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- crexor, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9umm, get some vegetable oil, problem solved :D
see: http://digg.com/mods/Strip_Out_The_Fans,_Add_8_Gallons_of_Cooking_Oil ;) - dgendreau, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7More info on quiet or silent PC components:
www.silentpcreview.com - handle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6"Another Idea would be to use an old fridge as a case."
As someone who once had to sleep in the same room as an old fridge, I can tell you now, that won't be silent. - Snooper1989, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Couldn't you just use liquid cooling?
- weiran, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Just because you put the foam in doesn't mean you'll cover all the exhaust vents. You still need airflow, this is just about reducing noise. He could've gone a step further and get a Zalman GPU cooler, although the nice point about the nVidia cooler is it does pump out the hot air out of the case.
- Alexalamode, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5The only question I have is why the writer is referencing Paris Hilton.
- ucg1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Do not stick a machine like that in a cupboard or closet without ventilation. All that heat will have problems disipitating and you'll overheat your machine.
- alf86, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8@agentgonzo:
Then you've bought two computers instead of one. Maybe not buying the macmini means you can afford more than 3TB. You know, macs aren't the answer to everything. - Mac2492, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Ear plugs! Ear muffs? I've got it!... Meditation. Voila! No sound... Or you could just follow that guide up there... (Spoil sport! :P)
- ucg1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4You need it silent for when you have the stereo/TV off, but you don't want to have to shut down the PC all the time. As for CPU speed, the more the better if you're doing any encoding (e.g. recording live TV to a compressed format).
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4exactly, media centers dont' need state of the art cpu's you drives, they need lots of expansions cards and inputs and outputs
- buso, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6"Why record TV when you can download it?"
Because you won't get sued by recording it at home :) - rebrad, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Or you can just buy a Mac Power Book Pro and deny that there is any whine or heat problem.
- disgruntled, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5yeah but can your mac mini hold up to 9 hard drives (if you use every bay on this case)
my uber media center PC (built in a sonata 1) whups a mac minis ass in storage space. (I have something like 3+ terabytes on the thing)
and as soon as I swap the CPU to one that'll run OSX86+frontrow itll pull even with it in the department OS too. - handle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3True! Ignore the PCmag article, these guys have the low-down.
- trogdor282, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4My PSU was loud so I sealed it in a 1gal metal can full of oil. works like a charm although the surface of the can (steel) dissipates less heat than I hoped. It stays about 105-110F. A little less if I set the can in a pan of water.
- Anchoret, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Having hyperacusis, this is a serious issue for me.
Top-grade, heavy, rubber rebond carpet padding is better and hugely cheaper. Cut it with a metal straightedge and a snap-blade knife. Glue it in with thick layers of roofer's cold patch, which is very similar to automotive undercoating, also a sound deadener. Isolate all sound and vibration sources from the chassis with silicone glue. Suspend hard drives from chassis mounts with either silicone straps or ones cut from old inner-tube rubber. Have silicone rubber feet on the computer case.
Use only 120mm low-speed fans. Ultra has PSs that use them, and Fry's recently had one free after rebate. It's very quiet.
I have the identical Zalman CPU cooler as used in the article (Fry's, US$24.99 on sale), but haven't found it that quiet, though cooling is excellent at low fan speed. CPU in office usage is only a little above ambient temperature.
The computer CPU box in my recording studio is going to be moved to a (ventilated) hallway closet on the other side of the wall, with the cabling to the studio controls, rackmount unit and A/V monitoring run through a foam-sealed hole.
The ultimate solution! - muller, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Or the easy way... just buy an Antec Sonata II and you really won't notice the sound much at all.
It's the one they used in the article and I can tell you from personal experience... that's the best, fastest way to make your PC quiet. - retawd, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6I built a completely silent pc once, but it got really hot and only worked for about an hour...;P
- agentgonzo, on 10/12/2007, -8/+11disgruntled:
If you 'need' over 3TB of storage, then you can get that beastly machine with all the storage, and stick it in a cupboard, in the cellar, etc, anywhere where it can't be heard, and then access all it's files across the network from your nice silent (and also small and attractive) mac mini in your living room. - agentgonzo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4If all you want to use it for is a home theatre, then why on earth do you need a top of the range machine? A 2GHz machine is more than enough, and you can get quiet fans running on it.
