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From: esieens on 9 Apr 2006 11:58
Hello All,

I'm looking for recommendations as i would like to build a powerful
(e.g. Athlon X2, ATI X1800 or nvidia 6800 GTO) but silent and small
home PC.

It needs to be as silencious as possible and should be as small as
possible (e.g. kind of a cube case).

Any recommendation what case, power supply, motherboard, CPU, Video
card... i should buy?

Thanks

From: George Pontis on 9 Apr 2006 13:03
esieens(a)chez.com wrote:

> Hello All,
>
> I'm looking for recommendations as i would like to build a powerful
> (e.g. Athlon X2, ATI X1800 or nvidia 6800 GTO) but silent and small
> home PC.
>
> It needs to be as silencious as possible and should be as small as
> possible (e.g. kind of a cube case).
>
> Any recommendation what case, power supply, motherboard, CPU, Video
> card... i should buy?
>
> Thanks

You won't get a completely silent system with these components, but you
can do pretty well if you can control the noise from the video card.
There are a few models with passive cooling using heat pipes. See if
you can find one at your performance level, or maybe retrofit one of
the Zalman fanless coolers onto the card of your choice.

I would recommend an Asus motherboard for the Q-fan feature, which
slows the CPU fan according to need. Also, you want to get one that
does not have a chipset fan. The A8N-SLI Premium would be a good choice
in nForce4 models. The A8R-MVP is a good one with an ATI chipset. The
"32" versions of these are of no advantage with a single video card,
but generate more heat which will make quiet cooling inside the case
harder. The A8V or A8V Deluxe are good models with AGP video.

For case and power supply, you need to avoid ones that have blowholes
or too many cutouts for fans since they let too much noise escape. You
won't have a problem with cooling. Antec P150 is a good choice and
includes a good power supply. Only $115 at Newegg,a real bargain. There
were some compatibility problems last year with this power supply and
Asus boards but that has been fixed long since.

--

From: esieens on 10 Apr 2006 01:35
Thanks George 0 sounds like a god advice.

Does a cubic silent case exists?

Thanks

From: George Pontis on 10 Apr 2006 10:36
esieens wrote:

> Thanks George 0 sounds like a god advice.
>
> Does a cubic silent case exists?
>
> Thanks

Hmmm, I forgot that you wanted it as small as possible. Small is the
enemy of quiet because it makes it hard to use passive heatsinks. This
is compounded by having to use small fans to keep everything cool. Then
the small fans have to turn at high speeds, which produce higher
frequency and more audible sounds.

There have been some improvements in recent models, like using a heat
pipe from the CPU with a single 80mm fan to cool that and everything
else. It looks like a good idea but I don't know how successful they
are, especially since the power supply still has noisy fans. An
Athlon64 model with a thermally controlled fan should be better than a
P4 model since the the P4 needs more cooling. You might also have to
back off on the video card. If the power supply was quiet enough then
water cooling would work well for CPU and graphics card cooling, maybe
chipset too. That would be an expensive project and a lot of work.

Yet another angle would be one of the home theater PC cases, that
resemble a large AV receiver. In terms of noise they look like they
would have similar problems to the cube cases, but to a lesser degree.

--

From: esieens on 11 Apr 2006 04:42
Thanks for the response.

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