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Dead silent PC (and I mean DEAD = 0 dB)

Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 3:11 am
by wiser
Hello to all,
I'm looking into updating my system and will probably build something around the Core 2 Duo processor.
I've always wanted to have a completely silent PC but somehow I can't easily find a list of key components to achieve this. I already have a very quiet one (0 dB power supply, Zalman heatpipe for my current processor) but there are still some front and back fans spinning, and I was unable to properly fit a heatpipe on top of my current video card (an ageing Radeon 9800 XT).

So basically, my call for help is to find out if it is at all possible to build a truly silent PC, although I do understand there will be some noise when accessing the hard drive and when the optical drive is running (is it possible to dampen this noise as well?)
One additional question concerns this (or the next's) generation of video cards. I'm planning on acquiring a fairly good graphics card (so I can FINALLY play Oblivion the way it was meant to be played... :-)) but I wanted to make sure I could fit a heatpipe on it.

So there we go. Any help would be most welcome. Thanks a million for your time.




Adrian

Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 4:34 am
by zenboy
In my opinion, the only way you're going to get a current gen PC - especially one with a video card powerful enough to do Oblivion well - down to 0 db is to turn it off.

There are very few components out there that can currently be run purely on convection with no fans. Here is my suggestions for getting rid of the perceived noise.

Put the PC in a different room, and use I/O extenders to bring the video and USB into your computing area.

Put the cooling into a different area - use water cooling on all major components, including power supply, with radiator and pump in a different room.

Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 4:39 am
by wiser
Zenboy,

Thanks for the tongue-in-cheek reply... :wink:

I honestly thought this was doable. But I guess I'll have to settle for the next best thing. Thanks again for taking the time to reply.



Adrian

Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 4:49 am
by zenboy
Nothing tongue in cheek about it, aside from the turn it off comment. I have several utility computers which do not sit in my primary computing area, and let me tell you, while they grate on the nerves to be in the presence of, from here they are 0db. The remote cooling idea is one I've been tossing around for a while. Get a fairly large radiator (something like the rad from a Datsun), water cooled power supply, CPU/GPU/Chipset blocks, distribution blocks with flow regulators for the input from a 110v pond pump located out of earshot. I'd probably put it in my basement.

The problem with cooling everything with zero fans is thermal runaway. Eventually the whole system will be unable to adequately radiate away all of it's heat, and the more powerthirsty components you feed into it, the faster this will happen. If you want to get down into that range, you'll need to carefully select _very_ low power components (think Via MiniITX boards or Laptop processors undervolted) and something like the PicoPSU. It will be fairly easy to get your setup down to _very_ quiet, but it will have fans, and it will have noise, just not very much.

Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 5:02 am
by wiser
Zenboy,

I didn't mean to imply the whole comment was tongue-in-cheek, just that first bit of course...

Thanks for all these suggestions. I'm a neophyte when it comes to silencing the apparently unsilenceable, but your solutions provide at least some way of circumventing the ventilating issues.

Thanks again.



Adrian

Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 5:05 am
by breunor
Well totally silent isn't really needed unless you live in a sound chamber or something along those lines, so I think you could make a system that's "effectively silent".

The new Aerocase videocard cooler angled to fit with a large cpu cooler like the Ninja, some quiet 120mm fans mounted to prevent vibration to move air through the case and past those heat sinks, and suspended hard drives can all make for a PC you don't hear unless it's used as a pillow.

Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 5:09 am
by wiser
Breunor,

Thanks for the helpful tips. Much appreciated! I live in France, but I'm fairly confident I should be able to find those components over here.



Adrian

Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 5:27 am
by Aris
if the noise being generated by your computer is less than your typical indoor noise levels, then your pc will be "effectivly" silent, because everything else in the house thats making noise will drown out your PC.

Ive read up on a few posts from people that spend alot of time in parabolic chambers that test noise levels n such, and most of them agree your typical home, in a quiet room with no "active" noise sources is somewhere around 25db. A 7volted 120mm nexus is only about 21db. So even with a couple of them in a computer, you still wont be able to hear it over the rest of the ambient noises in your house.


One last thing, im really suprised you havnt gotten any techies in here to tell you that 0db is impossible. Every time i see someone talk about "0 db" someone always chimes in with an explination about why 0db is technically impossible, and even parabolic chambers are at like 10db or somthin like that.

Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 5:46 am
by wiser
Aris,

Thanks for your insight. Actually, ambient noise is virtually nonexistent where I live (a remote house in a remote village on the west coast of France), so my work environment is EXTREMELY quiet, which is why I want as little noise as possible emanating from my PC.

