Silent Computers

[Minotaar]

Has anyone here made a fanless box, or perhaps with only one case fan?

I've made a few cooling boxes in my life,but now I want to make one for the bedroom. Its gotta be a good performance machine - I'll be bashing it with quake and warcraft 3 - but it cannot be loud. EVER. The problem is, most review sites and forums arent talking about this, so I thought I'd bring it up here.

Has anyone had any experience running zalman coolers without their fans? I dont know if this is ever recommended, but Im not asking for oc performance/cooling here. Im curious to see if you were able to get it stable.

Also, can anyone recommend efficient cooling systems for vid cards?

At this point, I think the best way to cool a non-overclocked performance system with one case fan will be some complicated duct work that splits from the fan, and goes to the vid card and the cpu.

Im going ape for the sound reduction padding and various rubber washers too.

Does anyone know if water cooling or phase change cooling can be quieter, by reducing the fans to only the ones at the heat exchanger?

Conclusion: Silence at all costs, with sacrificing normal performance. Possible?

 

[Wintermute76]

I bought a Antec Sonata case, it's supposed to be silent. It has a Truepower PS with one fan instead of 2, and I bought a panaflo L1A 120mm fan to put in it, also going to run a panflo L1A 92mm on the HS, don't have it quite together yet, but it should be pretty quiet.

 

[Minotaar]

well, Im trying to go with as much passive cooling as possible... I really dont want to compromise on the # of fans. Thats why I was asking about the water cooling and phase change cooling, to see if it could be more quiet.

 

[HimeNoHogosha]

just curious, why do you need it to be absolutely silent? i think you'll hardly be able to hear a couple fan's if u use it with sound dampeners and the such.

 

[Shimmishim]

Well...

You can also try watercooling... You need like maybe 1 fan for the radiator... and taht would be it.. and you could get a pretty quiet 120mm fan for it...

 

[RalfHutter]

You need to visit Silent PC Review. I don't generally pimp sites but this place is da' bomb for learning about quiet computing. The guys over there are hardcore about running their systems as quiet as possible. Lots of reviews and comparisons of hardware, a "Recommended Components" section and a lot of "Do It Yourself" articles. There's also great forums for timely discussions about any aspect of quiet computing that you can think of.

 

[OulOat]

Three words, and I'm completely serious... Get a Dell.

 

[Minotaar]

I totally know what you're talking about. I recently purchased a dell for my mom, and I was STUNNED how quiet it was. But this is a pet project of mine; I want to make a computer silent from commercial parts, but whatever prioritary schtuff they use at Dell. Besides, their cases are fugly

 

[godmare]

Zalman passive vga cooler.

 

[Zhentar]

As Ouloat said, Dells are SILENT.

I'll give you a hint to their silence- the case fan is an NMB. I'm using one for my case now too- their $2.50 on www.svc.com right now, and while they don't move a whole lot of air, you cannot hear it.

 

[WalMart1564]

well not that im recomending but my friend gave me his sony vaio box to fix (bad hard drive)
i turned it on and had to get down on my hands and knees to hear if was working

turns out it has 2 fans only the power supply fan is like 300 mm its as big around as a mini-basketball and it blows down on the processor and board

and the cpu fan thats it

it was so quiet i was concerned it was broken

 

[OulOat]

Also, Dell cases are made from plastic, unlike steel or aluminum that retail cases use. Plastic absorbs a lot of the vibrations from fans and hds, so that kills a lot of noise right there. However, plastic is hard to work with compared to metals when your modding, since you have to worry about it melting and stuff. It's up to you, but I would get a plastic box.

 

[beatle]

Agreed on the comments about a Dell. I work with them on a regular basis and you literally have to put your ear to the back of the case to tell that they're on. They use a single 92mm NMB case fan with a duct over the cpu and silent power supplies. Barracuda IV hds also contribute to the lack of noise (does that make sense?)

 

[Bookie]

I've recently attempted to make the perfectly silent pc and I think you may like what I've done. I am using the SLK-800 with the vantec steal 80mm fan to cool my xp1800+ (keeps it over 10C cooler than the stock hsf and is silent). I have absolutely no case fans and my case temp stays at 28C, 30C at load. My CPU stays a 40C idle, 47C at load.

I am using a Geforce 4 TI4200 with the Zalman passive heatsink (no noise here).

My latest modification was to replace the fan in my 350Watt power supply. I used a panaflo for that. I didn't want to spend the money to replace a perfectly good power supply with a silent one so this was the cheapest route.

Now the only thing I can hear from my pc is the dvd-rom when it spins up. I am using this case: Cheap and Efficient. I spent a lot of time with the cables inside of the case so that they are pratically unnoticible. I also used rounded ide cables.

I'd also stay away from Dell, cheap computers built with cheap hardware. (ya cheap, not inexpensive)

I forgot to mention, those load temps come from playing hours upon hours of Warcraft 3 (the greatest game on the market).

 

[godmare]

Originally posted by: Bookie
I am using this case: Cheap and Efficient.

I hope you're not also using that power supply pictured with the case.

 

[Fallen Kell]

Water cooling is not quiet. Most pumps are as loud as several fans. You just get better cooling for the same noise level, but the noise level is noisy.

