[Lynn]

I tend to agree about underclocking, but with modern CPUs do you need to do it?

My experience you can just run a typical load, and in the case of playing music it is a low load, and just turn down the fan. For instance I am running a 2.4 ghz P4 that is constantly on, and when I am playing music the cpu usage is 0-4%, temp is 120F, and I have adjusted the CPU fan to 1500 RPM (very quiet).

I could probably go with a large passive heatsink, but it is so quiet why bother.

 

[aphex944]

Quote:

Originally Posted by S_Dedalus I'd prefer a 1.7Ghz dothan, though, it runs cool at full speed, is much faster stock than the 2500+, and supports more modern peripherals. If you ever wanted a gaming maching, pop a really nice cooler on it, and overclock it to hell, and it outperforms even the FX-55.

Do you have any benchmarks to back this up? The FX-55 is THE best gaming CPU available right now, almost always outperforming the top of the line EE P4 processors by a good margin.

 

[S_Dedalus]

Quote:

Originally Posted by aphex944 Do you have any benchmarks to back this up? The FX-55 is THE best gaming CPU available right now, almost always outperforming the top of the line EE P4 processors by a good margin.

Let me find them

 

[llmobll]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lynn I tend to agree about underclocking, but with modern CPUs do you need to do it? My experience you can just run a typical load, and in the case of playing music it is a low load, and just turn down the fan. For instance I am running a 2.4 ghz P4 that is constantly on, and when I am playing music the cpu usage is 0-4%, temp is 120F, and I have adjusted the CPU fan to 1500 RPM (very quiet). I could probably go with a large passive heatsink, but it is so quiet why bother.

Well the CPU that you have isnt' really modern. So i would say that yes underclocking would great thing to do on lets say a Athlon64. It doesn't really matter if its new or old or ancient, when you underclock any CPU you're going to get a drop in temps. If you want dead silence < 20db this is a must. My roomate has a 2.4 ghz P4 and my athlon 1700+ @1.8ghz is much quieter. However its becaues my case is much more efficient than his. He hasn't modded it for SILENCE at all.

The problem with not underclocking a system is when you DO put some load on it. Many have problems because they haven't been properly setup. Mainly yes, if your load is between 0-4% when playing mp3's. You should be fine at stock clock. However what if one day its gets a bit hot, and well you're encoding alot of music, or decoding it. Now your load is alot higher, your HDs are also experiencing increase load. The only thing you can do to push your temps back down is up the FAN speed. So much for quiet.

Edit: My point is basically this. When you underclock a system you are able to run less noisy cooling setup. Even at high load on the off chance it happens, you are still fine.

 

[Lynn]

Ah, by modern I mean a CPU that understands how to throttle down power consumption based upon load. I am aware the CPU I have for power users is long in tooth.

I am curious on the Athlon 1700, are you under clocking? If so, and you are playing lossless formats with some degree of de-compression loading, what is your CPU usage?

I have been thinking about building m-ATX 'shuttle-like' silent PC. I have been thinking about the 1ghz eden board that is completely fanless, with an external power brick (like a laptop), for a completely fanless solution. For a hard drive, go with a laptop drive heavily acoustically dampened for the o/s. I have also thought about a going with a lanboot core on a flash card, linking to an o/s image on file server (no harddrive). A remore file server in a another room would provide the music files over a network. The only concern I have is if the little eden processor at 1ghz could handle the network traffic and music.

 

[eastside504]

If it helps any. I just finish completing my computer. I'm using a Cool master aluminum case with a 120mm fan (moves more air at lower rpm - less noise). I have a 410watt PSU from PC power and cooling (exchange the stock fan w/ a panflo quiet fan). AMD64 3500+ on a MSI neo 2 platinum motherboard ( socket 939 w/ northbridge fan exchanged for a heatsink instead), 1gb of cosair ram, 70gb raptor, 2 x 250 gb maxtor, sony dru 710 DVD+rw drive, nvidia 6800gt, watercooling (CPU and video card). The computer is lighting fast for everything. Its also pretty quiet because of the watercooling. Its a pain to set up but in the end i'm happy with it. I used water cooling not to overclock but to make my computer quiet and also because i think it looks awesome. Make sure you use rubber washer when you mount your drives, this will help eliminate some noise when your drive is in use. Also a fan controller is a good ideal, as i turn my fan down when i'm just listening to music or surfing the web, and turn it up when i'm playing video game ( counter strike at 1600 x 1200 w/ 4xAA and v-sync ). I still need to dampen my case. Anyone know of a good kit and where to buy one? Or any other product such as dyno-mat or something similiar?

