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The quietest rig on the planet: Passivley cooled P4?

F

FishTankX

Platinum Member
I'm thinking of using a passivley cooled 300 watt powersupply (Yes, those ones with the massive heatsinks that cost 200$) and running a 2.4C at 100MHZ FSB. This would give me 1.2GHZ which should be within the grasp of passive cooling. What do you all think? My cooling idea was the new Zalman or the Pal 8045(Is that the correct model number for the P4 version?)/ Or MCX478.

The second option is just to put on a 12DB Pabst.

This rig will be predominantly diskless (Booting into 2000 off a flash card, using NAS).
 
Actually, there was a guy at SilentPCReview that passively cooled a P4 3.06 awhile back running at factory speeds/voltages. Of course, he made his entire case into a heatsink..... but that's another story.

Passive cooling MIGHT be difficult in a closed case--because with NO fans anywhere, you'll have no air circulation to make your heatsink do much.

Also note that if you're going to be putting in case fans, you might as well put a fan on the CPU heatsink--the heatsink fan "buried" in a closed case emits less noise than a case fan. 🙂

If you succeed, definitely post pics/ideas here... I'd be quite interested!!!
 
theoretically it should be possible but y. Everyone knows a P4 at round 1Ghz range are quite slow (even slower than 1GHz copperine P3) My guess is that it would be on par with a C3 for desktop applications and this is my guess at what you want this system for.
 
i would use one of those 80mm heatsinks and use a panfolo on there, you'll barely hear it.

C'mon are your ears THAT sensitive that they can't stand a 1500rpm fan?
 
might work with a well ventilated case. atleast 2 intake 2 outtake. doesn't matter if you got passive cooling if all the air is hot inside.

get a rheostat and fanbus and run the fans at some insanely low speed. all you will hear is the harddrive.

thats how it is with my case, harddrive is bugging the sh*t out of me. i need a silent drive or something.
 
The rig will be driveless and it will be open case to allow for venthilation. I might consider having a duct come in from the other room, though.
 
To update this, this would be used as an audio capture system, so it would have to be sub 15DB
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Use RDS on the beast and have a 100% fanless AND diskless system in the studio. It WILL be SILENT for sure. DEAD silent. 15dB is over 28x louder than it should be in a studio...

-DAK-
 
That's what I imagined.. but it's not a big time studio. Just helping my friend record his rock band. So my standards are lower.

I'm aiming for totally passivley cooled system. A tower case, flipped on it's side (So that the heat rises directly) and the most powerful heatsink I can get with a P4 2.4C running at 100MHZ FSB (1.2GHZ) and undervolted as far as it will go, with a fanless powersupply. And a flash based disk system, capturing to a system in the other room. That's my plan so far.

Anyone seeing anything wrong with a 1.2GHZ P4 being passivley cooled by a MC478 or such? (The big monster heatsinks)
 
Anyone seeing anything wrong with a 1.2GHZ P4 being passivley cooled by a MC478 or such? (The big monster heatsinks)
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HEAT! They will still get very hot, albeit taking a good twenty minutes to reach TBT. They may not actually reach this temp depending on how friendly the surrounding environment is to convective induction. Just constructing a crude hyperbolic eductor out of cardboard can lower the cpu temps as much as ten degrees due to the chimney effect. It's cheap and SILENT obviously.

Since most rock music has its dynamic range rather compressed and exhibits a much lower crest factor than classical music, a "dell quiet" system would probably not even be noticed. Always eliminate the hums from small fans and poorly installed hard disk cages as it will definitely appear in the captured results. Once contaminated, it is extremely difficult to remove without threatening the quality of the master. Thyristor buzz from stage lighting is such an artifact.

Ok enough rambling for now. 🙂 Good luck.

-DAK-
 
Is it impossible for you to have the case in a different room, or at least far away from the band? Why not just run a mic?
 
Originally posted by: shuttleteam
Anyone seeing anything wrong with a 1.2GHZ P4 being passivley cooled by a MC478 or such? (The big monster heatsinks)
Click to expand...

HEAT! They will still get very hot, albeit taking a good twenty minutes to reach TBT. They may not actually reach this temp depending on how friendly the surrounding environment is to convective induction. Just constructing a crude hyperbolic eductor out of cardboard can lower the cpu temps as much as ten degrees due to the chimney effect. It's cheap and SILENT obviously.

Since most rock music has its dynamic range rather compressed and exhibits a much lower crest factor than classical music, a "dell quiet" system would probably not even be noticed. Always eliminate the hums from small fans and poorly installed hard disk cages as it will definitely appear in the captured results. Once contaminated, it is extremely difficult to remove without threatening the quality of the master. Thyristor buzz from stage lighting is such an artifact.

Ok enough rambling for now. 🙂 Good luck.

-DAK-
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Well, maybe I haven't explained everything clearly enough.

The heatsink will have full contact with the air, and will be oriented in a fashion that heat will rise out of the case. There will be no fans in this system, nor any hard disks. I will be capturing to a system in the other room, though LAN. The powersupply is fanless. I will be booting off a 512MB CF card.

You know, I wonder if I could get a hand on those weird hospital ionic fans. I wonder if they would cause electrical havok on the system, though..
 
I will be booting off a 512MB CF card.
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What OS? Queue depth of (especially XP) Windows NT based OS' could really shorten the life of the CFD.

You know, I wonder if I could get a hand on those weird hospital ionic fans. I wonder if they would cause electrical havok on the system, though..
Click to expand...

You MUST make sure all metal in the path of the breeze downstream is bonded to the same potential as the system ground the fan is plugged into. See Van De Graaff for reference!

See this article for a concept of simple positive pressure cooling with NZN.

-DAK-
 
Swap will be turned off, i'll be using 1GB of RAM. I know, turning off swap is a bad idea. But atleast it'll save my flash card. I'm thinking of transfering swap to the NAS but I'm not sure if that'll be good for the latency of the audio stream.
 
Lack of technical expertise among other things.

I'm network illiterate. I was just planning to map over a network drive and capture to it. I assume the gigabit ethernet on both sides should keep things nice and fast. (Gotta love CSA!!)

Do you think if I soundproofed the inside of the case I could get away with ducting cooling from the other room (through the door or wall or something) with a 12DB pabst fan? Since the rotational noise would be on the other side of the door, I imagine the wind noise would be sub 10DB and I'm pretty much sure sound proofing (As well as sealing the case) could allow a 12DB fan to suck heat outside of the room while still maintaing decent venthilation.
 
GLAN works wonders...providing you avoid the rogue chipset. PCI efficiency is a big player here! Not only will you be limited to <200 Mbps average, cpu useage will go over the top causing serious setbacks...

Remote cooling is a wonderful idea and you can pull some serious liters/min through a case before it starts whistling at you!

-DAK-
 
I've always wondered.. you guys have to keep the DB level so low.. but wouldn't the human heart and lungs average around 10DB or thereabouts?
 
Shuttle team, you're not serious are you? How do they really adress this situation?

Hey, that case is a cool idea! Maybe I should just take a car radiator and hook it up to the CPU with a heatplate and heat pipe! That would be a wonderful thing.
 
Does the box have to be small? I seen an excellent box design that places a computer within a box that has large fans that drawn air into the box through a dampened S turn and exhaust the air through a dampened S turn. I think it had 4 120mm fans that moved alot of air, so cooling wasn't an issue and that way you can still run full speed with a quiet heatsink/fan combo and use drives if you so chose. Just make a removable top panel to get to the inside case to work on it or even put a CD into a drive if need be.
 
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