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Hardware

A Silent PC Solution? 485

Posted by michael from the earplugs-much-cheaper dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Fed up with the monotonous whirring emanating from your PC? Well for once, someone with an actual knowledge of acoustics demonstrates what can be done AND backs it up with measurements!"
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A Silent PC Solution? More

A Silent PC Solution?

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  • Oh just shut up you whiner (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 30, 2004 @08:52AM (#9017500)
    Real nerd use fans to repel others:-)

  • Headphones are an even better solution.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Yoda2 ( 522522 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @08:53AM (#9017503)
    This is cool, but headphones provide the added benefit of canceling out the buzz & whirring of co-workers.
  • Just unplug it.

  • SIlence is a pipe dream for me (Score:5, Informative)

    by Mr Smidge ( 668120 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @08:54AM (#9017510) Homepage
    I recently thought I'd give it a shot at trying to silence my desktop PC.

    I have a Zalman flower on the processor, replaced my northbridge fan with a passively cooled heatsink, fitted two 'silent' YS-Tech fans for intake and outtake (with plastic vibration-reducing rings!), and each one is connected with a 12V->10V converter to reduce the speed a bit.

    Heh, well I still can't sleep next to the thing when it's on. There must actually be some phantom device in there making noise.

    What *affordable* things have you /.ers done about graphics card cooling, or noisy hard drives?

    • Re:SIlence is a pipe dream for me (Score:5, Informative)

      by chullymonster ( 695441 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @08:58AM (#9017549)
      have you checked the PSU? it will have a fan or two in there to cool it down, that could be the "phantom noise". i'd imagine it's possible to get hold of a quiet/silent one from somewhere or other.

    • Re:SIlence is a pipe dream for me (Score:5, Informative)

      by Mr Guy ( 547690 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @08:59AM (#9017555) Journal
      Not trying to sounds like a know it all myself, but my understand is 10V for a "silent" fan is still considered ungodly by the purists. Consider Zalman's FANMATE-1 that adjusts down to less than 5V with 11V as a MAX.

      Have you browsed, for example, a Some of the websites dedicated to silent PC's [silentpcreview.com]?
      The one I linked has a recommended page where they give noise to performance. For hard drives, the far and ahead winner is the Seagate Barracuda IV which is apparently discontinued. Your PSU is also generally one of the largest sources of noise on your whole machine, what do you use?
      • Seagate Barracuda IV which is apparently discontinued

        Not true--in fact, there is now a 200gb version.

        ST3200822A Barracuda 7200.7 Plus 200 GB Ultra ATA/100 7200 RPM 8.5 ms avg DPC
        ST3200822AS Barracuda 7200.7 SATA 200 GB Serial ATA 7200 RPM 8.5 ms avg DPC
        • Not true--in fact, there is now a 200gb version.

          No, it IS true--the version you speak of is not the Barracuda IV. Seagate introduced the Barracuda IV in 2001, followed by the Barracuda V in 2002. While the Barracuda V received a stay of execution by becoming an early adopter of the SATA interface this year, the Barracuda IV was discontinued. The current iteration of the Barracuda line, the 7200.7 models, are much different acoustically (since noise is the focus of this article) than that that had gone B-IV

      • I just got one of the new Barracudas (VII I think?) and it's super quiet. I have a feeling the db rating is lower than the IV. I also got a Sonata case, which is nice too - big, slow case fan, very quiet PSU, and it looks pretty good too.

        My graphics card is sufficiently old that it doesn't have a fan, and I've found the Sonata's case fan can cool the CPUs (2xPIIIs) sufficiently now I've put some bloody gigantic heatsinks on them. I'd probably underclock them if I knew how - the computer's more than fast en

    • Re:SIlence is a pipe dream for me (Score:5, Informative)

      by ikeleib ( 125180 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @09:01AM (#9017570) Homepage
      Glue carpet padding all over the inside the case. It costs about $1. It makes a big difference. It won't make your case really hot; your computer is cooled by forcing air through it, not radiation.

