Well, I'm getting close to setting up a (mostly)-silent pc for HTPC and general use purposes (surfing net, writing word docs, doing light coding, etc), and here's what I'm looking at:
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P2-400 (fanless - been running like that for four years, so I see no point in putting a fan on it now)
Zalman ZM300A-APF Power Supply
Seagate Barracuda V Hard drive
Matrox G550 video card or maybe the ATI 7500 AIW (no fan on either card, haven't decided - about the same cost)
Turtle Beach Sound Card
Chilli professional case (very small, pretty quiet)
512 megs PC-100 RAM (just had it lying around, so...)
Crystalfontz 20x4 LCD screen
Win XP professional
Samsung combo CD-RW/DVD drive (black)
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...so the total noise would be the sound from the Zalman plus the sound from the Hard Drive....can anyone tell me just how quiet this will be? I want it to be quiet enough to leave on all the time, and to sleep next to (going in a dorm room) without me being disturbed.
I have most of the parts - I just need to order the hard drive, video card, and the PS....I'd just like to know if anyone can give me some sort of assurance that this is going to be damn quiet. I hate noise.
Will this be quiet?
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Will this be quiet?
Last edited by Beyonder on Fri Nov 01, 2002 4:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Your setup looks like it should be pretty quiet. Maybe add a HDD enclosure (sandwhich or one of the others reviewd at spcr). Also, the q-tech psu is quieter than the zalman according to spcr review. Why not go with that? Lastly, if you are going to keep your cpu passivly cooled, you might want to get a decent heatsink to ensure that it works for a while. Good luck.
PS go with the matrox VGA
PS go with the matrox VGA
The CPU already has a huge heatsink that's pretty good quality, so....not too worried. At load, it can get kind of hot, but normally it seems to be pretty cool.
I'll look into the q-tech. Looks nice. =)
I dunno about the Matrox - I absolutly love the way Matrox cards look on a good monitor, but the AIW is looking pretty temping... (mmmm......infared remote.....
)
I'll look into the q-tech. Looks nice. =)
I dunno about the Matrox - I absolutly love the way Matrox cards look on a good monitor, but the AIW is looking pretty temping... (mmmm......infared remote.....
)