Or even buy a mini-itx machine. You can get a fanless 1.2GHz machine that will run any multimedia stuff you need quite happily (with the possible exception of HD), and there are no moving parts, except for the hard drive and DVD drive when that's running. You can get a silent hard drive enclosure, and you won't be able to hear it at all (or get a Barracuda IV!) - NightReaver, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3We used to use that foam in a couple of our IDF's until the switches kept failing and were too hot to even touch when they needed to be replaced....
- willhoy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I have 3 Sonata II's. They are an excellent case for a budget-mid-range system. I think they run about $100 and come w/ an excellent power supply (so long as your not rockin the SLI or X-fire).
- timbtwisted, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Well despite the fact that the writer proves to be lame by quoting Paris Hilton, the aarticle does make some good points. The PS they used was a little pricey but I really like the foam idea. I also own both the mobo and case they used in the article, both are high quality and I'd recommend them to anyone.
- djdole, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Heat pipes from the GPU, CPU, hard disks, and possibly even the power-source. Route them all to the outer case and have heat-fins on the case to dissipate the heat. Basically make you entire case the heat-sink. (you can buy premade cases like this).
No fans = VERY silent.
To step it up a notch remove all conventional hard disks, and install a solid state hard disk for the OS and current PVR recordings. Then configure the media center to move any older recordings/media from the local disk to a NAS file server.
If I had the moolah it takes, THAT would be MY choice for setup. Of course, such a setup would be quite costly.
But don't insulate the thing with foam like this guy did. Insulation keeps heat from escaping or entering (reflects heat back into the case), and just ups the chances of your case overheating.
Another Idea would be to use a mini fridge as a case. That would keep ALL the components cool, and as long as you didn't keep opening it the humidity would be relatively constant. You could even create a cluster fridge. ;-)
BEST bet for a silent home theater PC solution would be just to maintain a media server closet in another room and route all the A/V wires, through the walls, to your home theater. That other room could be as noisy as needed, and still provide you with a silent theater room. (No one ever said a home theater PC needs to be in the same room. Just the IR, and A/V connections. :-) ) - hardran3, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I tend to disagree. Mac's are far better suited to Media Center tasks because you can dual boot OS X/Windows. OS X for Media stuff and Windows for games.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -7/+9this is stupid. it won't be silent and it'll get hot as hell with all that foam in it
- ultrachrome, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2www.silentpcreview.com
The PC mag article is kind of lame. C .
Foam has the lowest ROI for noise reduction in a PC. A better choice of CPU heatsink (tower-style), some cardboard, duct tape, and rubber bands would do far more to reduce noise than $80 worth of foam.
I heartily recommend checking out SPCR. - Bokista, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I too have a Sonata II. It's extremely quiet unless I pump up the fans inside to spin at their highest RPM (which I almost never do). Granted I haven't put any foam in it... but it's a good place to start.
- nurriz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Hard to describe that solution as silent isn't it?
- waynejkruse10, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I tend to agree. PC's are far better suited to Media Center tasks because you can dual boot Linux/Windows. Linux for Media stuff and Windows for games. Or if you want to use Windows for both, even easier.
- willhoy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3OK, I'm sorry, but a Mac Mini is not the end all for HTPC. I mean i play Oblivion and FEAR on my system through my home theater. Are you telling me that I can just drop in a Mac Mini instead to play all my games, encode, rip etc... You'll never convince me that a mac is anywhere near as utilitarian as a PC.
- ra3ndy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2The real downside of having a Mac Mini is the onboard graphics. And since the video processor uses the system memory, it can only be helped by maxing out the RAM in the mini. Still, they are showing to perform well. I haven't found a "Windows-booted Gaming on a Mac Mini HTPC" HTPC" review yet, so hard to say what framerates you get out of it.
As for dvi->hdmi, cables are available for this conversion and it works well with most HDTVs, save for Sony.