    • Undervolting (Score:3, Interesting)

      by w00d00 ( 25416 )
      search google for "undervolting". it worked for me - i undervolted an old amd t-bird 1.3ghz to 1.3 volts at 1ghz. i have no fan on the cpu or on the bridge. check "athcool" for linux, my computer stays under 70 centigrade and is _may_ more silent :-)

    • Put noisy harddrives to sleep. (Score:5, Informative)

      by imtheguru ( 625011 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @09:55AM (#9018042)
      I havent had the need to apply any spin down times to my primary drive (Quantum Fireball) as it is very silent even during heavy data transfers. Here is a snippet from my personal HowTo on keeping harddisks quiet.

      Windows solution: Use Multiple Power Profiles

      - Control Panel > Display > Screensaver > Power. Turn off hard disks after x mins. [I have x set to 21 mins]
      - Save As "SLEEP Mode".
      - Set x to "Never", Save As "AWAKE Mode".
      - Under Advanced, check "Always show icon on taskbar".

      Icon appears in System Tray. When awake, use AWAKE Mode power profile and before sleeping, set to SLEEP Mode power profile.

      Linux solution: Use hdparm
      > /path/to/hdparm -y /dev/hdb
      From the hdparm man page: -y
      Force an IDE drive to immediately enter the low power consumption standby mode, usually causing it to spin down.

      Write a little script to include the command for all secondary harddrives.

      Sometimes the secondary drives are woken up for housekeeping jobs and refuse to spin down again... so it might be necessary to include some spindown times in script.
      > /path/to/hdparm -S255 /dev/hdb
      From the hdparm man page: -Svalue
      Set the standby (spindown) timeout for the drive. This value is used by the drive to determine how long to wait (with no disk activity) before turning off the spindle motor to save power. Under such circumstances, the drive may take as long as 30 seconds to respond to a subsequent disk access, though most drives are much quicker. The encoding of the timeout value is somewhat peculiar.

      - Value 0 (zero) means no spindown will occour.
      - Values from 1 to 240 specify multiples of 5 seconds, for timeouts from 5 seconds to 20 minutes.
      - Values from 241 to 251 specify from 1 to 11 units of 30 minutes, for timeouts from 30 minutes to 5.5 hours.
      - Value of 252 signifies a timeout of 21 minutes.
      - Value of 253 sets a vendor-defined timeout.
      - Value of 255 is interpreted as 21 minutes plus 15 seconds.

      NOTE: Spinning down drives may cause it not to spin again, so backup data often. NOTE: Defragment windows partition often. Boosts speed and keeps drive relatively quiet.
    • I got a second machine to use as a server. I have a fast, noisy machine I use for development, and a quiet, slow machine I use as a webserver. The quiet machine is built on the mini ITX [mini-itx.com] VIA Eden fanless CPU/mainboard combo, it has a Seagate Barracuda IV HD, and an external brick power supply. It makes absolutely no noise, and it's powerful enough to handle as my mail, file, and printserver. I could probably spin the drive down when it's inactive, and it really wouldn't make any noise at all. The mini-ITX s

  • Buy a laptop (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 30, 2004 @08:54AM (#9017513)
    Get yourself a Pentium-M laptop and be done with noise.

  • Get a Mac (Score:2, Insightful)

    by travellingnovice ( 775841 )
    Get a MAC!

    • Re:Get a Mac (Score:5, Informative)

      by IceFox ( 18179 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @09:20AM (#9017706) Homepage
      The parent may be flamebate, but sense bringing my Apple laptop to meeting I have noticed how just much noise everyone's else's wintel laptop makes while the Apple doesn't. No small external fans in the back and what is even more surprising/pleasent is the lack of hd seeking back and forth which occurs all the times in windows. Taking this to your main computer box, if you have to get fans, buy large slow fans and not fast small fans. They are a lot quieter. And spending $20 more on a good quite hd might surprise you. :)

      -Benjamin Meyer

      -Benjamin Meyer

      • iMac versus "commodity" PC's (Score:5, Insightful)

        by mariox19 ( 632969 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @12:27PM (#9019705)

        For all the snide comments the original iMac got when it came out ("gumdrop," "Volkswagen Beetle") there is no denying the thought that went behind its design when it came to cooling. It worked entirely on convection, and, having no fan, was silent (but for the occassional whir of the hard drive).

        The top of the case (where the heat vented) was hot as hell, but if you felt down on the bottom by the motherboard, it was cool to the touch.

