My Quiet rig.......... SSD Powered!

Show off your quiet rig.

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halfmanhalfamazing
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Joined: Wed Jan 16, 2008 9:41 am

My Quiet rig.......... SSD Powered!

Post by halfmanhalfamazing » Wed Jan 16, 2008 9:56 am

It's still a work in progress. But no longer does it sound like it could hover, now I just have a low hum.

Switching from a HD to a flash card made me realize just how much a noiseless rig meant to me.

Here's the pics I have:

http://www.angelfire.com/rpg2/tweakit/

And I created a huge discussion about it, for those interested in my inexpensive SSD setup.

http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3424

My next upgrade is going to be one of those picoATX power supplies. I'm just not sure if I can get away with the pico 90, I'll probably have to get the pico 110.

williamn6133
Posts: 100
Joined: Mon Jan 07, 2008 6:07 pm
Location: UK

Post by williamn6133 » Fri Jan 18, 2008 11:19 pm

How much all together for a picoATX PSU, 4GB card, CPU, mobo + integrated graphics?

The whole thing could be fanless... hmm. The Scythe cooler would add a bit of cost though.

lorn
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Joined: Fri Jan 11, 2008 3:07 pm

Post by lorn » Sat Jan 19, 2008 4:09 am

Remind me of that topic :)

halfmanhalfamazing
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Joined: Wed Jan 16, 2008 9:41 am

Post by halfmanhalfamazing » Sun Jan 20, 2008 5:30 pm

williamn6133 wrote:How much all together for a picoATX PSU, 4GB card, CPU, mobo + integrated graphics?

The whole thing could be fanless... hmm. The Scythe cooler would add a bit of cost though.
I haven't done pricing on parts in a long time. I do know that these cards haven't dropped in price, so it should still be $100. But the rest of the components, pricewatch will have your answers.

I'm trying to make due with what I've got, which was part of why I picked up an SSD. I knew it would increase performance and it has.

Your idea sounds really nice, but isn't in my cards any time soon. I'm just glad linux is small/fast, feature filled, and easy to use.

I just wish I had an easy and inexpensive way to measure my power usage.

halfmanhalfamazing
Posts: 10
Joined: Wed Jan 16, 2008 9:41 am

Post by halfmanhalfamazing » Sun Jan 20, 2008 5:32 pm

lorn wrote:Remind me of that topic :)
Ick......... a 120 x card running windows XP............ Might be alright...... but I have my doubts.

williamn6133
Posts: 100
Joined: Mon Jan 07, 2008 6:07 pm
Location: UK

Post by williamn6133 » Sun Jan 20, 2008 5:38 pm

halfmanhalfamazing wrote: I just wish I had an easy and inexpensive way to measure my power usage.
http://www.extreme.outervision.com/psuc ... orlite.jsp (?)

halfmanhalfamazing
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Joined: Wed Jan 16, 2008 9:41 am

Post by halfmanhalfamazing » Wed Jan 23, 2008 5:51 pm

williamn6133 wrote:
halfmanhalfamazing wrote: I just wish I had an easy and inexpensive way to measure my power usage.
http://www.extreme.outervision.com/psuc ... orlite.jsp (?)
Hey, thanks! I had not considered power supply aging into the equasion at all. I normally keep power supplies until they die. So I'll have to give up on the Pico until my next box.

I know that page only deals with estimates, but I'm way off of a 110w deal at 30% or so. :-P

MikeC
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Post by MikeC » Thu Jan 24, 2008 10:25 am

williamn6133 wrote:
halfmanhalfamazing wrote: I just wish I had an easy and inexpensive way to measure my power usage.
http://www.extreme.outervision.com/psuc ... orlite.jsp (?)
That's not a way to measure power usage -- it's a calculator designed to estimate the MAXIMUM power of every component and add them all up together. The end total is way higher than the real power draw under any conditions.

The best you can do is to use an AC power meter -- KillaWatt, Power Angel, Watt's Up? -- and measure the AC power in real use. (The first 2 sell for $20~30) Then apply the AC/DC efficiency of your PSU to obtain real DC power draw. If you use any of the PSUs reviewed by SPCR in the last few years, you can get accurate efficiency numbers from 65W all the way to full power in reasonably fine steps.

So, for example, if you use a Seasonic Eco Power 300 (the last PSU we reviewed), and your system draws 70W AC at idle and 120W AC at max load, then you can apply the efficiency factors closest to those power levels to get the DC power. For this example -- When the Seasonic Eco Power 300 is drawing 70W AC, it's at ~80% efficiency, so the DC power delivered to the computer would about 56W. For 120W AC, it's at ~82%, so it delivers ~98W.

What PSU are you using?

halfmanhalfamazing
Posts: 10
Joined: Wed Jan 16, 2008 9:41 am

Post by halfmanhalfamazing » Thu Jan 24, 2008 3:12 pm

I appreciate the reply. My current power supply is a fortron fsp 300 60atv, which is around 65% efficient AFAIK. It was my backup supply, but I had to give my primary to another box that died, and I normally try to make it a point to have a spare power supply hanging around.

The 20-30 dollar meters, while relatively inexpensive, I'd just assume use that money toward my next PSU purchase. I'd only use the meter a handful of times, wouldn't be worth the investment. Getting something 80+ would be good enough for me. My second choice was going to be this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817104031

Which seems adequate to me.

I've been throwing around the idea of a water cooling setup for a while now, and the new found interest in a near(or completely) silent PC has only made that kind of thing more important. But I hadn't seen anything that I really liked, until this:

http://www.thermaltake.com/product/Ligu ... /spec.html

Which I found out about from that extreme power supply estimate website, clicking through a bunch of the links on the sidebar. If I had water cooling, I could also possibly get some overclocking in. It just depends on what the price of those units are, I know they're relatively new and I haven't seen any reviews out in the wild on it yet. The biggest thing I like about that is that there's an indicator right on the front of it, when the pump should happen to die, you'll be able to tell just by seeing the indicator. I also like the internal nature of the device, there's no modifications needed, and there's no radiators or anything hanging on the outside. And granted, I haven't done much research on water cooling at this point either.

If I was going to go that route, I'd need more power. I have several considerations that I'm willing to bend/break on, but price is the one I'm least willing to move on. I might be starting a new job soon, so maybe that will change everything and I might just built a totally new rig, get some CPU/rig that's low power, get the water cooling and the pico and the AC power device, but we'll see.

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