in my PC. P4 Northwood 3ghz, 2GB DDR400, and Nvidia 6600GT. The AS-3000 comes with water block for both CPU and GPU.. ANY cpu and gpu. DB sensor, and LCD on the front. Took my idle temp from 105f to 90f. and under load from 130f to 105f. Not a performance Water cooler, but for $100 us, a great addition in my opinion. External, or mounts internal in 2 - 5 1/4 bays. This unit has 2 fans inside moving air across radiator. not fanless, but quite.
The above comments are not guaranteed to make sense to anyone other than the author...
Given the decent shape, material, and quantity of this foam that HDs are shipped in, I wonder if some strategical placing of this foam inside the box could produce a noticable effect on noise without any added cost?
Any fool can criticise, condemn, and complain, and most fools do. - Benjamin Franklin
Similar noisy system wouldn't be more than 200$ cheaper. And thats under 10% off overall cost there.
If you don't need more than 500W power supply, quiet system costs about 100$ more than noisy system.
I picked Nexus breeze as my case, and nexus CPU cooler, over stock fan and thats all I needed to get quiet system.
The breeze comes with preinstalled foam, and it has only slowly running 120mm fans, and quiet powersupply to begin with.
Only thing missing here is how much more costs a quiet GFX card, since I don't do anything that needs fast gfx card so I'm still el cheapo gfx which don't need active cooling due low power consumption.
Emacs is good operating system, but it has one flaw: Its text editor could be better.
Before I started spending my spare cash on building computers, I used to compete in the automotive stereo scene. But now that I am into building computers AND I am into making music on those computers, I am very surprised at how many people don't look to the car stereo scene for advice. I'm guessing that the average geek doesn't think outside fo the PC-mod world. But just because something isn't marketed for computers, that doesn't mean it isn't usable. Dynamat and Killer Blue. Dynamat is thin, very dense, and it does wonders for sound dampening. Killer Blue is a spray-foam that works for areas where a sheet of rubbery stuff won't work. While dynamat does make a "PC" kit, the regular automotive stuff is cheaper and better. Dynamat also comes in several grades and thicknesses. You'll want a couple different types for different applications. Don't forget to put some between your fans and the case and between your power supply and the case. As for the Killer Blue, you won't need much of it. Some cases, you won't even need any. In my case, there's a plastic front and there's a lot of space between it and the case. I sprayed some of it in there - careful not to block any airflow around the fans. There are also some crevices at the corners where the Killer Blue was more appropriate as well. But the important thing about sound-proofing any case (especially aluminum cases) is the fact that you will increase heat in the case itself. Make sure you ventilate it properly. Use larger fans when possible. For that matter...start with a good case.
There is absolutely no reason why you should put foam IN the ducts. Especially open-cell foam like that stuff. It will decrease airflow. And the last thing you want to do is decrease the cooling efficiency in the case.
My system is similar to yours. We may have read similar reviews.
My stuff:
01) I use a similar case: I chose the Antec P150 instead of the P180, because I use a more traditional airflow system, and never could get into the P180 design
02) same motherboard: ASUS A8N-SLI Premium Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX AMD
03) probably the same memory: CORSAIR XMS 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered Dual Channel
04) I use two Nexus 120 mm case fans, spun down using zalman fanmate 2 variable resistors to 35% normal speed (about 415 rpm)
05) I use an IDE ATA-6 laptop hard drive (with an adaptor for the Mobo); 5400 rpm 80 gig. It's small but it's all I need.
06) I use the stock Antec 440 watt PSU (despite the bad reviews on it, I've never had issues with it: b/c the fan speed is based on temp and power consumption, and my system is so low temp and power consuming, I can never hear the PSU fan, unless I put my ear up to it)
07) fanless GPU: the GIGABYTE GV-NX66T128VP Geforce 6600GT
08) I use a dual core AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ CPU
09) Scythe SCNJ-1000 CPU Cooling Heatsink (this is where the 1st spun down 120mm fan is, the 2nd is at the back vent of the case, replacing the what-I-found-to-be fairly noisy tri-speed fan, even if it was 120mm)
10) I use a simple Soundblaster Live! card (the card is three years old now) with the SPDIF/digital out for sound.