        No doubt this wasn't possible with the G4 (the iMac was a G3 chip), as it runs much hotter. If Apple gets some cooler running chips from IBM, we may see fanless Macs again.

        My new iMac (G4) runs very quiet. The fan does not run constantly, nor at one speed only.

        I think there's plenty to be done to reduce noise; but the manufacturers who ship out PC "commodity boxes" couldn't be bothered.

    • Re:Get a Mac (Score:3, Insightful)

      by rjung2k ( 576317 )
      No kidding. Ever since I got addicted to the near-total silence of my fanless G3 iMac, I can't even stand to have any noisy peripherals nearby to shatter the tranquility. When I went shopping for an external Firewire hard drive, I couldn't use one of the fan-based drives for more than ten minutes because of the noise. I end up looking specifically for a fanless enclosure and the quietest drive I could find just to have something I could tolerate.

      Like the Mac itself, once you tried silent computing, you
    • Our company was the first one on our block to get one of the 2ghz dual G5 Power Macs and it is BY FAR the quietest fan-cooled machine I've ever seen. You can barely hear the hard drive spin up, but other than that, it's virtually dead-silent. It's not ideal if you need wintel, but they're real quiet out of the box, and they're dead sexy.
  • You Can now use that pesky noise to cool [slashdot.org] all your over clocked athlons!

  • It's easy (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BoomerSooner ( 308737 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @08:55AM (#9017521) Homepage Journal
    Just buy a laptop, run it in powersaving mode all the time, plug it into a monitor, keyboard and mouse. You'll never know the difference. I got sick of transferring files between locations (work, second office, home, laptop) so I just have gone laptop only and only fire up my home PC for video games.

  • Dynamic site (Score:5, Insightful)

    by akjacob ( 621680 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @08:55AM (#9017524)
    here is the contents.. It goes without saying that even a moderately fast CPU these days requires a fast-spinning (read noisy) fan to avoid the risk of overheating. Combine that with a PSU fan, GPU fan, chipset fan and one or more case fans and your average PC can so easily become a major distraction. And it's not just the sound from fans that can cause annoyance. A high proportion of the noise created by PCs can also emanate from the hard disk(s), particularly while 'seeking', or from any optical drives that have been installed. Just imagine then trying to follow the dialogue in your favourite DVD movie with the constant din of your computer in the background.

    It doesn't even have to be a particularly loud sound to be distracting - a relatively quiet noise containing a strong tonal component such as a high frequency whine or a low frequency hum can be just as irritating to some people. Fortunately, there are now numerous noise elimination products available to purchase, either as add-on components or devices that replace the existing cooling fans in your system - these components are designed to reduce the sound of a noisy PC to barely a whisper.

    Sounds too good to be true? Well, specialist component supplier QuietPC [quietpc.com] certainly doesn't think so and has provided us with a range of silencing products for testing. The effectiveness of each noise-reducing component has been assessed subjectively based on the different acoustic features in each instance, and also from noise measurements taken using a high-quality sound level meter.

    So, if you fancy the idea of creating your own near-silent PC but are unsure of the best place to start, or are just keen to learn what the latest IT noise control technology has to offer, you should find this feature interesting.

    • Re:Dynamic site (Score:4, Funny)

      by chegosaurus ( 98703 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @09:30AM (#9017797) Homepage
      Just imagine then trying to follow the dialogue in your favourite DVD movie with the constant din of your computer in the background.

      Most of my favourite movies don't have a lot of dialogue.

    • Re:Dynamic site (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Buffo ( 773488 )
      Did you see the price on that Zalman no noise case [quietpcusa.com] on the Quiet PC site? I mean, sure heat pipes are expensive an all, but who in the hell is going to pay nearly $1200 just for a CASE?

      Sheesh - you'd think active noise cancellation hardware would be cheaper... (Not to mention way, way, cooler!) Er - as in "gadget-like cool", not temperature cool.

      • Re:Dynamic site (Score:3, Interesting)

        by mcpkaaos ( 449561 )
        but who in the hell is going to pay nearly $1200 just for a CASE?

        Vocalists and musicians who mic their instruments (or who play acoustic instruments with pickups sensitive to background noise).

