"Silent" system build & review at AnandTech

[NeilBlanchard]

Hello:

This article over at AnandTech might be of interest to folks here at SPCR, and/or can be a point of discussion:

http://www.anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=2385

[Qwertyiopisme]

Meh. Standard Overclockers site for making a quiet computer. They really tend to fail miserably. I would doubt that it is under 30-35db @ 1m (I seriuosly doubt their SLM readings, it is probably no good at so low sound pressure levels).

Bad stuff:

-SFF
-Hardmounted Raptor *and* another WD (that is just begging for noise)
-Noname PSU
-Standard heatsinks
-Stamped fan grills with noname fans.

etc etc. Just another run-of-the-mill thing. Nothing of interest.

[frankgehry]

What's new on spcr lately. Its always the same old stuff. If I missed a pentium m system project here, nevermind. - FG

[dukla2000]

If I missed a pentium m system project here, nevermind. - FG

Yup.

[frankgehry]

Nevermind then. I guess we will be seeing a real spcr system soon, or if there already is one, real soon (for me). - FG

[MikeC]

It's a thorough enough review, but the questions the reviewer asks and the way they're answered make the gist of the difference between SPCR reviews and just about all the other hardware reviews.

1) What is quiet? The reviewer never really defines this clearly enough.
2) What's important? According to the writer, some sense of value-for-performance and absolute performance, with acoustics as a last consideration.
3) Just how much quieter is the PC Club Silencer than other PCs? According to their own measurements, not very.

Given 2), you know that w/o "high performance" -- never mind their relevance or meaning -- no PC tested by them will be lauded. Given 3), there's not much reason to laud this one -- it's a lousy "silent" PC. Given 1), they may not even be able to decide when something is either too noisy or oustandingly quiet.

As for frankgehry's comment about "Its always the same old stuff" -- uh, you just don't read enough. There have been 8 reviews and articles in the month of March, an average of 2 a week, covering a pretty broad array of topics in quite a bit of depth, and no throwaway reviews, as usual.

[Tobias]

What's new on spcr lately. Its always the same old stuff. If I missed a pentium m system project here, nevermind. - FG

Well, on the product side of things.... not much. I amused myself with going back to when I registered here and look at what was the hottest topics then...

The A64 was out early september and here is a gem I found in one of the first discussions about it when it was starting to show up (mid sep 2003)

Wow! When I opened this page I saw all the benchmark screenshots I thought I had clicked on a link to OCforums or something!

Yeah, that A64 does look nice, now all we need is a 64-bit OS and some 64-bit apps to take advantage of it and we'll be set.......

TDP:s were initialy not as promising as peopled tended to hope and before it was clear that the A64 TDP:s had nothing to do with reality...

If Pentium M can scale nicely at up to and at 2 - 2 Ghz, then I think that baby would be my dream processor. However, it's not here yet, nor am I sure it'll ever be

early oct 2003

And what did one use to cool these babies? Zalman CNPS7000, naturally.


On the Grafix side on the other hand.... the Dustbuster (aka FX 5800) caused some people to get here and ask if this thing could be cooled quietly. The answer... Zalman. And in late november I saw the first posts about arctic silencer. As for the cards? ATI is all the hype and if one looks at the most current posts about "fanless VGA?" it hasn't really changed. The best recomendation is still 9600PRO.

Due to lack of time (and a lack of sleep in the near future) I have not looked past PSU:s. However, I think the title of a topic from Aug 19, 2003 says it all...

Super Silencer vs. Super Tornado

So much for the technical progress in silent hardware the last year and a half:) Nah, much has happened. Both coolers and PSU:s have evolved far since the first appearance of the CNPS7000 and it tells volumes about those products that they are still among the best in their specific areas after almost two years of development.




MikeC: The reviews and articles are GREAT. I especially LOVE the PSU-reviews which I'd say is unmatched today anywhere on the web. It is the market that doesn't move fast enough for us. Much have changed, but when one is taking a quick look back in time, it seems that surprisingly little has really changed. Of course, when one is looking back one omitts all the intermediate steps:)

[MikeC]

Tobias -- thanks for the vote of confidence. We keep plugging away.

[frankgehry]

My orig. post was as a response to qwertyi's dismissal of anandtech as an overclocker's site and his spcr style component by component review of the pc-club computer. Of interest to me was the fact that you can buy a P-M desktop system off the shelf and it was reviewed by anandtech. I do not recall a complete system, based on a P-M, reviewed or built by spcr.

The spcr homepage has a couple of psu's, a couple of shuttle's, an article at anandtech about the P-M and now a thread on a review at anandtech about a P-M based system. This is just not an interesting front cover week at spcr. - FG

Edit: If there is going to be a comparison between a P-M based system and an AMD system that will be interesting.

[Ralf Hutter]

If I missed a pentium m system project here, nevermind. - FG

You missed this Silverstone LC-11 case review. The core system components were the same as the PCClub machine reviewed by Anandtech and they were installed in a SFF/desktop-ish case much like the one used in the PCClub system.

The main difference between the two systems is that the components in the LC-11 system were carefully chosen with silence as their primary consideration, whilst the PCCLub system started with a Pentium-M board+CPU and started adding on typical performance oriented components with little or no regard to system noise.

In other words, as Qwertyiopisme suggested in his response to the AT review:

Meh. Standard Overclockers site for making a quiet computer. They really tend to fail miserably.

[frankgehry]

Ralf,

Thanks for pointing this out to me despite my somewhat obnoxious posts. I haven't been following the P-M, but when I saw the article at anandtech it occured to me that this was something worth looking into and of course I wondered where spcr's coverage was. The silverstone review was exactly what I wanted to see - and spcr system based on a P-M. - FG

[Green Shoes]

Edit: If there is going to be a comparison between a P-M based system and an AMD system that will be interesting.

I am looking forward to Turion/PM head-to-heads, but I doubt it's something you'll see on this site. Seems like people here generally cull the performance reviews from others, and focus entirely on the silencing side of things.

Which, of course, is just fine .

Since we already know the stated dissipation of both the chips it'll be more likely to see discussions on one platform or the other; we're all smart enough around here to extrapolate the results without having a Stupendous Cataclysmic Clash of the Mobile Platforms

But I am looking forward to reviews on both of those before my May/June build.

[frankgehry]

GShoes,

This is a quote from MikeC in another thread:

The P-M definitely runs cooler, and it has an edge in games, but I'm willing to bet the differences are marginal when you do some careful fine tuning. I am currently working on an A64-939 system for article that will be a head-to-head against Ralf Hutter's P-M system -- for processing power, usability, heat, noise and cost. In real boxes, not open bench. We're gonna have some fun.

Its going to be A64-939 vs P-M. - FG