RE: Re: Advice on building a silent PC needed.

["Kenneth Watt" <kwatt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This is something I'm trying to do for use as an HTPC and it's not easy. :/

You can now get a totally silent PC using passive cooling, there are
severa=
l
copper towers available for cooling (they say) up to a 3Ghz P4 as well as
fanless PSUs and HDD chipset coolers that are passive, even a video card
ca=
n
be passively cooled or close to silent even on the newer nVidia 6800 (model
??). You can also get passive cooling for drives, although that will limit
the space available in the box.

The problem is money frankly.

A silent fanless PSU will set you back a whopping =A3100 alone before you
e=
ven
go any further and to totally quieten a modern PC I should imagine you're
looking at the best part of =A32-300.

You can also look at a compromise, quiet PSU's can be had reasonably
cheaply, about =A350 which although they have a fan in them are whisper
qui=
et.
Zalman do the range of copper flower coolers which work well, I use them
extensively and, they are pretty damn quiet, but not silent. Chipset
cooler=
s
are as cheap as chips so that's a non-issue. As for drives, that's a tough
one and it depends on the use of the machine really but I don't find that
drive noise on most of the modern drives is really an issue.

Water cooling I went off as, other then the Zalman tower thing, I think
the=
y
all have pumps running.

K.