I am looking for a very quiet desktop and wonder if anyone knows: 1) which if any of the mainstream brands, e.g., Dell, carry quiet models 2) which of the non-mainstream brands are the best buy. Also, is there any advantage to ordering XP pro versus the home version? Thanks.
don't use xp home if you can help it, I have hard time install a bunch of software and help desk has no idea what went wrong since their xp is ok. I suspect there is big diff between home vs pro.
In my experience Dells are very quiet. I spent mucho bucks building a custom PC out of quiet components, only to find that a stock Dell Dimension was even quieter. My experience with Compaq and some white box manufacturers has been just the opposite. -blueberrycake
I have had problems with high pitch whiny hard drives in the past. What ever computer you get, make sure the hard drive has some sort of "quiet drive" technology and check out user reviews for it at on the net (ie..www.cnet.com). I now have a Maxtor with their Quiet Drive Technology and Hydrodynamic Bearing motor technology and it is very quiet. Good Luck
The quietest hard drives are the Seagate Barracuda iv and v. Another site with quiet pc discussion is http://www.silentpcreview.com/ see the links on the bottom of this page for other quiet pc sites http://www.via.com.tw/en/viac3/C3_silentbck.jsp#prob
One of the reasons I posted is that my Dell Dimensions P4s are very noisy, even after replacing two power supplies. It seems that by Dells own data sheets, we cannot categorize whole model classes as quiet or noisy: http://www.dell.com/us/en/gen/corporate/vision_datasheets_environment_environ.htm Considering that 6-10 db at idle accounts for a perceived doubling of noise, some models in the same line are twice as loud as others. Based on this info, my Dimension would test 4X as loud as some of the less noisy optiplexes. Thanks for the info. Has anyone actually purchased a PC from endpcnoise or silentpc?