 

[Confused]

Originally posted by: Fallen Kell
Water cooling is not quiet. Most pumps are as loud as several fans. You just get better cooling for the same noise level, but the noise level is noisy.

If you pair watercooling with a cheap-ass noisy pump, then yeah. The pump is the one thing that can make all the difference with noise, and is often overlooked, with people going for the cheapest they can find. Eheim pumps i've heard are VERY quiet, and are the most recommended. An Eheim pump with a quiet (Papst/Panaflo) 120mm fan on the radiator is going to be pretty darn quiet (it's what i'll be aiming for when I eventually make the jump to watercooling)



Confused

 

[Saurk]

Originally posted by: Fallen Kell
Water cooling is not quiet. Most pumps are as loud as several fans. You just get better cooling for the same noise level, but the noise level is noisy.

I disagree. Water-cooling is much quieter in my experience than air cooling. I DO have a cheap-ass pump (viaaqua 1300), but there's no way it makes as much noise as any size fan. Put some sound dampening material (i use an old mouse pad) under it so it can't resonate vibrations through the case and you CANNOT hear it unless you put your ear right up to the case.

However, you kinda do need a 120mm fan on the radiator in order to do water-cooling. I control noise by undervolting the fan, but if you just use any old 120mm fan, it's going to be loud. The loudest thing in my case right now is my VGA fan (stock on a Gainward GF4 ti4200). I'm thinking of getting either a dangerden waterblock for the video card, or a zalman heat-pipe. Any opinions for which would be better?

 

[powergyoza]

I'm not gonna get into the AC vs. WC debate here.

My suggestion is this: more fans running slow and carefully placed is a heckuva lot easier -- and arguably quieter -- than 1 bigger or faster fan. At 5V, a Panaflo is virtually silent - estimated @ ~10dB (AFAIR). Use 4 fans - at PSU, CPU, video card, and case exhaust and you're at 16dB - still quieter than a Barracuda 4/5.

As long as you accept temps in the 60C range for an Athlon and the 50C range for a P4, you can can easily make a silent computer these days. Just get the right parts and few simple mods and yer done.

The best sound deadening material around is AcoustiPak. Click here for review at SPCR.

 

[Eug]

I'm completely serious... Get a Dell.

My HP P4 1.6 GHz is very quiet too. Quiet fans and Seagate Barracuda IV.

My suggestion is this: more fans running slow and carefully placed is a heckuva lot easier -- and arguably quieter -- than 1 bigger or faster fan. At 5V, a Panaflo is virtually silent - estimated @ ~10dB (AFAIR). Use 4 fans - at PSU, CPU, video card, and case exhaust and you're at 16dB - still quieter than a Barracuda 4/5.

I swapped my Enermax Whisper's fans and I must admit, my 80 mm Panaflo at 5 V really pushes minimal air. It's a smidgen more at 7 V. At 5 V it's virtually silent. At 7 V it's very quiet but it ain't silent. At 5 V the air coming out was warm. At 7 V it's slightly less warm. Both run fine. I may end up switching back to 5 V again I dunno. I keep the 92 mm Panaflo at 5 V. It's fairly effective at that voltage.

Intel fan for my Celeron is also 5 V. Works great.

With OulOat's help, I modified my 5 V ATI Radeon 9100 fan to run at lower voltage with a resistor. It's pretty quiet too.

I'm also running a Seagate Barracuda V 8 MB cache 120 GB drive. With acoustic management turned on it's pretty quiet, but I'd still recommend the Barracuda IV. The IV 40 GB is rated by Seagate as quieter, and it definitely is. The IV 80 GB is rated as loud as the V 120 GB, but I feel the V 120 GB is still louder slightly.

 

[wetcat007]

My old compaq's, got a case fan and a PSU fan, both low RPM, no silent but very quiet, although the noisy HD defeats the purpose...

 

[BmXStuD]

yes mny p2 350mhz has only the psu fan. When i turn it on i dont hear jack u could hear a pin drop. BTW HEHE OLD PC DONT NEED MUCH COOLIN

 

[calvink]

my case is annoying the heck out of me day by day. the case fan and the cpu fan are at different speeds, so it makes beats when the two frequencies cross over each other, not to mention the continous hum that i have to sleep though. i agree dell's are quiet, that's wut i recommend to my clients because they "increase productivity"

 

[majewski9]

It can be done! Especially with VIA C3 which you proably get away using no fans at all if you did everything right. There are also several low wattage power supplies that use no fans what so ever. I think my sparkle power supply has the loudest fan in my system.

 

[treemonkey]

I had a P4 2.4 dell 8250 for a while and it wasn't quiet enough for me. If you read the articles at silentpcreview.com as another guy suggested you can build a comp. much quieter than a Dell for less $. The acoustic problems in a Dell are the P/S and HD. The P/S whines (a little) and has a grill which adds to fan noise. You'll probably get a ball-bearing HD which will whine and click. It's somewhat disguised by the plastic case but it isn't enough if you're picky. If you tinker with anything (esp. cutting out the P/S grill) your warranty is gone so you may as well have built your own and done it right.