Recommendations for ultra quiet PC

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

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bruno
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Joined: Fri Aug 28, 2009 6:01 am
Location: IL

Recommendations for ultra quiet PC

Post by bruno » Fri Aug 28, 2009 6:16 am

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

audiojar
Posts: 81
Joined: Sun Aug 23, 2009 1:17 pm
Location: Seattle, WA

Post by audiojar » Fri Aug 28, 2009 3:45 pm

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.

need4quiet
Posts: 5
Joined: Wed Sep 09, 2009 7:59 am
Location: USA

Post by need4quiet » Thu Sep 10, 2009 8:28 am

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.

casino888
Posts: 5
Joined: Wed Aug 12, 2009 9:04 am
Location: England

Post by casino888 » Thu Sep 17, 2009 11:43 am

Hi Bruno,see my post to Antoine

breunor
Posts: 96
Joined: Tue Jul 12, 2005 10:18 am

Post by breunor » Thu Sep 17, 2009 2:22 pm

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.

api123
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Joined: Fri Nov 13, 2009 4:06 pm
Location: san jose

Post by api123 » Fri Nov 13, 2009 4:29 pm

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.
Image

expxe
Posts: 51
Joined: Wed Nov 11, 2009 2:31 am
Location: Canada

Post by expxe » Sun Nov 15, 2009 4:14 pm

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.
Image
nice!

can we get more pics?

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