Silent Computers

[Clown]

I vaguely remember a thread with this title before... oh well.

Can someone give me any ideas on making or buying a ready made computer that doesn't make much noise? I don't have a budget yet (teehee), but I'm still looking at things. I want it to be able to play BF1942 at 60fps in 1024x768x32 (no antialiasing or whatever), but all these graphics cards are bloody noisy I know my GF4 is...

Still anyway, if anyone has any suggestions.

Cheers

 

[Clown]

OH OH OH... I forgot.

I also want a silent one to be a server type thing. I can put my 4MB ATI Rage Pro (YEAH!!)in it, and I'll need to buy a couple of 160GB drives. I don't care about the temperatures it runs at (maybe someone will tell me I will?), as long as the heatsink fan thing is proper quiet. I'll also need a quiet PSU and a case, some sort of CPU and RAM.

I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT TO BE LOOKING AT

Cheers.

 

[old.user4556]

Start here:

http://www.quietpc.com/uk/products.php

To get my own PC silent, I have an Arctic Cooling VGA cooler for the 9800 Pro from here, a Zalman 'flower' heat sink, Zalman fan mates on all the case fans so that they all spin slowly and an Enermax PSU with a variable speed control.

This kills almost all of the sound, I can only here a small whisper of fans now. The PC itself doesn't run much hotter, my barton 3200+ idles at around 56 degrees or so & 60 degrees under load. As for the 9800 Pro, it runs cooler than the stock cooler (and it's silent) which gives me more overhead for overclocks.

G

 

[ManDevil]

Hush PC's

 

[RedVenom]

I also want a silent one to be a server type thing.

Give up now. Hard drives make lots of noise. You have to keep them cool to stop them failing, so basically you're pretty screwed. Best alternative is to find a cupboard or something you can store it in, and run an extension lead and cat5 to it. You certainly wont 'do' cooling on a budget for server stuff.

 

[Clown]

Ok, I know... but I can try to get the computer as hush as possible apart from the hard drives. A new hard drive wouldn't be as loud as this old 6Gb one anyway... EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII, bloody racket.

 

[Chameleon]

I recently upgraded my pc and at the same time tried to reduce it's noise as much as possible. I now have a pc that's so quiet, I have to check I've actually switched it on! I replaced the hs/fan with a zalman, covered the inside of the case with acoustic matting, put some rubber anti-vibration gaskets on the fans and psu ...... but the thing that made by far the biggest difference was replacing my psu with a Globalwin Sapphire Super Silent 19dBA 520W ATX Power Supply (CA-004-GW) (see overclockers.co.uk). Get one of these if you do nothing else imo!!! I'm well chuffed with the noise coming from my pc now ...... and it has 2 extra 80mm fans.

 

[ManDevil]

I'd use seagate hard drives in it as they are nearly silent.

 

[old.user4556]

Give up now. Hard drives make lots of noise. You have to keep them cool to stop them failing, so basically you're pretty screwed. Best alternative is to find a cupboard or something you can store it in, and run an extension lead and cat5 to it. You certainly wont 'do' cooling on a budget for server stuff.

Hard disks can be made virtually silent by isolating them from the case via rubber mounts. This can be anything - for a long time i had my drive mounted on big blobs of blue tak which stopped any vibration getting to the case and made the drive virtually silent. I've since changed from blue tak to sorbothane.

 

[Yaka]

if you want silent pcs then look no further than SilenX, thiers PSU's and fans are 14db and shift a fiar amount of air thru em

 

[Mr.Monkey]

Making a silent PC is hard nowadays, as the chips run hotter, and require more cooling than ever before. As a result a fanless computer is very hard to make, and expensive.

Get one of these:

Actually, I don't like them. But it's an option.

Making a pentium 4 fanless is easier, as they automatically underclock themselves if they get too hot. AMD's using fanless solutions (such as zalmans flowers) will still overheat if you play games and the like (or rather, I have found that they do).

They provide a larger, quieter fan in this kit, which I've only heard good things about. But still, smaller fans cause more noise.

I use a watercooling kit to remove the fan from my cpu, northbridge, and vga card. This means I transfer the heat from them to a large (360mm) radiator outside the case. I then use a very low speed fan (acoustitec) to move air across it. This means I really can't hear it. Larger slower fans make less noise than smaller ones.

The PSU often has fans in it as well. I use the zalman silent 400W psu.

Makes very little noise indeed (uses clever thermal measurements to adjust the fan speed. so if it is under alot of load, for example playing games, it ups the fan speed. And the noise. But you are busy playing and don't care!).

I've also heard good things about the Zalman fanless heat pipe

But I overclock my gfx card, so it's not really for me.

The rubber mounts that have been mentioned are these:

.
They do reduce the noise made by the HD considerably. Due to the lack of ability to use the metal chassie as a drum!

I prefer the Silent Drive casing:

It means your HD runs slightly hotter than it used to, but I can't hear mine anymore (I've also modded it a bit, so that it is also watercooled).

This solution is no good for high speed drives. Again, I've not used this, but heard very good things about it:

The Zalman Heatpipe cooler.

Finally, stuffing your PC full of foam will dampen any other sound inside your PC

On a bit of an aside, I know that people have watercooled their psu's in order to reduce the noise! I have to admit I won't be trying that anytime soon.


