[skudmunky]

Quote:

Originally Posted by vulc4n /img/forum/go_quote.gif All of my systems have been overclocked 'silent' rigs. It's a huge challenge to do both of those at the same time, but its really rewarding I think.

yeah I overclock silently too. It's tough, but I'm a gamer! I need 100 fps at high res.


Quote:

Originally Posted by stevenkelby /img/forum/go_quote.gif It was a couple thousand more than doing the same thing "noisy" but I recently built a PC that is quieter than the noise floor in my silent room in the middle of the night. The loudest thing in the room is the monitor hum and I went through half a dozen models to get the quietest, then modded it too. Hard drives are the biggest challenge by far. A slowed 2.5" drive in about 4 layers of soundproofing, scythe case, suspended inside a box etc is inaudible from 1ft away. I use normal drives, still quietened for most things but they turn off after 5 min of inactivity, then I can browse and run foobar in silence. The P180 case weighs nearly 50lb now. In a SBT no one can pick whether it's on or not. It was well worth it to me. As for EMI, only an optical out has been a clean signal for me. Everything else I've tried still has traces of being PC based if you crank it up during silence in tracks. Even coaxial digital had noise. Hopefully the Pico is quiet.

yeah, that's quiet. Doesn't a slowed down drive decrease system speed though?

 

[Spiug31]

Quote:

Originally Posted by stevenkelby As for EMI, only an optical out has been a clean signal for me. Everything else I've tried still has traces of being PC based if you crank it up during silence in tracks.

I've found using an external battery powered transport (modded UA-5 soundcard) to feed (via coax) my Apogee mini-dac removes any groundloop/interference from using the USB out of my pc. A toslink cable would have been much cheaper though

 

[NiceCans]

Quote:

Originally Posted by progo /img/forum/go_quote.gif The cheapest solution to get a silent PC is to keep the main unit in another room or a closet. Pretty silent and what's best, you worry about no temperatures because you can use a number the noisiest fans. That's my ideal "silent" PC.

I found this to be both practical and effective.

 

[Fungi]

Quote:

Originally Posted by stevenkelby /img/forum/go_quote.gif It was a couple thousand more than doing the same thing "noisy" but I recently built a PC that is quieter than the noise floor in my silent room in the middle of the night. The loudest thing in the room is the monitor hum and I went through half a dozen models to get the quietest, then modded it too. Hard drives are the biggest challenge by far. A slowed 2.5" drive in about 4 layers of soundproofing, scythe case, suspended inside a box etc is inaudible from 1ft away. I use normal drives, still quietened for most things but they turn off after 5 min of inactivity, then I can browse and run foobar in silence. The P180 case weighs nearly 50lb now. In a SBT no one can pick whether it's on or not. It was well worth it to me. As for EMI, only an optical out has been a clean signal for me. Everything else I've tried still has traces of being PC based if you crank it up during silence in tracks. Even coaxial digital had noise. Hopefully the Pico is quiet.

Now THAT is intense. Silencing an existing system can be hard if the components get hot or are noisy by default. There is somewhat of a tradeoff between cooling and quiet, so if your components start cool, you don't need that much noise to keep it all cool.

 

[recca]

Battery powering source and amps helps you keep things quiet too. All of the SMPS from my PC, monitor, printer, router make my powerline noisy! Switching to battery power really made an enormous difference.

 

[kamal007]

or buy a dell desktop.. theyre pretty quiet

 

[cerbie]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kamal007 /img/forum/go_quote.gif or buy a dell desktop.. theyre pretty quiet

Some are. Some are definitely not. As a blanket statement, it doesn't work. Oh, and some could be, but I've encountered decent amounts of PWM noise on some new ones--god forbid they use their huge size to test and source fans based on how well they actually work in the system.

 

[stevenkelby]

Quote:

Originally Posted by skudmunky /img/forum/go_quote.gif yeah, that's quiet. Doesn't a slowed down drive decrease system speed though?

