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Hardware

No Noise PC Reviewed 214

Posted by CowboyNeal from the silent-running dept.
Arne Anka writes "How about a no noise PC? Well, Hush has recently launched its ATX range, which takes a full ATX motherboard, decent speed processors and graphics card, but sticks to the main concept of producing no noise PCs. The chassis is made from solid aluminum heatsinks and the whole system is fitted with heatpipes. Have a look at TrustedReviews for the first online review of the Hush ATX."
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No Noise PC Reviewed More

No Noise PC Reviewed

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  • Super secret to noiseless computers (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 14, 2004 @11:05AM (#9967456)
    Turn any regular computer into a noiseless one by turning it off.

  • Nah... (Score:5, Funny)

    by cs02rm0 ( 654673 ) on Saturday August 14, 2004 @11:06AM (#9967461)
    ...I prefer a system that runs with enough heat and fans that I don't have to pay heating as well as the electric for my computer.

    • Excellent advance (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Simonetta ( 207550 ) on Saturday August 14, 2004 @11:29AM (#9967628)
      This is an excellent advance in the use of PCs as appliances.
      Compare a PC to a TV. To use the TV, you just turn your eyes towards the screen and click the remote. Within a few seconds, it's on and you're lulled into its endless mediocre entertainment and corporate propaganda dimension.
      PCs with internet access are much more interesting. But you have to be at your PC desk, assuming a posture of office environment productivity. Then turn on the PC and wait, and wait, for the 'boot' process. Yes, twenty, thirty seconds go by, you're still waiting. Screen after screen of garbage text goes by. It's like bringing the Defence Department on-line. Compare the PC to a Commodore 64 (an 8-bit first-generation home-computer from the mid-1980s). With that machine, you flipped the on/off switch, and the computer was on within seconds, ready to do a rather limited number of things, but with no waiting. (You did wait to load files from the floppy drive - about 3 minutes to load 25K bytes).

      So after minutes, your PC is finally UP! and ready to go. Click on the telephone access, wait another minute or so before the internet connection is 'established'. Wait...and...wait.
      Oh yes, you can buy 24 telephone internet connection service, but it is very expensive. Especially compared to a television as an entertainment medium.

      Still waiting? System crashed and needed 're-booting' yet? Is there one little weird-ass little program that has tripled your power-on boot time for no good reason and you can't figure out what program it is?

      Are your ears hurting yet from all the white noise from all the powerful machinery creating the 'new information age' next to the desk?

      Anyway, the whole point is that PCs have a long way to go from this 'Data Control, IBM, Science Is Mankind's Brother' 1960's mainframe mentality before they can be as advanced as a television set or a clock radio as a home appliance/entertainment device.

      But making them quiet is a big and welcome step in that direction. A single step in a thousand mile journey.

      Now how about starting to work on an OFF switch? You know, push the button and the machine goes off? Now? Within one second? Goes from using amps of power to microamps? Is it really that hard to do, guys? You'all put a man on the moon.. how about an instant OFF switch on the PC?

      • Why not just use suspend mode? Most PCs have it. The ram is powered and refreshed, but the rest of the system is more or less turned off (except for stuff like the keyboard which is often kept running so you can wake the system up that way, and the NIC for wake-on-lan.) I think this is a reasonable way to split the difference between always-on and turning the system off at night.

        IBM MRAM may come along someday and make it possible for the memory to store information without the power being turned on, wh

      • What is this 'boot' process of which you speak? When I wish to use my computer I 'wake' it. Takes about 3 seconds, and I'm in. Even when I have to use Windows, I simply 'restore' it. Takes about 5 seconds. And this on a 6-yr-old laptop. I'd imagine that newer machines are even faster.
        Oh, now I get it. Re-'booting' is what I sometimes have to do when I do a 'Software Update...'. Even then, that only takes about 30 seconds. ;-)

        (tig)
      • Erm... the solution, DON'T TURN IT OFF.

        It's really sad that a C64 reading a floppy is okay, and booting a modern computer (roughly 20 seconds on mine) isn't.

        I know you were supposed to be humorous, but this is a valid issue. I've noticed that my old computers are untolerably(sp) slow, even though at the time I though they were speedy little buggers. This is very depression, what is waiting a FULL minute for a boot, who cares... It's a minute, I should be capable of waiting that long. I'm sure when the

      • "PCs with internet access are much more interesting. But you have to be at your PC desk, assuming a posture of office environment productivity. Then turn on the PC and wait, and wait, for the 'boot' process. Yes, twenty, thirty seconds go by, you're still waiting."

