On Fri, 2002-10-04 at 20:15, Tim Wilson wrote: > Hey everyone, > > I'm sick of my really loud PC on my desk and I'm planning to buy a new > case and power supply. I'm thinking about a black Al Lian-Li PC60 case > (it'll go oh so nicely with my black SGI flatpanel :-), but I don't know > much about the power supplies. > > PC Power & Cooling Inc. recommends their 275 W ulta-quiet model, but I'm > a little concerned that it's underpowered. I don't have a lot of > peripherals, however, so I may just be experiencing some Tim Allen style > worries. Their 400 W model is almost 2.5x as expensive, however, so I > doubt I'll got with that. What do you all think? The power supply specs > are at > http://www.pcpowercooling.com/products/power_supplies/ultra_quiet/silencers/index_ultraquiet_atx.htm > > Any other PC quieting tips? I don't know what sort of fans the Lian-Li > case might come with, but I'll consider going with different internal > and CPU fans if it turns out that they are contributing significantly to > the noise. Slashdot just had this article on hard drive performance vs. noise and heat the other day. http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/article/1540/ They really should have put their numbers on a logarithmic scale where they measured noise level. Note that a doubling of pressure will only increase a reading by 2 or 3 dB (of course, if you ask a human to crank a knob until something sounds twice as loud, it's generally more like 4 or 5 dB) In my experience, hard drives and CPU fans tend to produce the most noise in a system. It's probably a good idea to only have one hard drive in a system you want to be quiet. You can look around for quiet fans -- I think General Nanosystems sells some quiet CPU fans. I've also seen "maglev" fans online at places like Cyberguys which don't use any traditional bearings, since the fan is magnetically held in place. Not sure if they're all they're cracked up to be, though. You might consider lining some of the inside of your computer with sound-dampening material. And my final suggestion: never, ever buy a Dell PowerEdge 2650 unless you like to be tortured. -- _ _ _ _ _ ___ _ _ _ ___ _ _ __ What are you doing? The / \/ \(_)| ' // ._\ / - \(_)/ ./| ' /(__ message is over. GO AWAY! \_||_/|_||_|_\\___/ \_-_/|_|\__\|_|_\ __) [ Mike Hicks | http://umn.edu/~hick0088/ | mailto:hick0088 at tc.umn.edu ] -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part Url : http://shadowknight.real-time.com/pipermail/tclug-list/attachments/20021005/89df6bd0/attachment.pgp