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Ask Slashdot: Making a 'Wife Friendly' Gaming PC?
shadeshope writes Having just gotten married, I find that for some inexplicable reason my wife doesn't like my huge, noisy, 'ugly' gaming PC being in the living room. I have tried hiding it in a TV cabinet: still too noisy. I have placed it in another room and run HDMI and USB cables, but the propagation delay caused horrible tearing and lag when playing games. Have any other slashdotters encountered this problem? I don't want to buy a console (Steam sales let me game so cheaply), or mess with water cooling. Ideally I would just hide it in the attic, is there some wireless technology that would be fast enough for gaming use? I have become quite attached to 'behemoth.' I have been upgrading him for years and he is the centre of my digital life. I run plex home theatre, media centre, steam, iTunes and air server. Will I have to do my gaming in the spare room? Once I have sorted this small problem going to try and make a case for the efficacy of a projector to replace the television..... it takes up less space, motorized screen could be hidden when not in use, etc.
Your wife just wants to make the house more kiddie friendly. Get a laptop.
Why UNIX?
My Linux "box" is a fairly large server board with 4 fans in addition to the cpu fan. Makes a lot of noise especially when the cpu is doing a lot because the fans kick up. No way around it unless you want to:
A - Build a soundproof cabinet, or
B - Buy a quieter machine for gaming.
My machine is a huge server setup, but these are modern times, bleeding-edge powerful game machines can be had for not too much and are fairly quiet.
Tell her "That's The Way It Is", or get a new machine.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Get a less noisy system. How hard is that to figure out?
Get a case that has one or two 120mm or larger fans for airflow. They generate much MUCH less noise than 80mm fans and still push enough air to keep the thing chilled.
Switch CPU/GPU fans to ones that only turn on when needed, and are off while the system is at a cool idle temp.
Switch your HDD out for an SSD, and use network storage for your bulk storage. Gigabit Ethernet is ~100MB/sec and so is a rotational disk, so you're not gonna see much different in performance here (assuming your network doesn't suck)
you have a good prenup
Have you tried the Steam streaming mechanism? It works surprisingly well when I tried it, as long as you have gigabit Ethernet between the two computers. The PC connected to the TV can be a near silent mini PC and your behemoth PC that will actually run the game can be a few rooms away.
Alternatively, marry someone who respects your hobbies.
What are you doing "gaming" in the living room? Dude, you are now MARRIED. Turn the spare bedroom into your "man cave". The living room is your wife's domain.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
I have placed it in another room and run HDMI and USB cables, but the propagation delay caused horrible tearing and lag when playing games
Eh? This sounds more like crappy cables, than anything else. Propagation delay on an extra 10-feet of cables is hardly measurable much less noticeable.
Well, check out the Nvidia Shield Tablet. It supports PC Game Streaming, assuming you have a recent Nvidia Graphics card on the PC (if not, one more upgrade for Behemoth). The latest firmware is Android 5 Lollipop based, and includes support for a USB Y-Cable, allowing the use of a wired ethernet/USB power cable (caveat: I haven't tried the Y-cable).
As long as your wifi is sufficiently powerful, you should be able to stream your PC to the tablet. The tablet has no fans, etc, and is designed to work with HDMI from the ground up! And, it's probably the most powerful tablet you can buy for the money (about $300 US). Details:
http://shield.nvidia.com/gaming-tablet/
Find another wife.
Honestly, a good pair of headphones will remove all the fan noise, and noise in general. My wife and I both play with headphones. If it's the same game we use Teamspeak (yes, with 6 feet between us).
"You're awefully cute, but unfortunately for you, you're made of meat."
The more modern closed loop water coolers, like the h50 and h100 from corsair, are great if you want a less noisy machine. The video card will still pump out a lot of noise though.
Along the same lines, does anybody have a good recommendation for a living room projector?
It would need to be 1080p (minimum!) and quiet but otherwise anything considered.
wot no sig
You have a wife learn to read the signals its not the noisy machine but the fact your spending too much time gaming. Or like a former friend of mine you will have the best gaming machine but No wife or kids and quite likely no real friends
Your'e all thinking it, I just said it for you
Wirelessis way to prone to problems to work.
What you need is noise control and aesthetics.
A nice looking wooden cabinet can easily be found or simply constructed.
Cooling? There are drop-in radiator solutions and plenty of fan control options. You just need to focus on management. Get a good PSU. Aftermarket CPU cooler and a graphics card that is either quiet on its own or is easily customized.
If you're using steam games, the in-home streaming feature works surprisingly well. Put your rig in a spare room, and game on a laptop.
...Then change the wife. Simple.Patent, Collect royalties.
This is a boundaries and commitment issue. Are you willing to sacrifice the computer for her? Answer truthfully; Make your space and needs clear. Otherwise you'll be miserable for as long as it lasts.
Cheapest way around this is buy her earplugs. Serves multiple purposes.
http://silentpcreview.com/
It's perfectly possible to build a relatively quiet gaming machine. There are plenty of quiet, high-performance fans on the market, and the new Asus "Strix" graphics cards even have fans that halt when idle. Start doing your research.
Once I have sorted this small problem going to try and make a case for the efficacy of a projector to replace the television..... it takes up less space, motorized screen could be hidden when not in use, etc.
Just buy a flat-screen already. The picture is better than you'll get with a projector, you won't have to worry about people walking in front of it and casting a shadow on the screen, and really, a flatscreen by itself looks so much better than a projector and motorized screen hanging from the ceiling - and can be moved a lot easier when re-arranging the room. Projectors are so '90s.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
The simplest solution is the easiest one: you need a new wife.
More complex solution: a working relationship is a matter of give and take so try to negotiate some quid pro quo to find out how bad she really wants your living room PC gone. If your relationship is a matter of you give and she takes, see solution #1.
The spendy solution is to burn some cash on a SteamBox style PC that are compact and portable for your living room gaming; quite a few OEMs make them and they're easy to find. Unless you're running a 4K TV, they have more than adequate CPU and horsepower for nearly all gaming. You can home-build one using silent mini-ATX cases such as Fractal Designs' Define Mini. Relegate your monster server PC to a closet somewhere and enjoy your domestic peace. (At least until she starts griping about how much your new PC cost.)
Sounds like you need something like the Intel NUC. My wife is very accommodating of having a PC in the living room after seeing what sagetv could do (before we started renting an HD DVR.) Now we use the PC to throw movies up, and honestly - with the right setup, it is very quiet.
An Intel NUC will be quiet - and if you're good, you can hide it so it's out of sight, out of mind.
What lengths are you running on USB/HDMI that you're getting tearing on the cabling in and of itself? That might just be a factor of the quality of the cables; I've run 35 foot cables without any issue - but these aren't bargain cables; they're around 70-100$ a piece for a work project (network operations center).
Karnal
Just do your gaming in the spare room. Put a small quiet/silent PC in the living room for media centre stuff if you cannot live without a living room PC.
Also, I'd have to advise against replacing the TV with a projector. They're hellishly expensive if you get one with decent resolution, require a pitch black room to look any good, effectively prevent rearranging the living room, etc.
1. Okay, direct competition for your attention, that's not good unless you manage it. 2. Configure--in whatever way works--to being 'our digital hub', not just yours. 3. Find out what she would like to play--buy her one, too, if necessary, and configure to whatever works for her. 4. And yes, these aren't necessarily baby-friendly things--when she's up in the middle of the night trying to feed and settle the baby, something loud in the living room isn't going to soothe anyone.
Isn't this supposed to be what steam big picture is for. Playing games on your television in another room from you computer?
If the literature is correct, that would just make this ask slashdot just another slashavedisment .
/* TODO: Spawn child process, interest child in technology, have child write a new sig */
Have you tried putting her in a cabinet?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
You're trying to solve the wrong problem.
Either upgrade/replace the parts with quieter parts (that may mean a GPU downgrade if you have a 600$ video card) or build a "sound booth" for the machine (a plywood box with carpeting lining the walls. Or use slower larger fans in the chassis.
The coil whine may however still drive people nuts. I find I can hear high pitched noises that nobody else in my family can hear, primarily the flyback transformer noise in CRT screens and some switching power supplies make noises I can hear and I can't sleep if I can hear those but I'm fine with the low-speed fans.
Figure out what exactly your wife can hear, and solve that problem. If it's noise from the fans spinning up, your only other solution are cooling pipes that you run outside the case to a much larger quieter fan.
but the propagation delay caused horrible tearing and lag
Propagation delay is less than 1 nanosecond per feet. You must have really well trained senses if you can detect that.
..usually used in recording studios, etc.
- variety of sizes available, nice wood finish with glass door and, more or less, silent, WAG acceptance factor 9 / 10.
The drawback? (you knew there was one,,) not cheap, No, Sir.
Just choose your components with an eye for TDP and cooling needs (i.e. a passively cooled graphics card), and the only thing needed to do after that is selecting silent fans.
A silent CPU fan, a silent (possibly fanless) PSU, and a passive graphics card.
My computer is under 30 dB (I think), thanks to these guys.
http://silentpcreview.com/
http://images17.newegg.com/is/image/newegg/11-144-279-TS?$S300$
Seriously, how hard is this?
I have for myself a mini ITX gaming pc with a water-cooler. runs cool and quiet . a lot of mini ITX and micro ATX cases look pretty good, and with a water cooler they run quiet too. my only other suggestion would be Noctua brand fans, run super quiet with great air flow.
