Does low-noise system exist?

I'll have to second the above poster. I also have the Zalman heatsink/fan. And that is the ONLY fan in my entire rig, so it's totally silent. The Barracudas are great too, fluid bearing...silent. No fans on my G200MMS or my motherboard. Oh, there is a fan on my power supply. It's totally silent.

If you have a noisy laptop, you need a fluid bearing harddrive, as that is the only things aside from the fan that makes noise and that you can swap out. I use an IBM fluid drive spinning at 5400rpm (GNX models). And if you listen to music on your cdrom drive, go to nero.com and look for the free DriveSpeed utility that will let your drive spin at the slowest rate.

Here's where you can purchase the Zelman heatsink/fan in the US. They also sell complete silent systems, though it's pricey. Also sell a bunch of other mods to silence your system including power supplies, fans etc... Want to water cool you system? LOL.

http://www.sharkacorp.com/

 

Very good suggestions, thanks exe. I like DriveSpeed so much. But is there a utility to let P4m run at lower clock rate? When I run CPU intensive applications, the system fan goes off and makes noisy. I'd like to ask the CPU slow down and do not care the application runs a little longer. Seems Intel SmartStep Technology only makes it automatical.

 

In a previous office I was in, we put the computers in a closet and ran keyboard and monitor cables below the floor to a KVM switch in a large conference room where lots of demos were done. It was pretty slick but you're limited to a practical distance. We used 65 ft cables.

For a home office setup you could proably use 20 ft cables.

 

I thought about running cables before finding my solutions posted previously. You will run into problems extending digital signals, such as USB devices, and especially DVI cables to your monitor.

 

gdz, you need to look in your Bios settings to see if there is such an option. I have a P3 laptop, which gives me that function, but my chip doesn't have speedstep. Also, make sure your laptop feet is deployed to get better air circulation.

 

My Windows 98 SE Compaq Presario was much louder before. Now, after I optimized it, it runs incredibly quietely.

 

It has been just released the new VIA C3 cpu that doesn't require any fan or active cooling.It's 1 Ghz (more than sufficient for trading),fsb 100Mhz, and can be installed on socket 370/slot 1 motherboards, 128 KB L1,64 KB LII, will cost $60.

 

If your serious about reducing pc noise, you should check out:

http://www.silentpcreview.com/

And they have a very active forum too:

http://forums.silentpcreview.com/forums/

 

Two approaches for noise reduction:
1. Lower the noise. The solutions posted here are impressive, but they are based on air cooling. The next generation technology is water cooling, I think all high-end PCs will be water-cooled in a few years. Here is some peek:
Desktop:http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20020102/index.html
Notebook:http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,102779,00.asp
2. Put the computer in another room. Long cables will be need to connect the computer with monitor, keyboard/mouse, or KVM switch. CablestoGo has all kinds of long or extension cables. http://www.cablestogo.com

 

6 months ago, I did rebuild from scratch the 2 PC I use for day-trading, having as target to make them as quiet as possible..
As this link was not mentioned yet, I recommend “The Silent PC”, an independent website at http://home.swipnet.se/tr/silence.html which really offers, for each individual component, a very detailed overview on all the noise issues and the performance in this area of the main companies of the PC parts industry…

These 2 PCs were build around ASUS A7V333 motherboards with AMD Athlon XP1900 processors. The mainboard itself does not have any integrated fan (my older A7V-133 had a little fan for cooling the VIA KT133 chipset.)

They do incorporate the following “quiet” elements :

1) The CPU heatsink is the huge ALPHA 8045 (it weights half a kilo !) associated to a PAPST fan (NGL8412). With 12 DbA, this is the quietest fan available on the market, while still producing enough air flow to keep the XP1900 at a reasonable temperature. For a review of the heatsink : http://www.overclockers.com/articles454/

2) The tower is an Enermax FS-710BB server case (similar to the Antec 1030) with two other Papst NGL8412 fans used to produce a “cooling” airflow in the case…

3) The 350 W Power supply is the EG365AX-VE FCA, as well from Enermax (a 430 W version is available too). I found it to be the best choice in term of a reliable and quiet power supply. The FMA/FCA series includes a knob allowing a manual control of the fan speed. (http://www.mikhailtech.com/articles/psu/enermax365fca/ for a review)

4) The hard disks are from the Barracuda series of Seagate. As already mentioned in this thread, there are significantly quieter than the standard HD from IBM or Maxtor..

5) Finally, the Videocard is a Matrox G550, which uses only passive heatsinks for cooling (no integrated fan)

The final result is really worth the effort and the investment : I do not notice anymore the noise of the running PCs !!

Eddy