SPCR

Hi,

I am asking for recommendations for parts for ultra quiet and small pc (no gamer..) I have at work SSF Dell and it is very quiet...

Please help.
Bruno

Well if by small you mean standard mid-tower then I'd recommend the Antec Solo as a case. It's designed to be quiet from the ground up (insulated walls, suspended drives, etc.). Besides the case your main things that create noise are the PSU, CPU fan/heatsink, graphics card, hard drive, and case fan(s).

There are lots of reviews and comparisons on this site for all those parts, so I'm mostly just going to say look around the site. For a PSU the Nexus Value 430 comes highly recommended. It's the quietest PSU (with a fan) tested here, not all that expensive, and has enough power for the vast majority of systems.

Having gone through this myself, I'd highly suggest a Mac mini. Here's why. Yes, the up front price is $600. It's more than you'd spend building something yourself. It can run Windows very well through boot camp.

It costs more up front, but when you go to sell it, even in 2 years, you'll get a good $450 for it. It works. You don't have to build and troubleshoot it and order 20 different parts. It's basically silent. It has warranty for one year, so you can just bring it to the Apple store when it breaks.

You'll probably spend $400 on parts for a low end HTPC. When you go to sell it, you'll lose more money than you will on the mini. You'll also eat up a ton of time and if any component fails, you'll have to RMA it and be down for a week. Your computer will also be much bigger.

Hi Bruno,see my post to Antoine

Along the same line as teh Mac Mini, take a look at the mini-itx form factor. Very small, and you can get cpus that don't require active cooling. They have built in video, audio, and network chips, so your other costs are memory, hard drive, and case/psu. You can get a complete system except monitor starting in the $200-300 range, and it will be fine for standard office work.

That is very true I got a Atom N330 off ebay from tattoo4electronics and it has an customized case runs less than 50C at full load and barely makes any sound for less than $370. Check out my rig.

api123 wrote:That is very true I got a Atom N330 off ebay from tattoo4electronics and it has an customized case runs less than 50C at full load and barely makes any sound for less than $370. Check out my rig.

nice!

can we get more pics?