[cjr888]

I have been contemplating the PC as music source, which obviously leads into the various options of creating as close to silent PC as possible, whether through undervolting, cooling, dampening, quiet parts, fanless cards and CPUs, improved cases, etc.

I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on creating an enclosure, probably something that either looked more like a midrange server chassis on wheels, or more like furniture, like a large enclosed end table or cabinet, that was as close to soundproof, that one could then place almost any PC in, with fans and cooling and an opening at the back.  So an enclosure for the PC enclosure that had plenty of room inside, instead of treating the internal components and the PC chassis itself.

This would be for one of two things -- say a standard current PC with tolerable or lower than average noise levels (for sake of arguement, we'll use a current off the shelf Dell), or possible for an enclosure that holds nothing but a large array of drives to form a RAID array for external storage.

Let's assume minimum modification and additional cooling or fan replacement in either the PC or the array, and let's assume that the enclosure we are creating has to have some ventilation towards the back or the bottom.

I was curious if anyone knows how thick one would have to make the enclosure, and if certain materials, no matter how thick, would be out of the running immediately.

Also curious if anyone had generalized information on the frequency ranges you're typically working with in isolating the sound of a PC -- standard drive whine, white noise, etc.

Taking this angle obviously increases your flexibility vs. tweaking a single PC chassis itself, but I'm curious if it might be feasible from a cost perspective as well.  Unfortunately I don't have any old, thick furniture to throw a PC in to see how much that would isolate the sound as-is.

Zalman does offer a "totally no noise computer case", with early ordering...but for $1200+.  Its large, its expandable, but looking for something even more flexible, and that isn't the PC chassis itself.

Thoughts?

[Rob Babcock]

I've been doing a lot of reading on how to make a quiet/silent PC.  The first place to start is to determine how much computing power you need.  If you can get by with a 2.8 Gig P4 or less, you could use a Zen Heatpipe and run with no CPU fan- that would cut noise quite a bit. http://www.scythe-usa.com/  I've read reviews stating this thing works well.

Next, you'd probably want to use the quietest case fans you can get.  http://www.silenx.com makes the quietest fans I've ever heard of.  They also make about the quietest PS I've ever heard of.  Since the PSU is about the loudest thing in most PCs, except for the CPU fan, getting a Silenx or Nexus would make a big diff.

Zalman makes an HD cooler based on heatpipe technology- they claim a few dB reduction in noise level, too.

In all the research I've done, it appears to me that Seagate makes the quietest drives in the world, followed by Samsung, then Maxtor.  By the published noise specs, Western Digital makes the noisiest drives there are (both are confirmed by my personal use, too- the Seagate is very quiet while the WD's sound like a leaf blower).

Samsung seems to make about the quietest CD rom drive, while Sony seems to make about the quietest DVD rom drive.

It's much more effective that use quieter parts than to try to keep the noise in the case, but once you've got the quietest internals you can get, then you have to start working on the case.  I bought an Antec 3600 BQE to mod with some Dynomat, foam & Soundkote.  Unfortunately so far the case is sitting in my corner (once I bought it I can't decide yet whether to transfer my current PC into the Antec case or get a new Mboard & proc to build a new machine).

There's a link @  http://www.techtv.com on the Screen Savers page showing Yoshi building a silent PC- if I recall, the whole machine ran at about 11-14 dBA!  That's too silent to even hear under most circumstances.  He started, I think, with a an Li PC-6070.  I'll probably buy one of those cased pretty soon, now that they make them in black.  It's a really nice aluminum case with a door that covers the full front of the machine.  Both the door and case are lined with acoustic foam, the door has a rubber gasket covering the area where it meets the front, and the case makes liberal use of rubber grommets on all the drive bays to minimize vibration.  One last silencing touch the an Li PC-6070 uses is to have the air intakes on the bottom of the case, drawing air up into the case without any sound escaping the front.  It uses 4 x 80mm fans running a bit slower to cool without a lot of noise.

My thinking is to start with the abovementioned parts & case to get a pretty quiet machine, then to start modding it.  I think that Extreme Dynomat on the inside of the case (esp around the PSU & on the case sides) would help a lot.  Bubba966 has lined the insides of the drive bay knockouts w/Dmat, too, and says it helped.  If you use a large case to start with, you can get good airflow and still be able to fit some extra acoustic foam inside.  I haven't yet tried it, but I think you could attach a 1' x 1' x 1" peice of wedge foam to a sheet of Dmat on the side panel.

Lastly, you could build an airbox and/or keep the PC physically remote from your listening position.  I'm not sure just how you'd handle the user interface if you got too far from the PC...there are some threads on making a music server in the Square Cirlce that might give you some ideas.

