Silent PC?

[dgsg]

Anyone know anything good/bad about this company? Appealing idea but the freaking case is $1219.00usd!

http://www.endpcnoise.com/cgi-bin/e/std/sku=tnn_fanless_p4.html

 

[Agentbolt]

Cripes! I've heard of SilentPC, and I've heard good things, but just HOW important is silent computing to some people? My computer sounds like a taxiing jet with the 120MM fans going and I still don't hear it anymore (I guess my brain just kinda tunes it out). I can't imagine dropping what seems to be an extra 800-1000 dollars to get perfect silence from my rig.

edit: misread the page, I thought SilentPC made the case. Zalman's obviously a well-known name in PC cooling, most people like them. EndPCnoise.com I've never heard of.

 

[PhoenixOrion]

company: zalman or endpcnoise.com??

as far as the price goes for silentpc, there are many suckers out there and there's also the point of view that silence is priceless and people find it actually worthwhile.

 

[biostud]

Water cooling w/triple 120mm low RPM fans + Seasonic PSU

 

[DaveSimmons]

EndPCNoise has been a sponsor of SilentPCReview.com for awhile now, but I've never dealt with them.

SPCR reviewed a couple of the Zalman heatsink cases.

I'm happy with my "very quiet" work PC: Antec NSK-4400, Biostar TForce 6100-939 (fanless chipset), A64 X2 3800+ with Zalman 7000-alcu HSF. Total cost was less than that Zalman case

 

[mshan]

Silent PC Review designed comuters built by End PC Noise:

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article698-page1.html

 

[jkresh]

that zalman case is impressive (and very heavy), but it depends on what you are looking for. As it has no fans the only noise you will get is from your hard drives/optical drives and that should be muffled by the case, but without fans you wont be able to overclock and switching components (especialy cpu/gpu...) will be a bit more difficult then with a standard system. It doesn't seem that they are significantly overcharging for their labor on the system (you are mostly paying for the parts which is good), but again it depends on what you want out of the system. As you could build your own nearly silent pc with watercooling and a bunch of low cfm 120mm fans and actually get a decent overclock out of it as well.

 

[Chubbbs]

Those passive heatpipe cases (by Zalman) are ridiculous. With a little care, you can build an actively cooled system that falls below the ~22dBA@1m ambient levels in even the most quiet residential environments--without sacrificing performance. Here's how:

Antec P180 - the gold standard in quiet cases, but the TriCool fans need to go bye-bye
Scythe Ninja Rev B - can passively cool damn near anything in a P180
Scythe S-Flex SFF21E - just about the quietest fans you can get that start reliably at 5V; one comes with the Ninja, you'll need a second
Corsair HX520W - Whisper quiet like other Seasonic-based PSUs, but Corsair adds modular cables without the stupid 60mm fan on the M12.
Thermalright HR-03 - Get rid of that loud stock GPU cooler and put on this bad boy, which sits right in the same airflow path as the Ninja
Gigabyte P965-DQ6 - Best stock passive cooling system on a motherboard. Asus P5B Deluxe gets honorable mention.

Put the S-Flex fans in the rear and top mounts of the P180 as exhaust (preferably with AcoustiFan or similar silicone soft-mounts), undervolt them to 5V using one of several methods (Zalman Fanmate, the 5V wiring trick, NMT-2 temp-sensitive controller, etc.). Get rid of the fan in the bottom chamber. Now you have a 22dBA@1m system that can run any C2D at stock and any graphics card short of the 8800. If you want to overclock, put your optical drive in the bottom bay, put a Scythe Kama Bay without the included fan in the top three bays, and block off the front fan grill (with duct tape). The graphics card becomes a partial baffle that keeps most of the airflow going straight across the upper half of the motherboard where nearly all of your heat is being dissipated (by the Ninja, DQ6, and HR-03). Put all of your hard disks in the bottom chamber cage, remove the upper chamber cage completely, and remove any remaining I/O slot covers. Now you have a 22dBA@1m system for moderate overclocking. Add the Kama Bay fan for more cooling at a 1-2dBA@1m noise penalty.

That's essentially what you'll glean from 100 hours of reading SPCR, condensed for your convenience.

 

[Rubycon]

I like to hear the computer particular the hard drives thrashing.

 

[ForumMaster]

get and an enclosure for harddrives and a fan-less PSU and a some watercooling and your computer will be pretty silent as well.

 

[andy04]

Try scythe Ninja with AS5 and 120mm fan @ ~1000 RPM, it will cool any domestic CPU without noise and cost only 50 bucks. mine is barely audible, during peak summer or if i am playing games for extended hours I turn the fan to around 1800 RPM that makes a bit noise but with games... well...

 

[Rubycon]

Kind of hard to keep 8 15k SAS drives quiet. But like a hopped up motorcar, they run like the wind.