SPCR

I'm pretty much amused by the 'almost' silent project I've seen around.
Anyone else has a 0 fan box ?

Just because fanned boxes make me smile, here is mine :


Case : Yesico OpenAir (ok, I drilled vent holes in the bottom)
PSU : Yesico fanless 480W
CPU : AMD64X2 3800
Scythe Ninja
HD : WD 160 Go
GPU : Albatron GeForce 7300 LE
MB : Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9 Ultra
1 Go Corsair
DVD LG


This is a gentoo box : there is a weekly compiling session of several hours.

The CPU temp never exceeds 65 C° (normal is around 45 °)
The hottest is the MOBO chip which is around 100 °
GPU is at 80 °

The box never goes beyond a +7 relative temperature

The bow has been running for 1 year now, with uptimes up to 2 months

I find it amusing that you're so proud of an "almost silent" machine which still has a hard drive. Without a bulky silencing enclosure, a 2.5" drive still makes noise--more noise than a good undervolted fan and much more annoying due to non-constant nature of seeks.

I've done fanless a few times, but only one of my fanless builds are what I'd consider truly silent. Most of the time, there are weird electrical noises; especially strange coil buzz during I/O access. On most of my motherboards, this is NOT a subtle noise--the chatter totally overwhelms an undervolted fan!

My latest solid state build has no such strange electrical noises. Unfortunately, this computer is a mere 120mhz Pentium with 48megs of RAM--extremely limited on its own. It makes an awesome little X terminal, though.

BTW, the General Gallery is supposed to be where people post pictures of their systems.

Anyone else has a 0 fan box ?

0dBA Project rev.2

The CPU temp never exceeds 65 C° (normal is around 45 °)
The hottest is the MOBO chip which is around 100 °
GPU is at 80 °

out of interest, how do you read temps in linux? is there such an application for ubuntu?

A single undervolted exhaust fan drops your temps dramatically without a noticable increase in noise. It's not so much that 0dB is difficult to achieve, it's just impractical and stressful on your hardware. There are no in-case fanless PSUs that are designed without some level of case airflow in mind.

Your build isn't particularly impressive, you just assembled off-the-shelf parts and neglected to include a fan. Then you come here and brag in an annoyingly arrogant way in the "general gallery" section without showing pictures. If anything, your post amuses me.

I did run my Antec P180 fanless once, by mistake!

I had about similar temperatures. Why did I run it fanless? I my two fans turned all the way down using my fan controller, and I rebooted. The fans don't start at 5V, and the audible difference is, you guessed it, none. That's why I ran it fanless for over a day without even noticing it, because I couldn't hear any difference. The hard drive masks the noise.

I'm very disappointed in the OP. I was expecting to see some skyscraper sized heatsinks lol. It'd be nice to see at least some pictures to see what you've actually done instead of just using some words to describe it.

jaganath wrote:out of interest, how do you read temps in linux? is there such an application for ubuntu?

I know a couple ways, lm-sensors (kernel) and mbmob (no kernel dependences).
You can install and configure lm-sensors following this guide, and x sensors is the graphical client. lm-sensors can also be used to control fan speeds, but setting that up is much harder.
Mbmon can be installed via Synaptic, and xmbmon is the graphical client.

*Note lm-sensors can be installed via Synaptic and is preinstalled in Feisty, but it still needs to be properly configured so you can use x sensors.

Thanks so much for that z3r0, I'm a Linux noob so all advice and help is very gratefully received!

jaganath : You outworked my box by far
With regards to sensors, I think z3r0 already gave you the correct answer.


Alright. My post was deliberately provocative. I was interested in seeing other similar projects. And yes, the point is : I merely assembled retail components, with almost 0 additional work, for an almost 0 ( but HD and static) noise.

Greetings,

This is the gallery section -- where are the pictures?

yfh2 wrote:Just because fanned boxes make me smile, here is mine :

It is quite interesting how it can run so hot without problems (so far?). If you would also do something about the HDD noise, it would propably be truly silent? A 0 fan design is definately intriguing but I'm not that daring about the chip temperatures. Anyway, as long as the HDD makes more noise than a minimal set of fans, there's not much practical benefit.

For a fanless rig, I'd like to use a big external heat sink, connected by heat pipes to each chip. Even with all those investments and required effort, the HDD noise still remains to be resolved. If enclosing the HDD e.g. inside Scythe Quiet Drive box, some air flow is required for getting rid of the heat around. Connecting the HDD box to heat sink using heat pipes would most likely pass also some vibrations there, making it loud after all.

Moogles wrote:Your build isn't particularly impressive, you just assembled off-the-shelf parts and neglected to include a fan.

I'd welcome all kinds of builds as long as they contain some ideas for quiet design. The off-the-shelf builds are especially useful for many of us because they are easy to copy. Also, just neglecting to include a fan is interesting information because I like to know about the consequences without having to replace my own precious components.

Alright, pics, fast, or somebody's gonna die. This is a gallery, damnit!

IsaacKuo wrote:BTW, the General Gallery is supposed to be where people post pictures of their systems.

Chocolinx wrote:It'd be nice to see at least some pictures to see what you've actually done instead of just using some words to describe it.

NeilBlanchard wrote:This is the gallery section -- where are the pictures?

Sylph-DS wrote:Alright, pics, fast, or somebody's gonna die. This is a gallery, damnit!

I totally agree with all these people. Maybe the moderators should start taking down posts for all these people who post here without any pics.

len509 wrote:I totally agree with all these people. Maybe the moderators should start taking down posts for all these people who post here without any pics.

Well, if there really are that many people that want to show off their system without pics, perhaps there should be a "I want to show off my system but I can't afford a camera!" forum where we can move all of these topics.

I think Neil and Ralf normally do this but since they have decided not to...



God, I love that smiley...

Cool post! lol

No pics sorry