Quiet and Powerful...

[Baudesign]

Hi everyone,

Building a quiet PC has been in my mind for many months now. Quiet but at the same time, powerful, since I work with Photoshop most of the time, with many other apps open at the same time.

I have a pretty good computer right now: Antec case with lots of tweaking inside (Zalman fan, Power Snooze damping, etc.) But this is not quiet enough for my tastes.

I have seen on the Web many strange solutions: water cooled, the new Zalman heatsink case. There is the Hushtechnologies.com computer, but too expensive. I am really interested into the Scythe fanless mini case with VIA EPIA-M10000 inside, but is this powerful enough for me?

Any suggestions? I am totally lost here.

My goal: Ultra quiet PC, but powerful, without breaking the bank.

Thanks

[MikeC]

Ultra quiet PC, but powerful, without breaking the bank

That kind of eliminates the m-ITX platform. I think you'd want a better video card & better FPU performance for Photoshop + multi-app multitasking. Having done DTP for a long time, I have an idea of your needs.

Something like a mid-line P4 or AMD XP system (2~2.5G)with a decent 2D VGA card (Matrox?) and 512mb of RAM should work fine for you. Any number of DIY systems featured in SPCR would work fine. Ditto the ARM System or Frontier PC system in the Prebuilt system section. These systems typically run ~25 dBA/1m or better (and I would guess the DIY systems are in that ballpark if not better).

Your definition of "ultra quiet" is not clear to anyone but yourself, of course. To me that implies sub-20 dBA/1m, but to you it could be 30 dBA/1m. If you did nothing but duplicate ALL the steps taken in the Silencing a P4 article I did -- one of the first here -- you'd have a <20 dBA/1m system.

Your current system might be an ok candidate for systematic silencing. The case & PSU are keys. You could even just go down the recommended lists (some of which admittedly need updating) and see what in your system needs replacing.

Finally, welcome to SPCR.