FW: [slinkelist] Recommendation for quiet PC?

[Dylan Ginsburg]

Are you willing to build it yourself or are you only interested in
prepackaged PC's? If you are interested in building it yourself I can give
you some pointers.

First, there is a lot of discussion on this topic over at the HTPC forum at
http://www.avsforum.com . I suggest searching the forum for past
discussions.

There are 5 components that make noise in a typical PC. Here are my
suggestions:

Antec black desktop case. Antec power supplies are quiet with a variable
fan. The case is about the size of a large receiver and it doesn't look out
of place in an audio equipment rack. Be sure to get a floppy and CD/DVD with
a black bezel.

Golden Orb CPU fan. Some people have also tried underclocking their CPU's
and using passive cooling. I don't know if they've been successful. If you
feel like being really geeky you could go all out with some sort of water
based cooling solution that should be nearly silent. But that's pretty hard
core.

Quantum LCT15 or Samsung V10200 series hard drives. These drives are
specifically engineered to be quiet. Don't overlook the importance of
getting a quiet hard drive. While they may not measure as high on the
decibel meter as the fans, I find some drives produce a high pitched whine
that is more obnoxious than their SPL reading would suggest. Even though you
only need a 3 GB drive I strongly suggest that you not pick up an older
model. All of the drive manufacturers have made great strides in just the
past year or two in quieting their drives.

If you want a modern video card then I suggest the Geforce2 MX because it
only requires passive cooling (no fan). There are models with s-video
output. If you don't care about 3D graphics and want to save some money you
could pick up any number of older video cards on ebay. I'm partial to Matrox
2D cards myself but I've payed attention to video out so I don't know which
cards may have offered it.

I don't know much about relative volume levels of CD/DVD drives. A lot of
people on the HTPC forum - including myself - use the Toshiba black DVD
drive. It's quieter than a lot of the newer high speed CD/DVD drives and it
looks good in a black case. This drive is not made anymore but you can get
it at http://www.overstock.com . If this computer is going to be on a home
network you could even consider skipping the CD/DVD altogether. For the OS
installation you could temporarily put the new hard drive in one of you
other computers and copy the entire Windows CD onto the drive. From then on,
you can just access a shared CD on another computer when you need it.

-Dylan


-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff Schaffer [mailto:j.schaffer@snet.net]
Sent: Wednesday, January 03, 2001 2:43 PM
To: slinkelist@nirvis.com
Subject: [slinkelist] Recommendation for quiet PC?


Hi all,

I was wondering if anyone could recommend a model of PC that is 
particularly *quiet*. I need to operate it on my living/listening 
room, and really want to keep the noise level to a minimum. The 
machine will be dedicated to running CDJ, Timbuktu (remote control 
software), and occasionally IE.

Here's a kind of a target configuration:

Absolute minimum:

	Cost < $1,000
	Quiet!
	Small (desktop or tiny tower)
	500MHz or faster
	96MB RAM minimum
	3GB Hard drive minimum
	CD-ROM drive
	Video card to support 1024x768 or larger in True Color
	10/100Base-T Ethernet

Highly desirable:

	Cost  closer to $500
	Windows 2000
	Video out (or PCI slot to add) for TV connection
	Digital Audio input/output (or 2nd PCI slot)
	Serial (or USB-only for $100 less)
	FireWire (IEEE 1394) port

Any suggestions?

Jeff


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