        When you are recording a track and you don't have the luxury of a vocal booth, you will go to great lengths to cut back on background noise, even if said lengths include $1200 cases.

        Of course, this opens the debate on why anyone would be recording on a PC, but that's probably best left for another day... ;)

  • Whoa this is /. (Score:5, Funny)

    by shawn(at)fsu ( 447153 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @08:55AM (#9017527) Homepage
    We don't take to kindly to peoplewith an actual knowledge of acoustics AND backs it up with measurements! in these here parts. You best just move along College Boy...

  • Not cheap.... (Score:3, Informative)

    by noelmarkham ( 714160 ) * on Friday April 30, 2004 @08:57AM (#9017537)
    Interesting article...
    I'm looking forward to when I'm not a student and have a proper job so that I can afford to do something remotely like this!

  • tough choice (Score:2, Funny)

    by andih8u ( 639841 )
    Listen to incessant droning of multiple case fans, or incessant droning of neighbor screaming at his kids...tough choice indeed.
  • I reckon slashdotting trusted review's server isn't helping silencing it...

  • Dosen't bother me... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Jaysyn ( 203771 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @09:03AM (#9017577) Homepage Journal
    ... that low buzz & the hum of the air cleaner helps me sleep at night.

    Now if I could get it to act a little less like a space heater.....

    Jaysyn

  • How about the Noisy Ice Cream Truck solution? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Vexler ( 127353 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @09:05AM (#9017589) Journal
    The same song over and over and over again...

  • CD drives! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Paul Townend ( 185536 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @09:05AM (#9017590) Homepage
    Nevermind the noise from the actual PC - that's bareable! It's my CD drive that drives me insane! It's like there's some kind of acid-fuelled lawnmower-driving madman in my machine, whenever I so much as access F:!!!

    A while ago, I'm sure I read a review for a "quiet" CD drive, but I haven't found it since.... Old quad-speed drives were never like that!

    • Re:CD drives! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by richie2000 ( 159732 )
      I recently bought an ASUS DVD-ROM, the DVD-E616 which is very, very quiet, even at full speed.

      I used to read games and stuff into image files and mount them using Alcohol 120%, partly for the speed increase, but mostly to get rid of the noise from my old CD-ROM. With the new one, I don't really need to do that anymore.

      Other tips include finding a quiet hard drive (Seagate Barracuda, Samsung Spinpoint), a silent CPU fan (Arctic Cooling, most newer Zalmans, basically anything with a large, relatively slo

    • Re:CD drives! (Score:3, Informative)

      by hankwang ( 413283 ) *
      It's my CD drive that drives me insane! It's like there's some kind of acid- fuelled lawnmower-driving madman ...

      Try one of these:

      bash# mount /mnt/cdrom
      bash# hdparm -E 20 /dev/cdrom

      or

      #include <sys/ioctl.h>
      #include <fcntl.h>
      #include <linux/cdrom.h>
      main () {
      int fd=open("/dev/cdrom", O_RDONLY | O_NONBLOCK);
      ioctl(fd, CDROM_SELECT_SPEED, 20);
      }

      This will temporarily degrade your CDROM to a quiet 20-speed model, if you run the correct OS, that is.

  • Think Cheap (Score:5, Interesting)

    by stecoop ( 759508 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @09:06AM (#9017598) Journal
    The goal of silencing a PC is thinking like the cheapest man you have ever known.

    Start with the Case - Aluminum is the best but really expensive a cheapo person would make a case out of wood (im sure your going to do this one).

    Next the Case Fans - yeah you can buy those fancy isolators, better yet use silicon to "glue" the fans to the outlets.

    Hard Drive - Noisy little beast you can actually have it free hanging in the pc or use zip ties to isolate it from the case. Or you can sandwich it in between two thick sheets of copper or aluminum (wouldn't use wood here) and put bolts at the corners and tighten lightly.

    CPU cooler - hmm can't use the fans from a hair drier, any other ideas?

    The Actual Fans - ball bearing last longer and are a little more expensive, better go with the sleeve bearings because they are quieter. Also if the fan gets noisy peel the off sticker (half way so you can re-stick it) on back and drop some 3n1 oil in the hole.

