I see little point in going fanless with HDDs in the box Because of the noise, the heat, or both? What alternative is there? SSD? Having a fanless PSU and fanless/very quiet CPU would already help make that thing very silent. If you're looking to upgrade I would look at the cheapest Sandy Bridge se...

Hello On my XPSP3 host that I use for daily work + light development, I'd like to replace the AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ (Brisbane 65nm Technology) and the Corsair CX400W PSU for fanless devices. I'll check the page on the fanless PSU's , but I was wondering if someone could recommend a CPU that's about...

Thanks for the infos. I'll check what silent PSU's are recommended on SPCR, and come up with a better backup solution so that it doesn't matter if I can lose one or both drives.

My problem is this... I've plugged everything in and fired it up but I get almost nothing. All I get is a quick flash of the light that's on the volume knob of the Moncaso 320 - No cpu fan or anything (oh and the stand by light is on before I hit the power switch) Just a quick idea: Unplug the Pico...

Thanks for the tip. For "Suspend Mode", my Asus mobo uses "Auto" by default, with the options of setting S1 or S3. I'll play with this and see how it goes.

Hello I'm still running XPSP3 (don't have the courage to reinstall all the apps on a brand new W7 host). When I choose "Stand By", I notice that the fans (CPU + PSU) don't stop spinning, which means the host isn't really silent, although it uses less power by shutting down the hard drives. I have a ...

MikeC wrote:A voltmeter will not help you. Go instead for a Kill-a-Watt or similar (like Seasonic Power Angel)

Thanks everyone for the feedback. I bought an Avidsen 103353 power meter similar to a KaW. I'll connect it to my PC and see what it reports.

Hello I'd like to check how much power my work PC uses, and am thinking of getting a voltmeter . However, I was told that voltmeters aren't reliable with PCs because their PSU is more complex than basic power supplies like those for a fridge. I don't have the technical knowledge to tell: For those o...

Thanks everyone for the feedback.

Hello I was wondering two newbie things about laptops: 1. Why are they so silent without requiring the huge heatsink/fans that we use in desktops? 2. Are they powerful enough for developers, eg. to compile a big project like Linux, with similar performance to desktops? I notice that the Apple produc...

Thanks for the infos. I checked the Sandy Bridge CPU's and the mini-ITX boards that take them, and the bill for just those two components is about €200 for a Intel Core i3 2100 + ASRock H67M-ITX. Alternatively, to have an idea of their performance, I'd be curious if someone could tell me how long it...

Thanks for the feedback. I'll try to find a CPU that offers a good compromise between performance and power dissipation.

Thanks much for the infos. Too bad no brand came up with a totally silent desktop PC.

Is an 80W/6.6A PicoPSU enough to power this whole setup?

I'd rather just grab a computer from the store instead of building it myself. As I need to compile the Linux kernel, I need something faster than an Atom, but without the increased noise + form factor. Also, when I choose to put it in Sleep mode at night, I want the whole thing to be silent, even th...

Hello A couple of years ago, I bought an Acer Aspire L100 as a replacement desktop PC, but once set up at home, it turned out to be much less silent than expected (the fan would blow at 100% speed every once in a while). Are there compact, 100% silent desktop brand PC's (eg. Asus EeeBox PC ), or is ...

Hello My work PC is running an AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ on an Asus M2N68-AM Plus motherboard. SpeedFan returns the following readings: http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/6686/speedfanasusm2n68amplus.gif I have a couple of questions: 1. Are SpeedFan readings reliable? Is my CPU really 21°C? 2. Are AMD'...

Thanks for the tips.

Hello I need a case to hold a fanless Atom-based motherboard, a 2.5" hard-drive, and a PCI telephony card: http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/4904/minipcy.jpg To save space, I was thinking of using a PCI riser, either really high so the PCI card lies just slightly above the big, blue heatsink, or with a...

Too bad :-/ I'll try to find a quiet, regular size PSU, then. Thank you.

Thanks for the tip. Is there a document or web application somewhere that I could use to estimate the power requirements for those parts?

Hello I have a test PC whose PSU is pretty noisy. OTOH, I have two PicoPSU available, an 80w and a 90w . I don't know how to check which of the two, if any, will be enough to power the PC that has the following parts: Motherboard Asrock K8NF4G-SATA2 CPU AMD Sempron 2600+ 2.5" Samsung HM121HJ hard dr...

Thanks for the feedback. BTW, if a 300W PSU doesn't actually use that much power... how can I tell how much it does use?

Out of curiosity, I installed SharpDevelop 4 and launched a basic VB.Net application on a laptop with 4GB RAM and powered by an Intel Core 2 Solo SU3500, and it's fast enough for what I need. I wonder if I shouldn't just use a laptop instead of trying to find a desktop that would be as silent and co...

Thanks guys for the infos. Currently, besides the higher noise and the bulk of an ATX desktop box, leaving it running 24/7 costs about 450€/year in power (350W PSU with 0.15€ per kW/hour = 1.26€/day). I'd like a compact, fanless or really quiet desktop for office and moderate dotnet development. Tha...

Hello, I'd like to replace my aging, and home-built-, pretty-quiet-but-not-silent XP host with a really quiet Windows7 host (as in Apple's Mac Mini .) Besides the noise, I'd also like to save on power by avoiding keeping the host running 24/7 like I did until now because I wasn't confident the drive...

Thanks for the tip.

Hello I'm running XPSP3 on a desktop (AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+, M2N68-AM Plus mobo). When choosing Start > Turn off > Standby, the CPU fan and the PSU fan keep running. I was wondering if it'd be safe to have those fans run slower or even stop altogether, and if yes, if XP can be made to do this, or I...

Look, it's all really simple: rated max power for the brick must be larger than power drawn from it and same goes for the Pico part. However those calculators just don't give the correct numbers. In that case, if the PC components use 175W, the 120W PicoPSU clearly isn't enough, and the 100W power ...

A picture being worth a thousand words...

http://img37.imageshack.us/img37/8082/psuchoice.png

I don't understand how a 100W brick can power a 120W PicoPSU which in turn can power a modest, two-HD AMD desktop that uses about 200W

Thanks for the tip. I got a recommended 216W: System Type: 1 physical CPU Motherboard: Regular - Desktop CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ 2600 MHz AM2 Windsor CPU Utilization (TDP): 90% TDP RAM: 1 Stick DDR2 SDRAM IDE HDD 7200 rpm: 1 HDD Regular SATA: 1 HDD DVD-RW/DVD+RW Drive: 1 Drive Keyboard and mouse...