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Hardware

How to Build a Fast Air-Cooled Quiet PC 293

Posted by Hemos from the faster-quieter-better dept.
msolnik writes "Tweak3D.net has posted an article over how to build yourself a fast box that doesn't sound like an airplane hanger. Its nice to find something like this - most articles are just about speed this article combines performance and usability. If your interested in building a fast pc that you don't have to put in " See my thoughts on this as well.
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How to Build a Fast Air-Cooled Quiet PC More

How to Build a Fast Air-Cooled Quiet PC

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  • Anyone know if thing is very loud? [thinkgeek.com]

    • Re:cappucino (Score:2, Informative)

      by pinkpineapple ( 173261 )
      This thing is awefully loud my friend.

      I've bought one, and sold it just after a couple of weeks for 2 reasons:
      - video card sucks big time (not enough memory for 1280x1024 res.)
      - Noise is barely standable.

      I suppose you could fit it in a drawer, but cables and vent would be a problem. So, I say:
      Bummer!

    • Re:cappucino (Score:2, Insightful)

      by tempmpi ( 233132 )
      Very likely not very loud, but it also is likely to be silent. If you want to pack this amount of components into a tiny case like this one you will need good cooling. Also you don't have much space for a big fan, because of that you will need a small fan that must spin very fast to move enough air around to cool the thing. My suggestion is to use a cpu that stays cool like a celeron 1200 and use a very big and temperature controlled fan in a big case.
      Or don't try to make your PC silent and simply use a KVM extender to get away from the noise. Who cares how loud your pc is if you work 20 m (60ft)and two walls away ?
    • I have two of them at work - they are great if you need to install a quick server in a cramped network closet. I am not sure how they are cooled, but they aren't loud at all, just a low hum (and hard disk noise, of course).

      Oh, and all the hardware is very well supported under Linux.

  • for the money (Score:4, Interesting)

    by NotAnotherReboot ( 262125 ) on Friday December 28, 2001 @04:29PM (#2760225)
    It seems to me like it'd be a better idea to build a system that isn't quite the highest end, and don't buy expensive overclocking equipment. Then, when it seems to be getting a little slow, buy a new processor that will likely be faster than anything you could have overclocked for the same or less money. Sure it sounds cool to say you have an ultra high clocked system, but in 6 months when there's faster non-overclocked, who's laughing?

    • Re:for the money (Score:5, Funny)

      by ArsonSmith ( 13997 ) on Friday December 28, 2001 @04:59PM (#2760355) Journal
      Depends on the productivity all that over clocked processor did for me. If I was able to run vi at 2Gigahertz while everyone else was coding at 1.5Gigahertz then I would have produced 25% more code than them. Over the course of 6 months or more that could be a lot of code.

      Its all about economics of scale and if I am going to get 25% more code write because of over clocking than I am far more profitable that the next guy period.
      • I don't know about you, but my typing speed doesn't depend upon my processor speed, particularly in an editor like vi. Perhaps you are more talking about the time taken to compile that code? In which case only a proportion of your time is spent in compiling, so your time saving would be much less than 25%.
      • Or one could overclock in order to conquer 25% more imaginary landscape. Or kill 25% more imaginary enemies. I work in pubishing. In some cases, the computer-driven speedup of workflow has actually enabled people to become less efficient. These machines don't give time for one to catch one's mistakes before passing them on. Of course, this is not the computer's fault. Sometimes slow is better, and a little time between for a massage or coffee is nice too.
        --
    • But system have been pretty damn noisy for the last couple of years - just how far back do you want to go?

      What would work better is being able to buy lower clock-speed processors using the newer (cooler-running) manufacturing processes. At the time, a Cyrix 6x86/166 need special heatsinks and whatnot. I bet you can make the same thing with only passive cooling by updating the fab processes. A K6-2/500 with no fan would be reasonably fast for an X server, and pretty quiet too. All you'd need is a decent video card from just before they all started to have fans.
  • Could have used this info months ago. Asked on several forums if there was a quiet way to keep my system cool while allowing me to run at a good enough speed to run modern games. The answer was always something along the lines of "Go with watercooling, or suffer with the noise from a delta."

    I ended up settling for a system with decent, but not cutting edge speed (1 Gig TBird when 1.2 was the standard), moderate noise levels (audible in the room, but not annoying from outside the room), and decent but warm temps (around 48 C at full load).

    RagManX
    • I would have liked to see included an example of a water cooling system or even the author's assembled system with some db emission readings. I was a bit disappointed by the last bit about removing all fans, that's about as recommended as using your laptop in the bathtub and should have been more strongly discouraged.
  • Any way to just soundproof my PC case?