    Placement - get the computer off of the desktop and put it into a ventilated box. I have been thinking about building a small box with a regular household box fan on the back having a solenoid start the fan when the computer is on.

    • Re:Think Cheap (Score:3, Informative)

      by Enry ( 630 )
      Aluminum is the best but really expensive a cheapo person would make a case out of wood

      Not this again.

      Fer crying out loud. There's a number of reasons to build a case out of aluminum. The most important one is it's conductive. Any radiation coming off the motherboard/CPU/PCI cards gets blocked by the case and then goes to ground, preventing it from interfering with other devices around it. Open up any standard PC (or Apple or Sun or...) and you'll see the inside full of metal.

      If you use something th

    • Re:Think Cheap (Score:3, Informative)

      by FireFury03 ( 653718 )
      Hard Drive - Noisy little beast you can actually have it free hanging in the pc

      In my experience, hard drives don't take well to being free-hanging. One of my drives died very soon after I tried suspending it from rubber to keep the noise down and I've heard other people say that rubber mountings can impact the seek times of the drive.

  • Cool and quiet (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 30, 2004 @09:07AM (#9017606)
    1. Only use Seagate drives
    2. Only use Pabst fans (replace all of them)
    3. (optional) Thermaltake Hardcano12

    I run a rack-mount digital audio rig with 4 hard drives and 2 processors, and the loudest thing on the system is when the mirrored audio drives start crunching.

  • Noise reduction per dollar (Score:5, Interesting)

    by hankwang ( 413283 ) * on Friday April 30, 2004 @09:11AM (#9017642) Homepage
    The article shows how the noise level goes down by taking more and more measures, with the biggest noise reduction at the last step. However, this is deceptive since the noise is on a dB (i.e., logaritmic) scale. If his test computer produced 100 units of noise to start with, then the reductions were:

    73 units (low-noise case fans, 40 pounds)
    5.5 units (low-noise power supply, 90 pounds)
    9.6 units (CPU/GPU cooling, 75 pounds)
    5.2 units (acoustic materials and HD enclosure, 128 pounds)
    5.8 units (resistors on case fans, 0 pounds)
    1.3 units (remaining)

    So, by far the most bang for the bucks is in the case fans (with resistors), accounting for 79% of the noise. The worst deal is the acoustic materials and HD enclosure, which cost a whopping 128 pounds for only 5% of the total noise.

    • Re:Noise reduction per dollar (Score:5, Informative)

      by MrIrwin ( 761231 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @09:23AM (#9017731) Journal
      "However, this is deceptive since the noise is on a dB scale"

      It's not deceptive as noise is also perceived on a logarithmic scale by humans.

      • Re:Noise reduction per dollar (Score:5, Informative)

        by hankwang ( 413283 ) * on Friday April 30, 2004 @10:24AM (#9018357) Homepage
        It's not deceptive as noise is also perceived on a logarithmic scale by humans.

        Certainly the human ear works like that, but if you want to make a decision how to spend your money, it's hard to compare numbers in dB. In the original test, you might have read something like:

        case fans: 5 dB
        PSU:1 dB
        GPU/CPU: 2.5 dB
        Materials/enclosure: 2 dB
        low-voltage resistor:7.5 dB.

        This may lead you to believing that replacing the fans AND adding the resistor together will give you 12.5 dB noise reduction, while the rest gives you only 5.5 dB extra for . It is not meaningful to use dB in this situation, where you take out one noise source after the other. It would be meaningful to use dB if one were discussing an isolating enclosure for the whole computer.

    • Re:Noise reduction per dollar (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Custard ( 587661 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @09:29AM (#9017783) Homepage Journal
      73 units (low-noise case fans, 40 pounds)
      5.5 units (low-noise power supply, 90 pounds)
      9.6 units (CPU/GPU cooling, 75 pounds)
      5.2 units (acoustic materials and HD enclosure, 128 pounds)

      Were any other Americans, like myself, sitting there thinking "damn, that's one heavy computer!"

  • mini-itx (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sshtome ( 771249 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @09:14AM (#9017659)
    I didn't read the article cos it was already trodden on by the time I got there.

    but I built a fanless PC for less than $300 using a Mini-itx mother board, it's quite good.