 

[S_Dedalus]

Quote:

Originally Posted by aphex944 Do you have any benchmarks to back this up? The FX-55 is THE best gaming CPU available right now, almost always outperforming the top of the line EE P4 processors by a good margin.

Sorry, when I had first seen it, I thought it was Tomshardware, but it was them reporting on a claim from DFI.
http://www.dfi.com.tw/Press/press_he...33.jsp&SITE=NA
I wouldn't be surprised if this is close to accurate, though, since the overall design of the dothan and the athlon64 are much closer than the dothan and the prescott, although an FX-55 overclocked to 2.8Ghz would probably beat the dothan due to the on-chip memory controller. The dothan could have more headroom, though.
I guess we'll have to wait for someone to get the board and do some tests.

 

[Iron_Dreamer]

mbratrud, here is a wish list I made up at Newegg for you. PM me if you want to discuss further in depth with me. THe RAM, CPU, and motherboard are the same ones currently rocking it in my system. I explained the additional parts you'd need in the notes. As much as I admire running a seperate boot disk (I run a 18GB 15,000RPM Fujitsu SCSI disk) it really doesn't make much sense to pay $60 for a 40GB drive that will be slower than a $90 160GB drive (due to less data density and lower cache), not to mention the extra space. And like the others said, it is pretty foolish to put the furnace-like Prescott in a PC destined to be quiet. I also suggested the Seasonic PSU that is super cool and quiet in my experience with it. I have the Lian-Li PC6077, with acoustipack deluxe, which is a more expensive option than the PC6070 alone, but has both superior sound deadening and airflow (thanks to 2 80mm output fan slots).

Edit:shoot, now newegg ain't workin for me. I'll post it as soon as it does.

Anyway it still ain't working. Here are the alternative parts I suggested:

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3200+ DTR mobile
Mobo: DFI Lan Party UT NF3 250GB
Ram: PDP PC3200 1GB
Hard drives: 3x Samsung 1614C
PSU: Seasonic Super Silencer 400W
All of the above from newegg

All of the below from SVC.com
Heatsink: Thermalright SLK948U
Fans: 4x Panaflo L1A
thermal past: arctic silver 5

I suggested the Samsung drives because I have had both the Seagates you're currently considering (have 2 in my rig right now) and the Samsung I mentioned, the Samsung has a quieter seek noise that is also at a lower pitch, and runs a good deal cooler than the Seagate. The Seagate is a bit faster, but since these are just storage drives for you, that shouldn't matter.

I forgot, add the LG 16X DVD burner from Newegg, it is supposed to be the quietest of the bunch out right now. I just used a 16X Samsung and it was decently quiet, nothing offensive, but nothing to write home about either. Quick disk access time though.

 

[S_Dedalus]

Iron_Dreamer, do you have any experience with the Antec Sonata case? It seems like having just the one 5" fan would be a boon for silent computing.

EDIT: Not only does the lower data density and smaller cache size decrease performance, it forces the drive to read more often, making it noisier.

 

[Iron_Dreamer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by S_Dedalus Iron_Dreamer, do you have any experience with the Antec Sonata case? It seems like having just the one 5" fan would be a boon for silent computing.

No, but I did just build a rig for my stepmom in it's near cousin the SLK3600AMB. With a super-quiet Seasonic PSU, 7v'ed Panaflo L 120MM exhaust and intake fans and an 80MM L cpu fan (cooling an athlon mobile 2600+ at 2.0GHz 1.35v), and Samsung 160GB hard drive, it is extemely quiet, even in a quiet house. All that you hear is a slight air turbuluence sound and a low rumble for the HDD seeks. I don't know that the Sonata would be much quieter, because the materials and configurations are almost the same, only with the front 120 fan being behind the HDD's instead of in front. Of course with only one HDD you don't really need a front fan, I just put it on there because they are smokers and I wanted positive airflow to make sure all the air going into the PC is filtered first.