Why do you need a TV or a gaming machine in the living room?
"...is there some wireless technology that would be fast enough for gaming use?"
For the consumer space? No. Not yet.
I build home systems sometimes for clients, and the Wife Factor is frequently the most critical aspect. This has been true since I started in 1985, but is more true now as computers have become essential to so many households.
In my experience, the Fractal Design cases (e.g, the Define R4) have two wife-pleasing qualities:
(1) They are simple, elegant, unadorned museum quality sculpture-like mini-monoliths; and
(2) They are literally almost completely silent. I don't mean merely quiet, I mean you cannot tell whether the system is on or off. This is with fans, not water cooling.
Understand that this may not solve your real problem, which may be the mere presence of the machine in the living room. What it will do is force an honest exposure of the real issue, and besides that you'll still have a great case you can migrate components into and out of for years and years. Also it means you don't need a new rig, just new clothes for for the rig you already have.
Note that I do not have any relationship with that company aside from buying their cases for some system builds where they fit best. I will say that they are superbly designed inside, and the designers obviously build systems themselves. You'll know what I mean if you get one.
Twice as crazy as I would be if I was half as crazy as I am.
a) Longer HDMI and USB cables should not create a propagation delay, unless you are using repeaters. Get the unit at close enough that you can get away without repeaters.
Seriously, electricity propagates through copper at ~2/3rd the speed of light. You are NOT noticing the nanoseconds from an extra 10 feet of cable.
b) Water cooling. Don't fear it. If noise is the issue switch to water cooling. Its not hard at all for the CPU and graphics card. And good near silent power supplies aren't hard to fine.
If you aren't overclocking, or doing anything stupid overkill (and you really don't need to be running quad sli if you are just driving a 1080p hdtv) its not hard to make a virtually silent living room gaming PC.
Me personally, I have a near silent inexpensive mid-level gaming PC in the living room for games, mostly played with an xbox controller... but I still maintain a proper gaming pc in my office for FPS/RTS stuff. The parts from the downstairs pc filter into the upgrade pc as I upgrade. So the upstairs PC is always a year or so behind... no big deal. Hardware upgrade cycles have long since reached the point where you don't need a new video card every year.
And changing diapers, and breast pull-out-in-public to feed way-too-old todler, and of course if she works extra hard, shoes for the misses. But only for Sunday. Bonus points if she does not open her mouth unless spoken to. Yeah, a hard one, that.
There are a lot of cases that have sound dampening features and also have a super basic appearance (no silly LEDS or shiny bits). Bigger fans are quieter than little ones.
If simple case design still is too much, see if you can hide it behind or turn it into decor. Put a big plant in front of it or a dangling ivy plant on top of it. Tall vases, whatever, get creative.
I've been using fanless machines for ages. Basically, you use heatpipes to the case. QuietPC.com are extremely helpful - I have a system with a Streacom FC9 case which is big enough for a high-end CPU, but still dead silent. Of course, if you want the ultimate in graphics cards, you may still have to put up with a fan.
Also, signals travel along cables at about 2/3 speed of light - so your mere cable length shouldn't be a problem. HTH
I have placed it in another room and run HDMI and USB cables, but the propagation delay caused horrible tearing and lag when playing games
The signals travel at the speed of light. How far away is your room?
soylentnews.org
silentpcreview.com is a web site dedicated to quiet and silent computing, with extensive reviews and forums. They have very recently posted a sample build of a quiet gaming PC.
You can take that as a base and adjust according to taste. (For example, I'm more obsessed by quiet and less by frames per second, so my gaming PC has a single GTX760Ti GPU.) If you have questions, take them to the forums.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
She's just going to have to learn you're man cave is in the house, not the garage.
How about you actually grow the hell up and stop playing games.
Honey, I didn't realize you read Slashdot?! At last, we've found something we can do together!
Drop the watts and/or have more and bigger fans, you have noise because you wanted it (200W to 300W GPU). Get a GM107 GPU for instance, the board only uses around 65 watts max (and is around GTX 470 or GTX 480 graphics power)
Go on with your plan about displays.. Use a 1080p 27" or 28" PC 1080p PC display as a "TV" : with the best you can find (very low black levels, very low or none input lag, and calilbrated colors with either a downloaded profile or a probe) it's better than a TV and "small' like a big CRT used to be.. Get or do not get a projector (LED projector would be great for decade life time but as time passes, the LED gets better with a Moore-like improvment).
Keep the PC fucking simple, either a Windoze theme or linux, or Windoze 10 or Windoze 7 and have the software not crappy.
Custom interfaces are shit (in my opinion) and a file manager plus video player is simpler though a "TV" interface would be useful and by that I mean a PCI or PCIe tuner (cable, satelite, Hertzian antenna) where the interface consists of a remote with "channel 1, channel 2, chanel 3.." and "Volume up, Volume down, Mute".
Faliing that, follow the advice of about 40 preceding comments that say "put wife in cabinet".
I had a similar issue with a system in my theater room. I got a fanless video card and an oversize heatsink for the CPU. Then replaced all the fans with Noctoa fans. Use a case with 12cm fans too. I had a an issue with finding a heatsink that took a 12 cm fan that fit my case, but eventually did. Once I put it in the HT cabinet I can only hear it when I'm within a foot of it with nothing else on. Even with everything off, I can't hear it from the seats. You may need to mess with the holes in the case that the fans draw the air through. That can make a big difference. The other option is to get a bare bones fanless system. But it sounds like you're happy with your current system.
How about you actually grow the hell up and realize that something being fun to you is what matters, and not your age?
This behemoth gaming PC seems to be more important than your new wife.
...upgrading your wife to a more compatible model?
Alternatively, get a big case with lots of slow fans. I built an i7-3930k and 2x GTX680 4 gig gaming rig a couple years ago and I can barely hear it. I've got those ugly, yellow SilenX Effizio fans. Around 12dBA moving around 45cfm. A reasonable person couldn't complain about the noise it makes. I can hear my wall clock ticking from across the room. The GPU fans crank up while I'm gaming but you can't hear that over the sound of the game. Or go with liquid cooling and it'll be even quieter.
Of course, I don't think the noise is the real issue.
I hate loud PCs as well. Who wants to listen to fans run?
1. Find a Thermaltake case DH101 DH202, remove the bracket that runs front to back, it just gets in the way. I found mine on Craigslist.
2. Put in a quiet/silent PSU.
3. Put a short Zallman heat sink on your CPU with heat pipes with a 120mm fan on top.
4. Replace all your drives with SSDs, put noisy drives on the network, get a Western Digital My Cloud 4TB and wire it to ethernet for your PLEX library.
5. If the fan on the GPU is loud, get a bigger fan 120mm.
Here are some photos of a DH101 case and how I have it configured to be quiet.
https://drive.google.com/folde...
I agree with your wife, your living room shouldn't sound like a datacenter. Women can hear better than men so it is louder to them.
SFF systems used to be rather limited, but they have evolved to the point that there is really no need to build a massive, cumbersome system; unless you are doing really hardcore things such as SLI and overclocking. Take a look at the Silverstone Sugo enclosures or something similar. The SG08B-LITE will still allow you to use any beefy GPU you want as long as it has the right style of cooler.
It will be cheaper in the long run to get a quieter wife
When you marry its better to stop gaming and spend your time with your wife and kids... Source: Divorced due to Eve-online.
You should be spending time with your spouse, not ignoring her while just happening to be in the same room. If you're gaming on your PC you might as well be at the bar instead, you're just as committed to the relationship at that point.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Your game machine has to go where the full size stormtrooper, R2D2 and your pornstash went when you got married..
Buy an iPad or get divorced.
Put quiet fans in. Noctua are the probably the best large fans - for use as CPU, PSU and case fans mostly, my Noctua fans have been going for many years now. I had a heatsink so big on my previous 95W quad core that it didn't even need a fan!
Video cards can also be adapted to take quiet fans but that's not always easy. Either replace the PSU fan or the PSU.
CPU and GPU fans thresholds can usually be altered to make them quieter when idling. (sometimes via the BIOS menu).
See sites like http://www.quietpc.com/ and http://www.silentpcreview.com/
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
... not the PC itself, but the fact that you still seem to want to live the same life as a married man that you lived as a single man. You said your vows, now show that they mean something. Spend time with your wife. Talk with her about the new lives you are starting together.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
... but it's my guitar and mic amped up.
Grab that spare room and be grateful for it.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Do you love speed ? Here is you favourite cars and bikes that you love very much check out www.engineforspeed.com
Shuttle PC (already quiet) in one corner, and 50ft video & audio cables I ran up into the attic and down to the the 44" flatscreen TV. It's not the toaster shuttle, it's the cube one. Wireless mouse, keyboard, and game controllers. No wires are visible, I routed them in the walls/attic.
At least you don't have any kids yet. After that, where you put your gaming PC will be the least of your concerns.
So true. So, so, true. My wife is nodding to me as I write this after having read it to her. It's true. Time to refocus your attention a bit.
The HDD and power LEDs don't need to be plugged into the motherboard, unplug them, they're annoying.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
If for some reason cables can't work (distance is too great or something), then streaming over your LAN should be possible. NVIDIA GPUs support streaming to NVIDIA Shield tablet which have HDMI output, but frankly are too expensive.
