Re: Quiet PC Cases

["Steve Morgan" <steve@xxxxxxx>]

--- In ukha_d@xxxxxxx, "Graham Howe" <graham@s...> wrote:
> That's exactly what I have.

Me, too!

I'd have to agree with Graham's Pros and Cons except the build
quality - I've had no problems with fixings or anything else. I do
wish you could remove the lid without turning it over, though. The
fixing screws are on the bottom.

The cable to the Firewire port on the front panel has a standard
Firewire plug on the end, as you might expect. Consequently, the
lead comes out of the back of the case and into an external Firewire
port. This is irritating because the Mobo (ASUS P4P800) has an
additional on-board Firewire port using a standard IDC header.
Having said that, I could do the same as with the serial connection
to the IR receiver - this has a standard 9-pin D connector and
rather than swapping it for an IDC header, I took an external serial
port connector from one of my old PCs (one that had COM2 on a
separate backplate), cut the bracket in half and screwed it to the
side of the hard disk cage. My PC therefore has an 'internal' 9-pin
COM2 port. If I could get hold of a Firewire backplate for the Mobo,
I could do the same with that.

Obviously, I was keen to keep this machine as quiet as possible, so
here's what I've done....

The processor is a 2.8GHz P4 with a Zalman flower cooler (the Al/Cu
one, not the 900g Cu one) and it's associated 120mm fan sitting
above it. The Mobo has automatic speed control of the CPU fan and it
keeps it around 1900 RPM. CPU temperature is around 42-45 degrees
and noise is quite reasonable. Certainly not obtrusive. The PSU is a
Zalman 400W quiet one and I certainly can't hear it running. In
addition, I have a Digi-Doc 5 fan controller in one of the 5.25"
bays. This controls up to 8 fans, each with their own temperature
sensor. I currently have 2x 60mm fans on the rear of the case
(there's specifically provision for them) connected to the Digi-Doc.
These are set to come on if the temperature rises significantly. If
they do come on, it's usually only for a few seconds. There's not
especially quiet, but not too noisy either. They only come on if the
weather's hot and I'm running something CPU & graphics intensive
like a modern game. The graphics card is a Sapphire ATI Radeon 9700
Pro Ultimate. This is passively cooled - using a variant of the
Zalman passive heatsink. It's therefore completely silent. The two
hard disks are Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 160GB Serial ATA disks.
They're also very quiet. All-in-all the ambient noise output is
louder than TiVo, but much quieter than a regular PC. Probably
comparable with an XBox (perhaps the early versions with the CPU
fan). I also bought some acoustic foam, but there's not a great deal
of room for it so I haven't bothered fitting any yet.

Graham - are you interested in some alternate software for driving
the VFD? I'm not entirely happy with LCDSmartie, so I've started
writing my own .NET application. It comprises a Windows Service (so
no having to log in) and a driver component that you can use in your
own apps. The driver is abstracted so I could produce drivers for
other LCDs, but at the moment I'm only supporting the HD44780
parallel-port display that's supplied with the Accent case. I've
only been going a few days with it, but it's looking OK so far.

The same goes for anyone else here who may be using the Accent cases
or other displays with the HD44780 chipset, of course.

> Pros:
> Looks!
> VFD (optional extra and is a little small)
> Internal space (lots of room for cards and drives)
>
> Cons:
> Cost (It is very expensive for a case)
> IR (I got this and have never managed to set it up)
> Size (unfortunately it is not a tardis, so big internal size does
result
> in large exterior)
> Instructions (None are supplied and very little help available for
> things like IR and VFD)
> Build quality (the front facia is nice thick aluminium, but
internally
> the quality is nothing like other expensive cases. I had to drill
out
> one of the screws to open the case as it was jammed and so soft
the head
> stripped off easily with my screw driver, I replaced all screws
with
> better quality ones and now it is fine)
>
> All in all I am happy with it because of the look of the front
facia but
> I don't think it is worth the money and remember that even though
it
> comes from QuietPC, it has absolutely no sound damping. The only
> advantage it has in the sound stakes is that it has room for
fitting
> other things like hard disk enclosures and large (quieter) fans and
> heatsinks.
>
> HTH
>