Hanno Mueller a ?crit : > Nicolas Huillard schrieb: > >>There's a photo of the "technology demonstrator" >>(http://www.promise.tv/opentech2005.html) : a regular bare motherboard >>with 3 DVB cards, a big SATA controler, and a tower of 8 x 3"1/2 disks, >>with all the related cables, and two power supplies. >>That would fit in any basement... > > Seriously, I'm thinking about building a combined vdr with a home > raid5-fileserver. That would be 4 harddisks for raid5, one additional > scrap disk for vdr recordings, a regular midi-tower case and a 2 GHz > Celeron. Any chance at all to make that setup silent enough for home use? Noise sources are : * processor's fan : take a huge heatsink, large fan, and reduce its speed (take great care of fan vibrations : many "silent" fans induce a lot of noise when you mount them at their final place). Also choose a M series processor, and don't hesitate to use their cpufreq capabilities to reduce CPU speed and voltage (thus reduce heat, and fan requirement) * power supply fan : choose an efficient one, that won't heat up by itself, and select the correct max power (not too high or low, to maximize efficiency). You can also reduce fan speed to help reduce noise. * hard disk drives : 5 of them will make noise, and also induce power requirement and power supply heating... The Seagate ones are particularly silent (recent Samsung ones are also said to be). Don't go for high speed drives (less rpm = less heat + less power = less exhaust fan requirement). You can mount the drives in suspended locations, which is particularly efficient regarding noise (rotation + seeking noises), but suspended drived tend to heat more (maybe attach all drives together, in a suspended metallic frame, which will be equipped with an heatsink placed in the airflow...) Also take great care of airflow inside the case : no wires in the way, no direct output from the fan (add an airduct after the exhaust fan, to reduce noise, and direct this airduct behind the case)... Summary : it can be quite silent, but take great care and read, read, read... (www.silentpcreview.com is one of the good sources of ideas) -- NH
