The Sound of Silence: Computing's silent revolution-News.com

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Wraith
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The Sound of Silence: Computing's silent revolution-News.com

Post by Wraith » Mon Jan 31, 2005 8:00 am

Top of the page on Cnet's News.com this morning. Computing's Silent Revolution

Includes some discussion with Mike C and a link to SPCR. Image

Korwen
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Post by Korwen » Mon Jan 31, 2005 8:10 am

Awesome!

Good article and great press for the site. The more people we can interest in silent computing, the more products and competition we'll have in the industry. Congrats on the good press!

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Post by Tibors » Mon Jan 31, 2005 11:12 am

CNET wrote:The quest for quiet computing has inspired ... a small underground of acoustic cultists.
Ah, now I know what I am. I am an acoustic cultist. :lol:
CNET wrote:Quiet PCs can cost up to $500 more than their noisier counterparts
And then he forgot the next half: ", but they don't have to with a bit of carefull planning."

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Post by liquid_celica » Mon Jan 31, 2005 3:10 pm

SPCR stock on the way? I have first dibbs! 8) . good job Mike!

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Post by luminous » Mon Jan 31, 2005 4:07 pm

Great to hear that we have got a little more mainstream recognition for the work that MikeC (and others) have put into this site. The more publicity we get, the more people will care about the noise levels their PCs put out. So many people have no idea that a PC can be quiet, they just have never experienced it. I do enjoy pointing them to this site :)

For me the holy grail is the off the shelf, high performance, silent PC. Something that I think will take quite a few more years to come. So, in short guys, you are going to have to put up with me in the forums for a few more years ;)

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Post by DryFire » Mon Jan 31, 2005 4:19 pm

Pretty good article. Nice to see more expose for the silent. Hopefully this will decrease the price of silent equipment.
But truly quiet computing is still largely a niche market, served by specialty manufacturers such as South Korea's Zalman Tech, which makes huge copper heatsinks, water-cooling pumps and other components
zalman makes WC'ing pumps now?

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Post by pangit » Mon Jan 31, 2005 5:03 pm

Tibors wrote:
CNET wrote:Quiet PCs can cost up to $500 more than their noisier counterparts
And then he forgot the next half: ", but they don't have to with a bit of carefull planning."
Yeah, I found that a bit objectionable too, as it rather misleading. Sure it can cost $500 more if you buy a Hush, but the premium Hush charge isn't just for silence, but for the aesthetics too as they point out.

As we all know here, by carefully selecting the right components you can get a quiet PC for virtually no price premium over a standard machine. But I suppose quiet off-the-shelf systems are still more difficult to find.

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Post by mathias » Mon Jan 31, 2005 6:04 pm

They're rather correct in priniciple, a lot of PC buyers don't want extra costs in terms of not just money but effort also, and sometimes delays too. The worse ones even get angry when informed that they bought lousy components.

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Post by Edward Ng » Mon Jan 31, 2005 6:06 pm

You guys should check out the comments that people posted in response to that article; there's one particular dweeb in there that really gets on my nerve (and no I'm not talking about any of the Apple Cultists that crawled out of the woodwork to comment).

-Ed

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Post by mathias » Mon Jan 31, 2005 6:39 pm

What an idiot, 'noise is a non issue to most people because they only have one delta fan/vantec tornado' :roll:

But no wonder the idiot can't imagine putting the effort into silencing a PC, apparently he's so lazy he has a fridge, microwave, toilet, TV, and/or something else louder beside his PC.

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Post by Wraith » Mon Jan 31, 2005 6:43 pm

Love how none of that guy's points are valid. Heh.

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Post by sthayashi » Mon Jan 31, 2005 9:31 pm

I'm not going to register on their site just to leave my comment. So I'm just going to counter here and I'll let someone else do my dirty work. :twisted:

One does not need to compromise performance for silence. A 15kRPM drive is not the best performing drive, this product (at the bottom) is much faster and much quieter. This product is pretty good too.

