Quiet AND fast... surely not impossible?

[DeeKnow]

I keep wanting to upgrade from my 600MHz P3, but already find the noise of my current machine distracting (my son wants me to power off the thing before he can fall asleep in his room)

Now i know some smartypants came up with speedstep and such for the notebooks, but hasn't anyone come up with on-the-fly gearshift for CPU's that will let me have the power AND the quiet in my desktop(not at the same time, naturally)?

Surely thats not asking for too much... I want a machine that can crank up to 2-3 GHz when i want to edit video, fall back to 500MHz when I am just surfing and emailing, and kinda snooze along at 100MHz all night when i'm just downloading stuff / or just want to leave my machine running without having it burn up 200watts all night... i havent read up much on the new technologies, but maybe the mobile CPU\s do that??

 

[charloscarlies]

The A64's do that. It's called Cool N' Quiet.

 

[L00PY]

A less expensive solution would be something like an AMD Mobile Barton 2600+ and just run it at full speeds all the time (2 GHz off a low 1.4V). They drop into your standard desktop AMD Socket A mobos like their desktop counterparts. Given its overclocking ability, could probably even undervolt it at stock speeds to get the temps down even lower. That said, you'll need to have very good airflow through your case. Low speed case fans and the right HSF and vid card and you can have quiet and fast at a reasonable price.

 

[pelikan]

All you have to do to have a quiet desktop is get a case with good ventilation, use quiet fans, and use a top of the line Thermalright heatsink on the cpu. Check out SPCR.

 

[AWhackWhiteBoy]

Thermalright cpu cooler, silent fans, and seagate hard drives.

 

[Bar81]

Well, my rig is silent excep for the new Vid Card (which I'm not keeping anyway) When I had my 9700 Pro in it with Arctic Cooling VGA Silencer it was completely silent. I use Papst low noise fans (4x92mm, 1x80mm) with Zalman Fanmates and that way I can completely kill the noise. If you don't need absolute silence you can get by with a cheaper solution.

Generally the noisemakers:
1. Power Supply - get something from SilenX or if you're not willing to fork out the cash check out the Nexus 300W PSU
2. Video Card - get something like the Radeon 9700 Pro and pair it with the AC VGA Silencer
3. CPU Fan - Pick an Alpha or Thermalright HS that allows you to use any standard fan and choose a quiet fan
4. Northbridge Fan - Either pick a motherboard with a passively cooled chipset or replace the active cooling with the Zalman HS
5. Case Fan - like I said above choose quiet fans and use Zalman fanmates

Check out siliconacoustics.com They have all the gear

 

[DeeKnow]

thanks for all your answers people... It bugs me that I have to go about building all these custom solutions? why should it be so hard to have Cool N Quiet?

besides, if i follow your advice, I havea system that's quiet but still burns thru 200 watts all day and all night - most of which time it isn't doing very much useful....

surely the technology to get a CPU to 'downshift' when idle cant be rocket-science? then i wouldn't need any of this fancy low-noise stuff!

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: DeeKnow
thanks for all your answers people... It bugs me that I have to go about building all these custom solutions? why should it be so hard to have Cool N Quiet?

besides, if i follow your advice, I havea system that's quiet but still burns thru 200 watts all day and all night - most of which time it isn't doing very much useful....

surely the technology to get a CPU to 'downshift' when idle cant be rocket-science? then i wouldn't need any of this fancy low-noise stuff!

As was already stated... that's what AMD's Cool N Quiet feature does.

An A64 3400+ starts at 2200 MHz at 1.5 volts and is rated at 89 watts
It's intermediate power state is 2000 MHz at 1.4 volts and is rated at 70 watts
It's minimum power state is 800 Mhz at 1.3 volts and is rated at 35 watts

At it's lowest 800 MHz, it can probably be passively cooled.

 

[jjlawren]

Sure, but what boards actually support Cool 'n Quiet?

 

[Accord99]

Originally posted by: DeeKnow
thanks for all your answers people... It bugs me that I have to go about building all these custom solutions? why should it be so hard to have Cool N Quiet?

besides, if i follow your advice, I havea system that's quiet but still burns thru 200 watts all day and all night - most of which time it isn't doing very much useful....

surely the technology to get a CPU to 'downshift' when idle cant be rocket-science? then i wouldn't need any of this fancy low-noise stuff!

CPUs already have this technology since the Pentium era with the Halt instruction which is executed by all modern OSes during idle cycles and significantly reduces the CPU's power dissipation. When halted, the Northwood P4 based system should see >60W reduction in power consumption and is as effective as Cool and Quiet is for the A64.

 

[charloscarlies]

Originally posted by: jjlawren
Sure, but what boards actually support Cool 'n Quiet?

The Asus K8V Deluxe does. It works pretty well too. I know there are a couple other boards that support it as well.

 

[pelikan]

No cpu runs at full voltage all the time. That only happens under load.

 

[Dman877]

Originally posted by: charloscarlies

Originally posted by: jjlawren
Sure, but what boards actually support Cool 'n Quiet?

The Asus K8V Deluxe does. It works pretty well too. I know there are a couple other boards that support it as well.

I think most A64 boards support C/Q.

 

[Dman877]

Originally posted by: DeeKnow
thanks for all your answers people... It bugs me that I have to go about building all these custom solutions? why should it be so hard to have Cool N Quiet?

besides, if i follow your advice, I havea system that's quiet but still burns thru 200 watts all day and all night - most of which time it isn't doing very much useful....

surely the technology to get a CPU to 'downshift' when idle cant be rocket-science? then i wouldn't need any of this fancy low-noise stuff!

Comps that aren't running a load, even when running full speed dont draw nearly the power they do under load (as evidenced by thermal ouput but also varifiable with an amp-meter). No PC (except maybe if you use phase-change cooling) will burn through 200 watts while idle.

 

[jagec]

*cough* watercooling *cough*