    • Re:Noise Schmoize (Score:2, Insightful)

      by SID*C64 ( 444002 )
      Soundproofing would most likely involve closing up all possible places where sound (as well as air) could escape... I think you've just defeated the purpose of air cooling.
    • Worst noise I ever experienced was mini fan bearings going. I've seen somewhere a fan that actually flaps, rather than spins, wish I could remember where. Anyone seen the like?

    • Re:Noise Schmoize (Score:5, Informative)

      by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Friday December 28, 2001 @05:21PM (#2760441) Homepage
      Yes, and it's dirt cheap and easy.

      1 - build a wooden case that allows you to slide the computer into it with about 2 inches of space all around. insulate the box with sonex. or hospital bed padding (same stuff, and loads cheaper.) make the door out of plexiglass, 2 layers spaced about 1/4 inch apart and not parallel to each other (I.E. a slant on the inside pane.

      on the back you add 2 ducts, one high, and one low. duct these with dryer vent outside the room and place a blower on the out vent, a small filter on the in vent ( the in must be in the building, the out can be vented outside.)

      Voila, 100% silent PC god enought for a recording both (well that's what we use in our sound booth. the equipment registers no sound change at the microphones with the computers in the box on or off. or with the blower on or off. and a human cant tell either.)

      • plexiglass door (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Danny Rathjens ( 8471 )
        What is the reasoning behind the dual-layer-skewed plexiglass door?
        I just got a new desk which has a perfectly sized cabinet for my tower with some very noisy fans on the dual athlons.
        I planned on making vents similar to what you describe in the back but was just going to leave the wooden front door.

        • Re:plexiglass door (Score:2, Informative)

          by J4 ( 449 )
          In this application it serves no purpose unless the case is situated at a height where microphones might be. If it were a studio window, the angle would break up sound reflections and minimize standing waves in the room. In "proper" studio design, parallel surfaces
          are a no no.

        • Re:plexiglass door (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Lumpy ( 12016 )
          it eliminates resonation from the front window and adds an airspace to increase the sound deadining abilities. I suggested no having a plexi front door and use a nice plywood with sonex on it but management figures that the employees would get confused and start crying on the floor when they cant see the blinkey lights. (Yes people are that wierd, espically voice over talent.)

      • Re:Noise Schmoize (Score:2, Informative)

        by xtp ( 248706 )
        Adding stiffening material of one kind or another
        to the case components which can act as acoustic
        membranes (i.e. loudspeakers) can reduce or kill
        a good portion of high-frequency vibration noise.
        That's the most irritating noise for most folks.

        I have more rotating disk spindles than box fans
        or cpu coolers. The disks contribute hugely
        to the background buzz. Mounting the disks
        on rubber grommets and vibration-damping the
        supporting structure does help. Now that we're
        slowly converting to disk trays (each with a fan),
        it seems easier to apply damping to the disks
        as part of the tray assembly via foam/rubber
        standoffs.

        A technically better cooling solution that's less of a
        challenge than water cooling involves pumping
        cold air through the box. The cool air source and air pump are in a noisy equipment
        room or outside the building. The pressurized
        air is pushed into the computer box and pulled
        out. Using cold air means less air total flow is
        needed.

        I saw this technique implemented years ago
        - it was astonishingly effective: you couldn't
        tell the equipment was powered up.
    • Go grab some DynaMat [dynamat.com]. Check out their site, I was surprised to see they actually have a "computers" section.

    • Re:Noise Schmoize (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Barbarian ( 9467 ) on Friday December 28, 2001 @06:46PM (#2760734)
      Yes, you just need to add noise-dampening panels to the sides of the case.

      A lot of the noise you hear when the case is closed is the case resonating at the 1/2, 1 and 2 * wavelengths of the sound coming off of the cooling equipment (the fans tend to put off white noise of many wavelengths).

      You just gotta make sure you aren't obstructing the airflow. I'm going to do this myself, and on my case, you can put panels on the left and right, top and bottom without obstructing airflow. Front and back have to remain unblocked, although the front is possible to do too if room is left where the built-in vent areas are. Worse designed cases may make this impossible.

      The stuff I'm going to use goes for about $4 per square foot, and is about 1/4 inch thick.

      If you can't get this type of noise-reducing panel from your local computer retailer, go to a hardware store and get drop ceiling tile, as thin as possible (preferably 1/4 inch if they make it), cut it to size, and glue it into your panels.

  • Too late (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Jucius Maximus ( 229128 )
    Why are they doing this article a few days AFTER Christmas when everyone already has their new uber-ninja machines? It's too late to build a nice quiet one!

  • again? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Sebastopol ( 189276 ) on Friday December 28, 2001 @04:34PM (#2760249) Homepage
    What a terrible article. With the exception of the power supply, there is absolutely nothing new! There are three really good articles on this in /. already. And he doesn't even mention the 5-1/4" sleeves for HDDs! Why is this article even posted?!

