Re: [tlug] Dinky silent Linux box

["Daniel A. Ramaley" <daniel.ramaley@example.com>]

On 2010-12-02 at 23:09:56, Jawaad Mahmood wrote:
>I know this will distract a bit from your point (low-power), but with
>the proper heat-sink and an appropriately-chosen power supply, you can
>turn anything into a silent box.

Agreed. That's the route i went when building my primary workstation a 
couple years ago. I bought a nice fast Athlon CPU, and then put a truly 
monstrous heatsink on it (it almost hits the top of the 4U case!), and 
replaced the heatsink's fan with a larger one that spins slower. I have 
other fans in the case, but they are all larger than what would 
ordinarily be used and run at a much slower speed. The result is that 
the box still gets fairly good airflow, but is nearly inaudible except 
in an otherwise completely-silent room. The hard drive makes more noise 
than the fans do. Usually the sound of my heartbeat or slight tinnitus 
are more audible than the computer.

If you want *completely* silent, though, then i'm not so sure. I've 
never tried to build a computer that both performs well and has no 
moving parts. I do have some servers that are completely silent (no 
fans, flash-based HD), but they were built for low power consumption 
rather than performance.

__
Daniel A. Ramaley
Network Engineer 2

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E-mail: daniel.ramaley@example.com