    I installed the 17cmx17cm mainboard in the cardboard box it came in. It's small and quiet... I should've bought a quieter hard drive though.

    Useful links:
    linitx.com /linitx.org
    mini-itx.com
    via.com.tw

    I think I must've missed why this is news.

  • Pick two (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bill, Shooter of Bul ( 629286 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @09:16AM (#9017674) Journal
    out of the following:

    Cool running, Fast, Silent

  • What I use (Score:3, Informative)

    by The_Quinn ( 748261 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @09:17AM (#9017687) Homepage
    I use Thermaltake's volcano [thermaltake.com], which has this little knob that I can turn the fan up or down, depending on if the CPU temp is going up or not. Also, on my other computer, I hooked the Volcano fan up to a hardcano [thermaltake.com] hard drive case. It sits in one of your 5 1/4 bays, and via a probe, monitors your CPU temp so you can see it on the front of your PC. Plus Hardcano hooks up to Volano, providing a fan speed/volume adjustment on the face of hardcano.

  • Here's a Totally Silent PC. (Score:5, Informative)

    by gregarican ( 694358 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @09:20AM (#9017703) Homepage
    Get a VIA EPIA system (see here [viavpsd.com] for details). They have a fanless CPU and power supply. Plus the boards are small enough that you can build a PC that's the size of a Gamecube (or smaller). Their mainboards run as small as 12cm x 12 cm!

    • Re:Here's a Totally Silent PC. (Score:4, Informative)

      by deranged unix nut ( 20524 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @09:55AM (#9018040) Homepage
      I have the fanless EPIA mini-itx board, I am posting from a computer running on it in fact, and overall, it works pretty well but there are a few drawbacks:

      1) It isn't 100% silent when you add in the hard drives.
      2) If you want a fanless system, you are limiting the speed at which you can run.

      That said, I traded a dual celeron 400mhz setup for a single proc 600mhz fanless setup and I don't notice the speed difference.

      One other up-side is that I was able to mount it all in a set-top box case and it sits in my stereo cabinet right next to my audio equipment and the only noise is from the hard drives. It is so quiet that I am highly considering swapping my other 4 systems over to mini-itx fan-less boards.
  • I've built a couple audio work stations where I was stuck constructing a machine where the PC and disk were in the recording booth. Bloody propriety card/connectors would not let me move the machines out of the room.

    Anyhow.. I watercooled the disk, CPU, chipset, and power supply. No fans and the SCSI drives were enclosed well enough the 'audiophile' found the ambient noise acceptable. (I did not hear anything) Since I was not using any of the overclocking peltier kits, the coolant ran just above room temperature so I did not have any condensation issues a lot of people have. The copper tubing piped to another room where it dumped the heat. Worked great, though you did not move it around.

  • Or... (Score:3, Informative)

    by mbbac ( 568880 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @09:21AM (#9017716)
    Or you could always get an iMac [apple.com]. It has a fan that only comes on when the machine needs assistence for its chimney effect for removing heat.

  • A quiet PC for ~$200 (US) (Score:5, Informative)

    by Emor dNilapasi ( 455542 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @09:26AM (#9017757)
    1) Antec Sonata case with Antec Tru-Power 330W power supply and low-noise 92mm case fan. Essentially silent. $90 at provantage.com

    2) CoolerMaster DP5-7JD1B CPU cooler. Barely audible. $10 at directron.com

    3) Any Maxtor hard drive with an FDB (fluid dynamic bearing) motor. Essentially silent. ~$100 at your favorite cheapo online store.

    I built this with an XP2600+ CPU, and it's quieter than the fan in my TFT display (don't ask). It makes just enough noise that I can tell that it's running, and I can still hear the quiet ticking of the clock behind me.
    • I'll definitely attest to the FDB hard drives for near-silent operation. All my main drives are now FDB. Second to this, some manufacturers do make nice/quiet optical drives... I recently bought a Sony combo drive (it was just under $100 at the neighborhood store) and I have to check the drive light to make sure it's doing anything. My biggest noise source right now with three PC's all running is the cheapo power supply on one of them (which I can't change since, thanks to the cheapo case, I can't seem to e

    • Re:A quiet PC for ~$200 (US) (Score:4, Informative)

      by ilsie ( 227381 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @05:54PM (#9023231)
      1) Antec Sonata case with Antec Tru-Power 330W power supply and low-noise 92mm case fan. Essentially silent. $90 at provantage.com

      2) CoolerMaster DP5-7JD1B CPU cooler. Barely audible. $10 at directron.com

      3) Any Maxtor hard drive with an FDB (fluid dynamic bearing) motor. Essentially silent. ~$100 at your favorite cheapo online store.

