Ok, trying to find the lowest cost way to build a quiet, breadbox computer. Ideally, I could take the Q6600 and ram from my current big quiet computer (P150) and stuff it inside something ready to go.

First off, how quiet are Shuttles? They have some awfully small fans in them, but most Newegg reviews don't mention noise. Then again, most Newegg reviewers don't have quite the passion for silence that we do. In particular I had my eyes on this one (really would like the optical out): http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6856101077

Second question. I wanted to keep the q6600 so I could have some transcoding power when I needed it, but I was planning on using a 320gb 5400rpm 2.5inch disk since it is quiet and has the storage I needed. Would I be negating the speed I am getting with my q6600 by using this drive? For everyday tasks it will be fine, but am I giving up a lot?

No longer worried about fitting a graphics card in my system since I don't game anymore on my PC (farewell youth).

I had thought about using the Zotac 9300 and building a mini-itx rig, but it looks like it would cost several hundred more than a shuttle and may not even be much quieter if I am trying to still have some power.

Any opinions my fine friends?

Oh, and could I run something like this off of a Pico PSU? DVD burner, q6600 4 sticks of ddr2 ram, laptop harddrive, and onboard graphics? I would put all USB accessories on an externally powered hub.

The big problem in all those Shuttles is that little 40mm PSU fan you see in the rear panel photo. At idle it might be acceptable to some but under load as the case gets hotter, you can kiss quiet goodbye.

A picoPSU would be ok, maybe close to limit depending on how much 5V, 3.3V and 5Vsb current your components demand, but mainly the stress would be on the AC/DC adapter, as the pico simply passes the 12VDC through.

Whether you use a Shuttle or a similar size SFF case (like Silverstone su05/06) and miniITX board, PSU replacement would be a necessity for silent operation. You should probably check out electrodacus' Fanless 150W AC adapter + 130W ATX PSU

Whether the laptop drive would be a bottleneck really depends on your applications. They are slower, but the difference isn't often obvious.

Wow a reply from Mike C himself. I am honestly a little excited by that

Yeah, that 40mm is the main reason I asked. Most of the time, this computer would just be for watching movies or serving music so the q6600 would be overkill, and the laptop drive wouldn't matter. However, there are times when I want to transcode movies and my laptop (main pc for school) runs on a ulv processor and takes about 20 times longer to do anything of that sort. I am less worried about the harddrive speed since it really isn't the bottleneck when encoding x264 videos from DVD or converting FLAC to mp3.

Thank you for your thoughts. I will reprice things and see what I can do, because since the day I found this website many years ago, I haven't been able to use any normally built computer.

Actually, one of the reasons I started getting interested in quiet computing was my old super-loud shuttle box. That power supply fan started off ok, but as the years went on, man, whiny, loud, unbearable. I've since stepped up to Micro ATX cases, which are small enough but much easier to quiet. I suppose these days with Atom processors and pico-psu's, it should be easier to make a shuttle sized case both quiet and useful. But be careful!

The Shuttle I have is really quite noisy, not at all what I was expecting from the Newegg reviews (culprit is the power supply: high, whiny sound) -- it could be an aberrant model, but I would avoid the SG31G2, which you can still find but is a bit old now.

And, think about the future, too. Do you want to upgrade? How hard is it to find comparable parts?

I wish I had considered these when I bought the Shuttle. A fitting (pun intended) PSU is hard to find due to its seemingly proprietary, or at least unique, format.

It's not. It's normal.

[quote]It's not. It's normal.[/quote]

Thanks, Mike. Seriously, I mean that; it helps to know that!

You're welcome. See our review of the Shuttle SN95G5 from 2005 -- it uses the same PSU.

[quote="MikeC"]You're welcome. See our [url=http://www.silentpcreview.com/article222-page1.html]review of the Shuttle SN95G5[/url] from 2005 -- it uses the same PSU. [/quote]

Reading now, thanks for the link!

There is a passive PSU for the Shuttle G1, G2 and G5 systems, called PC62. If you also replace the cpu fan the system can be quiet, but no longer inexpensive.

I was just remembering the Sparkle SPI220LE. Not sure how much better than the shuttle PSU it would be. But then I could have sworn there was a version of this PSU with an 80mm fan on the side instead of the 40mm fan. But I can't seem to find it. Maybe I was imagining. Of course you could always take one of these PSUs and cut a big hole in it and put a quiet 80mm fan on it. If you don't mind doing some modding and are comfortable working inside a PSU.

Amazingly (though not cheap), my one and only local computer shop had a Shuttle PC60 power supply, which has solved the problem. Modding the fans wasn't in the cards.

There is one bad power supply in the G case that makes really horrible noise. It's the ENG power supply, that seems to come on the SG31G2. Haven't heard of any other models coming with that brand yet. Guess they were trying to save costs by going with a cheaper manufacturer. The fan on that PSU has a really high pitched, buzzing sound.

The normal Shuttle and ElanPower PSUs aren't that bad and are fairly quiet. Some more comments here:

New ENG power supplies are dodgy?



The PC62 is nice, but pretty expensive, around $100. But using it turns a computer into a SD11G5 type noise profile, which is one of the quietest (almost silent) computer I have ever used. The major source of noise is from the 40mm PSU fan on the Shuttles. The 92mm CPU fan only spins at around 700rpm, so it's almost silent. Those are the only two sources of noise on the Shuttle. The SG31G2 doesn't have a NB fan.