This might allow streaming to any Android tablet:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.limelight&hl=en
If it works, you could buy a reasonable powerful tablet with HDMI-out and use it as a sort-of thin client.
Some NVIDIA and AMD GPUs have built-in x264 encoders. You might be able to use Open Broadcasting Software to stream to VLC or something. Use TightVNC for keyboard input (but set refreshing to minimum to avoid overhead on the server end). It might even be possible with just CUDA, OpenCL, or QuickSync. There will probably be a quality loss, though. Slingboxes might also work, but you'd still need TightVNC for input.
Here's what one person did: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-1638643/tutorial-create-onlive-remote-streaming-setup.html
If you assume someone who wears a kilt (or other masculine skirted garment) hasn't grown a pair, perhaps you need to grow a pair.
Get one of those mini book size computers to hook up to your TV in the living room. And use that computer to remotely connect to your gaming PC. Like a remote desktop setup.
Namely, the most important other human person in your life. That's the whole reason for marrying someone, right? Acknowledging they are the one?
Now, she married you as well, and in marrying you, she married your gaming hobby. If she had a problem with it, well, laying down the law on that should have come before "I do". But all the mansplaining in this thread, trying to reverse psychoanalyze your wife's feeling about your gaming habit is either A) dead wrong, sexist, and borderline misogynistic, or B) correct, and your wife isn't being honest with you, in which case you have the right to ask her to be truly honest with you, but make some compromises because of her dishonesty.
So she's already told you the problem. Your PC is 1-large, 2-noisy, 3-ugly. I'm tempted to get into a discussion of relative aesthetics, but generally, "gaming" PC chassis *are* ugly. But it is easy to build a PC that is none of thee above. You might have to make a few sacrifices, but dems da breaks of a good relationship, based on mutual respect and compromise.
You say you "have become quite attached to 'behemoth'". Yet most of what you list is functionality, not form. To run all these functions in tandem requires performance, and performance=processing=heat=cooling=size & noise, but unless you're more attached to your Behemoth than your wife, you might want to think about breaking out some of those functions into targeted devices. Get a ChromeCast/Apple TV. Get a NAS for your digital library. Etc.
However, if she's really out to pull the plug on your gaming habit by way of sabotage, well, don't do any of these things. Go to a marriage counselor. But I bet if you treat her like, oh say, a person, instead of some gaming succubi, well, you might just get *most* of what you want. Which is a result you should get used to and appreciate, if you want to *stay* married.
I'm sure Bennett would be able to come up with some sort of algorithm or solution that would benefit not only the questioner, but humankind in total.
Maybe he could incorporate one of those small sample surveys that can be extrapolated to account for everyone else's circumstances as well.
I'm sure he can relay his findings in one of those succinct ands salient ways that his writing is so well known for.
~11 inches per nanosecond
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEpsKnWZrJ8
Really, pixels and crap don't matter that much and bigger screen might be too distracting even.
The sound and its quality will matter much more if you're playing and wife is cooking or if you're cooking and wife is watching TV (or programming a raytracer for 3D fractals on her mechanical bluetooth keyboard).
Get your damn sound nice. That may be a pair of speakers (rather than 5.1 or 7.1 or 2.1) with a class D amp either un-equalized or well equalized with care for the room's acoustics and how it's heard both in front of the screen and out of the screen. That's my own bias for stereo here. But get sound that's both great, vivid, loud and unobstrusive when you don't care about it, and likewise for my tastes, display. Projector has qualities (bad black levels, but 100% angles of vision. Which a CRT would do with black level at zero to boost.. OLED panel will do everything in about year 2016 or 2017.)
Not sure what kind of PC you have going on, but if it looks like this your wife it right.
Don't have a dedicated living room "gaming PC". Build a new system -- build an HTPC that has gaming-capable hardware.
- Make sure the case fits in with a living room setting. Preferably a horizontal or cube-shape. Not a tower. Look at Silverstone's stuff.
- You can have a large case if you need it -- as long as you can get it to fit with with existing home entertainment components.
- Reduce the size if possible MiniITX or MicroATX at the largest.
- ONE graphics card. No SLI/Crossfire. Time to let that go. The shorter the length the better, for helping control the overall system size.
- NO LED FANS.
- Get a case that is large enough for you needs, but as small as possible and still fit the components.
- Don't buy a large case because you have multiple hard drives for content. Move that shit to a NAS somewhere else in the house.
What are you doing "gaming" in the living room? Dude, you are now MARRIED.
So plug in two USB gamepads and play video games that you both enjoy.
OP, you have a spare room and are asking if you "have" to game in the spare room? You *get* to game in a spare room!!! Now you have a game room. Just move your game stuff and be done with it. No new hardware needed. This is why we split domiciles into rooms in the first place.
what the fuck how does this shit make it to the front page?
You need a "Gaming Friendly" wife, not the other way around.
10 years ago I built a box using MDF and glass for my computer, using noise dampening foam and watercooling, space for two motherboards. (I had a lot of problems with headaches - noise made it worse, and I wanted to game.)
It was upgraded this summer to a GTX 780 hydro copper, new motherboard (z97) and the latest i7 that fitted, M.2 disk and windows 8.1. The other motherboard is running my Linux server, XBMC and the RAID.
It's about as big as a small fridge (55x70x50cm) and it weights about 55kg (10 liters of water) (it has wheels), but the noise level is below 10dB(A) (@1m); the pump and the disks are the loudest. It's more silent than the cats' water fountain - and it's more silent than this laptop on idle (well, firefox is heating it up as usual).
It's not impossible. It just takes some effort. The expensive part of watercooling is the water blocks, which you need a new one or two for every upgrade since CPU and GPU changes shape. (This time I went for the hydro copper so I wouldn't have to do the GPU watercooling myself.) Building a case is fun and will allow you to buy nice tools, useful for any craft.
Later on Zalman came out with the Reserator, allowing people to cool any system passively and very quietly. Are they still around? That is, I hear, a rather good solution.
Posting about this on slashdot probably isn't going to solve anything.
You need to sit down and talk with your wife about this. Find out what's important to her and what bothers her about the current set-up. Tell her what you want and why it's important to you. Engage your brains and see if you can find some middle ground where you can both get your needs met.
The problem might be that a big gaming system spoils the esthetics of the living room. The problem might be that you check out emotionally on her when you're gaming. The problem might be that the sound of the gaming machine interferes with the kinds of activities she'd like to do in the living room. You can't solve the problem until you understand what it is.
--hmm
result? No noise.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
Corsair, Fractal, Nanoxia, and a few others make cases designed to be as quiet as possible. I've got a Fractal, and even with an i7 and a GTX770, I can barely hear it. Two 140mm fans up front, a 140mm on the ventral side, a 140mm exhaust fan, and a 120mm fan on the CPU cooler. The ventral fan doesn't even kick on unless things get REALLY warm (like 2 hours of Prime95 thrashing all the cores), and with nothing else on, I can still barely hear the system. Oh yeah, and as for looks, it's about as plain and understated as I could find. No window, no flashy lights or any other garbage (I left the power LED disconnected as it is rather bright), and the 5.25" bays are hidden behind a door lined with even more acoustic material.
So find a case designed for silence from a manufacturer you trust, and put the system in there along with some larger, quieter fans. Do this and you've solved both the loud and the ugly.
"So after all this, you make my case for me. To end this stalemate, you must die..."
Have yourself relegate to the dingy basement or the garage like every other man who gets married.
"Having just gotten married..."
That's the root of the problem, fix that and you will not experience the issue.
Closing the ticket as RESOLVED.
If you think extension cables causes to much lag what do you think wireless tech will do?
and get a sailboat.
...this really should have been something you discussed prior to getting married, as lifestyle preferences like these can create serious marital strife.
Perhaps you just need to designate a room of your dwelling as the gaming room (or perhaps the "study"), and throw a nice-looking computer desk in there so that you at least don't see the machine through the door when walking by the room. Then she doesn't have to put up with it and you can hide away in your man-cave whenever you want to game.
Remember: marriage can be expensive.
build her a computer of her own.
(I did this eleven years ago, she doesn't moan about my inordinate amount of time spent playing games now, she's on her facebook games 6 hours a day Now I wish I'd just gone and took up millinery).
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
I put mine in a 4U rackmount case. Get one that has at least a single 120mm inlet fan. I took the extra time and applied sound deadening strips and a layer of adhesive backed 1/4" felt to all the interior panels. It is whisper quiet. Certainly can't hear it over the projector.
If she can't compromise on a little computer case noise FUCKING RUN!!!!
Secondly
Who the heck asked for your opinion on this anyway?
The question is about quiet / remote computer entertainment centers if you aren't going to answer the question don't post.
Tell her to fuck off.
Why the fuck did you marry her?
This will not end. Upgrade wife ASAP.
1st, a projector is an awesome use of space, much more epic, but cannot be used very well in the day with the sun out. If she wants to watch her soaps, then a TV is probably better. We don't do more than 2 hours of tv every few days. Especially nice is if you put the screen over a large window or patio door. I have 105" diag screen and it doubles as a sun and privacy shade.
2nd, as for the computer, I had the same problem. However all i had to do was make an effort to fix it by installing some more high quality fans, and she has gotten used to the white noise it creates. Over time, spouses become more "domesticated" on both sides. You learn to forgive many things that would drive single you up the wall.