MikeC, they make it sound like you lost your mind one day and have been on a crusade since. Is that true?

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Post by MikeC » Mon Jan 31, 2005 11:09 pm

sthayashi wrote:MikeC, they make it sound like you lost your mind one day and have been on a crusade since. Is that true?
That's one way of putting it. :lol:

Why, do you feel righteous and holy when you're here? Or just crazy? :P

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Post by meglamaniac » Tue Feb 01, 2005 2:31 am

That's awesome, great to see some mainstream coverage.
Hopefully a few people will click the SPCR link in the article and get converted, hehe.

:)

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Post by sthayashi » Tue Feb 01, 2005 11:26 am

MikeC wrote:
sthayashi wrote:MikeC, they make it sound like you lost your mind one day and have been on a crusade since. Is that true?
That's one way of putting it. :lol:

Why, do you feel righteous and holy when you're here? Or just crazy? :P
Just crazy :lol:

I look at hardware differently due to this site, and I have to bite my tongue when someone in the Real World asks my opinion on a loud-but-otherwise-good computer component (e.g. 6800 Ultra video cards).

I've had friends that couldn't believe that I'd given them my old 30GB Maxtor or my old scratched up Cooler Master ATCS-201 case to them for free because they were in need of computer hardware and I wasn't going to use it since it was too loud. Especially when I told them I felt bad that I was giving them such a loud drive/case.

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Post by DryFire » Tue Feb 01, 2005 5:10 pm

Yes i have gotten a few wierd looks for not reccomending things soley because they are too loud.

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Post by mathias » Tue Feb 01, 2005 6:14 pm

sthayashi wrote: I look at hardware differently due to this site, and I have to bite my tongue when someone in the Real World asks my opinion on a loud-but-otherwise-good computer component (e.g. 6800 Ultra video cards).
A 6800U, loud but otherwise good? You're kind of overlooking expensive, hot and power hungry.

I also look at hardware differently now, but not really due to this site, I've been kind of apathetic about performance for while, mostly for a while before I found SPCR actually. And I also appreciate some of the side benefits of silencing/other benefits of more moderate/better desgned PC's(like the above coment suggests), like lower cost, lower power requirements and the high reliability of slow sleeve bearing fans.

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Post by Denorios » Wed Feb 02, 2005 10:13 am

MikeC wrote:
sthayashi wrote:MikeC, they make it sound like you lost your mind one day and have been on a crusade since. Is that true?
That's one way of putting it. :lol:

Why, do you feel righteous and holy when you're here? Or just crazy? :P
Well, I have felt a strong urge to convert my friends and family to the Silent side. :lol: I have succeeded in saving several benighted souls from the tyranny of noise pollution so far. Though that's mainly because I generate a steady stream of quiet-but-not-quiet-enough components that have to go somewhere. :twisted: Oh, well. I will feel justified when they start spending their own money on silencing.

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Post by Edward Ng » Wed Feb 02, 2005 4:58 pm

Some of us have to go through hell to seek heaven...

I once had a machine with these specs:

Thermaltake Xaser II
Antec True 550
Gigabyte 7NNXP w/DPS
Barton w/Aeroflow
Radeon 9800 Pro w/ZM80A-HP and three 70mm TMD fans tied to it at 12V
4 80mm high speed LED fans from Galaxy, 12V
1 80mm LED fan from Cooler Master, 12V
2 92mm high speed LED fans from Galaxy, 12V
1 18GB Cheetah 15K3, hard mounted
2 60GB Diamond MAX 9, hard mounted
4 40GB Caviars, hard mounted (no I am not kidding)
3 red 12" CCFLs
1 white 12" CCFL

That's my last loud rig, and basically it's what tripped over the line for me. More amazingly, I used to leave that beast on 24/7.

-Ed

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Post by burcakb » Wed Feb 02, 2005 11:55 pm

Some of us have to go through hell to seek heaven...