You may want to check some modding websites or magazines for ideas about building a PC in other types of chassis.  I've seen wood cabs, kids toys, even a model of the Millenium Falcon of Star Wars turned into PCs.  I'm not enough of a gearhead to want to try to build a PC in a box that didn't have drive mounting rails or standoffs for the Mboard, but I know it can be done.  I think you could probably buy some type of vanity or end table with a door that you could mod by putting fans & cable cutouts in the back.  Right off I can't recall what freq the drives make the most noise at.  This is just a guess, but I'd think lining the box with acoustic foam and setting the PC on some isolation device (eg. Levitator, Little Rock Iso Platform, Vibrapods on the corners, etc) would have to be pretty effective.

If you could figure out a good remote/wireless interface, the best idea would be to put the PC in a different room.

[cjr888]

Well -- best bet would be the system in the closet.  Issue is, I don't have a closet.  

Much of what you have been eye'ing, I have as well, both regarding the power supply as well as the stuff from Scythe.  I was actually tempted to give the Via/Fanless/Scythe setup a shot, run the OS on a small quiet drive, and then have all media storage accessed via network, or simply external storage tucked away.  Ideally want to go with something with a bit more horsepower though if I start messing with sampling, plug-ins, etc.

Have already gone through all the material at silentpcreview and some other sites, and its comforting to know that you're coming to similar conclusions.  Still curious if an enclosure around enclosure could provide a simplier solution, but the link about the machine running at 11-14 dBa is very impressive.  I'll have to dig up some articles that analyze the type of noise typically from a standard PC.

After I figure this out, then I have to figure the cheapest manner for me to do 1-3 terrabytes, heavily redundant.  Anyone want to sell me a Symmetrix for < $1k?

[laumans]

Or put the PC in a different room and do'nt care about the noise. Have the audio stream transmitted to your stereo by way of one of these wired/wireless ethernet devices.

You can remote control your PC either by way of these devices (what are they again called?) or by way of a wireless pocket PC link to your PC.

That may be more comlicated but also real fancy...and cheaper than a $1200 enclosure.

Different than what you were envisioning but hopefully still a good idea...

Marius

[cjr888]

Control of the PC at large distance I would be willing to do.  But doing audio output wireless from source -> amplifier I'm not so comfortable with.  Just can't see there being no effect on the sound....

[laumans]

cjr888, I understand your concern that the music quality may be diminished by the wireless transmission. However, the audio information is transmitted digitally and the ethernet protocol incorporates error detection. This ensures that the digital audio information that goes into the wireless receiver is the same as the one that originally left the computer.

In this kind of setup, the most important issue in terms of sound quality is the output of the wireless receiver. I haven't read any review of these comparably new devices. However, I assume that they are geared towards the consumer market (rather than audiophile listeners).

Nothing is impossible, though. It may be an interesting endeveour to scan the market for high-end devices of this kind. I also assume that these devices have some sophisticated remote control functionality for your PC (that is, I am certain). Some of these devices are even designed to transmit video as well as audio.

[EchiDna]

hehe... interesting discussion

you guys do know about our 'square circle' right?

come check it out, it is where this type of discussion normally resides  

IMO, there is no such thing as a silent PC due to HDD noise, you can't avoid it even with those Zalmann $1200 cases!

at the moment I'm using a antec sonata (rubber grommet mounted HDD, power supply and 120 mm fans) and even though I'm living in the tropics (over 30 degrees celcius every day) I find it very quiet and the only noise is the HDD spinning away. Depending on your configuration, the fan noise should not be a problem at listening distances at all and I can only just hear the HDD whine between tracks or in extremely quiet passages in orchestral works from my listening position (10+ feet away).

Also don't forget, you do not need the latest and greatest pc to do this kind of thing, I've got a few systems but the main one is a p4 1.4 gHz with a raedon 8500 videocard and 4 x 180 gb hdd for music and video storage.
works like a charm... try it and see for yourself. Old Athlon systems and latest generation P4 and Athlons are loud due to fan noise, but there is sweet spots where overkill coolers and slow speed fans work just great at low noise levels....

[brj]

IMO, there is no such thing as a silent PC due to HDD noise, you can't avoid it even with those Zalmann $1200 cases!

Media PC's have only recently popped onto my radar, so maybe I'm repeating something well known here, but why not just buy a bunch of RAM and create a monster RAM disk?  The average CD is 650-700 MB, so if you buy 1 GB of RAM, you easily have room for an OS and 1 CD's worth of songs (assuming WAV format - more if compressed).  You'll still have to spin the HD up occasionally to fill the RAM disk, but not nearly as often and probably only when you are selecting music.

Remember, I'm assuming that the OS is loaded into the RAM disk so that it doesn't have to keep hitting the HD.  Buy 2 or 3 GB of RAM, and, once the system is booted up, you'll probably very rarely spin up the HD at all during an average length listening session.

You multi-channel guys will have to splurge and buy a lot more memory to hold all those DVD's!

Hmmm.... I should start reading that square circle a bit more often!