As for all those saying "use your spare room". You all are some rich motherfuckers! Maybe ill take the wife out in my spare car as well! Or there's always the spare boat. Ill just use some of that spare money to do it!
-
You don't know how to read "wife". Wives communicate in unfamiliar, indirect ways. It's not the noisy computer your wife is upset about. It's you gaming in the living room. That can either be due to your absence while gaming, or because she feels she has no place for refuge. When is the last time you looked deeply into her eyes and made her know how much you love her? Spent more than a half hour just being with her and only her? Let her have her space?
Deal with the issue head on or start looking for a divorce attorney.
I always buy my components (except graphics adapter, which is of the least concern) from recommendations I get there: ..
http://silentpcreview.com/
I have a by now more or less outdated Phenom II X3 720 2,8@3,2ghz 16gb ram, amd/ati 7950 3gb
Power supply is a Nexux NX5000, cpu cooler a xigmatek with direct-touch heatpipes and I have slow running front entry and rear exhaust 120mm fans from Scythe. Hard drives were once the most noisiest, but are now in some rubber-suspended cases in 5.25" slots.
The case is some Coolermaster that was at least in the top 10 on silentpcreview.
Basically only the 7950's cooling could be replaced with some larger diameter fans or something like that because from those seems to be coming a slight noise, but which you can only hear if there are no environment sounds. But during full load, the 7950's fans spoil the otherwise quite silent system a bit, but is overall still not as noisy as the system of many other people of which I have heard their systems at full load... (probably because of the good coolermaster case)
Throw her down a welll.
Growing up is trolling Slashdot? Duly noted.
propagation delay? Really? What country is that other room where you moved the PC to? Or perhaps you had some other problem that you don't really understand and just decided to call it propagation delay.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
NVIDIA GameStream anyone?
If you're building a top of the line gaming rig you'll have to go with custom water cooling setup with as big as possible radiator or two smaller ones. I am thinking 120 x 360mm or 2 120 x 240mm. Using silent 120mm fans or bigger if they get loud try one fan on each side of the radiator. Don't buy a super cheap pump ether you'll regret that pretty quickly. Also, you should by low evap hoses if you're plan doesn't include showing off all you plumbing. If you're not building a top of line machine an off the self water cooler with a quiet GPU, PSU (with a 120mm fan) and an SSD will do wonders. If the stock fans for the radiator are too loud replace them with silent versions, I've even seen people replace the PSU and GPU fans with a quieter ones. Am getting great cooling with almost silence through a refurb Corsair H100i with a hole cut in my old case. I used tape to plug all the air holes in the upper part of the case. Which gives a good draft through the case with hot air being removed by the fans for the PSU and radiator. With this setup I even managed to cool my HDDs buy pulling air over them through the front fan mount without having a fan there. Basicly use your radiator to blow hot air out while cooling the CPU and use tape to force the air incoming to flow where you want it.
Make a man cave.
Using a giant beast of a pc for a server/htpc is wasteful for energy, time and effort and bad for downtime.
Get a small quiet PC to store a bunch of high capacity drives and put it in your lounge room. ...
Get a man cave and upgrade your gaming pc however you want, and only turn it on when you intend to game
With an SSD, boot times are measured in seconds, so just turn it off when you're not playing. Since you're married and apparently grown, I suppose you aren't going to be playing all that much. For the few hours per week that a responsible adult has time to play computer games, see all of the other posts re how to reduce noise.
make a shelf directly under your tv in the basement, cables dont get longer, cant hear the noise
course I would just get larger slower moving fans but I dont insist on having my gaming pc in the living room
It's probably not great for gaming, but this solid state PC is a great wife-pleaser, and does pretty good with streaming media and such:
http://www.fit-pc.com/web/products/intense-pc/
It's small and quite and being all solid state, there is nothing to break.
You need a man cave.
That's why we have man caves.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
... if you told him that "you got quite attached to your wife" and that she's "the centre of your (real) life"? He would probably also complain that your wife is ugly and makes too much noise. It's all about feelings...
Don't game in the living room. That's for family time anyways. Put it in another room. If you don't have the space then that's a problem, but work towards a larger home with your own space. It's important to the health of a marriage that you each have your own space anyways.
If you expect a marriage to be 50/50, you'll probably be disappointed. Because the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, two people who are equally giving will probably feel that they're doing 80%. I do a lot for my wife, and she does for me. Mostly, we do for us. We want time together, so we make time for that, etc.
but a divorce lawyer.
She's the problem
Hey, if your wife says it's too loud, turn it off when she's around, if it's a 'gaming computer' it means your gaming when she's there. Computer gaming is a monastic endeavor where people disengage from the real world. I had a girlfriend who got hooked on my WoW account. It was completely obnoxious to see from the other side and I'd suggest if you want to game, get a console and a few controllers. Otherwise you won't notice what's happening in the real world and you'll regret time wasted, communication lost.
Why not spend $100 and buy a new case? One which has larger fans which don't make noise? Suggestion would be a Cooler Master HAF 932, or for a smaller, mid-size one, Cooler Master HAF 912
You JUST got married, and she's already got you wiped. Fuckin' pussy.
PCs designed for relatively heavy use look unashamedly like machines and don't fit in with the idea of a well furnished space. Part of the solution is to surround it in something that looks like furniture that does fit in. Another is noise reduction, not as hard now as it used to be. Water cooled stuff comes sealed now and large diameter quite fans are easy to find.
My PC is a noisy beast sitting on a table made from a lump of chipboard and bolted together angle because I don't care, but I've seen people who do care make computer desks that hide the things. Maybe take your wife computer desk shopping or maybe just get it out of the living room entirely since that's not the place for obvious machines.
I'm assuming home theater, media center, iTunes and air server are the reason why your gaming PC is in the living room. So go get a nice, small, quiet, "pretty" machine to run that stuff on, and set up "Behemoth" in the spare room. You don't need a ferocious beast of a gaming rig to play movies and music.
I was going to leave it at that, but with all these Dr. Phil wannabes running around spouting off traditionalist nonsense I just can't resist. So I want you to ask yourself:
Why didn't your wife mention that she hates your PC before she married you?
Just don't fall to pieces when she dumps you. You and your gaming machine have many wonderful years to look forward to.
How in the hell did you get near enough to a woman to marry her?
Speaking from experience, I'd say that your best bet is to negotiate a man cave. That way you get to keep the stuff you like in a place safely away from casual spousal nagging, she gets her pristine living space filled with allegedly grown-up stuff to impress her friends, and you both get the warm inner glow of having made a compromise for the good of your relationship.
Just don't start spending too much time in there lest she start to feel neglected.
Why is she your wife?
How about you actually grow the hell up and stop playing games.
Ignorant moron.
The human need for recreation has been known for thousands of years.
Not the obvious choice, but if you are prioritising looks and quietness over price, stick Windows on it and it's got everything you're looking for - it's virtually silent, has twin graphics cards, SSD and it doesn't 'look like a computer'.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
Huge fans move just as much air with lower RPMs. Get the biggest heatsinks you can find. Worst case scenario, weld some extra copper onto the heat sinks. If you're able to cut through a wall, you could put a box fan in another room and have a ventilation shaft connected to the "out" vent for your power supply and make the box fan pull air through the entire PC. The PC will have some minor "woosh" sounds, but if you have large enough heat sinks, you could have everything nearly-passively cooled.
It sounds like you're more interested in having a gaming machine than you are in enjoying the games, thus the presumably high spec machine that needs to shed excess heat. Well, most games don't actually need that. Just tone down the settings, reenable your PC's power management settings, and enjoy the bloody games for their entertainment value.
If that's not enough, then it's time to consider other things. It may be a purely technical problem, such as cleaning out the system or replacing noisy fans. It may also be a social problem, i.e. your wife is trying to find time to spend with you when may be spending your time gaming.
All you need to keep her happy are game controllers in the shape of spatula and vacuum cleaner handles.
All of the couples I know with computers end up putting the computers in a spare room and then just use a laptop or small (ITX or smaller) computer in the living room. Steam remote play works decently and you've mentioned you already have Plex set-up so you've got everything necessary to stream remotely. Although I am not married myself, I keep my gaming PC in a bedroom, file server in the kitchen, and just a small HTPC for streaming everything to. The HTPC itself uses a Silverstone SUGO05 mini-ITX case that fits perfectly on the bottom shelf of my TV stand and is absolutely silent.
What is noise (sound)? How is it transmitted?
Essentially we are looking at a compression waveform. Take a slinkly. Stretch it out. Move one end up and down. That's one waveform. Move the end right and left. That's a second. Now compress the slinkly in the long direction and let it go. That's a compression waveform, the 3rd spacial dimension of movement.
Anything the sound has to move will attenuate it. At times I've used a rolled up newspaper to find my kids' toys that were making noise. Sound going straight down the tube I'd hear normally. But from the sides, the need to transmit sound through the newspaper, and move the newspaper, attenuated the signal.
So in this case, what you want is a box with lots of padding for soundproofing, and wrap the air intake and exhaust through a lot of curves with foam to absorb the sound energy. Styrofoam egg cartons would work. It's what they use in inexpensive "garage" recording studios.
Just make sure you've got good air intake/exhaust or it's going to overheat...
