Quiet PC: from niche to mainstream

[HEXUS]

Operations manager Paul Lee discusses the inspirations and virtues behind Quiet PC.

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[ByteMyAscii]

I also find the marketing usage of "silence" to be rather annoying.
While now having replaced my stock cpu cooler with a tower cooler, that is still the noisiest part of my system.
Though I am going to see if my very old motherboard has much control in the BIOS to deal with that, otherwise I will just run some software to reduce the speed.

[spacein_vader]

I think his view that the noisiest part of a PC is the CPU cooler is outdated. CPUs use less power than ever and OEM coolers are MUCH improved on a decade ago. I'd say that GPUs are probably the prime noise maker now.

[Mr_Jon]

I think his view that the noisiest part of a PC is the CPU cooler is outdated. CPUs use less power than ever and OEM coolers are MUCH improved on a decade ago. I'd say that GPUs are probably the prime noise maker now.

Yeah. All my case fans, along with the cpu fan, are 140mm. Rarely get over 50% speed (controlled via speedfan), and are pretty much inaudible. The GPU fans, however, are much smaller (92mm, or even a weird size), and frequently get to near full-speed. It's like a plane taking off in comparison.

There's not as much that can be done about this. One, buy a gpu cooler...but the fan sizes are again often much smaller than 140mm. Two, watercool it - bit pricey, and there aren't as many 140 options as 120. Three, bodge something up with larger fans (tried, but never had any success with a gpu as the surfaces tend not to be flat, unlike cpu heatsinks).

I plumped for option one. Getting a Prolimatech mk-26 shipped over, which can house two 140mm fans. Mmmm-mm. It was either that or the Raijintek Morpheus II from OcUK. I previously had a cpu cooler from Prolimatech (a Genesis black series, dirt cheap off ebay), and it was a wonderful piece of engineering so they got my vote. The mk-26 is compatible with all current (reference-ish design) gpu's, which means I should get a lot of years out of it. Due to gpu prices, I won't upgrade my 780ti for at least 18 months, and even then it will be for a 9 or 10 series, which it is also compatible with.

/justification of expensive new toy over.

[Xlucine]

One thing that can really grate is when a manufacturer markets their product as being “ultra-silent” (or similar), when quite clearly it has moving parts. Anything that moves will generate some noise to a degree. The definition of the word “silent” is “not making or accompanied by any sound”, therefore it is either silent or it isn’t; there is no variation. *rant over* J

If you've got DC-DC voltage conversion, you've got sound emitted - no fans needed. Zero sound emitted does not exist, for anything - "silence" is a psychoacoustics term, not acoustics, so you only need zero noise to qualify. If it's emitting sound with an RMS pressure less than 20 μPa then it's absolutely silent, and anything that's more than 5 dB or so below ambient is effectively silent irregardless of the number of moving parts.

[Strawb77]

but why are they (still) using mechanical drives?

[aidanjt]

I think his view that the noisiest part of a PC is the CPU cooler is outdated. CPUs use less power than ever and OEM coolers are MUCH improved on a decade ago. I'd say that GPUs are probably the prime noise maker now.

On idle, sure. Under load, not so much, TDPs are still high, and stock coolers are still awful when the CPU is running full tilt. GPUs come with a wide range of coolers out of the box, even blowers aren't quite as bad as they used to be. Although personally I think the biggest noise enemy nowadays are coils. It's easy enough to pick very quiet cooling components, but whiny coils aren't nearly as easy to change or modify.

[wazzickle]

I bought a streacom FC8 alpha OD from quietpc a couple of years back. There was a standoff missing, I called, the guy I spoke to was really nice and mailed out a bag of standoffs first class, no charge. When I had issues with heatpipe placement, the guy talked through the details with me and helped me fix the problem.

Other than a DVD drive, my i5 kaby lake system runs totally silent, and if I were to build a new one, quietpc would be my first place to shop.

[chinf]

"from a noise point of view air cooling is easier to manage as you can control the speed of the fans. This unfortunately is not possible with water pumps"

I've been able to achieve the impossible then with various AIOs and my full custom loop.

[spacein_vader]

"from a noise point of view air cooling is easier to manage as you can control the speed of the fans. This unfortunately is not possible with water pumps"

I've been able to achieve the impossible then with various AIOs and my full custom loop.

He's right in principle though, water has more noise sources than air. It's better at cooling and good for overclocking but for silence good air still beats good water.

[Xlucine]

He's right in principle though, water has more noise sources than air. It's better at cooling and good for overclocking but for silence good air still beats good water.

There's more potential noise sources, but there are some seriously good liquid coolers out now:

https://hexus.net/tech/reviews/cooli...us-s24/?page=2

The 0.3 dB difference at idle is not really noticeable, whereas the 1.7 dB difference under load is just about audible. It's probably just because the S24 and NH-D15S are both quieter than the ambient in hexus towers, but that does mean they're both effectively silent

[Arashmickey]

Most of these builds look really classy. I guess a window is noisier than sound dampening material, but it's very much worth it to me.

[sam_cat]

Have been running silent computers for a few years now.

Intel NUC I7 in an Akasa case, totally passive, no moving parts.
Its silent, and I love it. Used initially as a HTPC, now used for productivity stuff and sometimes as a HTPC.

Also built a Streacom FC5 with an I7 T cpu (35w), again, passively cooled with zero moving parts (other than the bluray drive).

More recently the RaspberryPi has been filling some of my silent computing needs.

Once you have used a proper silent PC its hard to go back.


Happy to report that all the parts were purchased from QuitePC Been using them for years, great company to deal with.