      Unfortunately, Essentially silent + Barely Audible + Essentially silent = Sorta Loud. After months of messing with low speed panaflos, vibration damping mat, custom power supplies, etc. I bought a sonata with great anticipation and was dismayed when I turned it on and it was louder than my custom job. By a lot.

  • Move it further away from you .. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Jon_E ( 148226 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @09:37AM (#9017872)
    While I don't hold an advanced degree in acoustics, I've typically found that sound tends to decrease with distance (separated by walls, floors, doors, etc) - so why not simply put it in the basement and do an IC based terminal server (no fan) and a CRT display .. used effectively you could put in a grid and have enough compute power for the whole family .. hmmm

  • I was considering doing this: (Score:3, Informative)

    by xaoslaad ( 590527 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @09:45AM (#9017954)
    $145 Fanless 600 MHz motherboard and processor [mini-box.com]
    $55 12V Power converter [mini-box.com]
    $25 12V Power adapter [mini-box.com]
    Free (own one), otherwise ~$42 or ~$80 for 512MB, or $178 for 2.2GB if you really want to go nuts.
    $20 Compact Flash to IDE adapter [yahoo.com]
    $216 1GB PC2100 RAM for VIA EPIA-M [pcboost.com]
    $60 Aluminium Micro-ATX case; rip out the PSU [directron.com]
    $62 80GB Seagate Barracuda IV [compuplus.com]Optional cause if your like me you store lots of junk... (quietest 5,400/7,200 RPM disk they make), set to aggressively spin down when not accessing your p*rn, mp3, software, etc. Collection:

    Total: $583
    Completely silent PC: Priceless

    Not the fastest server on earth, but faster than my p166 POS running Linux just fine; would completely silent (no fans) or at least it is when you're not accessing your p*rn, mp3, software, etc., collection if you go with the HDD. Only pain in the *** would be using syslinux to boot... and of course I don't know about using a RAM disk to run the system, and CF might take all the writes and rerwites over lord only knows how much use... but it's the start of an idea I've been kicking around...

    Would be an interesting project though..

  • ultimate silence (Score:5, Interesting)

    by WormholeFiend ( 674934 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @09:48AM (#9017983)
    I put my pc case in another room using extension cables. Door closed. I dont hear a thing!

    • seriously, same here.

      I've been preaching the wonders of VNC and remote thin computing for a while now.

      my development box (7/24 always up) is a dual xeon in the far bedroom; and its quite noisy to be sure (raid, 2 cpus, 24pin style server power supply, etc).

      in the living room, where my 'terminal' is, and where I want quiet, I have either XP or freebsd or linux (any/all; its a tri-boot system) and all can run vnc client just fine.

      the 2 systems are connected with a single point-point gig-E cable and both s

  • You are all just unlucky I guess (Score:3, Interesting)

    by acidrain69 ( 632468 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @10:14AM (#9018227) Journal
    I grew up with a BBS in my room (high school, middle school age), I'm used to the sound of a PC in my room. I have even gotten my girlfriend used to it. I have an alpha server and I can even sleep with that thing pumping away. It has 2 massive fans on the back to cool the swap bays and 2 PSU's, plus the 2 alpha CPU fans. I almost find it soothing.