 

[JayG]

Umm, am I the only one that thinks this is a little....unnecessary? If you absolutely must have a separate computer for music, there is no reason it needs to pack any significant amount of processing punch. A modest amount of RAM, modest processing power, and a huge amount of hard drive space will handle all the music playback you could want if that's all it's ever doing. Why not just buy a tiny fanless laptop and an external HDD? It will be dead silent, small, light, portable, and you could get an Airport Express to handle the output wirelessly so you could have the laptop at the couch or wherever you wanted to listen and not have all the audio equipment right there. Otherwise it seems kind of pointless to build a whole new computer and fight to keep it quiet so that you can sit in an uncomfortable computer chair to listen to it. Any computer that doesn't have a lot of loud fans in it because it's overclocked or something shouldn't be audible with headphones on from 10 feet or so away if not less. I mean, it seems like building a new computer and having to sit in a chair in front of it seems like a big price to pay just so that you don't have to get up and walk over to it to change the song. If I were you, I would just move myself or my audio gear farther from my computer and save myself a lot of money.

-Jay

 

[Iron_Dreamer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JayG Umm, am I the only one that thinks this is a little....unnecessary? If you absolutely must have a separate computer for music, there is no reason it needs to pack any significant amount of processing punch. A modest amount of RAM, modest processing power, and a huge amount of hard drive space will handle all the music playback you could want if that's all it's ever doing. Why not just buy a tiny fanless laptop and an external HDD? It will be dead silent, small, light, portable, and you could get an Airport Express to handle the output wirelessly so you could have the laptop at the couch or wherever you wanted to listen and not have all the audio equipment right there. Otherwise it seems kind of pointless to build a whole new computer and fight to keep it quiet so that you can sit in an uncomfortable computer chair to listen to it. Any computer that doesn't have a lot of loud fans in it because it's overclocked or something shouldn't be audible with headphones on from 10 feet or so away if not less. I mean, it seems like building a new computer and having to sit in a chair in front of it seems like a big price to pay just so that you don't have to get up and walk over to it to change the song. If I were you, I would just move myself or my audio gear farther from my computer and save myself a lot of money. -Jay

I recommended all of that because it appears that he wants a system with some extra grunt along with his music. If that is not the case then there are certainly slower, quieter options avaliable.

 

[IstariAsuka]

Gosh, why are you all recommending such high end processors and such? And I'm not seeing how the Raid 0 will come in very handy either, though if you're getting multiple large drives anyways...

Anyways, why not run it on some type of Via mobo/proc, like the EPIA (or whatever)? You could have it passively cooled, then. Can't exactly beat that as far as noise goes...

 

[JayG]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mbratrud So I am putting together a new computer exclusively to run iTunes and perform as a music server. Parts Total$1200

Well, now that I look at his original post again, I am certain that this is quite insane. Paying $1200 simply to play music makes no sense at all to me, and even if he is willing to do that, I would just get the cheapest iBook and an Airport Express. Fanless, Tiny, Wireless, Portable, Perfect. But I still think it's a waste of a computer to have it just play music. I mean even if he went with the iBook he could be doing all kinds of things on it while listening to his music, not to mention having a great little companion for travel. If he's set on the USB out he could set all his audio gear up next to his listening position, put the laptop on a little table or on his lap or anywhere and plug it in with USB.

I mean I have old computer parts sitting around that nobody is using that could easily be put together with 2 big hard drives and a few quiet fans that would fill all the requirements easily. $1200 buys a lot of CDs... I can't see any way to justify the cost for that purpose.

-Jay

EDIT: Another benefit to a laptop, it runs off of battery power. It will be a lot cleaner power source than AC from the wall, which you may like if you believe that the quality of power feeding the computer affects the sound quality, or even the digital out.

 

[Juzi68]

I liked Lynn's take on things.

Here's my 3 cents. The graphic board I'd go with is either an ATI (not high-end) or Matrox. Both manufacturers are known for having excellent 2D performance. If you use a nice monitor with a RGBHV connection, you'll appreciate the difference.

Cases and fans can be tricky to find, if you're particular....like me

Try and find a case that uses 120 mm fans in front and back. Never use the stock fans that come with the case. Look for steel cases only. Larger fans run slower and quieter while providing lots of airflow. A good start is "www.directron.com" If you're really serious.... this site offers modified cases "www.coolcases.com". I'd recommend the Chenbro.

For fans I've always used Pabst. In my experience they're the quietest, fault free and best fans around. They are German made and can be pricey, but definately worth it. For power supply go with PC power and cooling or Seasonic Super Silencer. I use the Seasonic in my setup.

The last essential step in making your box quiet is lining the inside of your case with AcoustiPack. This stuff is expensive ($70) but absolutely essential in making your case very quiet.
Don't forget a good CPU cooler. Zalman makes a nice one that uses an 80mm fan and is made of copper.
Good luck!