I hope this has been of some help, as it includes the less expensive silent cooling options.

edit://all this information and more can be found care of QuietPC.com, who incidentally supply all of the above - Xavier

 

[ManDevil]

if you want silent pcs then look no further than SilenX, thiers PSU's and fans are 14db and shift a fiar amount of air thru em

I'd recommend them as well, got one of their 450W PSU's and you have to put your ear right on top of it to hear any noise from it



I want to watercool the CPU/GPU/NB next to lower the rest of the noise (& overclock them a little more) & replace the case fans with 14dB ones Then I should have near silence.

The only thing left then that makes any serious noise are optical drives but that's only when they are accessing disks, so I think I could put up with that.

 

[Sharma]

I might sound slightly out of it but i couldnt really use a quiet PC, i love the hum of my PC, wouldnt want to give it up.

 

[old.user4556]

Watercooling is definitely the best option for cool and quiet, but it's not the cheapest or easiest to setup.

Quite like the look of those vapochill cases.....

 

[Mr.Monkey]

Watercooling is now as easy to set up as putting on a new heatsink.

See the Corsair Hydrocool http://www.fastlanehw.com/reviews.php?action=view&revid=89&page=2 or the Thermaltake Aquarius III Water Cooling Kit
http://www.overclockercafe.com/Reviews/cooling/Tt_Aquarius_III/


Vapochill is active cooling (ie down to about -20 degrees) and it is far from silent, as there is a compressor as well as a pump etc.

 

[old.user4556]

Vapochill is active cooling (ie down to about -20 degrees) and it is far from silent, as there is a compressor as well as a pump etc.

Holmes, how do you do it!!!?

Yeah I know, but the ultra chill could allow some crazy overclocks.

 

[Clown]

Hehe, I don't overclock so mega cool shit aint really a thing for me. As long as it doesn't turn itself off then I'm jiggy

Thanks for your help guys.

 

[GDW]

I cant buy the whole watercooling thing yet.

Water + electricity = very very bad

 

[old.user4556]

I share that stance GDW, i'd not be totally happy having water being pumped round my case; i'm not totally confident on the watercooling front (which was why i never invested in it).

G

 

[Clown]

Silent stuff is le expensif

 

[Mr.Monkey]

Anyway, try Corsair Hydrocool 200 or Thermaltake III for pre-sealed watercooling solutions that are just as easy to install as a new heatsink.


And you have to use distilled water anyway, which doesn't conduct electricity.

edit://yes MrMonkey - I removed the spurious posts and digs you were taking at Big G. I read your posts including the one you thought you'd deleted and deemed them inappropriate.

 

[Clown]

Does that mean water from a bottle? What shops sell them (so I can get an idea about the price)?

 

[Xavier]

Distilled water is basically de-ionised water, extremely pure. Because of the high purity it contains far fewer metal ions from the salts and other trace chemicals found in tap and bottled (mineral) water.

Good sources are supermarkets and garages. De-ionised or distilled water are both fine.

I was running an ASETek waterchill for some time on the 3.2Ghz P4, but the test system concerned suffered a PSU failure and rather than hook a new PSU into the existing chassis, we built a replacement box based around the Athlon64 FX. It was definately quieter, but unless you're planning to overclock you might as well go for a Zalman flower.

Xav

 

[Clown]

Yeh, fuck overclocking
I just want a really quiet computer because my ones are doing my head in.

 

[Tom]

I've thought a few times of moving the pc into another room entirely (preferably under the stairs), and having an external cdrom, monitor, keyboard, and mouse up in my room.

I know its possible to do for the keyboard/mouse, will the monitor signal make it reliably over a 10 metre distance, along with any cdrom gubbins?

 

[Xavier]

IDE runs into real signalling problems over 90cm apparently, so the best way would be external USB2 or Firewire for the CD-ROM, which experiences no such problems. If you used USB2 you'd only need to run two wires from the PC - monitor signal and one USB lead to a hub, but Firewire obviously has benefits in terms of true speed and CPU load.


That is, if you weren't worried about audio...

 

[RandomBastard]

We have vga cables working at 50 meters for our av install in one of the unions venues ( two projectors running off a matrix and scalar) certainly its not a problem at 10meters (the length of our smaller venues is not far off that (also 2 projectors)) you need decent cabling tho, and if the signal still isnt strong enough a vga booster (£40 or sumit like that)

 

[Xavier]

Incidentally MrMonkey - can you please refrain from regurgitating the contents of a companies website as your own advice?

Big G had already pointed Clown to QuietPC.com, and apart from them being good friends of ours they deserve some form of credit or mention in your post which hotlinks to images on their servers - not great netiquette.

 

[Clown]

It was good for me though

 

[Tom]

Right, I think I'll move my base unit downstairs and remote link the monitor, keyboard, and mouse, upstairs. I'd also like a portable cd/dvd writer (suggestions please. The whole thing will be on a cable run of up to 20 metres.

I presume the PS2 keyboard will make it fine, the mouse is a radio mouse, so I can hide the reciever under the floorboards and it should have enough reception to make it (mouse will be about 5 metres away) although I can easily move it closer. All the cables will be running alongside lighting/ring main/alarm/central heating control cables. Do computer cables tend to be screened? I'm presuming a USB2 or firewire external CD will not be affected, as its a digital connection?

The audio connection will be fine, its at line level and I can route it slightly differently. Pity its unbalanced audio, but not much I can do about that.