    Other articles on /.:

    Shhh! Constructing A Truly Quiet Gaming PC by Hemos with 397 comments on Wednesday October 31, @08:30AM

    Building the Quiet PC by CmdrTaco with 171 comments on Sunday July 01, @02:08PM

    Building Quieter Computers by Hemos with 398 comments on Monday June 04, @06:51AM
    • The only problem that I have with the hard disc sleeves is that I can only find ones rated for ATA 5400 RPM drives :( My 7200 RPM SCSI drive is not that noisy and it blows away the low performance value drives... Granted that 7200 RPM and 10K RPM drives do generate a lot of heat, but just buy a big case and mount them away from the other components and it will be just fine. Most desktop machines only need one hard disc anyway.
    • The quiet PC articles been done many times, but none of them seem to really do the trick. Good air cooling is always going to be a little noisy. Even with watercooling you need fans to cool the radiator.
    • You need to read between the lines.

      What Hemos & Taco are really saying is that they did not get a quiet computer for Christmas, again.

      ./ fans, you missed your chance!
  • Try using Dynamic Dynamat [www.dynamat.com]. The company says it can cut the noise by 9dB.
    • I tried this in one of my machines, as well as the car audio application it is intended for. Not only does it STINK (I mean *really* bad), it doesn't do much to reduce noise. The reason it works in cars and not in computers is that it reduces noise caused by vibrations, which in some cars can be quite loud. Vibrations aren't typically the problem in computers, usually it's fan noise caused by air on the rapidly-spinning blades.
    • A better choice is this:
      Noise Killer [noisekiller.com]

      They list several products but the only one you are likely to get in small quantities is the brush on variety. It's a bit more time consuming to apply this stuff but it's far more effective.
    • It doesn't cut by 9dB, but it does help quite a bit. The key is to stick it on areas subject to vibration. I have the large side panels on the case damped, the hard drive cages, the power supply brackets, the fan brackets, etc. Anything that vibrates.

      An article online had suggested using a blower fan on the case, which I also followed up with. Works great. I have 3 machines kitted with the Dayton 2C647 AC blowers and standard bathroom fan speed controls. The three machines are quieter in total than one used to be.

      The info on the blowers is at Overclockers Forum [overclockers.ws]. You can also search for info on the "Hoot Chute".

  • wasnt the G4 cube super quiet, and wasnt the iMac also super quiet, these both have no fan, but this might be because they use PPC which have a lower heat output than pentium? isnt it sad that i know all this
    • I've got an iMac (500Mhz) and I'm generally happy with it. I would also like to build my own PC, I've had both PC's and Mac's in the past. But one thing that's been holding me off is that issue of noise. I like my little apartment and I like it quiet. I live in an apartment which has (apparently) absolutely sound proof walls and windows (downtown Honolulu apartments are built like this typically) and I love it. I REFUSE to put something that sounds like a vacuum cleaner in my living space. On most days I can just open all my windows and listen to birds, I'm far enough up where even cars and bus noises are fairly minimal.

      My current machine makes no noise except for the harddrive, which shuts off after 5 minutes of non-use. I bought 1GB of memory (maxxed out my iMac) when prices were low enough so that it would rely more heavily on cache, and I pre-launch all my favorite applications to keep it from hitting the harddrive after boot up too often. All I really want now is a solid state mass storage device, like perhaps a flash harddrive so that I can get rid of the noise that's left.

      Of course, the attitude towards noise is different in the PC world. Generally, people seem to care a lot more about Mhz than noise, looks, elegance, getting things done, or even the actual performance of the machine. This has created dual purpose machines that could be used for computation, or for heating a small house in southern Argentina. And enough noise to WAKE THE GODDAMN DEAD to keep it cool!

      On the other hand I can't get my iMac to run QNX, so some kind of sacrifice must be made. What's holding me back now is the lack of a full and deep understanding on how to build the PC I want. Rule one, no noise.

      Erik
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Other way to cool your CPU (Score:3, Funny)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 ) on Friday December 28, 2001 @04:36PM (#2760257) Homepage Journal
    Though I've seen this on Slashdot before, I think this is still one of the neatest ways [asciimation.co.nz] to cool beer and maybe adapt to your overclocked CPU.
  • This is a very bland and non-revolutionary article. I was expecting something new and exciting, but it was not delivered.

    The whole area of cooling for home PC's is very lacking in innovation. Most of the heatsinks are horribly flawed in the way in which they function. Very disappointing overall. There are plenty of changes I'd like to see made. I'll have to call up some heatsink companies and get them to give me some money for my ideas.

