Building a Dead Silent PC

Jouster writes "The folks over at HardCoreWare.net have finally lost it. They built a PC that's well over twenty times quieter than their comparison PC (40 dB versus 65). And it's no sluggard, either: P4 2.80 GHz, 7200 RPM hard drive and--get this!--an overclocked to the max GeForce4 Ti 4200! The only fan in the entire system is in the PSU."

Not as loud, but its still a space heater

[jeramybsmith]

Those who forget the apple are doomed to reinvent it. Apple has been using large heatsink, air flow design, etc for ever since the blueg3 to keep there from being too many fans in the system.

However, an Apple still puts out much less heat overall and I notice the article didnt even try to find a quiet cdrom. I have 2 in my PC and both are loud as the dickens.

silence overrated?

[mackstann]

i used to always strive to quiet my computer more and more, undervolting fans to 7v or 5v, i had my p233 absolutely SILENT, except for the loud hard drive.

but now, building my new system, i have 4 moderate (sound) volume fans, but they really dont bother me. they produce a calm whir, and they're actually kind of soothing at night :P

but the whole silent pc thing isnt all that hard, really. just put in some panaflo L1A's (undervolted if necessary), a seagate barracuda IV, and you are good to go. i dont see why people go to such extremes, for little to no improvement.

So what?

[jpmorgan]

So some guys with a website bought a bunch of large heatsinks from other companies, built a computer that uses almost entirely passive computing and we're expected to do what? Commend them on their innovative use of a credit card? ;)

And it's not like super-quiet computers haven't been done before. Yawn. Boring.

Re:Noise Cancelling Case

[Fourier]

Unfortunately, general noise cancellation in three dimensions is a much more difficult problem than noise cancellation at a point or two (e.g. headphones).

Re:I can think of one idea to get even cooler

[Shelled]

Those are some gigantic heatsinks.

Gigantic, yes. Massive, no. Those large, very thin copper sheets appear to lack the mass required to move much heat.

Closet PC...

[rsborg]

A friend of mine had a great idea... which I eventually used... a closet PC.

For those of you with the advantage of having a closet in your room (ie, not living in a college dorm), just putting a door (sliding or closing) between yourself and your beast can probably reduce your PC to fanless levels (I barely hear my monitor more than my PC in da closet).

My PC: Athlon 900 w/stock fan, 4x80GB IDE drives, geforce2mx video, 300W PS + LOTS of fans

Challenges:
1) ACPI on my mobo sucks, and I can't resume with my wireless keyboard as easy as I'd like to
2) CDRW/DVD drives are still on the unit; I'd like to replace them with firewire/usb2 external devices, but haven't had the cash to do it.

Im interested in knowing if anyone else has opted for this low-tech, low-noise solution?

Fanless PC PSU - THAT would be news

[Brother52]

CPUs and cases without fans are not very rare among brandname boxes (Compaq, for example), but I've yet to see a fanless PC PSU.

Is it really that hard make? I don't mind it to be heavier or more expensive - the reliability (no moving parts) and noise level are much more important in a lot of cases (pun intended :)

I was thinking about building one myself: old-style with a huge transformer, but then I heard that some powerful ATX PSUs can have their fans disconnected under reduced load. Can anyone clarify?

Re:20 times quieter?

[Graff]

Please explain how something can be 20x quieter...how does this math work?

It doesn't. Something can't be 20 times less than something else. You can either have something which is 1/20 as quiet as something else or something which is 20 times LOUDER than something else. It is complete nonsense to talk about something being 20 times less or 20 times quieter.

This is a common mistake which people make, you can see it all the time even in professional settings. You will often see people saying stuff like, "This will be three times less costly than other solutions." It's a sad state of affairs but I think that math skills are seriously deteriorating.

Re:Noise Cancelling Case

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the effect is called destructive interference, not phasing, but we get the idea. Plus, it seems like it would be simpler to design components that don't make as much noise and/or find ways to absorb the sound.

Another fairly obvious thing would be to mechanically isolate the noisy vibrating bits (like hard drives or CD-ROM drives) so they aren't coupled to big, flat, non-rigid surfaces (like panels of the case or maybe even the motherboard itself). Most stringed musical instruments have a big not-completely-rigid piece of wood, and its purpose is to provide extra surface area to push around air and thus make the sound louder. That's great for music instruments, but it's not good for a computer case.

If the two big panels of the case are actually acting as sound boards, there is a pretty easy fix: hook up a wire or something between them and put it under lots of tension to prevent them from vibrating. Unfortunately, this would require putting a hole in the middle of the motherboard...

Re:20 times quieter?

[johnburton]

I don't think it's sad, it's just evolution of language. I think that it fairly clear what it means and it can be more convenient to phrase things that way so even if it's not the traditional way to say something it's a decent enough innovation. It has nothing to do with math skills, it's to do with English language usage, and that changes all the time.

I don't know if I'd like this

[lewp]

I've become rather used to the rhythmic hum of my PCs (there are four in this room) while I sleep. Sure, I had to get a voltage regulator for the 6000-something RPM fan on my Athlon XP's heatsink (even I have limits), but I didn't turn it down too far. Hell, none of my PCs even have cases on them besides the laptop.

Of course, on the rare occasions when members of the opposite sex have slept in this room (Gasp! It has happened. Recently, even!) I have gotten more than one complaint about the noise and turned my boxen off. I just chalk it up to the fact that the girls don't tend to be geeks, which isn't such a bad thing :).

