Hi Everyone,

I am building a simple home computer for me and my wife mainly use it for to be in the communual area: browsing the internet, watching films, listening to music.

I don't really need any performance from this at all, therefore, but I do want at least 500GB of storage.

I have been trying to fathom out how to do this from reading the site, etc, but there is too much information!

Is this kind of thing even possible purely passive? Like with the little pico?

Thanks,

Paul

Its doable, but you can get much easier if you put at least one slow, spinning fan exhausting air out of case. Slipstream 800 on CPU fan control from CPU header would make fan spin like 500 rpm's and being completely inaudiable and over the stress it would increase the speed but with your specs, I doubt it ever ramps up.

Trust us, one inaudiable fan is excellent safe guard for over heating and do prolongs life time of the components. They run cooler and you really need to have bats ears to hear Slipstream spinning 500 rpm's from arms reach away...

You can get good results with AMD 740G / 760G or 780G motherbolards paired with Athlon LE 1640 single core, very good, very cool running, underclock it bit and use like Scythe Mini Ninja on it.

You can get some good cases from Antec, if you go mAtx form factor, NSK 3400-series or 4400 series might be very good cases. Silverstone has good passive PSU's but with low-end system like 740G + LE 1640 and using only integrated systems + 1 - 2 GB memory 1 + Hard drives, you can easily run that system with Pico PSU...

I support what thejamppa proposes.

Further suggestion for silence : get a 2.5in harddrive and put it in a Scythe box for even better noise isolation.

You didn't say what you propose to spend, but what is being proposed is not expensive. OR how much effort you want to put into this.

Don't be afraid to throw out the fans and PSU that come with the case - if you buy an Antec NSK 3400-series.

Thanks so much for the info guys. Ok no problem having one case fan. I do want this to last a long time, so I dont want to shorten the component lives.

In terms of budget, as little as possible. I can afford anything really, but out of principle would like to keep it cheap and simple.

So, I will write up a formal list.

Processor: Athlon LE 1640 (found for £30 within the UK)
Motherboard: What in a nutshell is the difference between 740/60/80 chipsets? And how good is the onboard sound in these?
Case: I have used Antec before and know them to be very good. This looks very good, because it is quite small as well which would be nice. Is this the smallest in their range? It appears so.

http://www.antec.com/uk/productDetails.php?ProdID=00391

The problem, however, is that its more expensive than the larger 4000 which has no PSU. So I think I should go for that one?

PSU: Pico I woulr prefer because its small and light! What is the point of anything bigger in this situation?

RAM: PC4200. I see no reason for any quicker. Shall I just get some corsairs with heatsinks on them?

Hard Disk: Don't think I can really get 2.5inch drive because I want at least 500gig..

740 seems to be a repackaged 690. So if i was going to get that I may as well get a 2nd hand 690. Don't know about 760, but 780 gets great reviews, generally speaking, especially for what I want to use it for, and I have found one here.

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/142347

But really I would like to get the price closer to £40 - any ideas?

I'll confine my comments to things with which I have experience :

Mobo - I have a Gigabyte GA-MA78G-DS3H with an AMD Athlon64 X2 4850e and a Mini Ninja. This uses the AMD 780G Chipset and has on-board ATI Radeon HD3200 graphics with Gigabit LAN. Works fine and doesn't get hot with 1 fan (I have a fan at 422rpm - SpeedFan reports 45C for the CPU and 95C for the GPU). (This in a P182 case)
It advertises good audio, but I don't use it as I have an M-Audio 2496 board for audio digitising.

Antec 3480 is the smallest that will easily fit with a 120mm fan AND has 2 compartments (but if you aren't generating much heat then it's not so relevant). You're paying for a PSU with this that isn't that quiet.

I also have one of these cases with a Silverstone PSU and 1 fan running with an AMD Athlon X2 Be-2300/Asrock board. SpeedFan reports 50C for the CPU and 700rpm for the fan.

Antec 4000 is easier to work with (more space). It also has good reviews.
Maybe this is OK for your needs and you might want to spend the saved £ on a 3.5in drive box (see below). The 4000 also allows a full size ATX board.