11) LG 16X DVD±R DVD Burner 5X DVD-RAM drive: it supports dual layer and DVD-RAM (my favorite).
12) A Hauppauge 980 ( WinTV-PVR-250 ) to watch and record TV
I can *never* hear this system, since it's about 23 decibels, unless the room is completely quiet with no speakers on; then I can hear a "whoosh" of airflow. It doesnt have massive GPU power, but if I wanted that I would have sprung the $500.00 for a XFX PV-T71F-YDL9 GeForce 7900 GTX (650MHz) 512MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 card, with it's excellent heatsink and fan system. Since I'm not FPS gamer (never did like those kinds of games much), I passed on that expense.
I didn't put any foam in (thought about it for while, though), since the sound deadening properties of the P150 were good enough, and the system is virtually silent anyway.
I already had a DELL UltraSharp 2405FPW 24-inch Wide Aspect Flat Panel LCD Monitor, so that expense was out of the way. I read reviews at silentpcreview.com first, shopped in local retail stores, and then bought most components from Newegg.com (except the fans and fanmates from endpcnoise.com). The whole system cost me about $1,200.00, ($2,000 if you include the monitor) which I found reasonable, especially for an almost completely quiet system.
Hope this helps anyone looking for a system out there,
uR iGn0ranc3, Their Power
http://www.eqluclin.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9977
Decent $900 model assembled from Newegg without needing the foam. Even using the same caliber of components that they use in the linked article it would cost less than $2k and be far easier to assemble.
Hell is being intelligent in a world full of idiots.
Just a few weeks ago I had to replace my computer, and I did it using the same case as the article, but I stuck to stock coolers and the like. It seemed awefully quiet right off the bat, but it really drove home just how nice it was to have a quiet computer when I was out of bed in the middle of the night getting baby formula, and I walked by my computer and wondered who bothered to turn it off. Funny thing was that when I looked under the desk, the soft blue case lights were bathing the floor with their glow. The house was quiet, there was no traffic, the furnace fan was not running, and the baby wasn't actually making any noise yet, and I actually could not here the computer over the sound of my own footsteps. I ended up moving it on top of my desk instead of hidden, so I could see the lights easily (and to get the cables off the ground -- baby is crawling these days).
More Caffeine. NOW
Good info, thanks. I've been to SPCR many times, but I've always been frustrated, having to wade through endless reviews. I've wanted to just say "my budget is $X, and I want a PC that can run VST synths and effects and record, quiet enough to be in the same room with a condensor mic."
So far, I've got the Antec Sonata, a Zalman 7000, on an ASUS P5P800, a fanless SVGA card (very hard to find those!), Samsung SP drive, and it's pretty good, but it's nowhere near quiet enough to use in the same room when recording classical piano and flute (which is my application). Right now, I think the biggest problem is the PSU on the Sonata, but I can also hear the Zalman fan unless I crank it down too low for the CPU (a 3.0G P4). I can even hear the air going through the intake on the Sonata!
I know I should move the PC out of the room, but in order to do that, I'd need 10m USB and VGA cables, and I'd also have to move my mixer rack away from the piano, which would be extremely awkward. I'm tired of throwing good money after bad in pursuit of a quiet enough music PC. It's frustrating enough that I'm looking into dedicated multitrack recorders even though that means giving up a *lot* of flexibility. I suppose I could move house or remodel my music room or build an enclosure with an isolated heat exchange, but I'd be happiest with just a quiet (not necessarily *silent*) machine.