  • Quiet PC (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Y B MCSE ( 469234 )

    I am torn as to wether or not to put stock in this. Every page lists the parts to buy then offers links to buy them. It looks a little slanted on the choices there. Additionally, I would think that tweakniks (or speedfreeaks, whatever you call them) would not put so much FLASH on their page. My poor Windows box (I am at work) kept wanting to get this flash 5.0, I convinced it that we could live without.

    Other than the last complaint this seems a very noteworthy resource at least and I thank you for pointing it out.

    Cheers

  • Awww... (Score:4, Funny)

    by alfredw ( 318652 ) <alf@fr e e a l f . c om> on Friday December 28, 2001 @04:39PM (#2760274) Homepage
    But I LIKE my jet engine [freealf.com] start-up...

    I even give it a countdown as I power up...

    "All systems, report status. Cooling 1"
    "Go!"
    "Ventral Fan"
    "Go!"
    "Fluid Pumps"
    "Go!"
    .
    .
    .

  • Beware of bad advice! (Score:4, Informative)

    by uncle isaac ( 542895 ) on Friday December 28, 2001 @04:41PM (#2760279)
    Thermal compound is optional and isn?t required. If you?re going to use thermal compound, I suggest you scrape off the thermal pad on the bottom of the Volcano 7. We suggest the use of Artic Silver II which is one of the best thermal compound solutions available. This can be found for $8.50 from our friends at Heatsink Factory as well.

    A few weeks ago, I finished putting together a shiny new Athlon XP 1900+ for my son, and was very disappointed to see that heatsink grease is indeed necessary on the newer processors. The CPU and power supply fan worked just fine, the heatsink was in very close contact with the CPU, but there was no grease. What happened when I turned it on nearly made me cry: the CPU overheated within minutes of seeing the KDE desktop on this new system, and I was out $200 for a new CPU.

    I learned my lesson the hard way: don't try to skimp on thermal grease, especially on the new Athlons. They run hotter than ever now and you're risking your system's life if you don't take the proper precautions.

    -Isaac

    • Re:Beware of bad advice! (Score:5, Informative)

      by CtrlPhreak ( 226872 ) on Friday December 28, 2001 @04:56PM (#2760341) Homepage
      What is meant by this is that replacing the thermal pad with thermal compund is optional. You definatly need a thermal conductor between the heatsink and the proc. That's just common sense.
      • What is meant by this is that replacing the thermal pad with thermal compund is optional. That must be what he meant, but it isn't what Tuan said. That's just common sense. It's common sense if you're an experienced technician. Kids and software geeks wouldn't necessarily know it. And that article really wasn't aimed at people that would know things like why you need a thermal compound or pad -- just give me a parts list on one page, rather than forcing me to fetch many pages from a very slow server just so Tuan could chatter on and on, and put in pictures of everything including the freakin power supply!

        By the way, properly applied paste is better than a pad -- but it takes some rather messy work, so if a pad is available and good enough...
    • You are basically saying that the thermal threshold went undetected by the cpu and the chip fried instead of the system trapping to the shutdown code. Wow! Was it running Linux or Winblows?
      • It was Linux (KDE), but this is probably hardware, not OS related. AFAIK, shutdowns due to thermal thresholds being exceeded are done by the hardware alone, with no input to the OS. (This does give you a shutdown without proper preparation by the OS, requiring a file system check when started up again, but if your box waited for Windoze shutdown the CPU would fry for sure...) Or does anyone know different?

        The newest Intel CPU's will detect overheating and either shut themselves down (P3) or throttle back the clock rate (P4); it's not an OS function. Athlons have a built-in temperature sensor, but depend on motherboard circuitry to act when the temperature rises. And until quite recently (when a hobbyist magazine demonstrated Athlons melting down when the heatsink fell off), the circuitry recommended by AMD didn't react quickly enough to save a chip that wasn't thermally connected to a heatsink. (At least not where 800MHz+ systems are concerned; older, slower CPU's just didn't heat up that fast.)
    • if you use too much heat sink grease you are causing more harm than good. you need a thin layer and that is it. it is to fill in the voids from processor and heatsink imperfections and that is it. otherwise in large quantities it has horrible thermal characteristics.

      DONT PUT ALOT ON. just coat the top completely in one thin coating.
  • What if your using this technology in other applications? For instance building information centers to sit in rest areas along the highway? I've got a project somewhat like this, but, alot of the things I'm trying to work out no one discusses. For instance, Monitors give off ALOT of heat, try putting that in a sealed enclosure! =P Anyways, I think all this over-clocking, water cooled, 15 fans and a monkey blowing in the case is cool and what not, but why don't we see very many hardware hackers out there playing with more than just CPU speed? Either way, I'd like to see people hacking monitors into cooler cases, or building star trek like keyboards. Then I'd be impressed.