        I'm reading this slouched on the floor, back against the couch, on a whisper-quiet laptop the I rarely shutdown - I put it into sleep mode and it comes to life faster than the TV. When the rain stops I'll be on the patio knocking out some work

      • No, you just put your Mac to sleep and it's back up and ready in 1-2 seconds when needed.
      • Now how about starting to work on an OFF switch? You know, push the button and the machine goes off? Now? Within one second? Goes from using amps of power to microamps?

        I recently discovered this feature in VMWare called "Suspend". It's amazing. I can suspend a VM, then shut down the computer.

        I can oopy this VM to another computer, and then restore the suspended session. The VM comes back up, restored at the exact processor/memory state it was suspended in!

        So, I ask... why can't this be done in hardware?

  • Isn't it cheaper... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Three Headed Man ( 765841 ) <dieter_chen.yahoo@com> on Saturday August 14, 2004 @11:09AM (#9967477)
    to build your own PC and put it inside of a sound insulating box that you made? My computer is very fast, and I refuse to trade performance for an expensive way to try and get it quieter. The other solution is to shut off the computer at night. Really. The LED's and whir of the harddrive annoy me at night.
    • Would it kill you to turn it off? You'd be helping to Save the Planet, too.
    • ...so you would choose to convert a huge desktop case to something that is even bigger? Of course it is cheaper, but then why be a cheap bastard if you'd only end up with something that looks ghetto?

      The noise isn't about being able to sleep. It is about being able to use the computer while using it.

      Frankly, a well designed desktop case with simple silencing mods should do the trick, should one chose the self-assemble route. My Compaq workstation has four well-built 9.2cm fans and with accoustic treatme

  • Here's a silent pc made for gaming. (Score:5, Informative)

    by wpmegee ( 325603 ) <wpmegee@@@yahoo...com> on Saturday August 14, 2004 @11:09AM (#9967480)
    Voodoo PC [voodoopc.com] makes a high-performance gaming rig that's totally fanless, uses giant heat pipes integrated into the case for cooling. It's called the Rage F50 [voodoopc.com].

    Apparently it can cool damn near anything as far as CPUs and GPUs, including an Athlon FX-53 and a Geforce 6800gt and up to 2 Gig of ram. The only thing you'll hear is the drives while you frag.
    • Yeah, they use the Zalman case here:

      http://www.zalmanusa.com/usa/product/view.asp?id x= 64

      which sounds like it uses technologies very similar to the Hush case, though the Hush case is impressively quite a bit smaller. Tom's has a review of the Zalman case here:

      http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/20040115/index .h tml

      In any case, neat idea, but I don't think I'm alone in balking at spending over $1000 on the case alone... =)

  • HD (Score:5, Insightful)

    by c0dedude ( 587568 ) on Saturday August 14, 2004 @11:09AM (#9967481)
    Hard Drives make Noise. CD-Roms make noise. Floppies make noise. A noiseless computer is impossible because anything with a motor will make noise.

    • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday August 14, 2004 @11:12AM (#9967504)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:HD (Score:4, Funny)

      by cpghost ( 719344 ) on Saturday August 14, 2004 @11:15AM (#9967524) Homepage

      Only the CIA computer (terminal) in Mission Impossible was so silent, that Ethan Hunt had a pretty hard time to work on it without triggering the noise sensor alarms...

    • Of course it's possible to build a _really_ silent computer. CPU, RAM, video card, motherboard, NIC, soundcard (well, maybe you should leave that out, too) don't need moving parts, and you don't need any hard drive, CD-ROM or floppy. If you need storage space, just use flash. Having no moving parts saves power, too.

    • Re:HD (Score:2)

      by horza ( 87255 )
      Hard Drives make Noise. CD-Roms make noise. Floppies make noise. A noiseless computer is impossible because anything with a motor will make noise.

      The Barracuda drives are supposed to be nearly silent. However for the living room I would definately go with netboot and no hard drive instead. btw you say anything with a motor will make a noise but wasn't there an article in Slashdot earlier with HD flash drives using IDE interface?

      Phillip.

