<div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Mar 4, 2010 at 13:18, Carl Wilhelm Soderstrom <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:chrome@real-time.com">chrome@real-time.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
<div class="im">
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</div>At times in the past (before I worked for RTE) I've worked in some noisy<br>
rooms. Enough so that I was glad to get out of them and away from the noise.<br>
<br>
Right now the noise isn't such that it would really bother you much if you<br>
didn't listen to it 14 hours a day... but there are some times when I'm glad<br>
to put on the earmuffs and enjoy some additional quiet. My home office is<br>
comparatively small, and there's little to absorb the noise, so it seems<br>
louder and more irritating. Moreso than when I had the same computers in a<br>
larger room.<br>
<div class="im"><br>
</div>Yep. But while >130db is painful and damaging in a short period of time; it<br>
doesn't mean that longer-term exposure isn't damaging as well. I've been<br>
around the noise of fans and drives almost continually for 10+ years. Yes,<br>
much of that has probably been well under 70db; but I don't know if there's<br>
any sort of quantum threshold beneath which there's *no* damage.<br>
<br>
Oleg Volk made a really cool graphic about noise levels.<br>
<a href="http://olegvolk.net/gallery/technology/misc/noisevolume2.jpg.html" target="_blank">http://olegvolk.net/gallery/technology/misc/noisevolume2.jpg.html</a><br>
<br>
In any case, my empirical results are that there are times at which I really<br>
want to wear earmuffs because the noise levels bother me. That's enough to<br>
make me want to relocate these computers elsewhere.<br>
<div class="im"><br>
> I wear hearing protection around guns as much as possible.<br>
<br>
</div>Too bad silencers aren't legal in MN. They're legal to own in a lot of other<br>
states; but you pay a $200 federal tax on them (and wait for goofermint<br>
approval) in any case.<br>
<div class="im"><br></div>
I'm really hoping that my next monitors will be bigger than 1600x1200; so I<br>
would like a solution that will support that (at least, if I'm to be<br>
investing much money into it).<br><br></blockquote><div><br>I'm in the same situation as Carl. The fans on my workstations are annoying, loud, etc. and I'd prefer to not listen to them. Unfortunately, I can't relocate my computer for various reasons (preferences more than anything), so I have to listen to it hum along. I've put in supposedly quiet fans, reduced power consumption in efforts to help cut down the heat, etc.<br>
<br>Best option I've been able to come up with is to replace the video card fan with a fanless heat sink with a Zalman VNF-100. But, that's only compatible with certain cards. Still need a fan for the P/S and CPU which are the noisiest IMO. I don't believe in liquid cooling due to cost, hassle, and still not liking the idea of fluid in electrical components.<br>
<br>I do have an ASUS EeePC netbook. But, that is more for travel as I need the power of a desktop and still run Vista on my workstation (don't worry, servers and netbook are running Linux). I've thought of buying a really large notebook as a workstation replacement. However, last time I did that, it cost me far too much money, was overly cumbersome, still lacked in performance and I had to send it back to the vendor for repairs too many times.<br>
<br>Regarding hearing loss, it's a mixed bag. A lot of it is due to the environments we put ourselves into as well as being genetic. We still don't know everything about our genetic makeup and how it's affected over countless years. In a way, I'm glad we don't.<br>
</div></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>-Shawn<br>