OK, maybe there's SOME ambient noise - the sun rising, the moon shining, the grass growing, and oh yes, the cows coughing and the swallows chirping - man alive those animals are noisy! :-)

Again, thanks for taking the time.



Adrian

Re: Dead silent PC (and I mean DEAD = 0 dB)

Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 5:53 am
by QuietOC
wiser wrote:Hello to all,
I'm looking into updating my system and will probably build something around the Core 2 Duo processor.
I've always wanted to have a completely silent PC but somehow I can't easily find a list of key components to achieve this. I already have a very quiet one (0 dB power supply, Zalman heatpipe for my current processor) but there are still some front and back fans spinning, and I was unable to properly fit a heatpipe on top of my current video card (an ageing Radeon 9800 XT).

So basically, my call for help is to find out if it is at all possible to build a truly silent PC, although I do understand there will be some noise when accessing the hard drive and when the optical drive is running (is it possible to dampen this noise as well?)
First dual-core isn't very power efficient for anything not optimized for SMP. For example: contrary to current marketing, gaming is best on a faster, lower-heat single core processor. The few SMP aware titles aren't really all that SMP optimized. However, if most of what you do is encoding/decoding then dual-core is very useful.

The desktop Core 2 Duo's are ~65W processors, so not likely to get away with passively cooling those at full load. Fully underclocked (1.6GHz) and fuly undervolted they may be okay. Also AMD has some fairly efficient single core AM2 processors. Look for the lowest Vcore at the highest clockspeed for a good idea of performance per Watt. AMD has a 35W 2.2GHz @ 1.20V Athlon 64 3500+ AM2 that would fit the bill.

It should be possible to undervolt the 1.86GHz Core 2 Duo E6300 much under its default voltage at its stock clockspeed. The easiest processor to cool passively would be an undervolted E6 Sempron 2500+ on a passively cooled S754 motherboard with full undervolting control. That will get full CPU heat well under 10W. To get anything that low wattage from Intel means buying a mobile chip.

Dual-channel memory of any type is mainly a waste of energy for very little performance gain. Whatever memory you do get make sure that is specified to work at the lowest voltage range (2.5V for DDR, 1.8V for DDR2). Undervolting the memory would be nice to keep heat down.

Any video card will likely require some active case airflow even if the card is a "passive" design. A variety of GeForce 7600 is probably your best bet (GS<30W peak, GT<40W). Slapping a large passive heatsink on a 7900GT (<50W peak) may be doable if you underclock/undervolt it. Certainly avoid SLI or Crossfire setups.

It is possible to build a decent gaming system (7600GS and a fairly speedy processor) that only uses ~60W peak and be completely passive. Removing all spining disks would also help.

Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 5:56 am
by FraGGleR
The effectively silent principle is quite true. I just finished building a brand new core 2 duo rig based off of the recommendations here at spcr. I was about to swap out the tri cool fan that came with my p150 for a low speed yate loon, but realized that I couldn't hear it on low over the airconditioning in my office. Heck on medium I could only hear a low hum. The computer sits about three feet from my ear. Now when the weather gets cooler and I don't need to run the AC all the time, I may have to proceed with the fan swap, but right now my computer is effectively silent unless I access the harddrive or spin up the dvd burner. So in any case if you have heatpipes on everything and use a couple low speed, quiet 120mm fans, you should have something that is effectively silent. And besides, won't you be blasting the music and sound fx from your games :) ?

Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 6:47 am
by Aris
wiser wrote:Aris,

Thanks for your insight. Actually, ambient noise is virtually nonexistent where I live (a remote house in a remote village on the west coast of France), so my work environment is EXTREMELY quiet, which is why I want as little noise as possible emanating from my PC.

OK, maybe there's SOME ambient noise - the sun rising, the moon shining, the grass growing, and oh yes, the cows coughing and the swallows chirping - man alive those animals are noisy! :-)

Again, thanks for taking the time.



Adrian
Even in such a remote area, id wager your ambient noise levels are still around 20db. Once your noise levels are this low, things like a care driving past your sub division 3 blocks away become audible. Its a very low amount of noise. I think you'd be suprised how "loud" your house really is if you actually tested it.

Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 6:59 am
by QuietOC
smilingcrow wrote:
jaganath wrote:Has anyone done a study of the undervoltability of Conroe? I know it has dynamic EIST for each individual core, which is pretty cool (hopefully literally), so has anyone tried it w/ RMClock or similar?
I have an E6300 that I'm evaluating at the moment; It has a stock Vcore of 1.325V and a frequency of 1.86 GHz.
I'm currently testing it for stability at 2.8 GHz at the stock Vcore and so far it's running dual Prime95 with no errors.
I briefly tried undervolting and it seemed fine at 1.164V, but I didn't run dual Prime95 for long; I will later and report back.
So, preliminary test seems to be you can undervolt the E6300. Still it's a $230 processor and idle power is still 2 to 3 times a similar AMD and 5 times a single-core K8. Plus the AM2 35W Athlon 3500+ is only $89.

Considering that a totally passive system is going to be severly limited by lack of available GPU speed anyway there no sense in wasting money on the more expensive Core 2.

Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 7:20 am
by Lawrence Lee
If you want to play Oblivion well at 0DB, you're going to need to put the computer in the next room and drill holes for your cables to go through. And insulate any gaps.

Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 7:33 am
by IsaacKuo
I have a pet peeve about the term "0db". "0db" does NOT mean zero noise. It means a level of noise just at the threshold of human hearing. That means something at 0db could be heard (given a sufficiently low noise background). It also means that multiple 0db noise sources would add up to an amount of noise greater than 0db.

I'd rather use the term "noiseless" for something which generates no noise at all. Or you could use the mouthful--"negative infinity decibels".

In any case, I agree with the others above. It's pretty hopeless to make a powerful gaming rig completely noiseless.

Pentium M ULV Laptop with a solid state hard drive

Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 7:48 am
by Jake
I've got an Acer Travelmate C111Tci laptop. The only noise it makes is the HDD spinning, and thats pretty quiet (key here is a 4200 drive not a 5400 drive). No fan anywhere. Its 3 years old now, mind, still doing me proud.

The key is a 1Ghz ULV Pentium M and the laptop form factor (built to be fanless).

If I were to buy a solid state hard drive (currently in the £500 region for about 30GB) it would be totally silent. When Samsung brings out their 32GB drives some time soon, I'll probably use it to replace the mechanical drive.

Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 7:50 am
by danielvh
It is possible to make an almost completely silent system (bar optical drive). It would just cost money.

1) Zalman passive case
2) Core 2 Duo E6300
3) Passive conroe compatable matx mobo
4) Solid state HDD (eg Gigabyte i-RAM with 4GB RAM). Add more for more storage space.
5) Passive video card.
6) RAM and so on.

This computer would be fast and completely silent (other than when you use the optical drive. Only problem would be limited storage space and expense. To get around the limited storage space I'd suggest an external 2.5" drive that you only connect when you need to use the storage.

Hope that helps

Daniel

Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 7:56 am
by Rusty075
wiser,

A true "noiseless" high-powered pc is certainly possible. The questions to ask however are, "What will it take to get there?" and, "Do I really need to?".

The latter has been expanded upon pretty well above. In reality what you need is a computer that you cannot hear, as opposed to one that doesn't make any noise. I suppose its a bit like the "tree falling in the woods" question, but its not as philosophical as it sounds. If your environment has a noise floor of say 18dbA, there's no point in trying to silence a machine below that, since there will be no perceptible improvement.

So the question "Do I really need to?" becomes, "How quiet do I need?" There's a pretty simple way to figure that out without even worrying about what the actual dBa levels are. Buy yourself a quiet 120mm fan, and some simple mechanism for adjusting its voltage. (here in the states a Nexus and a Zalman fanmate would be the simplest to get, I imagine you have access to similar) Then with your current PC off, power just the 120mm fan from your current 0dB PSU, and play with its voltage until you can't hear it. (be sure to set the fan the same distance from you that your future PC will be) You'll quickly find the speed at which the fan is inaudible. That becomes your benchmark for how quiet you need.


As for "What will it take to get there?", that's another story. As the wattage goes up, so does the need for airflow, and thus noise. I'd start with a good case, one that has potential for as much passive airflow as possible. Something like the P180 or the TJ08, with their top vent holes above the CPU might be a good place to start looking. Combine that with a Ninja or the new Thermalright tower heatsink and a fan running at your "silent benchmark" speed, and you can probably cool a Core 2 silently.

The VGA is tricker. There are a couple of aftermarket VGA heatsinks out now that can silently cool near-top-end cards without fans. Or, another option may be to find the fastest factory passively cooled you can find, like the MSI or Asus 7900GT's, and run a pair of them in Sli. Either way, you're likely to have to add a case fan or two (running a low speed) to move that heat out of the case.