      • Re:HD (Score:3, Informative)

        by Slack3r78 ( 596506 )
        Barracudas are great in respect to noise. Samsung Spinpoints are even better. I have 4 160GB Spinpoints in various machines, and the only way I ever know they're working is when the HD LED on the case is on. They're as close to silent as I've ever had in a hard drive.

        The SATA versions are slightly noisier though. I've noticed that if it's quiet enough, you can barely hear the head on the SATA drive seek on occassion. :-)
    • Well, my experience in quieting a PC to sit under my TV for video playback was this: replacing the power supply with a special quiet one made a huge difference, I wish I had done it years ago. Replacing the CPU fan with a quiter, speeed-sensitive one was a worthwhile step also. Then I set the bios to power down the hard drives after some period, and that helped (it especially helped lower the temperature of the drives, which were almost too hot to hold a finger on!)

      But then I decided it was quiet enough

    • Re:HD (Score:3, Interesting)

      by SagSaw ( 219314 )
      Of course, could always make a computer without hard-disks or optical drives.

      Use compact flash to hold the os and core applications. CF cards can be connected to an ide port with a simple adapter, so you should be able to boot right off the CF card with any system. I imagine most of the silent PC market will be either purpose-built systems (streaming audio players, dvd/divx players, firewall/router/access-point, etc) or web/e-mail terminals. Both of these should easily fit in a 512MB to 1GB CF card.
    • File server hard drives in another room at the opposite end of the house don't make noise, except in an if-a-tree-falls-in-the-forest kind of way.

  • That's nice (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Quasar1999 ( 520073 ) on Saturday August 14, 2004 @11:09AM (#9967482) Journal
    I want a decent video card (say an ATI 9800 XT or equiv.) and a decent speed processor (say a Prescott 3.2 Ghz or equiv.)... From what I've read, I can kiss the noiseless part of the system good bye if that's what I want... The heatpipes need to be cooled, and at close to 200 watts of heat dissipation for just the CPU and GPU, I'm not so sure their solution will work fanless...

    • Er RTFA (Score:5, Interesting)

      by brunes69 ( 86786 ) <slashdot@keir[ ]ad.org ['ste' in gap]> on Saturday August 14, 2004 @11:41AM (#9967696)
      Does anyone read the articles anymore???

      "There are only two backing plate slots for expansion cards and they are both occupied. One is filled by the graphics card ? an ATI Radeon 9600XT with D-SUB and DVI connectors, while the other is filled with a digital TV tuner card."

      "Hiding under the CPU heatsink was a 2.6GHz Pentium 4, but Hush has now dropped this chip from its range and will be offering a 2.8GHz Pentium 4 instead."

      Is a 9600 vs. a 9800 and a 2.8 vs. a 3.2 really that big a deal? Hell you could probably swap them out and it would still work fine.

      • Re:Er RTFA (Score:3, Informative)

        by RzUpAnmsCwrds ( 262647 )
        "Is a 9600 vs. a 9800 and a 2.8 vs. a 3.2 really that big a deal? Hell you could probably swap them out and it would still work fine."

        Well, the 2.8 vs. 3.2 isn't a big deal at all. I don't know why the hell the grandparent wants a Prescott - they absolutely SUCK - 50% more power consumption and 5% lower performance per clock compared to Northwood.

        I'm confused as to why this system doesn't use an Athlon 64, or, better yet, a Pentium-M. Both require less power and still offer great performance.

        As for graph

    • Re:That's nice (Score:3, Informative)

      by Wordsmith ( 183749 )
      For the 9800xt, try sapphire (sapphiretech.com). They make a line of "utlimate" Ati-based cards that use honkin' huge zalman heatsinks instead of fans, even for the high-endish chipsets.

  • Hate to toot someone else's horn.. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 14, 2004 @11:09AM (#9967485)
    ..but I encourage everyone to remember Apple's old G4 Cube.

    Cooled by convection, the core seems to 'hover' and the only noise-making devices in the whole computer are the hard drive and the optical drive.

    Sadly, Apple didn't pursue the design. From a business standpoint, this was neccessary, the computer was almost as expensive as the towers, had no real expandibility, and Apple couldn't put a ramped up G4 in the Cube and keep it passively cooled.

    Regardless, it's a Mac collector item, retains a large amount of its value despite being discontinued 3 or 4 years ago, and runs OSX beautifully.

    This post brought to you by a G4 Cube and 17" Apple Studio Display. No PC ever looked this good, bay-bee.

