Do-It-Yourself Systems

Another month, another silent PC. This time, in a handsome presentable case with just one moving part: A 120mm fan spinning at 500rpm. The SMPPC combines an Intel X25-M 80GB SSD, a Cool'n'Quiet AMD Athlon 64 2X processor, high efficiency DC/DC power conversion and DIY modding on a heatpipe heatsink in a Silverstone TJ08 for a system that is immeasurable even in an 11 dBA anechoic chamber.

A PC without any moving parts has been the Holy Grail of Silent Computing for years. It's a quest that has led some individuals to fabricate their own cases, massive heatsinks turned inside out, with the components bolted inside them. The final moving part to go is the spinning hard disk drive. A new PC for our anechoic chamber uses a Samsung SSD to eliminate all moving parts for truly silent performance.

Edward McKeating's project started not as an exercise in reuse and recycle but because he wanted to move his media PC into the living room to watch TV and videos more comfortably. The problem was that the PC was ugly and very noisy. He decided instead to modify what he had with some of the junk cluttering his garage. The end result is a unique and successful DIY media PC that cost only a can of paint and some time and effort.

An English electronic engineer who likes making things, Bill Todd made many modifications, and created a new wood case to take this modest old Pentium III system far along the road to silent nirvana. His ingenious journey involved recycling and creating of all kinds of parts including old electronics heatsinks, home-made damping gel packs, scraps of plywood, and even wheels from an old scooter. Two years after he first assembled this passively cooled system, it's still working silently away, even after a leak in a gel pack next to the hard drive.

Chris Thomson returns with a Core 2 Duo upgrade of his quiet PC, greatly overclocked with carefully chosen high performance parts, modified judiciously, and meticulously ducted for maximum airflow and cooling with minimum noise. It's another magnum opus on the current state of DIY, enthusiast, air-cooled, high performance, silent computing.

Here's a DIY quiet PC project story by a Finnish teen who has the distinction of being the youngest SPCR editorial contributor to date. The project involves another custom-built wooden case (not the first at SPCR), exotic woods, a cardboard box, and some help from Jani's father.

Chris Thomson returns to SPCR with Round Two of his Pentium D silencing saga. As before, Chris does a great job with systematic documentation, and this time, he incorporates the feedback on his original DIY article from many forum members. By identifying names, their comments, and the way these comments were used for further improvements, the article also becomes a showcase of the SPCR spirit: A community sharing in exploration and discovery.

Chris Thomson built a system around a hot, overclocked Pentium D 830 dual-core processor with a total system power draw of 327W AC and managed to quiet it down to true whisper levels by applying ingenuity and drawing judiciously on the infobanks of SPCR. The great attention to detail makes this one of the best documented DIY articles we've posted.

An old friend from another life asked about a quiet computer... and the end result is a PC that's been custom built to be quiet in the tropical heat of rural Thailand. Its components include an Athlon64 X2-3800+, EVGA nVidia 6800GS-256, Samsung 200GB HDD, and six fans in a modified Antec P150 case; still, measured SPL is just 23 dBA@1m. Quiet is in the details of this high heat optimized PC.

Doug realized that to follow SPCR's advice of starting with quiet components to make a quiet computer, he'd have to replace most of the noisy components in his computer. He decided this would be too costly, and opted for a different approach: Build a case using pine boards and a design to contain the noise, with a little advice from SPCR forum members. Doug's successful DIY quiet system should garner a lot of admirers.

His mother turned into a digital shutterbug and wanted a bigger than a 17" screen to show and edit her photos. Jordan Menu used this as a good excuse to make a quiet Home Theater PC that could also play movies on the big 52" TV in the family room. In the process, the Nexus DampTekacoustic damping material also got a test run.

Peter Scott writes from New Zealand about his efforts to quiet a noisy P4 2.66A box. His article is a saga of experimentation and inventiveness, which seem requisite for a successful PC silencing project. Peter also shows us another variant of the HDD anti-vibration decoupling suspension technique we espouse. This article will inspire those for whom the latest "silent" gear is not available.

Given the the absence of any decoupling suspension on the hard drive, Ami's fanless dual-CPU P3-500 Blue 42 can't be a silent system. But I think it must be very quiet and it must have been fun for Ami Rodan to build. It's another testament to PC silencing creativity — although some will quibble over the mixing of metals in the watercooling system.

A reader's account of the most extreme undervolted and underclocked system I've yet heard about. Mark Charlesworth created an auto-speed adjusting AMD XP1700+ system that runs with as little as 4.7W CPU power draw yet ramps up to full speed when needed. Read how he did it!

A uniquely ducted, heavily modified Zalman Z7000cu heatsink on an AMD Athlon 64-3000 are the lungs, heart and brain of Han Bijlard's new PC. Countercurrent flow cooling is the concept he implemented with a dual-Panaflo push-pull fan duct and three suspended Samsung hard drives in an Ahanix Black Knight case . The end result is a cool, quiet and powerful computer.