True. 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.
@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.
> 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 PCThat 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.
Why 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).
pornelMay 5, 2006
True. 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.
alf86May 5, 2006
@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.
anchoretMay 5, 2006
> 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 PCThat 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.
pcdirectMay 8, 2006
Why 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).