  • WTF ... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by TheViffer ( 128272 ) on Friday December 28, 2001 @04:46PM (#2760304)
    After reading the article this is what I got out of it ..

    Here is what I want ..
    Here is the system I spoolley all over for ..
    iMa leet kewl doOd ..
    Daddy is going to buy this for me ...
    Film at 11

    I mean the the article was written without testing ... like this ...

    The heatsink fan on the northbridge of the KR7A-RAID isn?t that loud, but it causes vibration which produces noise. For that, you could just take off the fan. The KT266A should run fine using a passive heatsink,

    Should? Should? Gawd ...

    Has this system even been built? All I see are pictures found on the products web pages.

    Where is completed project?

    Where is test of the decibals of it?

    • Re:WTF ... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Brento ( 26177 ) <brento&brentozar,com> on Friday December 28, 2001 @05:10PM (#2760400) Homepage
      Has this system even been built? All I see are pictures found on the products web pages. Where is completed project? Where is test of the decibals of it?

      Read the last sentence of the article. It's very clear that they didn't build it - rather, they just culled through product listings of items that had decibel quotes. When a "review" tells me that the finished product "should" produce less than 30 decibels, they've completely wasted my time. This was nothing more than the journalistic equivalent of a high school book report.
    • I know this wasn't the topic of the post, but in case anyone's curious..

      A KT266A does not need a cooling fan.. I've got a Gigabyte GA7VTHX [giga-byte.com] + XP 1600+ (1.4ghz), overclocked to 138 bus speed (1.45ghz). Everything still runs great, and fast as hell.

      And, of course, there is no fan on the chipset.
  • I just recently ordered parts for a AthlonXP 1900+ running @ 1.6ghz. (yep, its fast). And I ordered some really nice cooling on it. The heatsink is much larger than I thought, and the fan is enormous. Talk about noise... The brand name is 'Volcano', attached to the top of the Heatsink of the Athlon.. And it makes a sound like a jet taking off the runway. It runs at 7031rpm according to the sensors built into the Epox motherboard. I actually like the sound of the hum. I have 3 machines in my room alone, several others throughout the house. But the 2 workstations, and the house server in my room generate a loud noise that puts me to sleep at night. The 2nd workstation has only one fan, and sounds like a small commercial plane. The server has 2 large, and one for the PII processor, and it sounds like an air conditioner when I shut down the Athlon.

    The hard drivers generate very little noise, if none at all.

  • AGAIN?!? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by pinkpineapple ( 173261 )
    One more article about this subject and I fall asleep. BORING!

    On the good side, it matches what I just did yesterday: I ordered parts from QuietPC.com to replace power supply and fan in my Sun Blade 100.
    What I found sucks is the shipping from UK to the US that cost about $30 or 25%. No warehouse over here makes these things more expensive than they should be. Hope they realize that the biggest market for computer stuff is in the US not in the UK.

    Second thing I did was to order a Seagate 80GB ultra quiet drive. These drives rock. A friend of mine got one to replace the HD in his Apple G4 Cube. Absolutely quiet!

    Now I need to a neighborhood where they ban leafblowers and I will be able to concentrate on my screen.
    • So what is the seagate part number, so we can all enjoy it? (seriously, drive manufacturers tend to make several drives of the same capacity at any given time)

      Also, I like the fact that I can order from quietpc.com without having to pay through the nose like I do from US companies (assuming they are even broadminded enough to believe the rest of the world exists). The grass is always greener...

      [the silentdrive is US-made, and has been reviewed on /. before, and most of their other parts are actually resold, not made by them - you probably can source them locallly]
      • Sorry, I didn't forget about the drive ref. but being at work, it was a little bit hard to find it again. I was talking about the Seagate Barracuda ATA IV, ST380021A. I've bought two since it came out. I can't tell when they seek during defragmentation!!!

        Here is a link to the review on TH's Web site:
        http://www6.tomshardware.com/storage/01q3/010905 /p erformance-01.html

        Enjoy!

        PPA -- the girl next door
    • Next time you could check out Quiet PC Canada [quietpc.ca] instead of the buying from the UK website [quietpc.com]? That might save you a bit on the shipping...

      Their order page says that they gladly process US orders by telephone even though the online ordering system is not set up for US customers.

      I don't know if it would actually be cheaper in the end, but it's probably worth checking out.

      Christopher
  • If your like me you dont care how loud your system is, as long as you have ample speakers to drown out the noise.

  • What a crappy article (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The "timeline of heat" jumps right from early Pentium to Thunderbird with no mention of the K5, K6, Cyrix, IDT, etc. Reading the article, one would think that waste heat has been constantly increasing unchecked. In reality, AMD made serious efforts to reduce waste heat after the K6/233. IDT came out with their WinChip line which runs very cool. So cool that it can stay in-spec with a big heatsink and no fan. It may not be a good foundation for a bleeding-edge game box but it'll run office apps just fine. Intel's mobile CPUs go to great lengths to both reduce heat and extend runtime by using less power.