  • Also on The Register (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Copy of the article here [theregister.co.uk]

  • Soekris (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cpghost ( 719344 ) on Saturday August 14, 2004 @11:11AM (#9967500) Homepage

    I switched recently to a Soekris [soekris.com] net4801 with a 2.5" harddrive as my main ADSL router, Postfix, Cyrus/IMAP, and thttpd server, running FreeBSD 5.2.1.

    One of the main reasons was the noise of the PC being always on. Of course, the other reason was to save (a lot of) power. Now, my desktop PC is still not silent, but it's great to be able to turn if off before going to bed.

  • What is the noise of one noiseless computer slashdotting?

  • Man that server went down fast but quiet.

  • Not the first online review. (Score:5, Informative)

    by frostman ( 302143 ) * on Saturday August 14, 2004 @11:15AM (#9967522) Homepage Journal
    Not sure what the submitter was smoking, but the Hush ATX has been around for a while now, and was reviewed in April [silentpcreview.com] by SilentPCReview.

    After "TrustedReviews" recovers from the slashdotting I will have a look though...

  • First? (Score:3, Informative)

    by kloppe ( 740713 ) on Saturday August 14, 2004 @11:15AM (#9967525)
    The site's /.-ed so I dunno how old that review is, but SilentPCReview [silentpcreview.com] has had a review of the Hush ATX since April now.

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday August 14, 2004 @11:17AM (#9967546)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • The fans in my notebook can get pretty loud.

    • Laptops are anything but noiseless. An older laptop with a very quiet hard drive is near-silent but modern laptops usually have fairly high-speed cooling fans and a loud hard drive, because getting good performance out of a disk that small is nigh-impossible to do quietly. Many laptop drives I have heard (and owned) seek more loudly than many of the desktop hard drives I have owned, even as compared to some of the old ST-506 drives I had "back in the day".

      If you want noiseless, I suggest a diskless book

      • Concerning the fan noise, don't buy a shit desknote. A desktop P4 (likewise a desktop AMD64, and even the desktop replacement AMD64) has no business in a portable, they don't have decent power management nor do they scale the CPU clock at will.

        The Travelstar isn't too bad. I hear the seek noise, but it is still overall, still quieter than any desktop I've ever owned. Really, the only thing objectionable on my laptop is the DVD drive when reading CD-ROMs or non-video DVD. For video DVD it slows down to
      • An older laptop with a very quiet hard drive is near-silent but modern laptops usually have fairly high-speed cooling fans and a loud hard drive, because getting good performance out of a disk that small is nigh-impossible to do quietly.

        My IBM ThinkPad T40p is nearly silent during normal use. The fan noise becomes recognizable when you start taxing the graphics card and processor at the same time. The HDD (Hitachi 60GB 7200RPM) isn't a problem.

    • I have a Compaq Presario 2166EA laptop, and I have a self assembled stationary computer with four harddisks and fans for both CPU and PSU. Even when the fan in the laptop is spining on the lowest speed, it makes more noise than the stationary computer. And on work I have a thinkpad where the harddisk is even more noisy than my Presario.
    • A laptop which is basically all the componants of a pc crammed together and encased in plastic is never going to be as quiet as a comparative desktop.

      If you don't need a fast pc then get a fanless mini itx board http://www.mini-itx.com/ [mini-itx.com], a flanless power supply, a quiet hard drive and put it all in a big airy case with a large low rpm fan and hide it all under the desk. Much quieter and cheaper than a laptop.
    • i run my athlon xp 1600+ (1.4GHz) laptop WITHOUT a fan.

      yessir... a fanless athlon xp.

      have clocked it down to 300MHz with cpumsr...

      after the HD spins down it is DEAD QUIET

  • Underclocking (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DakotaSandstone ( 638375 ) on Saturday August 14, 2004 @11:20AM (#9967564)
    Personally, I think underclocking [wikipedia.org] for the masses should be more popular than it is. Desktop motherboards that allow on-the-fly switches in performance levels would be great.

    I mean, laptops have already had this technology for years (battery versus wall power), although it is often is fairly proprietary, if it works at all.

    For the 9 out of 10 times when I just want web surfing & audio streaming at home, I'd like to run at 20% of my 2 GHz and turn down the fans. After all, when you're trying to set a mood with Soma FM [somafm.com], who needs blaring screaming fans going?