  • I like the HUSH machines (Score:3, Interesting)

    by matdavis ( 21180 ) * on Friday April 30, 2004 @10:16AM (#9018256)
    I was tired of all the noise from my machine and bought one of the HUSH ATX machines from Hush Technologies [hush-technologies.com] (from Logic Supply [logicsupply.com]) and I'm very happy with it. It's extremely quiet; the only noise I can ever hear is a very slight one from the hard drive occasionaly. No fans at all.
  • - couldn't figure out why all my silentPC sites had all gone down :D

    My idea is to have two layers of glass (or something else waterproof) with damp sand in between, possibily using water or homebrew alcohol

    ^ this liquid then evaporates

    Picture of the idea:
    pic [termisoc.org]
    Prose and links:
    txt [termisoc.org]

    More:
    directory [termisoc.org]

  • Dells (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dokebi ( 624663 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @10:20AM (#9018310)
    I've tried a lot of things and spent a lot of money to quiet my older computers. But when I bought a Dell, (Poweredge 400SC), boy, were they *quiet*! The fans are low-speed, the drives are mounted on rubber mounts, and the power supplies are quiet. All for $250 including tax and shipping. That's a complete system for a price of a barebone. Even their cheapest (2400) models are very quiet. (I've got one). So I don't notice my computers anymore, even sleeping in the same room.

    It goes to show, a little thought in case design can pay off handsomely, and without costing a lot of money.

  • My Favorite Noise Reduction Technique (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Compulawyer ( 318018 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @10:38AM (#9018511)
    I use a Macintosh G5. Except for all the fans whirring on start-up (which makes it sound like a Ferrari revving up for about 2 seconds) it is almost completely silent.

  • Slashdotted (Score:3, Funny)

    by c0d3h4x0r ( 604141 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @03:41PM (#9021874) Homepage Journal
    A Slashdotted server is always quiet :-)

  • Wow. that's a lot of money (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Quila ( 201335 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @06:53PM (#9023755)
    Almost $600 to get a single-processor PC almost down to the sound level of a dual-processor Mac. Kind of puts that "Mac is more expensive" mantra into perspective if you like your computer quiet.

  • Good suggestions.. I have a few more. (Score:3, Informative)

    by -tji ( 139690 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @07:03PM (#9023862) Journal
    I've spent a lot of time and money trying to quiet my system, so I'll toss in a few things I have learned. I liked most of his suggestions in the article. I was surprised he didn't go some different routes though. Such as:

    - CPU: Athlon 64. It has a feature they call "Cool n Quiet" where it will run at a slower clock speed when the CPU is not under heavy load. So, as you're browsing the web, typing in the word processor, playing MP3's, etc. it will run at 800MHz. When you play a game, process video, etc. It will run at full speed. This saves a lot of heat in the system, and actually lets the fan on the CPU heat sink stop much of the time.

    - Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda (Samsung, and maybe Fujitsu also make some very quiet drives.. check spec's before buying). The Seagate drives are very quiet. In most cases, if you mount it well (rubber grommets, or suspending the drive to avoid vibration transfer) it is quiet enough to not require the drive silencer thing.

    - 120mm Fans. He replaces the 80mm fans with super-quiet 80mm fans. Why not use high quality quiet 120mm fans for better airflow and lower noise?

    - Power Supply. Zalman makes great products, so I assume their PSU is very quiet (but I have not used it). I have found almost every other PSU with small fans to be the loudest component in the system. There are several manufacturers that make PSU's with 120mm fans in the base. These big fans can run slower/quieter. They also give the system a fan right next to the CPU, which helps a lot. There are also expensive PSU's that have huge heat sinks, and cun run completely fanless. I plan on trying one of these next.. But, this puts more burden on the case fans.

    Or, if you want it as quiet as possible, and cheaper.. go with lower-end components.

    - VIA C3 CPU - Plenty of power for normal business tasks, and can be run fanless if the heat sink is large.

    - Passively cooled video card - GeForce FX 5200 is not a speed demon, but it's fanless. Or, if 3D is not a concern, go for embedded video. (the 5200 will still kick up the heat inside the system.. fit the video card to your needs.)

    - 2.5" Laptop hard drives. If you don't need buttloads of storage, a 20/40/80GB 2.5" drive could help a lot. Check spec's before buying, some 2.5" drives are loud. But, they run MUCH cooler than 3.5" drives (2.5W vs 15W). They are also smller, offering better airflow, and have less vibration.

    And, lastly: S3 Sleep mode is your friend. The computer noise mostly bothers me when I'm not using it. I want to be able to hear the movie over the humm of my computer. So, use S3 sleep, with aggressive timeouts, to shut the thing down when not in use. It wakes up from this mode in a few seconds, and is completely silent while sleeping - saving noise, heat, power, and money.

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