    And what about PPC chips? G3? G4? Heck, Apple's got their cubes and imacs running fanless. That "article" is just a big old ad for cooling systems. :P

  • I like the noise. (Score:4, Funny)

    by dbCooper0 ( 398528 ) <dbc.triton@net> on Friday December 28, 2001 @05:01PM (#2760366) Journal
    That way - I can tell when a fan is failing well before the situation is critical - there's nothing like the noise from 3 or four boxen in close proximity, and to hear the HDs (two to four per box) as they recalibrate, seemingly from old age. Surround-Sound in a natural occurrence...

    And the fans - (one to two per processor) complement this ambience with a critical indicator to health - ie: they usually start making a hell of a racket when starting to fail - along with the power supplies' fans. Time to start checking things out before your sense of smell takes over!

    Of course, your mileage may vary.

  • lousy article (Score:2, Insightful)

    by malus ( 6786 )
    what a lousy article. they manage to get an average 2 paragraphs in before I have to click onto another page. have to get that advertising dollar, don't you? I quit at page three.

  • This page on QuietComputers [lunkwill.org] describes a cheap way to reduce noise by slowing down PS/CPU/case fans using resistors. Works nice in addition to other sorts of quieting solutions, although I've found it sufficient by itself. It works well enough for me that my roommate came in after a power outage and cycled the power 3 times before realizing that the machine was on the whole time...
  • I am going to replace an aged Pentium 200 MMX Linux box with a much faster Linux box in the next few months. Via's C3, running at 933 MHz, doesn't even require a fan; heatsink alone is sufficient.

    I have a silent drive sleeve for my 20 GB 5400 RPM drive, and with a fanless power supply (see the links from http://home.swipnet.se/tr/silence.html [swipnet.se]), this thing will only have moving parts in the drive and should register less noise than my breathing.

    Surprisingly, it will also perform fairly well--those C3 processors are not dogs, as you can see from the reviews linked to on Via's page (cached at http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:PMSJrxoMUV4:w ww.via.com.tw/jsp/en/products/C3/c3reviews.jsp+c3+ reviews+and+awards&hl=en [google.com]).

    For Quake 3, Wolfenstein, and others, I have a GeForce3 card and an Athlon 1600+ (which also runs fairly quietly, with a Silencer fan replacing the original noisy one on my Volcano cooler), but for thoughtful tasks you can't get better than blissful silence.
    • But where can you buy a C3 933Mhz chip?

      I found tigerdirect [tigerdirect.com] has the 800Mhz chip, but nothing faster. These are from the previous version of the C3 that run at 1.6V and don't support SSE. The newest C3, called Ezra, runs at something like 1.2V and uses less power. I think they also have SSE support but I'm not sure about that. I can't find anyone selling these chips. Pricewatch doesn't list newer via chips, google searches just turn up reviews, etc.

  • A better choice for a heatsink would be the Alpha 8045:

    Here [micforg.co.jp]

    These mount VERY securely using the 4 holes that surround the cpu socket on socket A motherboards and you can pick whatever 80mm fan you think is best for your situation.
  • This is a little of topic, but bear with me...

    I had to put a sofa in front of my electric heater, and now my electric bills have skyrocketed. I'd love to have a quiet fan back there that starts when the heater gets hot and blows the trapped heat heat out.

    A CPU cooler fan already has the heat triggered activation, it's small enough, and according to the article, at least this Thermaltake Volcano 7 model is designed to be quiet. But how hard is it to take a component designed to be inside a PC and plug it into a regular out let?
  • I can't speak for the KT266 chips, but the KT133A "can" run with just a heat sink on the Abit KT133A board. My chipset fan was squealing, and I ran a few weeks without while waiting for a replacement. I'm all SCSI and not overclocked on that box, however, so your mileage may vary. The chipset got hot to the touch using only a passive heat sink - probably a stability thing.

    I added a 1.4 gHz AMD CPU and had to get a better heatsink / fan combo than the chrome orb I had used on the previous duron processor. I bought a copper heatsink kit that cooled well and fit my budget. What I did not know is how load the 47dB Ytech fan really is in practice. ARGH! I started shopping for a new fan based on amps, airflow, noise, and air pressure.

    There are some good fans out there that fit the normal 60mm CPU mounts, but I'm also seeing some 60-80mm adapters used to match a larger, lower RPM fan to a cpu. Mind you, air pressure makes a difference. I'm building my own adapter now since I have a couple nice quiet 92mm fans that push/pull enough air (with ducting) to keep my CPU around 40c under load. Still tweaking the heat resistant foam ducting before I put on a coat of fiberglass. And to think we would never use our fluid mechanics outside the classroom!