A Pico 120 would be OK for your needs unless you want to add-in a better graphics card.

For general work the PC4200 is now a bit slow, I would suggest a minimum of PC5300 at 667mhz. I'm using PC6400s at 800mhz and I don't do much that is special.

If you want more than 500GB, then yes, get 3.5in Samsungs (1x 750GB or even 1TB). I suggest you put even this in an enclosure or soft mount it with knicker elastic. I have the best enclosure (GrowUpJapan 2002c - http://www.quietpc.com/gb-en-gbp/manufa ... /gup_japan).

I have a Samsung in my DIY NAS in this box on a bed of soft foam - can't hear it ! I also have one in my P182 with a WD 74GB Raptor in it - also very hard to hear it, but the P182 is a bit special as cases go.

This is now a normal spec Gigabyte Mobo. The price looks to be a good one. How often will you upgrade your PC ?

I really can't see myself upgrading at all!

Like I say, I use it for nothing other than surfing the net, watching a movie, listening to music. I am not into HD or anything like that.

(And I will running Linux).

With Linux you always have Geforce 8200 boards. While Ati drivers have seriously improved, GeForce drivers are still slightly better.

Sorry as I am new to this.

Why are the Geforce 8200 best?

I believe nVidia drivers for Linux are much better than the ATI drivers.

Try an Asus eeebox not passive but silent, or go for a mac mini.
From the asus site
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
EeeBox PC B204
High Definition Entertainment in a 1L-Sized PC
- Delivers high definition entertainment for maximum enjoyment
- Connectto your HDTVs and projectors via HDMI
- Provides supreme convenience with a full-featured media player and remote control
- Small—only 1L
- Saves up to 90% in energy consumption
- Barely audible in operation—only 26dB
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
and use an 2,5" USB harddrive for storage.

I'm thinking of getting one for the grandparents.

The quietest system w/ HD video potential -- if you want it later:

- Antec 3480 case
- Main 120mm case fan replaced with a Scythe Slipstream 800rpm model on an thermal fan control header on the motherboard
- Silverstone 300W fanless psu -- sell or give away the PSU in the Antec
- almost any 780g motherboard -- the gigabyte has a good rep
- 45w AMD dual-core, at least 2.1 GHz
- Scythe Ninja heatsink -- w/o fan (I think it fits)
- 2 gb ram
- 500gb seagate momentus 5400.6 notebook drive in Novibes 2.5" bracket
or
- 1-1.5-2 tb Western Digital GreenPower drive in Novibes III bracket -- glued or doubleside sticky taped to floor of case

The above system will be quieter than just about anything you can buy commercially. My guess would be ~15 dBA @ 1m -- inaudible except from within a couple feet, and it would be a smooth broadband sound with a touch of hum. It should always sound the same -- no fan ramp up under load (at least if the motherboard fan controller is half decent or allows manual settings). It will still run cool.

The main cost in silencing is the fanless psu, the fan swap, the novibes brackets. Maybe $200 in total.

The main cost in HD vs non is a minuscule surcharge on higher speed CPU and 780 vs 740 or 690 chipset motherboard. Probably no more than $20~40 in total.

If you're willing to swap a PS fan you can get by with a lot less.


My Sempron + 740G was $60.

I don't think the "45W" X2s are really worth much over the 65W versions. The 4850e is a decent value only if you run your CPUs as their makers intend them to run. I keep waiting for the price of the AMD Athlon 64 X2 5400 black edition to drop more. That would be a decent alternative to the 45nm Pentium Dual Core E5200. Of course I just sold my E5200 and went with a Core 2 Duo E7200 instead--at ~4GHz it is pretty fast, but idle power is unavoidably horrible, but that is not really a noise issue.

I am also inclined to try a Geforce 8x00 motherboard for my next AMD system, but the HD audio limitations of the 780G aren't a problem for me.

I also wonder if a fast a single core K8 can do HD. My LE-1250 runs very cool clocked at 2.8GHz, and more clockspeed is certainly possible. Maybe an overclocked Sempron + 780G/Geforce 8200 would be sufficient?

My much slower overclocked Eee PC can play some 1080p WMV HD clips. Maybe HD means Blu Ray playback now?