[PLUG] OT: comparative noise levels

[AthlonRob]

On Tue, 2002-12-24 at 10:28, David Fleck wrote:

> So- any recommendations for quiet fans / power supplies / drives (or ways
> to muffle existing ones - I'd like to be able to leave the Sparc turned on
> without getting evil looks from the spouse).

Watercooling!

If you went with watercooling on a non-overclocked PC, you could keep
the whole beast quite cool with three fans - two 120mm's and the CPU
fan.  If you buy a nice 120mm fan, they'll be near silent (I saw 21db
fans a year or two back when I was digging in to this).  Water pumps are
generally near silent, as well... which leaves the loudest part of the
system being drives and the PSU... both of which can be quieted, too.

The PSU can be quieted down either by buying a 'silent' psu (I think
Zalman has one) or converting it to watercooling (google about - there's
an article for that one)...

The drives can be quieted down by - for the hard drive, buy one of those
drive kits that suspends the drive on rubber bands and for the CD type
drives - buy the spendy ones, they're generally quiet already (my DVD
drive is virtually silent and my CD-RW drive is just a little bit louder
than that - the Creative 52X drives you find for $40, on the other hand,
are like chain saws).

For a quiet PC, watercooling is the most effective means available...

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