    As for the thermal paste... you don't need any if you use the thermal pad they leave on the CPU. You are a dead man if you take off (or re-use) the thermal pad and run the CPU bare back. Artic Silver is nice stuff, not only because of heat transfer, but it is non-conductive. Some do conduct electricity, which is generally a bad thing if it drips or leaks.
  • Ah, you kids and your 'quiet' PCs. Here's a picture of my 'box', currently running at 25GHz:

    http://crazy.codetroop.com/randimg/?overclock.jpg [codetroop.com]

    I get an average framerate of a couple of thousand running Quake III.

  • Outdated Idea. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by spack ( 43763 )
    Better yet, go with the case sold from Koolance.com [koolance.com] It's a liquid cooled setup. This will be my next case/cooling solution. My friend got one a couple months back. I couldn't believe how quiet it was. And for about $200, this is a nice setup. He raves about the low (and stable) temperatures in his system. He also moves his system around a lot, so it's a pretty sturdy setup.
    • Is it quiet compared to normal jet-engined overclock systems, or compared to a room with no PC in it? I see what seems to be a bank of 6 fans on the top of that thing...

      I'm looking for silent or near to it.
  • Following those steps, you should end up with a PC that will give you high fps

    Hot damn! Imma gonna build me the first ever first post machine! Lookout cyborg_monkey, make way for sdem!

  • I'm planning to build up a dual CPU system and would like some idea on best cooling method for 2 Athlon MP CPUs. What's worked, what hasn't, motherboard or cabinet problems to watch out for.

    Thanks in advance.

  • Twinhead [twinhead.com] makes laptops that normally run without a fan. Their computers use a proprietary heat pipe for cooling. (There is a fan, but it only goes on under extreme circumstances.) Why go to the trouble of building one?

    I got a Twinhead for that reason, and have been glad that I did.


    Buy Windows XP: give Bill Gates even more of your money.

  • Wouldn't large diameter fans be able to run at lower speeds? The chassis fans in my computer don't even use half the depth... if they were 150mm across, presumably they would shift a lot more air and could run at a fraction of the speed.

    Does anybody know of cases and PSUs that take really big fans?

  • Quiet CPUs (Score:4, Interesting)

    by kcbrown ( 7426 ) <slashdot@sysexperts.com> on Friday December 28, 2001 @06:55PM (#2760776)
    While the Athlon is far and away a better deal than the P4, there's one thing the P4 has in spades over the Athlon: it does exactly the right thing when it overheats -- it steps down its speed.

    Now, most people aren't going to care about this but those who are trying to build a quiet PC are -- if you put a P4 in your system you could conceivably cool it passively and take the performance hit. I don't know how much of a performance hit you'd get by cooling passively versus actively but the video on Tom's Hardware about what happens when you remove the heatsink from various processors shows the framerate of Quake III returning to something close to the original just by reattaching the heatsink to the P4...and the fan isn't running on it at the time. Of course, that's probably because the heatsink itself is cool and will warm up significantly after being attached to the CPU for a while.

    My question is this: what heatsinks exist out there that are designed for passive cooling purposes? I'm sure the design of such heatsinks differs significantly from those designed to accomodate a fan.

    • there's one thing the P4 has in spades over the Athlon: it does exactly the right thing when it overheats -- it steps down its speed.

      Its a matter of opinion. If you are properly configuring your cooling hardware, you do not need an auto shutdown/slowdown CPU. Also, AMD has a thermistor in its CPU. It beleives that stepdown/halts should be executed by the motherboard manufacturer. If you think CPU heat cutoff is an important feature, spend the extra money for a MB that supports it.

      The drawback of the P4 thermal management? It never tells you when its stepping down the CPU. Congratulations. Not just are you paying hundreds more dollars for a less efficient CPU, but now you're paying a 2Ghz P4 price for a 500Mhz P3 (which is what its equivalent processing power may be when its starts doing CPU stepdowns). I think AMD's philosophy is the correct one.

  • cheap pc's?

    Let's say you want a cheap, SMALL, silent pc. No need for an athlon.

    Any web articles on that?
  • I just finished building a quiet machine. I definitely recommend Directron [directron.com] as a nice place to buy all of the parts needed to build a machine that won't sound like a 747.

    Some parts that went into my machine:

    1. Seagate Barracuda IV hard drive. Noise level below what people can hear. 20, 40, 60, 80 GB models available.
    2. Fong Kai FK-603 case. Includes duct to help hot CPU air out the rear case fan. This case got a nice review from Ars Technica. Good quality, good looking case.
    3. Antec Jet-cool CPU cooler. Good cooling capability but still low noise.
    4. Enermax power supply. Extremely low noise, with one intake and one exhaust fan to help remove CPU heat, and available in any power level you could want.

