This may be the Holy Grail of silence

Info & chat about quiet prebuilt, small form factor and barebones systems, people's experiences with vendors thereof, etc.

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HFat
Posts: 1753
Joined: Thu Jul 03, 2008 4:27 am
Location: Switzerland

Re: This may be the Holy Grail of silence

Post by HFat » Fri Apr 12, 2013 11:37 am

pmcd wrote:Those serial ports must be a mistake.
There are people who have equipement you need serial ports for... the kind of equipment you'd put next to someone's bed perhaps? Or possibly people concerned about dust issued? I guess that would be the point of fanless + serial. For a lot of serial-driven equipement, I don't think a fan would be a problem.

I assume it's not a mistake and that this PC's main market is simply not supposed to be consumers.

toronado455
Posts: 376
Joined: Mon May 15, 2006 12:24 pm
Location: CA, USA

Re: This may be the Holy Grail of silence

Post by toronado455 » Fri Apr 12, 2013 1:49 pm

HFat wrote:
pmcd wrote:Those serial ports must be a mistake.
There are people who have equipement you need serial ports for... the kind of equipment you'd put next to someone's bed perhaps? Or possibly people concerned about dust issued? I guess that would be the point of fanless + serial. For a lot of serial-driven equipement, I don't think a fan would be a problem.

I assume it's not a mistake and that this PC's main market is simply not supposed to be consumers.
So the main market is people who need legacy serial ports? What sort of equipment doesn't support USB? If they want to include the COM ports, they should just put them on the back with the rest of the I/O where they belong.

Edit: Not that I disagree with you. It seems like they had some corporate customer request front panel COM ports, otherwise this is a stupid design.

HellDiverUK
Posts: 51
Joined: Mon Feb 04, 2013 9:56 am

Re: This may be the Holy Grail of silence

Post by HellDiverUK » Fri May 17, 2013 2:31 am

I got an i3 NUC a few weeks ago. I've had no problems with it overheating, but the fan is very buzzy. No problems with the wifi not working due to heat either, and I'm using an Intel Ultimate-N 6300 beneath a 64GB Crucial M4 SSD. It performs excellently, I use it as a HTPC running Windows 7. HD4000 video is perfect, I've witnessed no issues at all with it.

Reviews have said the NUC is quiet, one reviewer saying he needed to put his ear next to the machine to hear it. That reviewer obviously lives next to an airport, or needs his ears cleaned out. :lol:

I've ordered one of the passive cases off Tranquil. I'll of course post up my thoughts when it arrives (hopefully next week), and will get some pics of install.


Scrooge
Posts: 206
Joined: Tue Oct 17, 2006 4:46 am

Re: This may be the Holy Grail of silence

Post by Scrooge » Sat Jun 08, 2013 7:50 pm

toronado455 wrote:So the main market is people who need legacy serial ports? What sort of equipment doesn't support USB? If they want to include the COM ports, they should just put them on the back with the rest of the I/O where they belong.

Edit: Not that I disagree with you. It seems like they had some corporate customer request front panel COM ports, otherwise this is a stupid design.
There is a lot of very expensive medical, scientific, and industrial equipment that is driven by COM ports, and when you have a CNC milling machine with a six-figure price tag, you don't replace it because the new one has a USB port.

toronado455
Posts: 376
Joined: Mon May 15, 2006 12:24 pm
Location: CA, USA

Re: This may be the Holy Grail of silence

Post by toronado455 » Sun Jun 09, 2013 12:34 pm

Scrooge wrote:
toronado455 wrote:So the main market is people who need legacy serial ports? What sort of equipment doesn't support USB? If they want to include the COM ports, they should just put them on the back with the rest of the I/O where they belong.

Edit: Not that I disagree with you. It seems like they had some corporate customer request front panel COM ports, otherwise this is a stupid design.
There is a lot of very expensive medical, scientific, and industrial equipment that is driven by COM ports, and when you have a CNC milling machine with a six-figure price tag, you don't replace it because the new one has a USB port.
OK, fine. But I still don't understand why the port MUST be on the front panel.

idbash
Posts: 8
Joined: Thu Jun 13, 2013 6:01 am

Re: This may be the Holy Grail of silence

Post by idbash » Tue Jun 18, 2013 9:18 am

Really fun concept, buuuuut they are terribly cost prohibitive. to build a base computer with no OS or peripherals, you are looking at a 450-500 before tax, and that is with 4GB ram and 64GB SSD...... so unless you have an OS, you can spend the same money and get an ASUS AIO that is ?passively cooled? (I have not been able to confirm, but they are quiet), comes with a 24" screen, DVD drive, more powerful CPU, 6GB memory, OS, etc.

capecodbackup
Posts: 152
Joined: Tue Oct 20, 2009 12:06 am
Location: Cape Cod

Re: This may be the Holy Grail of silence

Post by capecodbackup » Tue Jul 09, 2013 6:27 pm

I went ahead and sprung for an i7 2.3Ghz Mac Mini. I am extremely happy with the silence. I have light bulbs that make more noise! That said, I do not do much with it and I also use fan control software because I think it runs too hot if left to Apple's devices.

This little machine, with 16GB Ram and a Vector 512 SSD has exceeded my expectations by a large margin. I like it and switched to OSX in the process.

I guess I would look at an NUC, but only Haswell and if I could be assured of a non buzzy fan. I HATE buzzy fans.

For now, Mac mini FTW!

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