Sounds like a fun project, keep us posted. :lol:

Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 8:03 am
by QuietOC
IsaacKuo wrote:In any case, I agree with the others above. It's pretty hopeless to make a powerful gaming rig completely noiseless.
Yes, just adding three ~800 rpm 120mm fans to a system lets you handle at least 300W of components fairly quietly--quieter than the quietest 3.5" hard drive at least.

Let's see what can I do with 300W:

Xeon 5160 (~80W) (faster than a Core 2 Extreme)
2x 7900GTX (~170W)

That leaves about 50W for a power hungy motherboard to run those and all the neccessary peripherals (FB-DIMMs are power hungry).

Regarding GPU coolers: I am not really impressed with either the factory passive video cards or the aftermarket GPU coolers. Really what you want to use on your GPU is a good big CPU heatsink. Now a Ninja probably wil be hard to fit on a GPU, but there are plenty of CPU heatsinks than will fit.

I have a big chunky aluminum P4 OEM heatsink on my overclocked X800GTO. Works well and only cost $1. You can probably find something that will vastly outperform it for more money.

Of course the 7900GTX has a nifty heatpiped cooler with a 92mm fan already. The main thing maybe to find a way to get rid of the exhaust from the front side of the cards.

Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 8:52 am
by Howard
Remember, when you're talking 0dB, ANYTHING that can move will cause noise. Don't forget about the transformers, boiling fluid in heat pipes, etc. ;)

Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 9:16 am
by QuietOC
Howard wrote:Remember, when you're talking 0dB, ANYTHING that can move will cause noise. Don't forget about the transformers, boiling fluid in heat pipes, etc. ;)
In my system I find the data flow over the PCIe lanes more noticeable than any of those. :P

Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 9:44 am
by jaganath
I have a pet peeve about the term "0db". "0db" does NOT mean zero noise. It means a level of noise just at the threshold of human hearing. That means something at 0db could be heard (given a sufficiently low noise background). It also means that multiple 0db noise sources would add up to an amount of noise greater than 0db.
For all practical purposes 0dB is inaudible. No-one who doesn't live in an anechoic chamber can hear that kind of low-intensity sound. I suppose we could go round saying "0dB re: 20 micropascals RMS" but it's a bit of a mouthful and overly technical.

Unless you go solid-state, 0dB isn't achievable, but you can probably get it below your ambient with a lot of work.

Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 10:39 am
by qviri
Howard wrote:Remember, when you're talking 0dB, ANYTHING that can move will cause noise. Don't forget about the transformers, boiling fluid in heat pipes, etc. ;)
If my transformers were moving, I think I'd have bigger concerns than the associated noise...

Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 3:08 pm
by croddie
Aris wrote:if the noise being generated by your computer is less than your typical indoor noise levels, then your pc will be "effectivly" silent, because everything else in the house thats making noise will drown out your PC.

Ive read up on a few posts from people that spend alot of time in parabolic chambers that test noise levels n such, and most of them agree your typical home, in a quiet room with no "active" noise sources is somewhere around 25db. A 7volted 120mm nexus is only about 21db. So even with a couple of them in a computer, you still wont be able to hear it over the rest of the ambient noises in your house.
No, you don't just hear the loudest thing. It is possible to hear two things even if one is louder than the other.
And at any rate you increase total noise leve significantlyl. For instance 25db+21db=3*log(2)(2^(25/3)+2^(21/3))db= about 26.5db (3db more is twice the power.)

Posted: Fri Aug 11, 2006 3:12 am
by Pate
I live in a similar rural area as Adrian (wiser), though in Finland.

For me, the definition of the "effectively silent" computer is a computer that I can not hear if it is on or off unless I hold my breath. Don't know what that would be in decibels, but I believe this might give you an idea of the noise level I find acceptable.

I am using mCubed passive cases for both my computers, a HTPC (with a 2.0GHz Pentium M) and a desktop PC (with an Athlon 64 X2 3800+). My gallery thread about me systems is here: http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewtopic.php?t=28990

Anyways, I am in the process of upgrading from the X2 3800+ to Core 2 Duo E6600 as soon as we get those processors here in Finland.

I've been very happy with the noise level of my machines, but the X2 machine has been giving me various problems so I am looking forward to swapping the processor to a lower-wattage yet faster model!