I once had a machine with these specs:
OUCH!!! That's worse than hell :)

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Post by luminous » Thu Feb 03, 2005 9:54 am

11 fans !! 3 of them 70mm!!! All at 12V..... hold on I think I just fainted at the concept.

THE HORROR, THE HORROR - I'm sure thats a good film quote from Apoc Now...

Its very nice to see that you have converted from the Dark Side, and not a moment too soon :)

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Post by pdf27 » Thu Feb 03, 2005 2:32 pm

Edward Ng wrote:I once had a machine with these specs:
What did you do with it, hoover the floor? :?

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Post by StarfishChris » Thu Feb 03, 2005 4:10 pm

Hey, at least if it toppled over it would float above the floor...

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Post by Gxcad » Thu Feb 03, 2005 5:33 pm

Ouch...thats some scary specs! I started on the right track right from the beginning; I got pushed over the edge with 2x 120mm panaflo L1A's @ 12v and a stock old enermax dual fan. Back then, cases with stock 120mm fans were quite rare, but mine had 3 openings for them STOCK. I paid $180 for the case though... I also had a IBM deathstar 30gb hard mounted. Back then these were considered quiet already, and I picked most of these for their advertised quietness. Once I put em in my PC I just assumed that noise level was considered quiet. I did however notice my PC bothered me and my concentration a lot, especially when I did all nighter papers for school.

Then I found Mike and the rest of the early underground on silent PC yahoo groups... :wink: . Quickly moved to a cuda IV 40gb suspended, modded the enermax to a single 80mm panaflo, and undervolted the 120mm's to 5v with the simple 5v trick from the PSU connectors (this was actually the first silence mod I did and I found it before the yahoo groups). Found myself on my PC more than ever before after it was quiet. Never turned back since...

-Ken

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Post by Edward Ng » Thu Feb 03, 2005 6:15 pm

luminous wrote:11 fans !! 3 of them 70mm!!! All at 12V..... hold on I think I just fainted at the concept.

THE HORROR, THE HORROR - I'm sure thats a good film quote from Apoc Now...

Its very nice to see that you have converted from the Dark Side, and not a moment too soon :)
The fans weren't the worst part, actually. Just look at the specs and think a bit more on it.

But then again my high frequency noise sensitivity is just crazy compared to my merely above average mid and low frequency sensitivity, so that also had to do with why the fans, as incredibly bad as they were, weren't the worst part for me.

And as to why, the simple reason was that it had not yet occurred to me that I could get much lower noise for barely noticeable performance in exchange for a hardly noticeable performance drop at the time.

-Ed

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Post by sthayashi » Thu Feb 03, 2005 9:25 pm

Edward Ng wrote:The fans weren't the worst part, actually. Just look at the specs and think a bit more on it.
All those hard drives creating a gyroscopic effect on your computer :D ?

I'd forgotten how loud non-FDB drives could be, and I didn't read the count until just now. You sound like another guy who lost his mind one day and went on a crusade :lol:
Edward Ng wrote:And as to why, the simple reason was that it had not yet occurred to me that I could get much lower noise for barely noticeable performance in exchange for a hardly noticeable performance drop at the time.
Amen to that. 1.2GHz and no effect on my emailing or forum posting.

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Post by Edward Ng » Fri Feb 04, 2005 2:59 am

sthayashi wrote:
Edward Ng wrote:The fans weren't the worst part, actually. Just look at the specs and think a bit more on it.
All those hard drives creating a gyroscopic effect on your computer :D ?

I'd forgotten how loud non-FDB drives could be, and I didn't read the count until just now. You sound like another guy who lost his mind one day and went on a crusade :lol:
Edward Ng wrote:And as to why, the simple reason was that it had not yet occurred to me that I could get much lower noise for barely noticeable performance in exchange for a hardly noticeable performance drop at the time.
Amen to that. 1.2GHz and no effect on my emailing or forum posting.
One Caviar is ear-bleeding. What impressive effect does four of them at once render?

A sudden urge to review for a silencing site?

-Ed

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