Alternatively, put it in the garage and hit monoprice for some better cables.
But the NUC is an overrated piece of equipment. Other vendors provided similar form factor with as good or better performance at better pricing.
I honestly don't understand why Intel gets so much attention for something when it wasn't novel. People had already been taking Intel's architecture into that direction.
I know you don't want to mess with water cooling but you can get some pretty easy to install kits these days. Even installing one on your cpu will lessen the noise a great deal. Some stuff doesn't even have to be changed.
Yep. The clues are there: newly married and spending time on games and not the one you fell in love with. Seriously, knock of the gaming for a while to properly get to know who you married.
I had somewhat the same problem at work - my favorite computer in my cubicle (150 person cubicle farm) would howl and roar somewhat, and the nearby co-workers gently complained about it from time to time. I made it reasonably quiet by adding some fans and replacing the rather loud cpu fan with a better one and they were placated. I'm partially deaf so it didn't bother me, but I knew it was loud to them so I fixed it. Sometimes I would bring a 1U IBM server from the datacenter to my desk for one reason or another, and that did indeed make it difficult for some of the others to focus on their work so I minimized the on-time during the day. Eventually I put my noisy box into a nearby storeroom and just used RDP to get to it.
I say all this because noise is not just a "your wife is being fussy and/or you're an insensitive clod" issue.
Anyway, at home my wife has excellent hearing and my old computer at home was kinda noisy. We both telecommute often and our computer desks are in the same spare bedroom so the extra noise interfered with her concentration when she was coding. I quite understand that - I'm the same way but my threshold of hearing is about 30 db higher than hers.
When it came time to build a new one for me last year, I researched reviews for quiet operation of the various components, and I'll spare the details of my selections because they're out of date by now. Anyway, I got a nearly silent computer that lets me play at high frame rates and run a vmware session at the same time. Everyone is happy.
All this advice about rebuilding is all well and good, but we're all suggesting that you spend some money. You'll have to spend money.
Perhaps you could take some time to identify which components are the most noisy. I'm betting like some others said, that all you really need a new case with big fans.
If there's not hope for the big computer, maybe you make a silent gaming box for the living room and put the behemoth in another room. You may have a look at HDMI over ethernet for when you want to use the media center capabilities of the behemoth on the big TV. Set it up for dual screen - one to the TV, and the other to host an RDP session from the game box to control the big one.
'ugliness' is an excuse, a red herring. The real problem your wife has with gaming is that it takes attention away from her. hours upon hours of attention paid outside of the relationship or things she wants you to do really burn her ass. There's no getting around it. eventually you'll give up gaming or her. sorry dude.
Having just gotten married, I find that for some inexplicable reason my wife doesn't like (...) Have any other slashdotters encountered this problem?
The root of the problem here seems to marry someone you never tried lived with before. Modern western societies let people test life with their could-be partners, which is IMO a mandatory stage if you want a successful marriage not turn into a lottery.
Silverstone sugo, mini itx, 750ti. Case is super small but holds a full size video card. Power and heat friendly 4th gen i5 in the drivers seat. Its silent. Game over. Happy wife. Happy IT gamer husband.
to buy a brand new, top of the line, QUIET gaming pc... Just make sure that it is quiet before you drop the $5,000 on it.
Not sure how you have your setup, set up, but your best option is to go the laptop route and a nice set to wireless headphones.
Btw... Congrats on getting married :)
I had a loud PC in my bedroom-I had trouble sleeping with it on.
The next PC, I decided to put together myself, using this website. When I turned it on, it was so quiet I didn't think it was on, and started it again.
The PC I built wasn't even that quiet by the website's standards. Mostly it consisted of getting a quality case, using larger fans, and grommets with the hard drive. These days, the hard drive could be supplemented with an SSD, making it even quieter. It helps not have a top of the line PC-mine was mid-range.
Congrats on getting married! I hope that you keep working things out so that you can both have a long and happy marriage.
Now some options:
1. Upgrade your tv cabinet to something that easily conceals your pc. Either something with doors or drawers or drill some holes in a drawer and put your pc in there. Make sure you have adequete ventilation though if you do this.
2. Look at something like an intel nuc or mini itx or a mac mini. The problem is you have to choose between size and performance. Trick out an intel nuc as much as you like and it wont be as good or as upgradable as a normal pc.
3. Seperate rigs for htpc and gaming. I.e monster gaming rig for games and intel nuc for htpc.
4. Game somewhere else. Is there another room you can use that won't be a problem? Can you make a man-cave somewhere? ;-) my wife is happy for me to have a half-height rack in our office. If you don't have enough room think about how can you move so you can?
5. Perhaps get her to help you pick out a case that she's happy with. Get a bluetooth mouse and keyboard so there's less clutter.
6. Give to the marriage enough that your wife puts up with it and eventually comes to see it as an adorable quirk. Level: expert. Seriously it's worth considering and the effort.
Get a less noisy system. How hard is that to figure out?
Married 15 years. After I had spent the money on quieter fans, it turned out she just didn't like the look of the computer in the living room, with its wires and peripherals and stuff.
Go the man cave route with an extra room (or even a closet). You get to spend the money on bigger speakers instead of quieter fans. She gets to decorate the living room to her liking, and you get major points for being so accommodating. It will come in handy later when you have kids, so you can lock out all your little ones from the Dangerous Stuff, and it's even more handy later when you can let your bigger kids play in them while you and the Mrs. enjoy some sanity time in the nice living room.
The moral of the story is: don't be poor.
This ain't a cheap solution but I have my PC in my garage and have ethernet through my attic to my living area (about 60 ft). In my gaming PC I have a PCoIP host card installed. And in my living room I have a PCoIP Zero Client connecting to my wall mounted TV. My TV needed DVI to HDMI cable for video and stereo headphone cable for audio. I also needed an audio isolation transformer to eliminate a hiss/hum from the analog audio going into my TV.
The effect is this is good enough for watching movies and playing single player games including shooters but not games that aren't too rhythm precise. I can plug a USB mouse/keyboard/gamepad to the Zero Client no problem. I've had some luck with a USB bluetooth adapter but I don't really use it, just trying to get my Wii-mote to work. Last part for me is to find a way to let my existing universal remote control Plex when I have that running.
I agree, lots of people use loud systems with tons of fans. One option is to buy a case that uses 120mm fans, like mentioned above. Get the fluid ball bearing fans that use a foam like material. The fins can be different shapes which causes a different frequency for each blade. (same blades make the same amount of noise but all at the same frequency which causes it to be louder, different sizes create different frequencies causing it to appear quieter) You may just need one exhaust fan at 120mm.
Another idea is to scrap the case and make a living room friendly case out of an old wooden sowing machine. (find it at a thrift store) Look for one with a nice antique look and gut it out. Again one fan should work. May take some metal work to get parts of a case to fit in it.
Also use an air duster. Your loud machine may have clogged cooling fins on the heatsinks. Also get a fan controller and set them to super low. (and raise it if you need to)
I have a sweet gaming rig that is quiet. (you can too)
move your machine into a nice quiet understated case like the Fractal Design R4. Use a single 140mm or larger low speed fan just to move the air through the case. Then water cool it and use a large passive cooler... Something like a Zalman Reserator. Once done, the only noise will be the pump(s) and the single fan.
I have a fractal design R4. I built it after being annoyed (me, not my wife) at how loud my coolermaster was. I have been very happy with it.
http://www.fractal-design.com/
This case has the best airflow I have ever seen in a MiniITX case that isn't ten feet tall, with three fan settings. The front has two 92mm fans, and the rear has one 140mm exhaust. It cools processor plus graphics card well even on low, and you can't hear anything from further than 3 inches away.
Just add an Intel Core processor, a video card in the GTX 750 Ti range, and you'll have a capable gaming system with silence.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
Just put a liquid cooling kit. Not sure why u dont want to "have to deal with it" like its a huge inconvenience. Fucking bitch ass...
she's a big pain in the ass. My wife puts up with my media server in the mancave, beer brewing, and pickling so long as I clean up after myself.
Here's a bunch of wife-friendly consoles
Why yes, I am single. How could you tell?
-- Will program for bandwidth
Your wife sounds like a real bitch, maybe you should have thought this through before marrying a cranky old prude?
Very good performance, 8 cores, PCI-E 16x slots on most implementations. Can be passively cooled. Toss that in a noise-friendly Mini-ITX case with an SSD and you're good to go.
Short advice - "get a room".
move your toys out of living room. Instead of conflict you got your own "den". Which may be used also for other controversial activities in the future.
It works for me and my wife. We have 2 "dens" one for me one for my wife.
We both are working from home from time to time - it comes handy too.
I am not complaining about her not yet finished "art" projects or loud 3h teleconference with customer.
She does not complain about my "world domination 2015" desk with 3 monitors and couple computers.
Ekhem, gun rack, cleaning equipment, reloading equipment are also there together with edge weapons collection.
Living room is for common interests like books racks.
Women can hear better than men so it is louder to them.
That's not exactly true they are however significantly more sensitive to higher frequency sounds than men
Put a quite PC out the front and stream from the beat else where
Rent a one room apartment somewhere close by and keep your gaming machine there. Then whenever you want to game you go there. Get drunk before going back home and she will believe you were out drinking.
Or GTFO.
Hans Reiser did the correct thing.
