Help me build a super quiet computer.

[Kyn]

Hi I'm new here forgive me if I misplaced something. I thought this was the best place to ask for good opinions. I want to build a cheap and dead silent computer so I can do simple things on it like check email, leave me aim chat on, stream the occasional mp3 to a home sound system, and watch the occasional movies off of it. What's a good processor/fan/case setup should I get? I plan on leaving this thing on forever and using my louder system for regular activities. That's all I can think of right now, thanks for the help in advance, lemme know what else I should say. Cheers!

_kyn

 

[Marshallj]

Those new Shuttle mini systems are pretty quiet. They use a heat pipe or something like that.

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Start out in the Small Form Factor forum - they've probably got tons of info on small, quiet boxes. Try the CPU / Overclocking and Cases / Cooling forums as well to discuss quiet cooling.

Welcome to Anandtech!

- M4H

 

[Zugzwang152]

Originally posted by: MercenaryForHire
Start out in the Small Form Factor forum - they've probably got tons of info on small, quiet boxes. Try the CPU / Overclocking and Cases / Cooling forums as well to discuss quiet cooling.

Welcome to Anandtech!

- M4H

or for general advice, hit the General Hardware forum...happy neffin.

 

[pennylane]

Originally posted by: Zugzwang152

Originally posted by: MercenaryForHire
Start out in the Small Form Factor forum - they've probably got tons of info on small, quiet boxes. Try the CPU / Overclocking and Cases / Cooling forums as well to discuss quiet cooling.

Welcome to Anandtech!

- M4H

or for general advice, hit the General Hardware forum...happy neffin.

neffin' would be saying random, often useless, things to boost up your post count. like what i'm doing now

 

[m2kewl]

if you can't stand the noise, don't rice it

 

[hollowman]

sparkle whisper PSU, celeron with large heatsink/slow fan. 3~4 NMB case fans will do it.

 

[lowtech1]

Built a diskless station with disk-on-chip & solid state memory. Get any CPU of your choice and under clock it.

I have built disk-on-chip systems for firewalls that is about 1/4 of a note book size from 225~750mhz, and they were noiseless due to no moving part with very quick boot time (as low 10 sec with linux).

 

[rgwalt]

Or you could water cool. No fans...

Ryan

 

[jimmyhaha]

on budget = buy a dell

more $ = get a hush ITX

building a silent pc include trial & error, not desirable for newbie.

 

[Colt45]

an older celly w/bigass heatsink, no fan, and a linear PSU i guess.

 

[FoBoT]

zalman sells quiet stuff, not necessarily silent or cheap though

 

[SagaLore]

Well the Apple IIe never made any noise... no moving parts...

 

[Darien]

Panaflo fans work like a charm

 

[Booster]

What you should do is...

Get a standard ATX case for example, Inwin. Do not install any additional fans in the case, you don't need them. Get a motherboard with fanless northbridge, a video card without the cooler (for example, Geforce 2MX or FX5200 non-ultra), Seagate Barracuda series harddrive and an Intel CPU with a retail cooler (for example, a P4 depending on preference). Then it won't be absolutely dead quiet like a brand name PC, b/c it'll have 2 fans instead of one, but it'll still be somewhat tolerable IMHO.

 

[lowtech1]

Originally posted by: SagaLore
Well the Apple IIe never made any noise... no moving parts...

The floppy drive make noise.

 

[FoBoT]

on my apple II (not "e" or "+" , just Apple II) the floppy was external, seperate box, so technically , the computer itself was silent

but it also had thermal problems, it would lock up all the time and we would have to mash the motherboard to fix it

 

[dquan97]

Get the Shuttle barebones system, then line the interior with Dynamat

 

[HokieESM]

Originally posted by: Kyn
Hi I'm new here forgive me if I misplaced something. I thought this was the best place to ask for good opinions. I want to build a cheap and dead silent computer so I can do simple things on it like check email, leave me aim chat on, stream the occasional mp3 to a home sound system, and watch the occasional movies off of it. What's a good processor/fan/case setup should I get? I plan on leaving this thing on forever and using my louder system for regular activities. That's all I can think of right now, thanks for the help in advance, lemme know what else I should say. Cheers!

_kyn

Just a recommendation: check out Silent PC Review. Especially the forums--the members are quite nice and helpful.

Just a few comments from myself: how quiet do you want? THAT makes the biggest difference. If you're looking for REALLY quiet, some of the fanless VIA/Epia systems are nice. But not very powerful. Otherwise, for a bit more noise, you can make a Tualatin or P4 system with a very low level of noise--depending on how much effort you want to put into it.

And another note: Dells are frequently VERY quiet.

 

[GermyBoy]

Originally posted by: lowtech
Built a diskless station with disk-on-chip & solid state memory. Get any CPU of your choice and under clock it. I have built disk-on-chip systems for firewalls that is about 1/4 of a note book size from 225~750mhz, and they were noiseless due to no moving part with very quick boot time (as low 10 sec with linux).

Details of this anywhere? I wanna take a look. PICS?

 

[ericboo]

I have two SFF PC's that have been modded with fans and they are not nearly as quiet as a Dell.

If you want to build something like you say, head over to Mini-itx and look into building a computer with one of the lower powered Epia motherboards that use passive cooling for the soldered in cpu.

 

[Kyn]

Thanks for all the replies. I'm going to take a while processing all the resources. Unfortunately I wasn't one of the blessed in that I can stand computer noise at quiet times(night, sleep)... ANY noise. My PS2 bugs me sometimes when I play at night. Since I want to leave a system on, that's gonna require a completely silent computer. I don't even think I can stand the whine of a harddrive if it's constantly on. Looks like I'll find what I need though thanks everyone!

 

[theNEOone]

ok best advice is get a dell.

dell=cheapo and silent
christ, they're selling $600 2.2 ghz nicely equipped systems - and this price includes an LCD!!!


and trust me on the silent part. i work in a lab full of dells. they are DEAD fvcking silent.

 

[Gage8]

if you don't feel like building one those hush itx's seem nice. The loudes component is probably the cd drive

 

[GnomeCop]

Those Hush technologies systems are very nice, almost bought one myself, would have made an excellent computer for downloading stuff, dvds, leaving on all the time, etc. But when I saw the price, I said forget it.