  • First - I think that was a lousy article :(
    The more fans there are, the more noise are you going to get - they could have choosen the MSI board which doesn't have any fan and they could have choosen a different video card that doesn't require a fan either, but they didn't.

    My current system is an old celeron 300@450 (yes I'm overclocking currently, but it runs without problems) which I intend to upgrade to an Athlon XP soon.

    My current case (which I'll be keeping, but upgrading with new and better noise dampening material - more about that later) is this one:
    http://www.noisecontrol.de/info/big/inf.htm
    (in German)

    If you look at the "innen_vorne.jpg" picture, you can see it has 2 "air holes" (what do you call them? - English isn't my primary language) on the back, besides the one for the PSU.
    I'm thinking about putting a 80mm Papst fan (I'll use a similar one for the Alpha PAL 8045, those fans are *really* low noise) at the lowest hole, to suck air into the case. Together with that I'll add a "NoiseControl Magic WhisperBox" to the back of my case:
    http://asp.webconsult.dk/vareinfo.asp?VareID=112
    (in Danish)

    Bigger pictures can be found in this (also in Danish, but the illustrations should mostly be pretty easy to understand) pdf manual:
    http://asp.webconsult.dk/Box-Manual.pdf

    That box should eliminate the noise (which is currently not much) from the fans on the back, which is also why I would rather not put a fan on the front of the case.

    AFAIK, the best heatsink right now, is the Alpha PAL 8045, which I mentioned earlier too.

    As said earlier, I'll upgrade my case with some new noise dampening material - you can read a bit about it here:
    http://www.chillblast.co.uk/
    (look under "Accessories/Magic Fleece noise killer")

    The last thing I should mention is that the harddisk is usually also an noise issue which is why I use a "NoiseControl Hard Drive cage" - it effectively removes vibrations. I have also tried the Silentdrive , but in my experience, it doesn't make the harddisk become les noisy and since it encloses the harddrive completely, it's not good for high performance harddisks (they are simply getting to hot).

    Actually, the only thing I can practically hear from my current box, is the harddisk (an older IBM Deskstar, 7200RPM). That will be changed with a new Seagate Barracuda IV, which should be much more quiet.

    The main issue I have here is how little cooling is enough to cool an Athlon XP.

    Another issue is the video card - that is actually a big problem, but I think I'll buy a Gainward Geforce3 Ti200 card which should be able to run only with passive cooling (if you buy a good heatsink). It should have pretty good 2D image quality also.

  • Strangely people talk about passive cooling in tower cases. Passive cooling would work much much better in a desktop chassis than in a tower. Reason being you could take a nice sized heat sink and stick it on your processor with plenty of headroom over it. With enough intake slits near the processor convetion would work pretty well for the most part. Heat sinks are perpendicular to the plane of the processor but making the plane of the processor perpendicular to the direction air is going to naturally flow ends up fucking up your cooling. More than a dozen models of Macs were designed this way and coupled with the fact the 603 disappated about 5 watts at the most made for a pretty quiet design overall, my PowerBook uses the same concept but instead of a heat sink it conducts heat into my lap. If you took a decent desktop chassis with a Tualatin P3, Celeron, or Via C3 you could probably get away with entirely passive cooling on the processor itself. As for the other noisy parts thats somebody else's problem.
  • I've got an Athlon Classic [slot-a] 750 MHZ cpu.

    I simply bought a triple fan that hooks nicely on the CPU. No heatsink, no grease.

    Sometimes the case does get hot. But the simplest solution in my mind was to put my air purifier fan behind my case.

    Now when I put my hand on the floppy drive I don't feel the warm air. Basically it's a small fan with a filter on the bottom. Now it doesn't have the filter and blows air right onto the power supply and the back of the case.

    This is a homebuilt PC so you know not everything fits the way it should. I've got extra holes on the back of the case which could be used for extra serial ports or the like. I kinda' opened them and now the air flows right in.

    The important note is that I've got the front 'case fan' blowing air OUT of the case. This way none of the hot air is built up into the case with no place to go.

    Try my idea and blow some smoke into the air stream. With my current setup you can see some of the smoke coming out of the front of the case.
    • a) Hot air rises ... venting should be at the top (front or back)
      b) Power supplies create heat -- they should vent, not be intakes.
      c) Air flow, aside from the above, is just air flow -- get lots of it.
  • If the air temperature is 40 celcius then you need as much airflow as you can get (I have the box open and a 40 cm pedestal fan pointing at the drives) I have to put up with the noise. An air conditioner would drop the overall air temperature, remove the need for a couple of case fans and move a lot of the noise outside.

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