He killed his adulterous woman. He killed her and now she is dead.
She is still dead.
Good on him.
All men, sorry "maaalleeess" (men == good obedient pro-woman's rights males) should do as he did in such a situation.
The Old Testament commands it.
After about 6 years of alimony payments, and found a compatible partner, I consider the alimony a bargain.
Replace the wife with a gaming edition. You can get them now. Or move the computer to the attic and play up there with it.
If you want to run the machine in another room, there are dvi->fiber->dvi converters available. I've worked on high-end, large format interactive display systems for museums, etc., and this is a standard, professional method for running video over long distances... Particularly when you have lots of loud rack-mount machines which need to live in a server room. Usb, however, has smaller cable run lengths which I can't remember offhand, but probably max out around 20-30ft.
Steam in-home streaming. I use this every day.
My gaming rig is in the basement hooked up to the gigabit LAN port of my wireless AC router. My thin, light, cool and quiet laptop is now my gaming rig right on the couch while we watch TV or whatnot.
In the same vein, if my kids want to play a game I have a cheap, quiet small form factor PC hooked up to the TV with some 360 controllers plugged into it, same deal. Stream away. No noise, no heat, and the gaming rig stays nice and cool (and comparatively dust-free in the unfinished portion of my basement.
Worth a look, especially since you mentioned you're a Steam user already.
I'm too lazy to enter a sig. Hey wait a second! You tricked me!
Man, what's your wife look like? If anything like mine you should hide her in the attic and get on with your gaming; no sense in putting up with TWO huge, noisy & ugly things, and the PC is wayyy more entertaining.
Do you really think she's being reasonable?!
I have placed it in another room and run HDMI and USB cables, but the propagation delay caused horrible tearing and lag when playing games.
Ok, then you just aren't doing it right. HDMI or USB cable can easily run 15-20m without issues. If that's not far enough I think you don't need a new cable, you need a new wife...
OK
you just got married
first thing to do is get a man cave,
put a beer fridge in cave,
and a work bench and some tools,
and a comfy old lounge,
and a sound system, big screen,
card table / chairs
if all you can think about is gaming,
you must be over the sex thing
Go well
get one
www.RacquetUp.org - Helping Detroit Youth
She probably jealous to computer, as when you play games you do not pay much attention to her. It's not gonna be fixed by any hardware upgrades or buying xbox - she will hate your new shiny and silent toy all the same. I can suggest one of the following: ;)
- Hook her up on the same drugs. If you are playing MMORPG - make her play just a bit, chances she will get hooked and you will become happy zombie family, spending all your spare time and more leveling your chars and communicating with each other using team chat. I spent about a year like this with my ex wife, can not really recommend this option.
- Get couple of noisy bitcoin miners, overclock, put in the same room and inform her that those monsters will mine 24/7. You will have a rough week, keep calm, then sell them after she understand that your computer is not at all noisy.
- Move your gaming rig into separate room, stay there and hope she will ask you to move back with your noisy gear. Even better if you can move it somewhere outside the house, to you friends place or something like this, and spend a few evenings there because you do not want to disturb her with the noise.
- Ask her to move in another room while you play if she do not like the noise.
- Think, maybe it's really time to stop playing and consuming other forms of digital content and spend more time with her? Get her out for a walk, or start doing something interesting together like for example get the 'Cooking for geeks' book and explore cooking, or get plush handcuffs and stuff, crystal meth, viagra and have some fun together, or buy aquarium, or sign up for pottering classes - possibilities are endless and almost anything is better than spend your life in front of a monitor, trust me on this
Get a nice-looking large chasse like Fractal Design R4.
Don't go overboard with the graphics, a decent mid-ranged card every other year costs about the same as a top of the line every four years and produces about the same results over time.
Get good fans in all spaces.
Then it will be close to silent and won't look ugly.
Marriage isn't about completely giving up individual lives and interests, it's about sharing and partnership. OP is trying to find a way to compromise, which is a completely reasonable thing. I co-habitate with a musician and she plays a rather loud instrument. Should she just give it up because it hurts my ears? Or is it more reasonable to say "hey, if I'm working from home, just make sure I'm not on a meeting first and let me know and I'll put my headphones on?" Seriously, don't be silly. This macho "grow up and don't have hobbies inside your home" bullshit needs to stop.
If your marriage or partnership involves you giving up things you're passionate about, I'm very sad for you.
With your lightning fast reflexes you are wasting your talent by making compromises about your gaming. And when I say lightning fast, I mean literally lightning fast, or at least within some small factor. Also, figure out whether this is really a PC noise problem, or a "I hate that he is always playing games" kind of problem. The first one is solved by bying different gear, the second one by talking to your wife.
Isn't this one of the key problems that Steam in-home streaming is designed to fix? Chuck the gaming PC in a back room, then run games from a laptop or other lightweight PC that farms off the rendering to the remote PC ? http://store.steampowered.com/streaming/
I make small and quiet gaming PCs, I can save your marriage! Check the website: www.lindobox.com
1) huge -> ok, I can live with that
2) ugly -> there are really neat cases which do not look like a 12 year olds wet dream
3) noisy -> a noisy pc is a bad pc. get a good case with vibration absorbers, get rid of your 60mm fans in favor of 120s or even 180s and run them on 1/4 the speed -> silent.
...your wife is frm the same planet as You.
The big problem is that You uses your common space to get away from your common life, if she also is a geek you may just need to buy another big TV for her and everybody is happy (that works for me and my wife) BUT your non-geek friends (believe it or not you may experience them) will have very hard time understanding your living room setup (as does ours).
Look at it logically and there's only one thing to be done. The wife has to go!
Kill her, roll her up in a carpet and put her in a dumpster. Nothing should interfere with having 5 7000rpm fans so you can game. NOTHING.
You don't. At all. She may say she doesn't like the noise of your gaming PC. What she means is that she doesn't like the fact you have a gaming PC. Not at all. She's waiting for you to wise up and see things her way. You see, this is going to be painful but she didn't marry you for your smarts, your charm, your good looks, your sense of humor or whatever. She married you because she - and most probably her mother - say potential in you. The potential to become the kind of person she (they) want you to be. In the life of this person you are required to become there is no place for games, comics, or even your old friends. It's a completely different, artificial person that you can only become by casting away what you are now, which you better start to do fast. The alternative is simply too painful to contemplate: you know what happens to people who get accused of "spousal abuse", don't you? It's her word (and her mother's) against you: you will lose. Resign to your fate, throw away that computer, lose all your games, comics, hobbies, say goodbye to your old friends. Delete your personality. She (they) don't need it. Learn to read the writing on the wall, start to mold yourself into the person they have decided you to be. Your life, as it has been, is over: from this time onward, you will service them.
Use Steam Streaming to a laptop. Keep MR behemoth in the back room.
You wife may have misunderstood "i like to play exciting games for one hour every day".
WTF?
And then you ask for wireless tech, hoping it would be faster?
Just put it in a room, where you have some quiet time for yourself and your gaming. you are not disturbed, your wife is not disturbed. win-win.
I mean server ;)
http://askaralikhan.blogspot.com/
Get yourself a Silverstone FT-03, mATX motherboard, and a Nofan CPU cooler. Drop your fancy noisy cooling. Get a GPU with a blower fan. Small, stylish, and quiet.
With Steam in-home streaming, you can send the game over the network from your gaming PC to a small, silent, physically attractive "receiver" PC using SteamOS. This adds only a few ms of indistinguishable lag.
I applaud your trying to satisfy her desire for a neat, tidy and quiet living space in a constructive way. Obviously, even if the PC is tucked away and inaudible, there may be issues later if you spend excessive time playing with it and ignoring her.
So as others have suggested, make sure you understand that life as you know it is no longer available to you and that it is urgent to find activities of common interest.
It would be best for you if these activities involved a highly powered computer, something she may find she needs, like maybe video editing (time to be creative). Once she sees the PC as a tool rather than an annoyance, the noise won't be as much of a problem and she may even let you play with it, occasionally.
Good luck to you!
I had similar problem. ;-)
I am pretty sure you are going to find this post at the end of the thread after slogging through all those helpful posts suggesting that you show your wife who is the boss
I had similar problems (with computer, not with my fantastic wife!) some time ago and I have solved them by cutting several large holes in the side of the case, installing large fans (12 volt versions, I ran them at slightly lower voltage) and installing a cardboard ducts that directed the airflow directly to the graphics card and to the processor cooler. Take care to provide also air outlets to keep up with large fans blowing in. The best way to let the majority of the air out is through the power source.
I was also able to run those [multiple] large fans off 7V that I got by connecting them between 12V and 5V lead on a power source. Be careful, "your mileage might vary" and your power source might not like being used this way. This was suggested to me by a computer technician that works for the same company I do.
It also helps processor has heat-pipe cooler. Heat-pipe is a copper pipe filled with a liquid and sealed tight, with no external means to circulate liquid. They are used extensively in notebooks and luxury coolers. It works because liquid has better heat conducting properties than copper. Pay attention to the orientation of the cooler suggested by manufacturers - some of them are said to work only in horizontal / vertical position and not upside-down.
Consider getting an SSD. Much quieter than a HDD and you might get computer that feels actually faster even if you under-clock your processor.
