On Tue, 2006-06-27 at 14:52 +0200, John Anderson wrote: > On Tue, 2006-06-27 at 08:30 -0400, Dave Phillips wrote: > > 6) How can I best reduce the noise from this system ? > > Fans and hard drives are the noisiest components. So if you have quiet > PSU and CPU fans (and GPU if it's a powerful nvidia), the next step is > to get a hard drive enclosure. Or maybe go for a 2.5 inch laptop drive, > bearing in mind that the throughput is lower. Although I read recently > that laptop drives aren't as slow as they used to be and can be used > acceptably in a desktop system. I've had mixed results with hard disk enclosures. One I tried muted the spindle noise a bit but actually amplified the seek noise. It was better to just leave the drive out of the box (I guess it depends on which noise you find more annoying). Re: cases/noise control, I used the Antec Sonata a couple of years ago, if coupled with a no-fan power supply it becomes quite quiet (I tried the Antec Phantom 350W). Zalman CPU coolers would be my choice if you have to have fans. The best option is _no_ fans, Zalman's TNN500 (or TNN300 for mini-itx mobos) is the choice if you have the money to spare. It is incredible to have a cluster of 12 machines running full tilt - if you can hear noise in the room it is probably a laptop somewhere :-) -- Fernando
