How did they do it?

[lordex]

I have just put together a P4 3.2G system with Asus P4S800 mb, and a chieftec tower case. I picked panaflo case fans and ahanix power supply so now the most noisy thing is the stock HSF. It's tolerable, but definitely more noisy than the ****** P4 2.8G PC I use at office (I took out the manufacture name becaues it's not important anyway, just one of the big manufactures).

So how did they do it while we are all here pulling our hair on all these exotic fans and heatsinks?

 

[zodder]

Go on, you can say it: Dell. They do have the quietest machines I've never heard.

 

[beatle]

Dell uses passive cooling on their CPUs and a single 92mm NMB (quiet) fan for the case exhaust. The PSU is also quiet. When you only have 2 fans, the system is bound to be quiet. They also use Maxtor and Seagate drives, which have FDB motors - also quiet. Video cards are passively cooled as well.

Generally, you can make a system this quiet, but overclocking becomes more of a challenge. The tbred in my sig is extremely quiet as it only has 2 fans, including the PSU and a 5400 rpm Seagate drive.

 

[Cerb]

It's very simple:
1. Add 20ºC and many hours of testing.
2. Underclocking is preferable to overclocking.

 

[lordex]

Originally posted by: zodder
Go on, you can say it: Dell. They do have the quietest machines I've never heard.

As a matter of fact, it's an HP, but I knew you guys would guess Dell.

 

[lordex]

Originally posted by: Cerb
It's very simple:
1. Add 20ºC and many hours of testing.

good point, let me go get MBM...

 

[Cheetah8799]

Building a quiet system with Intel or AMD parts isn't all that hard if you know what parts to look for. In the end though it sometimes takes some trial and error to get it just right...

1. use a Seagate hard drive. The less drives you have the quieter it will be.
2. Get a GOOD heatsink for your CPU. Zalman makes excellent quiet heatsink/fan combos.
3. get some quality quiet fans for the cpu and exhaust.
4. get decent optical drives that doesn't sound like an airplane.

that's about it... although quality quiet parts cost more than teh cheap loud stuff... Often the stock heatsink/fan combos are louder than aftermarket parts.

You can also get a fanbus to control the speeds of your fans. i do this to slow them down when I'm not playing games or doing other heat producing activities.

 

[BlueWeasel]

Originally posted by: lordex

Originally posted by: Cerb
It's very simple:
1. Add 20ºC and many hours of testing.

good point, let me go get MBM...

Yeah, it will be interesting to see the difference in CPU/system temps between the HP system and the one you built at home.

Regardless, it's probably safe to say that 90% of the Dell users (or most everyone who buys brand name systems) could care less how hot the system gets as long as it runs.

 

[Davegod]

I still find it surprising there arent more motherboards that can vary the speed of fans according to how hot the CPU/system temps are. I guess theyre worried some fans might stop when at 7v or something, and might not kick back up to speed again. Maybe the cool n quiet for AMD's does that well (or better since it can vary the mhz of cpu aswell), dunno as I dont have a A64. Hope so though, seems an elegant solution.

 

[LongCoolMother]

i use a dell and its my first one, the first time i powered it on i was stunned because it was near silent. i had to check to see if it was on by looking at the led light. seriously. gosh darn, their systems are so quiet its amazing. right now i dropped in a high end vid card and 2 more hard drives so its slightly louder now, although still significantly quieter than my athlon system which is on a tbird 1.4.

dell systems are extremely reliable and quiet. but you cant overclock anything or tweak anything more than basic hard drive performance etc. but they are so quiet itd be hard to build anything as silent.

 

[Dman877]

With a quiet psu, a water cooling syustem can be "dell" quiet and have much beter cooling ability too. On air cooling, if you are comfortable with 60 - 70c load temps, building a "dell" quiett system is easy, just need to pick the right stuff, go to silentpcreview to get started.

 

[Davegod]

edit: erm posted in wrong tab (thread) again

 

[RalfHutter]

"How are Dells so quiet?"

 

[Cheetah8799]

Good link, here's a quote that sums it up well:

There's no temp sensors on Dell mobos (as many folks have found out when trying to run apps like MBM and Speedfan) so there's no way to tell what kind of temps the CPU is running at. I'm quite sure the Dell engineers know exactly what temps their systems run at and feel very comfortable configuring them the way they do.

The bottom line is that if you're not as obsessive about your temps as most of us at SPCR tend to be you can run your system with very little fannage. It will be nice and quiet and probably live a long, productive life.

According to Intel, as long as the CPU stays under 70°C or so, everything is fine. But how many of us get our panties in a twist when or load temps get over the low 50°C range? Most I'd say.

I don't know about you but if I felt comfortable running my CPU at 45°C+ at idle and 65°C-ish at load I could run a very quiet box. I'll bet you a dollar that I could build a ducted HSF system with a quiet, thermally controlled 92mm fan that would be just as quiet, just as stable and last just as long as a Dell.