Look....I've no right to speak for SPCR, and I'm not. This is me only talking. But this has been bothering (if that's the word) me for a while. No one thing set it off.

When you read anything on SPCR, or even see pictures for that matter, please keep one thing in mind.....almost everything concerning our topic of interest here, quiet computing, is debatable. There are very few universal truths when it comes to computers in general, and quieting them in particular.

After hanging around the SPCR forums for over a year, I must say I never found a single person to purposfully post anything un-truthful. But that does not mean that everything you read here is 100% true. Quite the contrary.....

When you read anything at all on these forums, keep in mind that everyone has his own personal likes and dis-likes. And this most certainly clouds whatever he might say.....concerning anything. And it's hard for a person to separate his own preferences from the truth. He might well think something is true, beyond debate, but that is rarely the case.

So what you have to do around here....and everywhere else.....is to take it all "with a grain of salt". Don't believe everything you read, no matter who says it, no matter how much you might like to believe it. In most of these matters, you'll have to try it yourself, buy it yourself, make your own mistakes.....only then will the truth start to become plain. If you're lucky, you might get good(for you) advise, but that's not always the case.

Heh....I feel better now.

(golf claps)...

LOL

nothing a little hot cocao won't cure blue.....

but your comments are very true. My opinions, yours, and everyone else's are definately open to debate and interpetation (and dismissal ) by all readers here. I just love it when one person hears a 'clicking sound'; all of a sudden 15 others hear it too, despite their previous posts! that has got to be my fav.

Enjoy your Cocao...

One thing to keep in mind is that brand spankin' new stuff often does not get an immediate recommendation unless it has been formally reviewed here. Take for example, your Black Knight. I'm STILL skeptical of it, even though I'm willing to concede that it can be a quiet case.

I think that approaching these forums with a healthy amount of skepticsm is a good idea (actually, I try to apply that to life in general, but that's OT). I think some of us have been burned by products that have claimed to be quiet or silent when in fact they actually are not. Also, our tolerance levels are completely different. What may be perfectly acceptable to me may be annoyingly loud to you.

And finally of course, there's the bad apple problem. I have about half a dozen L1As. One of them makes a noise when spinning at any speed (I think there's a physical problem with it). Had I only purchased one L1A and received that one, I may very well come to the conclusion that all L1As are loud. It's just one bad apple that came out of an otherwise excellent product.

Fortunately I'm here to give you 100% accurate, completely unbiased answers. Heck, I don't know why anyone else even bothers posting here.

My advise would be to "search for all posts by Ralf Hutter". That way you can skip right over all the misinformation and personal biases posted by everyone else and just get right to the "meat" of the matter. No sense wasting your valuable time when you have the One True Source right at your disposal.

I gotchur back homes!

The problem is that Ralf Hutter doesn't comment very much on the newer or more exotic stuff

I can't comment on specifics, but perhaps that's because "new" or "more exotic" doesn't necessarily equal "better".

I don't have enough time to waste trying to make some new gizmo with flashing lights, pumps and rearview mirrors work as well as something that's already working just fine.

I think one of the interesting things about SPCR in general, as well as the forums, is the skepticism we have. It applies reviews, products, and testimonials. We seem to have a collective, "oh yeah? Prove it" attitude. Which I, for one, think is a good thing.

The design world has a $10 phrase for it: Evidence-Based Design.

But for our little corner of geek-dom "proving it" isn't always easy. A good chunk of what makes a product recommended over another, for us, is based on the subjective noise level. Making as much stuff objective rather than subjective is one of the founding goals of this place.

Sure he does. He makes lots of comments about Thermaltake.

Following up on Rusty075's point, not only are many of the observations made here subjective, but they are also next to impossible to share. For example, you have the quietest computer setup in the world, but there is no practical way for me to hear that over the internet. Even if you put a microphone up to it and make an MP3 file out of it, there are so many factors involved (microphone quality, recording levels, distance from noise source...), it becomes difficult to get a real feel for how it sounds in person.

There is an awful lot of truth in what you say there. When I first came here I bought one of the recommended products and was bitterly disappointed with it. Initially I was about to write this website off as "just another place full of rubbish". I'm glad I stuck with it

Its not sufficient to just take one persons word for it, you really need to get a feel for their levels of noise acceptability. Its also well worth while having a good look through the forums. This is something that I did not do when I purchased the offending item, I just saw that it was recommended, skipped to the review conclusion and bought it.

