Why are new cheapo Dells so quiet?

neptunefix · Post by **neptunefix** » Tue Jan 29, 2008 8:06 pm

I'm sure I'm going to get flamed for this, but both my work and school have both purchased a bunch of new small desktops and mid-towers from Dell. Usually I hate the computers they get, but I have to admit that I am impressed with these new ones.

They are amzingly quiet and swift. Some of them are very small micro-ATX cases that are attached to the monitors and I swear I can barely hear them. Actually the hard drives make some racket when loading something sizeable, but that's because they dont use good drives. My samsungs definately have them beat.

I currently have a solid Antec SLK3700 case with a 1600rpm antec fan and an s-flex @ 800rpm. Abit IC7 mb w/ Thermalright XP120 + s-flex 1200rpm, passive north bridge and passive Radeon 9250SE video card. The hum is pretty noticeable. Im looking to make a much quieter build with my current case and maybe the Scythe fans, but fear I may be better off getting a.. Dell?

zorrt · Post by **zorrt** » Tue Jan 29, 2008 9:18 pm

They also get pretty hot...I know the apple G5 is silent as but also hot as too.

porkchop · Post by **porkchop** » Tue Jan 29, 2008 9:28 pm

don't forget that ambient noise in an office or school is SIGNIFICANTLY higher than in your room.
my old viewsonic 20" lcd had an inaudible whine at the shop (although it was admittedly on a main road), but the whine was intolerable when i got it home.

my experience with dell is that hdd cooling is neglected, in my brothers case they are located in the bottom front of the case below the intake fan, meaning they get practically no airflow.
otherwise they do pretty well for cooling the other components, they use custom mobos, cases and heatsinks so its to be expected.

neptunefix · Post by **neptunefix** » Tue Jan 29, 2008 9:37 pm

I wish there were cooler standard sized parts out there available for the individual consumer. seems like everything in market is maxed out for gamers and hard core users, thus driving heat up. If you notice, the current technology of desktop chips are higher clocked versions of their laptop counterparts, derived from the low heat laptop processors, I think developed by intel-Israel.

frostedflakes · Post by **frostedflakes** » Tue Jan 29, 2008 11:46 pm

It may also be that idle noise is low, but under load it's a bit louder. With SpeedStep and CoolnQuiet even the faster processors don't use more than 5-10w idle, so keeping these systems quiet at idle/low load shouldn't be very difficult. At full load, though, fans probably ramp up quite a bit.

But my experience is that many modern prebuilt systems are adequately quiet. I don't know how people could stand using prebuilts back in the P2/P3 days, 90% of the older systems I've used had screamers on the CPU and horrible whiny hard drives.

TBM328 · Post by **TBM328** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 5:27 am

Make sure you are doing an apples to apples comparison: the Dell desktops in my office seem quiet too, but they are low end configurations. I've purchased in the past few years two Dell computers for my personal use, but they were fairly high end configurations, and they were both loud.

sjoukew · Post by **sjoukew** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 12:52 pm

Often only the really slow dells are quiet. If you don't put any interesting things inside the case, you don't have to cool anything