As for encoding, there are several high-end dvd re-encoders. ffmpegx is one of the better ones.
Still, better options ARE available for price vs. performance, but the mini's adavntage is it's unobtrusive size and relative silence. - saddad, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Why is everyone suggesting a mac mini? Can it handle dvi->hdmi well with all the right timings and resolution? (Real question, since I have never tried.)
Last time I checked, apple really doesn't have that great of programs to re-encode DVDs (good quality, not something the equivalent of a 1 click dvd copier) or rip to xvid. Avisynth is one of the best frameserving tools out there for encoding, but to my knowledge, it has not been ported to *nix and definitely not OSX.
These would be a few things stopping me from buying a mini. - Anchoret, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1> The PC mag article is kind of lame.
Agreed. It's more about "how to buy a lot of expensive stuff from our advertisers."
> Foam has the lowest ROI for noise reduction in a PC
That entirely depends on the foam and the case. Some foam is utterly useless, sonically transparent and not dense enough for contact-damping the case vibrations. Some cases are just incredibly resonant and noisy and require heavy damping of the panels and attachments not to actually amplify their internal noises.
Relatively little heat is dissipated through the typical case walls, but increased cooling efficiency is important anyway. Additional (isolated) case fans can be added and their voltage input adjusted downward somewhat by adding one or more salvaged 1N400* rectifiers to the power connection until the RPMs reach the optimum compromise of noise to efficiency. Most fans are in fact receiving about 5%-10% more than their rated voltage in a typical box, resulting in higher than rated fan speed causing increased racket and decreased airflow from cavitation. - pornel, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2True. I've tried building silent PC myself, but eventually I've given up and got an iMac - it's silent, compact, powerful enough for me and has price/value comparable with silent PCs.
- silkworm, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1There are completely fanless cases available: http://www.zalman.co.kr/eng/product/code_list.asp?code=020 Price is a little bit steep though. The higher models are ~$1000. And you would need a flashdrive to make it complete silent.
- FelixSchmelix, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Buy this: http://www.deltatronic.de/int/fanless_pc.html. I did and I love it. I also have an intel mini; it is quiet but not nearly as quiet as the deltatronic box.
- plankmonkey, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3Mac mini?? Get yourself a modded Xbox with XBMC and hook it up to your network and stream movies, music etc.
- FelixSchmelix, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Mythtv on the mac works very well, as do Frontrow (with wmv and divx/xvid codecs installed) and Mediacentral.
- trogdor282, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1As PC's go, the xbox is pretty quiet. Plus with the sub 10 second boot time, it only has to be on when you're using it.
- SniperX, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1There's an easier solution: Ear Plugs.
- PCDirect, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Why would you want to use such a large case anyways? AOpen makes some great barebone PC's that would work much better. Throw in a real video card like and ATI AIW, large SATA II drives, and away you go. Forget all the Mac Mini crap for now. Even with BootCamp, how are you going to get an HDTV tuner installed? Forget an external USB 2.0 tuner and I have not seen any Firewire devices that support HDTV (I could be wrong there).
- pbrooks100, on 10/12/2007, -5/+3The best way to get a quiet PC is with the OFF button ;-)
- plankmonkey, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0PJBonoVox, thanks for the advice. The only noise from an xbox when streaming is the fan and you can soft adjust that so that its pretty much silent. It's as silent as you're going to get.
If you want to record TV then don't use an xbox, or as someone has already pointed out you can download it, its soon to be free and legal. - slippery, on 10/12/2007, -7/+4Silent computers for a home theater can be purchased for less than $600 new; it's called a Mac Mini.
- plankmonkey, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0And as XBMC is a continuing project its highly likely it will have some kind of PVR functionality at some stage.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+0And how do you suppose we use this X-Box to record TV? Think first, type after.
- leonwehttam, on 10/12/2007, -15/+8umm get a MacMini, problem solved :D
- WaterDragon, on 10/12/2007, -12/+4How to get a silent PC:
Obtain handgun.
Hold near right ear, point away from head.
Squeeze trigger.
Repeat for left ear.
All is silent!
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