I suspect that one person's "quiet" might not be another's.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
>Why don't you put the powerfull PC in another room, and use a less powerfull (and quiter) one
> next to the piano and use VNC.
Way too much latency, and too much a Rube Goldberg for my tastes.
Due to my audio interface, I need about 1.5 meters between the rack with my mixer and the PC. If I could find 10m VGA and USB cables, I could sort of work with that, although it would be annoying.
>Maybe you can use an mac mini?
Way too slow for my application, and while I love my Powerbook, I want a PC for this.
I'm really close to what I need already. It's just that the noise of the Antec Sonata PSU and the Zalman 7000 are loud enough to be distracting and to ruin recordings. Even when I moved the machine into a closet I could hear it in the high freq range.
My application is to use the PC as a soft-synth and recorder, and my musical style is classical piano and flute. If I use a mic with this PC, it shows up on the recording as a very audible wash in the mid-low freqs (the intake on the Sonata, and the 120mm case fan, and the PSU fan) and a whine in the high freqs (the Zalman, and surprisingly, not my disc drive.) I think I should be able to do much better, but I'm tired of buying things that are supposed to be quiet and discovering otherwise.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Lately i have become quite interested in quiet computers. One thing i don't have is a device to measure sound levels. Any idea where to get such a thing? I probably wouldn't use it terribly often, so a simple and cheap decibel meter would probably be better than a lab quality one.
----- "I'm still sane on three planets and two moons."
Ouch.
You really need silence there, and not that many perfs. Go for a notebook drive and a tower rad. If possible, you should also switch the CPU for an Athlon64, a Turion64 or a Core Solo/Duo, halving the heat output of the CPU goes a long way towards silencing it.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
Umm... pardon me for being scientific but foam as a whole is an insulator. PC's main combatant is heat.... I understand the need for noise reduction but why would you put an insulator in an item that has severe issues with heat? I'm sure the 20-50dB difference is nice but why risk a system failure or system burn out on a bit of noise? If any of the major fans in the system fail you could be buying another CPU/HDD memory or video card in short time. If you want quiet. Aluminum case double walled with plastic line and yes Insulated panels. true it is insulated but the aluminum is a natural heat sink since it is double layered the aluminum will help to transfer some of he excess heat. Water cooler. they are cheap enough now and the pump noise is next to NIL. you can even go as far as replacing the video heatsink/fan with water block cooling. now ports on the system face all ports out the bottom and intake from the front. sounds weird but think about it. Heat rises anyway so the down force if you have a carpeted or padded room will help with the noise. Powersupply go with the ANTEC fanless model and that should remedy all the issues you have. I'm guessing at this point short of some 10k WD raptor or scsi drives over 10k the system will be nearly silent regardless. Some still fear a liquid running around an electronic device and I sympathize with you. its all a matter of what degree of noise you will tolerate. Mine sounds like a freight train derailing in a firework factory during a new years day parade.... so as you can guess noise isn't an issue. (OC CPU requires some compromises).
I own four pcs atm - weird thing is the most noisy one is my laptop. It was really, really cheap, and the via nehemiah cpuis supposed not to overheat but there are two fans on this thing and the cheap hard drive just ROARS and i'm not talking about the dvd whet it gets spinning...
The least noisy pc i ever owned is this 486 by zenith, still works btw. The thing has no fan on the cpu and the power supplu one is completely inaudible - the sony cdrom i stuffed on it is noiseless too, even when spinning at a whopping (sic) 4x
There are two ways to see things imho: either be reminiscent of "good old times when hardware quality was better and people used 14 screws for a mobo and 6 for a floppy drive", or realise that kinetic energy usually is accompanied by heat and/or noise and that "quicker stuff" will most probably mean "hotter and noisier stuff"
(Imho again) as long as HDDs have moving parts and are portable storage medium is a spinning disc (be it cd or dvd) noise and heat will have to be tolerated. Why can't we make 40gig hdds from the same stuff usb pendrives are made of again?