Re:Missing the point

[hatchet]

It's just figure of speech. It's same for faster slower. We say car A is 3 times slower than car B. Which is(or may seem) incorrect, but we use it anyway. We should say car A is one third as fast as car B.
So it doesn't matter how we say it.. as long as listener understands it.

Re:20 times quieter?

[Godwin O'Hitler]

Exactly. It's a language quirk that entered into usage while nobody was paying attention and there's nothing anyone can do about it now. Is a razor blade that is "twice as thin" the same as one that is half as thick? We have units for measuring thickness (mm, etc.) but what unit do we have for measuring thinness? or quietness for that matter?
Here's another perspective, if something is twenty times quieter, how quiet is something that is one time quieter? Logically, shouldn't "one time quieter" mean just plain silent?

Re:Not as loud, but its still a space heater

[Natalie's Hot Grits]

"Those who forget the apple are doomed to reinvent it. Apple has been using large heatsink"

Who said Apple invented large heatsinks,airflow design, etc?

I have been using large heatsinks, low powered quiet ducted fans, and passive coolers since the pentium days. My current machine has an 80x80mm heatsink with copper base embedded in it with an 80mm silent fan and its cooling an athlon XP 2100. The rest of my system is setup such that I have minimal airflow for the required cooling. Ducted air, large heatsinks, copper bases, etc etc..

People have known about large heatsinks, passive cooling, etc way way way before Apple Computer started making PC's with passive heatsinks on it.

Also, your post is irrelevant considering that Gateway, Dell, HP, Compaq has been doing the exact same thing in (many) of their systems as well for years. (check out dell optiplex, Gateway E-series, I dont know the compaq models, but I have seen some like this).

Then consider the G4 cube. it was fanless, nice innovation. But then they put a loud as hell hard drive in it, the power switch went off intermittently due to overheating (it was heat sensitive) and they put a fan in it anyway when they put the 3D Video cards in it. (this video card fan was like a 40mm fan spinning fast as hell and it was not very quiet at all, all on top of a very very small heatsink which had plenty of room to be larger)

Next, you are going to tell me that Apple invented thermodynamics? Please. Don't try to pretend Apple invented everything. They didn't. And they are far far far FAR from the ppl who started making silent PCs. Everyone has been making silence (and mostly, reduced noise) since the begining of cooling weather it be for cars, power lines, space shuttles, oil pipes, computers, whatever.

Re:Not as loud, but its still a space heater

[lkeagle]

That's great... now will someone PLEASE make a CRT without that damned high frequency whine? ;-)

My TV can be more annoying than my computer with all the fans at full blast!

~Loren

Re:Not as loud, but its still a space heater

[Joseph Vigneau]

And what aboutthe floppy drive? Those things are rarely used these days, but can be terribly noisy.

Easy: take it out. Since last year, I've been building PCs sans floppy drives. IMO, floppies have very little use these days; files are regularly larger than 1.4 (or 2.8) MB, making floppies pretty useless. Most modern BIOSes can boot directly from CDROM. I've been using USB flash drives (a friend has a "pen" style, I like to use Compact Flash w/ a USB adapter), they're faster, and to the topic, make no noise whatsoever.

I remeber taking over the lab to download the 20+ floppies for Slackware back in '93...

Re:20 times quieter?

[arkanes]

People have been worrying over the "decreasing skills of our youth" for the last 400 years, at least. The evolution of language and communication is always percieved as a decrease. This is not to say that AOL kiddies talking in single letters, upper case, 26 point pink and maroon letters doesn't make me grind my teeth with rage, but *your* idea of "communicate effectively" and the your great-grandchilds will probably be rather different. As an example, a couple hundered years ago, anyone who wanted to be taken seriously in academics(any field) HAD to be fluent in (at least) Latin. Now, hardly anyone uses it. A couple hundered years from now, probably even fewer. Remember, all these kids who you think won't be able to manage in the real world can talk to each other just fine. 40 years from now, YOU will be the one who can't communicate..

OT: Re:20 times quieter?

[Marc2k]

But it's a fairly obscure point that most people seem to just ignore.

I do agree with your logic, however saying "twenty times larger" is a form mathematical slang to begin with. Are we multiplying 20 by the integerial value of the string "larger"? Well, no. The multiplication by fractions to describe a smaller quantity is quite lucid, but we're not really talking about strict mathematics anymore, so it really becomes a matter of whether or not you want to adhere to the conventions of the notation from whence your phrase descended. Keeping that in mind, it becomes more of a question of which is proper in English grammar.

Re:Not as loud, but its still a space heater

[Jouster]

*phew* I'm glad someone else hears it, too.

It drives me nutty.

Jouster

They're available but read the fine print...

[jmichaelg]

Yeah, you can get fanless PSUs but watch out. TKpower's only delivers about 80 Watts sans fan. Neither it, nor the RSG RCP 300W-series fanless psu, are recommended for P4s. More here [silentpcreview.com].

Bottom line, no one that I am aware of has delivered a fanless psu that is recommended for the P4.

Perhaps a psu engineer can comment on the following as I'm not sure I'm right. A psu running at 300W at 70% efficiency has to dump 30% of the 300W as heat. That's 90 watts that has to be gotten rid of - a lot to ask of a passively cooled psu. TKPower tries to do it by physically coupling [siliconacoustics.com] their psu to the case.