Once you have spent a little time here you realise just how much people are prepared to help one another. We can all relate to that point in time when our PC was seen as the enemy. We had to use it, but we hated every minute of it cos it was so damned noisy. I think that’s the key to this place, if we can just save a few people wasting all those countless hours trying in vain to silence their machines.

No matter how good the reviewer and no matter how hard they try, you are not always going to get the review you hoped for.....

BTW: The product in question has been very thoroughly discussed in the forums. I'd rather not name the item in question, because that would reflect badly on the reviewer's hard work. It has also been regularly discussed in the forums, so there is no chance of a repeat error for anyone else if they do just a little research (now there's motive to search the forums )

Well, there's a simple solution to that.

Simply get all of us to sit in on the reviews .

I, for one, shall be expecting a first class ticket for MikeC's next review ...

... well - it was an idea, at any rate, albeit a bad one.

Sticking "X" amount of techs into a single room is bound to come up with "X*2" different opinions .

It IS all subjective in nature, therefor I regard SPCR as purely guidelines. Something that works for SomeSuchOrAnother may or may not work for me. However, people here have got quite a few interesting and good ideas, which is a good base.

Similarly, it's a good indicator of "what not to buy", at the very least.

Since all things in terms of sound are highly subjective, I don't think that SPCR can do much more of a good (nay, excellent) job than it already does.

There is yet another side to all this.

A thorough disciplined reviewer can do a very good job on a component with careful listening, descriptions of noises heard, and SPL measurements under specified conditions. But that component is NOT going to be used the same way under the same conditions by everyone. Naturally, if thermal / acoustic / mechanical conditions change, then the resulting performance (both thermal and noise) is unlikely to be exactly the same as reported by the reviewer.

What it comes down to is this: PC noise is the end result of a system of components that work together. Changing one component can often lead to changes in the noise/thermal behavior of other components; they are often interdependent. Air intake, air exhaust, airflow path through the case, the thermal output of all the various components...

To get the best performance (noise/thermal), you need to get the best balance of conditions for all the noise-making components. This sometimes means that one or more components may run noisier or hotter than ideal, but overall, this might give you the best compromise. Quieting a PC is pretty much an exercise in systematic tweaking, and both component choices and how well you understand the way they all work together in a thermal/noise sense have a huge impact on the final result. It's virtually impossible for a review to predict acoustic behavior of a component in your specific PC. Only if your system very closely simulates the test conditions will you get what the reviewer heard/measured.

So simply swapping out a component for one that's positively reviewed may not always give you what yo expect. It may also reveal thermal problems in the system you did not see before. PSUs are most subject to this, IMO, because of their reliance on a thermistor to control its fan(s) speed(s) and because it usually plays a role in system cooling as well, positioned as it is in an ATX tower case.

Anyway, my 2 cents.

Hmmm... So, the local optimums do not necessarily lead to the global optimum...

MikeC's comments pretty much covered it. But it's a difficult subject to keep in mind when we have to deal with individual components. Like he said.....the PSU is the hardest component to pick from a list of recommended parts.

Say you buy the quietest, most highly recommended model around. Next thing you know, your CPU temp is up 10C.....then you increase the cpu fan speed or the case fan speed to compensate. So what have you gained? A quieter PSU, but a noiser computer. And if you bought and assembled all the pieces of your computer at one time, you probably won't even know what's happening.

You have to keep everything in perspective, when you analyze one particular component, and how it might improve your own setup....not easy to do, subject to many variables, many interpretations.

Too bad we cannot try before you buy, like some software. If you're new around here, please do a search on every subject, and particularly every component before you try/buy. You'll probably find many different opinions.

But then again, for many of us, this is half the fun -- getting to silence or to lower noise.

After several years of hacking around with PC silencing, I have to say this: What you know is generally more important than what you have. Although it is true that what you know will affect what you have... It should. PC silencing without spending big bucks is more art and less paint-by-the-numbers -- if you are trying to achieve really low noise with unique components. (Rather than copy someone else's quiet box -- a perfectly good & efficient approach, IMO).

Anyway this is to support Bluefront's comments about reading thoroughly. The reviews and articles on the main site really do have a LOT of info, and careful reading will provide high yields.

The closest I came to a lie was when I boasted about lower hd temps 20c I did lower them. I was cooking my hd at almost 50c and then I added some side attached copper cable like battery cables, and I dropped my hd to about 30c, but I has also adjusted my intake fan from 6v to 12 and my exhaust fan to about 9v fr 6v.