Yep, but I only run like that when I want silence, if I'm editing video I'm using the big guns anyway, it's still quiet though. My system only goes truly silent when I don't do anything but listen to music and browse. It's all automatic though (t-balancer), and the fans run as slowly as possible, or stop, and only start turning very slowly when the heat rises. Buying big cold (normally pricey) components in the first place is needed to keep quiet and fast.

SPCR was my home page for many months!

Noise irritates me anyway and noisy PCs drive me nuts.

Welcome to silent computing, sorry about your sanity?

 

[krmathis]

Guess I am lucky then.
Cause none of my computers make any disturbing noise. The audio signal is clean, and I can barely hear any fans running.

 

[Jaska]

Quote:

Originally Posted by krmathis /img/forum/go_quote.gif Guess I am lucky then. Cause none of my computers make any disturbing noise. The audio signal is clean, and I can barely hear any fans running.

Yes. Oh yes, you are lucky indeed.

You really should hear the sound of my Windtunnel G4. It is something to behold. I have never heard a computer louder than this in any place or at any time of my life. It is the main reason why I must restrict my headphone choices to closed designs.

 

[skeeder]

Macs are noisy. I've NEVER seen a quiet Mac, even the Quad's (intel) ones are terrible...

Honestly silenceing a computer is not very hard...fan controller, good fans, and a nice case, probably $200. But thats nothing in this world...lol.

 

[krmathis]

Quote:

Originally Posted by skeeder /img/forum/go_quote.gif Macs are noisy. I've NEVER seen a quiet Mac, even the Quad's (intel) ones are terrible...

Guess you have never seen (or heard) a PowerBook G4 or MacBook Pro then...
Cause I have one of each and I can barely hear any of them when they are running.

 

[OverlordXenu]

Quote:

Originally Posted by skudmunky /img/forum/go_quote.gif yeah I overclock silently too. It's tough, but I'm a gamer! I need 100 fps at high res.

You do know that the human eye can barely sense anything over 60FPS, right?

Placebo isn't limited to audio, you know.

To OP: I replaced all the fans in my case with Yate Loon fans (the Nexus fans are just a re-brand of a specific Yate Loon model, yet cost more...just ask on SPCR) and put an aftermarket heat sink (by Thermalright) on my video card. I already had a Thermalright cooler on my CPU.

The loudest things in my computer right now are the hard drives, and the mobo fan (which I haven't bothered to replace because I don't feel like taking my mobo out of my case to replace the stock northbridge cooler and fan).

Quote:

Originally Posted by stevenkelby /img/forum/go_quote.gif It was a couple thousand more than doing the same thing "noisy" but I recently built a PC that is quieter than the noise floor in my silent room in the middle of the night. The loudest thing in the room is the monitor hum and I went through half a dozen models to get the quietest, then modded it too. Hard drives are the biggest challenge by far. A slowed 2.5" drive in about 4 layers of soundproofing, scythe case, suspended inside a box etc is inaudible from 1ft away. I use normal drives, still quietened for most things but they turn off after 5 min of inactivity, then I can browse and run foobar in silence. The P180 case weighs nearly 50lb now. In a SBT no one can pick whether it's on or not. It was well worth it to me. As for EMI, only an optical out has been a clean signal for me. Everything else I've tried still has traces of being PC based if you crank it up during silence in tracks. Even coaxial digital had noise. Hopefully the Pico is quiet.

Why not go with solid-state memory then? I'm considering picking up a few 16 gig compact flash cards, and a few compact flash to sata adapters, and then sticking them into a software RAID0 array, because my hard drives (WD Raptors...what a mistake. I will admit, I got suckered in by the marketing.) are so freaking noisy when they're in use.

 

[wangerin]

The Audigy 2 ZS had a terrible hiss, but after installing the kx drivers its gone. I run a e6400 @ 3.6 watercooled.

 

[stevenkelby]

Quote:

Originally Posted by krmathis /img/forum/go_quote.gif Guess you have never seen (or heard) a PowerBook G4 or MacBook Pro then... Cause I have one of each and I can barely hear any of them when they are running.

Barely hear is still hear which was just unacceptable to me. Almost, nearly, very close to silent is still not silent. It's those last few db that cost the most!