Consider replacing small cooler with fan on a chipset [if you have one] with a much larger [passive] heat dissipating cooler. Combine with a large 12V fan fed by 7V or PWM power source blowing on it through cardboard air duct.
Consider building / buying a small PWM power source with variable output that is powered by 12V from PC. I believe those are available commercially for modders, complete with thermal sensors, but building one (without thermal regulation) can be a fun little Sunday project. The PWM source then powers your fans, so they spin fast enough to cool your PC and slow enough not to make much noise. You turn it all the way up before serious gaming session.
Consider under-clocking your processor AND graphics cards when you do not play on your PC.
I have recently purchased a notebook as a replacement of my big rig that had many of the above mentioned enhancements. I bought a notebook, because I was visiting USA and I wanted to buy a better computer there during Black Friday and I strongly disliked the idea of packing a regular desktop PC inside a big checked-in suitcase. So I had to purchase something that I could take with me alongside a company-issued notebook. I had a *strong* case of buyers remorse. Now I can't improve my computer anymore. No installing extra stuff, getting a second disk (large SSD) was complicated and I had to give up [internal] DVD drive. On the other hand, notebook *is* much quieter, especially with an SSD. ;-).
So, if you like to tinker with your big rig, like I did, do not make the same mistake. - Unless you are filthy rich and can afford an alienware or similar notebook
Would Parallels running on the newest 4k iMac be powerful enough for your games? [evil grin ;-)]
You shouldn't have gotten married, kid.
Your brain is stuck at age 8 - 10. Same goes for any of you other gamers that spend more than 3 hours a year engaged in 'gaming'.
I recently tried the "remote" way of using Steam.
A friend of mine came to my place with his expensive-super-noisy Windows gaming PC. We plugged it onto my LAN in another room and tried to play Steam games from my living-room where I have an inexpensive-super-quiet Linux based machine connected to my TV (usually running XBMC).
I didn't feel any lag or issue at all, it was perfectly stable. Even my friend who is used to play directly on his own machine was impressed and didn't feel any difference.
That may fix your noise issue. I hope this is the only one...
Maybe there's a 12 step program...
...of earmuffs.
Have a separate Home Theatre /casual gaming silent machine for your living room and have "Behemoth" in the spare room for when things get serious?
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
But you yourself are constantly going on about how there aren't very many couch co-op games for the PC!
That I was, past tense. But according to Slashdot users hairyfeet, nschubach, Pubstar, and others, as well as Anonymous Cowards, the situation has changed. Valve has done much to promote this sort of stuff on Steam in preparation for the Steam Machine, even though it's dragging its feet on the actual Steam Machine hardware. This includes Big Picture, a store filter for controller-friendly games, and Steam OS (a Debian derivative that boots to Big Picture). Other sites have started to list such games as well, such as Co-optimus and reddit.
If he wants to play in the living room he'd be better off with a PS4.
Choice of platform is often driven by exclusives. No upgrade will bring games to the PS4 that aren't already there or let you install mods for those games that are on PS4. PC, by contrast, has a wide selection of previous-generation games and community-made mods if you tire of the top 40.
Find a cabinet that goes with your living room furniture, and stick it in there. It'll hide it both visually and audibly. Just make sure it allows enough air-flow from the rear, for cooling, or open the cabinet door while in use. Stereo heads like me have had to deal with this problem for a long time, and the solution is nice-looking furniture.
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
Wow so much unsolicited relationship advice. There certainly are some good answers about larger fans and quieter cases, but the problem of "long USB cables and long HDMI cables" causing propagation delay and lag is interesting. I have never heard of this issue before. How long are we talking? Are the cables shielded? Do you have repeaters in the picture?
Just a thought, but I know a lot of people leave their computers on a lot more than there's any reason to. Consider: if you're gaming the sounds coming out of the speakers will probably mostly drown out the fans, and if you're not currently gaming the thing should be off and completely silent. If you don't like boot times get an SSD, and/or enable hibernation.
Even if you can't get the noise down completely when you're playing, there's no reason it can't be completely silent the rest of the time. Then you just need to hide the thing visually and you're golden. Assuming of course that the noise/ugliness is her actual objection.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
The problem with a projector for 'everyday' TV is that you need a new bulb (maybe $400) every 3000 hours or so, which is noticeably expensive and inconvenient.
Also, daylight and projectors don't mix well at all, so you often need to substantially darken your viewing room, darkening windows and possibly repainting light walls/ceiling darker, which all has a very low WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor), especially if its the lounge.
... If you find you don't recognise your wife after a while you might be spending more years gaming than you think.
In the meantime you are at least making an effort.
to get over it or get lost!
That also reinforces needless and outdated gender role stereotypes. Awesome. (sarcasm).
You are in a marriage which is presumably a sort of two person relationship. Discuss the matter with your wife and come up with a reasonable compromise. Consider it practice for the many many times you will both need to do this in the future. Best wishes.
Also.. I am a wife and a gamer. I sympathize with both points of view, but agree with what someone else said. The living room is a shared space for family as well as guests. It's not totally unreasonable to want to keep it that way. Figure out how to run a hard wire to another room. It will be awesome.
What often seems to be forgotten when it comes to silent gaming is getting the airflow right. Even with expensive 140mm fans and best CPU/GPU coolers you can still do everything wrong. It's impossible to give a step by step instruction on this, but there are some rules and guidelines about doing airflow right:
1. Always pull, NEVER push: A case fan that pushes air into the case is wasted noise, pushing air creates lots of turbulence inside the case, which is not what you want. Inside the case you want to have nice laminar stream of air with just the right temperature gradient between the stream of air and your heatsinks, that's why you *always* pull the air OUT of the case.
2. Go for the stack effect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stack_effect i.e. let the cold air stream in at the bottom and pull it upwards as it heats up inside the case, e.g. have a big fan that blows out of the top cover of the case.
3. Avoid heat pockets, i.e. don't have an internal fan blow hot air into a dead end. All internal fans should exhaust into the stream that goes out of your case.
And, obviously, all your fans should be temperature controlled PWM fans. Put a bit of trial and error into getting the thermal balance right between the components (mainly CPU/GPU) under typical loads. If your BIOS doesn't support temperature-guided fan control, get a proper mainboard or some software that can do it.
That also reinforces needless and outdated gender role stereotypes. Awesome. (sarcasm). You are in a marriage which is presumably a sort of two person relationship. Discuss the matter with your wife and come up with a reasonable compromise. Consider it practice for the many many times you will both need to do this in the future. Best wishes. Also.. I am a wife and a gamer. I sympathize with both points of view, but agree with what someone else said. The living room is a shared space for family as well as guests. It's not totally unreasonable to want to keep it that way. Figure out how to run a hard wire to another room. It will be awesome.
maybe the solution is making the computer not such a noisy behemoth in the first place. I know you said you did not want to get into liquid cooling but lately a lot of manufacturers are producing closed loop water coolers that drastically reduce noise,increase performance and are as easy to install as swapping out your existing heat sink and a fan or two. you could also look in to changing the case to something a little more low profile that would fit with the decor of the living room. like a htpc case, although they typically are a little on the small side when compared to full sized gaming rigs. take it from another happily married man compromise doesn't always have to mean giving up on what you care about to make her happy. there is always a middle ground.
Um. There is no propagation delay running HDMI from a different room- it is the exact same as if the PC was directly next to the TV. On what drugs were you high when you made this statement?
Like almost every other male, you did not select for compatibility, so you didn't get it. Working as designed. Almost every male uses the following algorithm: 1. Pick the best-looking girl that seems like she is in my league. 2. Do we meet an absolute minimal compatibility threshold such that we can stand being around each other? 3. Is she willing to settle for me? 4. If so, I'm done... change relationship status to Engaged! If not, go back to Step 1. Obviously, this algorithm does not optimize for compatibility. If you want a different result, fix your program.
Simple: get a water cooling system (Zalman, if they are still in business). Very silent, can be hidden.
Geez it's not that hard.
Something like a Noctua NH-U9B = quiet CPU
SSD = quiet hdd
A good quality 80+ platinum PSU (like some of the FSP ones out there) = quiet PSU
Put them in a good case, like the fractal designs define R4 which also looks fab
And maybe add a couple of quiet fans is you need more airflow
That only leaves the video card and it wasn't an issue for me, but I've seen several that have some nice big fans on them that wouldn't run that noisy.
B.
Here is how to fix it, adapt as necessary for your personal situation.
http://no-maam.blogspot.co.nz/2007/03/fine-art-of-tv-repair.html
Once done, there should be less problem with the constant whining noises.
I would suggest wife lock the husband in a CB6000 chastity cage
Why do some people insist on gaming in the living room instead of in an office? What is so all-fired important about the living room?
Did it ever occur to you the rest of the household doesn't want to listen to you grunting and screaming at your gaming partners for hours and hours on end?
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
similar issue with my 1993 model M keyboard, expecially at night, oddly attached to a totally fanless pc. I'm planning to attach a backup rubber dome keyboard before the next quarrel. By the way, the clickier 1983 model F is at the office ;)
Just make sure your gaming rig is less noisy than her gaming rig. And don't put either of them in the living room.
My system is practically noiseless. Silent water cooling and 140mm fans. No HDDs, just a stack of SSDs.
My wife's gaming rig is noisy as hell. Old i7 920 ("frying pan" early stepping) with a HD6970 and 24GB 1.65V ram, a couple of 2nd generation SSDs and a stack of HDDs. Doubles as space heater during the winter.