    • Re:Underclocking (Score:3, Interesting)

      by abelsson ( 21706 )
      All Athlon 64:s have exactly that feature - AMD calls it Cool'n'Quiet. Make sure your motherboard supports it, and your Athlon 64 will dynamically underclock itself when idle and lower the RPM of the CPU fan. In many cases, the CPU fan can be completely shut off when the system isn't doing any taxing work.
      • finally! ... why we must switch to 64-bit computing (AMD64, in any case....), to finally achieve that 'groove (almost) noiseless CPU' :-)

        BTW, Here's [amd.com] the link parent forgot to mention/link to. /* basically it`s just a bunch of PR Spin/BuzzWord, as it's a rename of 'PowerNow' that has been in the Mobile cpu's ... I know, I know - why rename/rebrand it and sell it as it where something new? ... what can you do, every Corp. (as we know them) *just* got to show to the world they got a bigger 'DICK" then their

  • Where to buy (Score:3, Informative)

    by mollyhackit ( 693979 ) on Saturday August 14, 2004 @11:24AM (#9967592)
    To get one in the US: Logic Supply [logicsupply.com] Also, mini-itx.com [mini-itx.com] will ship you one.

    These would make great MythTv [mythtv.org] boxes if they had more pci slots. Currently there are only two. It would be nice to have two regular tuners and a digital tuner in the box. They could also add an irda port to the front. Also the thing weighs 15kg or approx. 33 pounds; not something you want to trip over in the dark.

    • Also the thing weighs 15kg or approx. 33 pounds; not something you want to trip over in the dark.

      If you're building a home theater setup based around a PC, perhaps you should consider purchasing some furniture first.

    • Digital tuners also have analog ports and support analog tuning too. You only need two slots to do what you want, unless you expected to have three full tuners available at any one time.

  • Hush Website (Score:3, Informative)

    by z0ink ( 572154 ) on Saturday August 14, 2004 @11:28AM (#9967619)
    the Hush Technologies website [hush-technologies.net]. includes their product lineup with lots of high-res pictures.

  • Not for me! (Score:4, Funny)

    by toetagger1 ( 795806 ) on Saturday August 14, 2004 @11:39AM (#9967686)
    "The Hush ATX is a totally silent PC, which is a good attribute for something that deserves to be in a design museum."

    I'm not sure if I want a computer that the review lables as ripe for a museum!

  • For what it's worth, here's a sloppy little mirror [medienkunst.com] of the Hush ATX review [silentpcreview.com] from Silent PC Review (from April), in case that gets slashdotted too.

  • Instant boot and silent PC? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Louis Savain ( 65843 ) on Saturday August 14, 2004 @11:46AM (#9967715) Homepage
    A silent PC is indeed a nice thing to have but what infuriates me, sometimes more than the noise itself, is having to wait for a PC to boot. Why can't somebody make a desktop PC that instantly (or almost instantly) powers up to its previous state? Surely one can use very low power battery back memory to store the system's state when the power is turned off, and then restore it when the power is restored. Does this technology exist?
    • They did. The company was called Acorn, and they used StrongARM processors. The last ones were 200MHz (contemporary with the 200MHz pentium, which they whopped in speed (but not floating point)). The computers had the OS in ROM, just like the old BBCs and had a subsecond boot time.

      They had a whole GUI OS with a built in scripting language (BBC Basic: the best form of BASIC ever made (even had malloc() equivalent and proper pointer indirection:) ), and a few other very interesting features.

      But they've gone
    • check out 'vnc'. run the server on an always-up box. connect that via a network cable to your client, the 'sometimes on' box. run your programs on the server and 'view' them on the sometimes-on pc.

      btw, the server and client and run ANY mix of win/unix. win on server and unix on client or unix on both or win on both, etc, etc. you pick. but the important part is that you can have a persistent desktop in the os of your dhoice if you run vnc server on it and 'view' it remotely via a 10/100 or /1000 conn

  • TAA (This Ain't Astroturf) (Score:3, Informative)

    by omnirealm ( 244599 ) on Saturday August 14, 2004 @12:20PM (#9967926) Homepage
    Up until last week, my Athlon XP machine sounded like a vacuum cleaner. Between the two fans in my 400 watt power supply and the CPU fan buzzing at 7200 RPM, it was atrocious. I finally got around to purchasing a new ``quiet'' heatsink and fan (copper, ~2700 RPM), but unfortunately, my case was designed for an old slot P-III, which meant that the fan was almost flush against the bottom of my power supply (although there were slots in the side of the fan casing for air to come in through). I got I2C sensor support compiled into my kernel and watched as my CPU temp varied from 65 to 80 degrees Celsius (as I taxed my processor). Soon, paging errors started creeping in, and the kernel would send my applications into la-la land.

