Thiking of doing the Silent PC build...

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tspnyc

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Well, a friend at work is going to actually put it together for me. I get too frustrated when slots don't fit their pegs and all that stuff!

Anyway, I am looking for suggestions and advice.

I have speced out machines from Puget Systems and other silent PC makers. All very nice, all very expensive.

I need an as-silent-as-possible PC because I record solo, acoustic guitar, with four live mics in the room.

I hope to bring it in under $2K, which should be easy enough if I am putting it together myself with components from NewEgg and Tiger Direct, etc.

I already have the soundcard and breakout box (Aardvark), using Cubase SE.

I want to put the money where it counts most in terms of components and memory.

Can someone recommend a good mother board, powersupply, quiet case, cooling, etc.? All with "silent" computing in mind.

I really do not know anything about the insides of a computer enough to know what is best for silent operation and good performance.

I expect to also get the 8800GTX video card and someone recommended a special heat sink for it that will allow it to run without the fan when doing recording and with the fan when doing graphics intense stuff like internet gaming and all that.

Thanks!
 
I dont understand what the deal is with pc's being so loud. They have never cause a problem for me recording. I use Antec cases and power supplies which by nature are pretty silent and very reliable.
 
For a fraction of the price you could move the computer out of the room and have even less noise than one of those "silent" PCs...

Just get some extension cables and move it into the hallway or whatever. Zero noise.

I think I paid about $50 total for all the cables that were necessary.

Then use whatever is left over from what you were going to spend and buy some microphones or something. ;)
 
Yes I could. IF I had some place I could move the PC too. But I do not.

But it does seem like building a silent or near silent PC will be less than half the price of buying one from a slient PC company.

Thanks for the links!
 
I recommend water cooling. Its main benefit is that I can get silence AND performance. I have my C2D E6400 clocked to 3 GHz with no noise whatsoever. For a case I recommend the Antec P150.

Mine is pretty homemade (only the waterblocks for processor and graphics card are "pro" stuff) but nowadays there are lots of commercial water cooling packages available.
 
Danny.guitar is right. The best advice IMO is to move the PC into another room, or just into the hallway, and it'll just cost the price of a few extension cables.

I installed Acoustipak foam into my PC over a year ago. I followed ALL instructions, made sure NO holes or vents were covered, made sure there was enough space for ventilation etc. etc. My PSU fried soon after... Now I've taken the sides off my PC completely so it's as cool as a cucumber. My advice - avoid that foam like the plague if you don't want your PC to overheat.

I'm planning on setting up to record vocals soon, and have taken the decision to use an old PC for vocal recording, and install it in another room (the bedroom), while everything else is in my spare-room studio. But you could probably get away with just having it outside the door...

Good luck.
 
I just moved my C2D mobo to a new case that has a 10" fan on the side panel blowing cool air directly over the PCI cards and CPU. I went for this big fan mainly because I have three Creamware cards with total of 27 SHARC dsp processors and now the big side fan keeps them cool. For the processor I got a big heatpipe cooler with 120mm fan and then I got a new passively cooled PSU. Then I blocked all air vents except the one at the back of the PSU and now the air comes in thru the side fan and goes out thru the PSU.

Next thing to make it quieter is to replace the hard drive containing XP and the programs with a 8GB Compact Flash card which helps it too boot quicker too and then I will most likely get a fan speed controller to slow down the side fan and the cpu fan when the most efficent cooling is not needed.
 
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I'm not sure if I'd trust the fanless PSU, especially if the warm air is circulating out through it. There are regular PSUs that are extremely quiet on the market.

It's also best to mount the hard drive so that it doesn't contact the case. This will raise its heat levels but will reduce resonances. The Antec P150 case is great for this because it has built in rubber bands for dangling the hard drives.
 
I actually was looking into a silent PC but ended up just getting exrension cables and put the tower in another room. It might not be possible in every situation but it sure is a lot quieter that any silent case..etc.
 
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