---- Sig. gone.
You nailed it it's big, it's ugly, and it's noisy.
You're going to have to remove all the moving parts especially the fans, put
it in a slimline That's capable of hiding inside some other piece of
furniture while still providing cable access for your display/TV and mouse,
headset, keyboard.
There are several websites that address building silent PCs. You'll have to
look them over.
Being big is solvable provided you don't have too many add-on card's. You
need a motherboard, and a graphics processing unit. Other than that your
ethernet, Wi-Fi, sound should all be built-in on the motherboard.
Storage: get rid of your hard drives and switch to solid-state storage. Not
only is it quieter it's also cooler. Cooling is going to be a very major
issue.
The noisy this issue is mostly because of fans. Cooling a high-powered
system without fans is difficult. You stated you don't want to deal with
water cooling which would be one obvious way to go, and that probably leaves
out oil cooling as well. This leaves you with a combination of passive
cooling systems, very very very quiet fans, and a lot of soundproofing.
The quiet PC websites have products for all of these.
My solutions in the past have included placing the tower inside the bottom
of a TV platform, on top of rubberized mounts with lots of acoustic foam and
replacing all of the fans with models designed to be extra quiet.
The larger the piece of furniture you can place the tower inside of, the
more acoustic soundproofing you can place around. You still need to be
careful to designing your path because you will still need cooling.
Doing this well, in a way that still allows your unit to be adequately
cooled, and provides good cable access which is part of the performance no
lag issue is going to require some fun in improvisation.
Good luck
Time to man up, stop being a wimp.
Put her on a cable (wireless won't do it) that extends from the kitchen to the bedroom. If she can't get to the living room then she can't complain.
It'd probably be cheaper in the long term.
My PC to living room solution was to use a wireless HDMI streamer, and a wireless Xbox 360 adapter, and gyrations wireless keyboard and mouse for other stuff. My living room receiver is about 20 feet through two internal walls.
Here's the link to the wirless HDMI thingy I use.
http://www.amazon.com/IOGEAR-GW3DHDKIT-Wireless-Digital-Channel/dp/B00630WKGI/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1417402556&sr=8-8&keywords=wireless+hdmi
Do it. Now. Build a man cave. I did it before I married, at my apartment, and after two years of being married, I buyed a big house. Of course, with a BIG man cave. My computer with a 32" monitor, my pinball machine, my arcade machine, and all my stuff is there (I've got a 42" rack full of network equipment and servers there, I have an IT company here in Chile, so I really like my work!). My wife don't like to play videogames so she don't ever look inside the room, not even for cleaning. From the door inside, is my PERSONAL SPACE, and I do whatever I like there. The rest of the house, including our bedroom, is her domain. She can paint them whatever color she likes, put whatever furniture, do what the hell she wants with all the other rooms in the house, but the man cave IS NEVER TOUCHED. Been married for 8 years now, and counting!!!
-- Francisco Rivas C.
Did your wife not notice 'behemoth'? I promote a philosophy of it came with the deal.
Did he have tattoos before you married, then he can get tattoos.
Did he have firearms before you got married, then he is going to buy guns.
Did he have a motorcycle before you got married, then you are the second love of his life.
OK, so I'm thinking, you need a 100% fanless zero decibels quiet gaming PC. This is what you need: http://www.techtalk.cc/viewtopic.php?t=1814. They got all the components listed. I got one of those PCs myself and I can play almost any game. You have no idea what a bliss a 100% fanless PC can be!!!
Vehemenly disagree on the price / visibility comment of projectors.
A good TV here in the netherlands is ~700-800 euro's (i'm talking about 40"). A good projector for home use (1080p / 2000+ lumen) is about 800. Resolution, refresh rate and screen visibily is equal to a tv and the size of it is x5 (at least).
My entire setup at home, including projector, projector screen, wall and ceiling mounts, AV receiver, Blue ray player and 7.2 surround system - all brand new. cost me under 2k Euro's.
Just about what the same setup would have cost me with a TV... but now i have a whole wall i dedicated to books, instead of looking at a tv screen (and i just pull down the project screen and watch a movie when i want to.
I will recomend a projector any day!
She says the computer is loud, but you don't understand, in girl code what she means is that she want's you to stop gaming.
It sounds like there are several problems here, one his computer is to loud. This is a problem that is solved with better equipment. Liquid cooling modern video cards and CPU you can make a computer near silent. If you do not have the money to build a new computer with noise reduction in mind you can always move the computer and desk to another room all together. Now the other problem may have nothing to do with the "noise" of the computer at all. In this case you need to look at the number of hours you play games and weather you are meeting your relationship obligations. Are your chores around the house getting done by you without being told/yelled at/hounded, are you spending enough time with your wife/kids/(non-online) friends? She may not be wrong but going on-line and asking a loaded question like this with only 1 side of the story makes it impossible for a group of people to diagnose YOUR problem. My suggestion is you talk to your wife find out what is really bothering her and possibly seen professional help.
If your path in life includes kids, you do not want your pride and joy to attract attention. You may find the cabinet route wasn't such a bad idea after all. I've done this successfully, but it helps that my wife does enjoy watching me play games while she putters on the couch or adjacent living space.
In my opinion, the solution to your dilemma starts with separating your gaming harness from your media center. Deploy your plex server / media center to another room, or less powered (and silent) machine. Use Apple TV and Airplay to stream movies and content to your TV. Next, turn off / hibernate your gaming machine when not in use. The sound the machine makes is irrelevant while you're playing games.
If you have an nvidia card why not pick up an nvidia shield?
NVIDIA's Shield tablet has a console mode, and allows streaming games from your PC to your tablet, for full HD gaming on your TV. It requires a GTX graphics card though.
Still, perhaps the only real option at the moment.
Just because he games means that he doesn't spend time with his wife? My experience is that most women want to spend every fucking second with their husbands. They need fucking hobbies.
Is this is shit test or is she legitimately annoyed by the sound? It may very well be she's just testing the OP to see how far she can push him.
"On a scale from 1 to 10, people are stupid"
Use big fans, and be picky about your parts. Power efficiency is key, you want something that generates very little waste heat and thus requires minimal cooling. Many good PSUs these days will only spin up the fans when on heavy load, which is a good compromise so that most of the time it's quiet but you don't have to worry about silently cruising to thermal extremes. Also be aware that the noise level isn't the entire story, you also want the noise to be as "white" as possible, because it's often the overtones and such whines that catch the ear. My primary computer acts mostly as a server but doubles as a second gaming PC when needed, has 5 drives and a powerful GPU and CPU in it . . . and because I was picky about the parts (among other things I mostly went with lower-RPM drives that are known to have few distinct tones to their operating noise) I have huge amounts of storage and a powerful gaming rig but it can stay on without much notice. Hell, my housemate fires up his PS3 or xbox360 and the noise level in the room is suddenly extremely high by comparison to how it was.
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
Put the games in a separate room and when you want to play games, go there. I might be showing my age because I do remember a game-free house because I was almost 20 when Pong became available. You can argue with me, tell me I'm wrong or whatever you want to do but my opinion is that games should be left behind in childhood and are a complete waste of adult time. Feel lucky that your wife is not interested in throwing you out of the house instead of just wanting you to get a different, smaller system and, perhaps, in another room.
sims
I know some easy changes I did to keep the peace.
1) Picked up a 50$ gaming headset.
2) Picked up a 20$ silent mouse.
For 70$ it is well worth it. In addition, out of consideration, I try to plan most of my gaming while she is away at work or whatever.
You won't get to play as much as your used to, but it is about balance. You shouldn't have to give up everything, but be prepared to compromise. She should do the same.
I'm a gamer with a wife and two kids. My wife doesn't game at all. I didn't need to be asked to put the PC elsewhere because I also don't want a loud ass, ugly machine ruining the living room either. So I put together a machine that looked like a piece of A/V equipment, there are lots of great cases now that are unobtrusive, and I purchased components that made low noise the priority. It pulls double duty as a media center and I made sure the cabling ran all within the walls, with as few wires as possible and bound them nicely so as not to attract dust bunnies.
For example this.
And wiring like this.
I'm not sure what there is about being a man that means I have to be gross and loud. It's not like I don't appreciate a clean, aesthetically pleasing place to live as well. Ultimately I ended up moving the machine to another room running the cables through the floor to the basement because I didn't want to see anything at all. That was my choice.
It lets you stream your games over network to your shield which can be put on any HDMI display. Totally silent, but you will probably need to upgrade your router.
I feel like the nVidia shield is the first attempt at really taking on gaming like netflix took on movies. It will be something amazing to watch.
With the new Grid Games, you can stream games executed on fancy computers off site. That is, if your internet connection is snappy enough.
We are just on the verge of being able to run high end games with thin clients located thousands of miles away.
My girlfriend has made some similar hints over the past year we've lived together. She hates that my face is buried in my screen all the time and that I'm not paying close enough attention to her. My proposed solution was to set up my computer screen with an AAXA P3X pico projector as an alternate video out which allowed her to watch and become more involved with the games. Now instead of pouting on the couch while I'm playing she can watch and becomes more interested and involved in the game without having to sit over my shoulder. Definitely made the best of a bad situation with just an adjustment of the hardware.