    I weighed my options: new CPU heatsink/fan that leaves some room between it and the power supply, underclock my current CPU (going from 1690 to 1250 MHz lowered my CPU temp by 10 degrees C), or try a new case.

    At that point, I ran to Fry's and picked up one of those Altec Sonata Quiet cases (the one with a fan in the back of the unit with the 30 dollar mail-in rebate). Lots of room above the CPU fan. Now the only noise I hear from my workstation comes from the hard drives, and my CPU runs at a cool 40 degrees Celsius! That's a 20 degree difference, just by getting a decent case. A quality case and power supply do wonders for keeping a system quiet, cool, and stable. Now I need to do something about those annoying blue LED's...

    Oh, and TAA (This Ain't Astroturf). Really! :-)
    • You can just unplug the wire going to the LEDs on the front -- IIRC, it's the connector that only has two wires. (On mine, at least, I think it was labeled 'LED'.) I've been running without the LEDs for a while now because I leave my computer on at night and found it virtually impossible to sleep with those two blue eyes staring at me out of the darkeness. I've half thought about wiring that connector through a switch and mounting it on the front of the case, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.

      That s

  • Zalman TNN 500A (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Tibe ( 444675 )
    I have been interested in a silent system for awhile, although I don't really have the money. Zalman made the TNN 500A [zalmanusa.com] which is the same concept as this case, giant heat sinks with heat pipes. However the Zalman has plenty of room, supports ATX P4 3GHz or more, top ATI/Nvidia graphics chips, Tomshardware has a review [tomshardware.com]. Other than weight I see no advantage with the Hush system. Price? Hush $3,069.45 USD Zalman $1199.99 USD. My no money is with Zalman.
    • The Hush has a different advantage of being compact. Being huge only has an advantage of being able to put more things in it, at the disadvantage of, being huge.
  • If you're going to go all out, aluminum makes only a fair-to-moderate heat conductor. The chassis should be made of solid copper if they want to do it right.
    • Copper doesn't look as good as aluminium, and it oxidises at a higher rate. Copper core surrounded by aluminium? Nah, probably too expensive.
      • Copper doesn't look as good as aluminium, and it oxidises at a higher rate.

        Why is this a problem? Oxidized copper actually looks quite nice, sort of a pleasant pale green... much better than yet-another shiny silver case (yawn).

        Indeed, the more I think about it, the better it sounds -- get away from the shiny technical look, and do something a bit more muted and organic (without the heat problems that come from making your case out of wood!). Too bad nobody will really make one...
        • Does oxidation affect heat dissapation, or would it increase thermal insulation and result in a lower transfer of heat from the inside of the computer to the case?

          I think polished copper looks nice. Oxidised looks grotty. It doesn't just go green, splotchy and everything darkens too.

    • Re:solid aluminum? (Score:3, Informative)

      by toddestan ( 632714 )
      If they did that, the computer would probably weigh a ton, or close to it. Not to mention the cost. If I was a millionaire though, I would skip copper and go straight to solid silver. But that's just me.
      • If I was a millionaire though, I would skip copper and go straight to solid silver

        Now we're on the right track! For a moment I thought gold would be even better but it's probably too soft.
        But does copper really cost that much? Melt down, say, 5,000 old pennies and that's only $50 in material. That should be plenty.
  • ...that are located in other rooms in my house!

    With a good video/audio distribution plan (hopefully one that incorporates 2-way remote IR), it doesn't actually matter how loud my PC is...it's in another room (along with all my other AV equipment; which also distribute their signals to multiple TVs.

    I mean, making a silent PC is kinda like making a silent Central HVAC unit...(nobody steal my idea now...)

  • I recently moved 4 machines out of my work area into another room (not to mention the worst one of all, a nortel switch which sounded like a jet engine). Now they can make as much noise as they want somewhere where it won't matter (one even has a noisy cpu fan).

    All I have now is one desktop and a notebook. With the data living on the other machines, the desktop often spins down it's HD's reducing that noise (the PS fan is another issue - and it's a G3 desktop so it doesn't use a standard ATX power supply).

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