Silent computing

Posted on July 08, 2003 @ 11:41 in Tech

Researching games is pretty cool. For example, you get to put together a rather high-end gaming rig and you don't have to pay for it. One problem with computers, that gets worse and worse the faster they get, is noise. All those cooling fans add up to a fairly consistent pressure on your eardrums. That's why I have made sure this new game machine is going to be as silent as I can make it, without having to put it in another room.

Making a computer quieter does cost some money, but it doesn't have to cost a whole lot. The thing is, you're going to spend the extra money on stuff like a quality case and a silent power supply, not on pure performance enhancements. Spending about €125 extra on making the system more quiet, means that you will have to make do with a 2.8GHz P4 or Athlon XP instead of a 3GHz one (disregarding the AMD P-rating for a minute here). With the extra €125 you wouldn't even have been able to get a 3.2GHz CPU and the average performance delta between the 2.8 and 3.0 GHz processors lies somewhere between 4 and 8%, depending on what game... err, application you run.

So is that trade-off worth the money? I think it is. When I compare what little noise my Dell desktop at work produces with the two systems that I have running at home, I'm pretty sure that the constant hum contributes to my overall tiredness at the end of the day and dwindling levels of concentration. Nevertheless, computer noise reduction doesn't appear to be a very prominent issue in computer sales. Finding general information about silencing computers wasn't too hard, but most of the referenced products are not available in The Netherlands and those products that are available often haven't been tested. Nevertheless, quite a bit of digging learned the following:

The background noise-level for a normal, quiet room is about 30 decibel. Ideally then, the noise from the computer would be 30dB or lower, which would make it nearly inaudible under normal circumstances. The main cause of noise in computers are the fans, not just because the fan itself makes noise, but especially because the airflow it causes is a very noticable and I think very tiring noise. A really silent computer would have no moving parts and no airflow. While Hush Technologies makes such systems, they're not exactly high-end gaming machines. 'Normal' computers, however, need cooling, and that means airflow, unless you want to install water-cooling, which, despite more and more professionally produced products, is still quite a delicate operation. The three major measures then, to reduce noise levels, are: a noise absorbing case, quiet power supply, and quiet CPU cooling.

Eventually, I decided to go with Nexus products, because they're the most readily available in The Netherlands and they had some good reviews. I settled on their iStyle case, which doesn't look bad either, the NX-4000 power supply, and the KCZ-2700ms CPU cooler. I also managed to track down a fanless high-end video card, the Sapphire Atlantis (Radeon) 9700 Pro Ultimate, which features an impressive heatsink. I didn't spend anything on making the harddrive more silent, as some people do, because I think that the very slight rattle that the Maxtor drives I've been using so far produce, will be absorbed by the case. I might have to add an extra low-rpm case fan eventually, for improved airflow in/through the case, but I'm going to see if I can do without (of course using Motherboard Monitor).

Hopefully, all this gear will keep the computer's noise level below 30dB in idle, or "websurfing and e-mailing" mode. When playing games the power supply will undoubtedly make more noise, but the game's noise is probably way louder anyway. When the system arrives, I'll write a short impression about its performance and noise levels. For the moment, I'm just waiting anxiously...

Comments and Trackbacks

  1. Ooh, nice gear. I'm going to have to remember Nexus when I get my next set of upgrades. (Probably around the time that Half-Life 2 is released... :-)

    Posted by Martin on July 08, 2003 @ 12:23

  2. Yeah, I'm looking forward to HL2 and Doom3 as well... they should run pretty decent on this AthlonXP 2800+, NForce2, Dual Channel 512MB CL2-2-2, Radeon9700pro, 80GB S-ATA rig. Drool :)

    Posted by Frank on July 08, 2003 @ 12:57

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