Pate

Posted: Fri Aug 11, 2006 2:32 pm
by Shadowknight
QuietOC wrote: Regarding GPU coolers: I am not really impressed with either the factory passive video cards or the aftermarket GPU coolers. Really what you want to use on your GPU is a good big CPU heatsink. Now a Ninja probably wil be hard to fit on a GPU, but there are plenty of CPU heatsinks than will fit.

I have a big chunky aluminum P4 OEM heatsink on my overclocked X800GTO. Works well and only cost $1. You can probably find something that will vastly outperform it for more money.
... That's a bit unreasonable. There are PLENTY of VGA coolers that have gotten good reviews and feedback from users. CPU coolers like the SLK-900u are going to break the video card or heavily damage it. Unless you're going extreme overclocking, there's no need to use CPU coolers. Zalman heatpipe coolers (and their many ripoffs), Thermalright's VM-101, even Aerocool make excellent coolers that work well in either passive or active mode.

Posted: Fri Aug 11, 2006 4:38 pm
by Howard
qviri wrote:
Howard wrote:Remember, when you're talking 0dB, ANYTHING that can move will cause noise. Don't forget about the transformers, boiling fluid in heat pipes, etc. ;)
If my transformers were moving, I think I'd have bigger concerns than the associated noise...
http://www.federalpacific.com/universit ... pter2.html

Oil Immersion

Posted: Mon Oct 30, 2006 5:37 pm
by dperrella
You could probably get pretty close to silent by immersing all the non-moving parts in a sealed tub full of mineral oil. I don't know how much heat this could disperse without active movement of the oil, but my guess is that a copper case the size of a standard tower would probably be able to get rid of a lot of heat delivered by the oil by conduction and convection. The much greater heat capacity/volume of oil over air should make passive dispersion of heat work much better. You end up using the entire case as a large heat sink, only limited by the ablility of the oil to conduct heat from the CPU and GPU to the sides of the case. As for the moving parts, you could suspend a 2.5" HDD in a separate sealed chamber and just deal with the noise when you spin up your optical drive(s).

If push came to shove and you needed more convection, I understand some fans (probably not the ones that are really quiet in air) will turn in oil and move it around. They'd be running slower, but what they're moving could probably carry more heat than the air they could move. If the whole case got too hot, then you'd need a bigger tank and/or radiator fins on the outside, but with fairly low power components, that shouldn't be the limiting factor. I had an oil-filled electric radiator once and my recollection is that on the lower (500W or 750W) power setting, it didn't get ridiculously hot. With something more like 250W, the temperature should be acceptable.

Of course, upgrades would be a hassle and wiring would be a pain. I also understand that you may have to seal the oil away from some parts near the CPU socket to avoid problems caused by changes in capacitance.

I've read a few demonstrations of oil-cooled computerrs, but never one by somebody serious about getting a high-performance PC to run quietly. Plexiglass tanks are great for display, but insulate the oil and prevent heat disapation. Of course, you may not have been looking for quite such a big project.

Somebody here should try or I may have to - and then I'll be in big trouble with the GF.

Re: Oil Immersion

Posted: Mon Oct 30, 2006 7:08 pm
by Erssa
dperrella wrote:Somebody here should try or I may have to - and then I'll be in big trouble with the GF.
Rusty did it already 3 and half years ago and Tom's hardware copied the idea and tried it a year ago. Not really the most practical cooling solution. If you are interested for more information, use the search function.

Re: Oil Immersion

Posted: Mon Oct 30, 2006 8:48 pm
by jackylman
Erssa wrote:
dperrella wrote:Somebody here should try or I may have to - and then I'll be in big trouble with the GF.
Rusty did it already 3 and half years ago.
If memory serves correctly, the oil got into his hard disk and killed it, right?

Anyway, here's my component list:

CPU: Athlon 3500 EE - My 62W AM2 3500 runs at full speed on 1.150V. I wonder how much more undervolting headroom the EE version has. Either way, I wouldn't use Core 2 Duo unless the system will be under load for a majority of the time it's on. AM2 Athlons are awesome undervolters at idle.
Case: P180
PSU: Antec Phantom 500 - Extremely efficient PSU. If the right components are selected here, the fan should never turn on.
Mobo: MSI K9A Platinum - Built on the efficient ATI RD580 chipset.
HD: SATA notebook drive
GPU: Radeon X1950 Pro w/VF900 or another great cooler
CPU cooler: Ninja Plus? Ultra-120?
Fans: Yate Loon or Nexus @ 5V or 7V