Do you want to know about building a silent PC? Well, this is what I have built. It is almost silent and as a bonus, extra small.
Attached are some quick pictures for you. I am running windows on it at the moment but when I have got some more time, I will instal Linux.
I must thank Richard from White-Chocolate Computers in Sydney for helping me with this project. As you can guess, there isn't a lot of computer stores in Parkes! Richard did a lot of running around and physically looking at components for me.
Here is a list of all the parts.
ClipperPro I-box Mini-ITX aluminium case with 180 Watt power supply.
VIA EPIA-5000 Mainboard
256meg RAM
Seagate ST360021A 60gig ATA100 hard disk drive
Pioneer DVD-106S slot load DVD-Rom drive
D-Link DWL-520+ wireless LAN card
Samsung 151BM 15inch LCD monitor with built in speakers.
A logitech wireless Navigator (white & silver colour) keyboard and mouse will be added when they arrive in Australia. Total cost with the keyboard is just over $2000.00
The case is the only Mini-ITX case we could find in Australia. It is a well built case and being all aluminium would help with the cooling. The fan in the power supply was a noisy, small, high speed type. Since the power supply is situated at the front of the case and the airflow passes right over it, I removed the power supply fan and cover. What a wonderfull difference. The case fan is at the top rear of the case. I can't hear it above the normal noise in the house. If I stick my head near the rear of the case I can hear it. I can also feel a small vibration when I lightly touch the case. I might see about finding a better case fan.
The lone case fan seems to be doing a good job. Nothing seems to get too hot. The bios reports the fan is running at just over 2000 rpm.
The mainboard uses the VIA Eden processor. It runs at 533mhz, is low power and has no fan. According to VIA, the instuction set is optimised and seems to run everything here quite well. Everything including LAN is provided on the mainboard. One PCI slot is provided. VIA also make a C3 800 mhz low power processor but it has a fan.
The seagate barracuda drives are one of the quietest around. I can only hear it if I place my ear near the case and watch for the HDD LED!
The DVD drive makes the most noise, especially at high speed. I think all DVD or CD drives do make a lot of noise. We chose the slot load just for the neat look.
Since I have a wireless network here at home, as well as wired ethernet, I bought a wireless LAN card to test the PCI slot. The 90 degree PCI riser card came with the case. One good thing about the mainboard, you use standard components. Some of the other small PC solutions use laptop (expensive) components.
Now for the monitor. To compliment the lovely small, brushed aluminium, quiet and low power computer, a matching monitor was in order. Easy, a silver LCD monitor. Built in speakers seemed to be in order to keep with the tidy appearance. This narrowed the field down considerably. Richard checked the warranties, especially for the backlight (apparently half the cost of a LCD monitor!). We were left with Samsung (three year warranty) and only this model was available in Australia with built in speakers.
It has taken almost a month to research and built this PC. It has actually turned out a lot better and quieter than I believed was possible.
Maybe I will figure out if it will run with no fan at all!
