View Full Version : Noisy PCs
Why is it that you can have a high powered laptop sitting on your desk and it's virtually inaudible?
Why is it, that it can have the same CPU, same amount of RAM, same size hard drive and speed of DVD ROM drive but it DON'T make a lot of noise?
Why do I bother with my noisy thing and it's heat problems when I need the power only relatively occasionally?
Why can my office machine run satisfactorily on NT4, Outlook 2002 and Access 2002 with Word and Excel sheets open as well, on only a PIII 600MHz and 128Mb RAM?
Why can't these blurts who make kit for big boxes make the same quiet stuff they make for laptops?
Why do I keep on spending hundreds of pounds on fancy "quiet" kit and poring over specs. and trying different things.
:( :( Why can't I get a life. :confused: :confused:
Coz laptop fans arent running constantly, they run for a few minutes once a very high temperature has been reached.
They run so hot they can burn your lap.
Most use a heatpipe cooler which shifts the heat away from the cpu to a heatsink that is at the vent on the side or back of a laptop.
PJ Matthews
16-02-2003, 22:33
Plus the full desktop replacements with fast desktop chips are very noisey too and don't have a couple of extremely hot drives running because the harddisk runs slower as do the optical drives. Secondly theres no high spec graphics card and thus no high powered cooler. You can get similar spec on your main PC if you really want to spend the sort of money laptops are on a desktop rig.
You'd need an intergrated motherboard to begin with as well as a few 3.5 inch to 2.5 inch adaptors.
PJ
I agree with Alan, I use a Toshiba 1.3 Cel Laptop at work, it's never crashed in 6 months, it plays DVD's and runs office like a dream. I know I can't expand it but given that we're all a bit good with PC's then you'd think we'd have mastered it by now. The main difference is for me, I never mess with my laptop at all. I need it all the time, I travel a lot and need it to be reliable, so I never experiment with software or hardware at all. At home, I never have the same config for two weeks runing! I suspect this is why we get so many problems, we're always pushing the envelope a bit more. That's what all the fun is about.
What do you think Alan? If you left your rig alone and never installed any softare or hardware on it, would that make it stable?
I agree with Alan, I use a Toshiba 1.3 Cel Laptop at work, it's never crashed in 6 months, it plays DVD's and runs office like a dream. I know I can't expand it but given that we're all a bit good with PC's then you'd think we'd have mastered it by now. The main difference is for me, I never mess with my laptop at all. I need it all the time, I travel a lot and need it to be reliable, so I never experiment with software or hardware at all. At home, I never have the same config for two weeks runing! I suspect this is why we get so many problems, we're always pushing the envelope a bit more. That's what all the fun is about.
What do you think Alan? If you left your rig alone and never installed any softare or hardware on it, would that make it stable?
Ooops, too much wine, posted it twice:confused:
Oh no Conan, it IS stable - I'm just fed up with the noise.
PJ, comparing like with like, my video card makes no noise either, I was comparing component for component and I am used to mobile versions of chips, not desktop variety so I didn't think of them.
With my luck, I'd buy a 5,200rpm drive and get a noisy bugger!
Alan, I'm thinking the same as you. Noise is terrible, I'm now building a watercooled setup. Is there any reason you haven't gone down this path? From what I've seen of your posts you could do it easily. Any reason for not doing?
PJ Matthews
16-02-2003, 23:55
The world of laptops is not the way to head at all, embeded soloutions are one option. The new home technology that MS is pushing where the base unit remains on the desk and you lift the screen away to use as a tablet is the way to go perhaps. They really are silent.
If you plan to play games then your out of luck but if you strive for no noise, a Win CE embedded soloution would be the way to go.
You may be right there PJ for the moment. But remember when Athlon slot 1's first hit the market? They needed Vapochill or similar in the early days. As the technology gets better and the manufacturing process brings the wafer size of the chips down then the cooling requirements will decrease.
Just think how much things have moved in the last 2-3 years, in another two years everything we talk about now will be obsolete. The latest PDA's are better and more powerful than the rig I am using now and this has cost me over £1000! (started a long time ago).
WHy no water cooling? I just don't fancy it. It seems to involve lots of compromises. Besides I don't get a lot of noise from my Cooler Master HSF - it's all the other bleeding bits! - which a Vapochill won't fix!
I've just had a brainwave. Build a large compartment big enough to house the PC box and fit a small aircon unit in it. Have a vent and fan to the outside wall. Insulate and sound deaden it and put an insulated door in it. Use cordless mouse and keyboard and any other cables which have to pass through the box, seal them at the penetrations.
Have the aircon unit maintain the box's temperature at about 10°C and have as many fans as you like in the case.
When you want to access the computer e.g. for a CD or DVD, open the access door then close it. It can be noisy as you like, you won't here it.
After the divorce which is bound to ensue after the total disruption of the room in which the computer is kept, there won't be any other sounds in the house either.:D :D
There must be an easier way...
There is one. When gaming, you have sound which will surely drown out the noise of the computer. This is the main reason for a fast graphics card and CPU.
For Office applications, e-mail, and web browsing, have a low powered, low heat, low noise computer!
It has one of the problems of the solution above, needs lots of readies.
Sigh...
PJ Matthews
17-02-2003, 11:08
You may be right there PJ for the moment. But remember when Athlon slot 1's first hit the market? They needed Vapochill or similar in the early days.
Umm I think you find thats wrong, the Vapochill units contained really overclocked athlons to 1 gig from about 800 mhz if I remember correctly. The coolers were no better or worst than todays when in regular use.
Sorry if I got that wrong PJ, I was sure I remembered that the early athlons need refridgerated cooling. Memeory isn't what it used to be, to much alchohol killing the gray cells I think. :confused:
As I remember, Panrix or a computer company like that, used a custom water cooling to overclock an 800MHz Athlon to 1GHz, which made it the first giga-hertz computer available - lots of headlines in the magazines.
Sadly for the company, real 1GHz Athlons were available about one month later in computers that cost £1,500 less with the same spec.
Originally posted by PJ Matthews
overclocked athlons to 1 gig from about 800 mhz if I remember correctly
Aye, I remember that
Da_Rebel
24-02-2003, 01:19
My PC is by far the loudest one I have heard out of everyone elses I know. I accepted it and have lived with its noise until now. However, just before xmas I bought an 80GB barracuda IV. When i installed it, i realised that the previous loud droning had been coming almost entirely from my crappy old hard-drive. You can imagine my annoyance when I discovered that my prehistoric system was not ready for such space age technology as an 80Gb drive :( and so i had to take it back. I am now currently budgeting so i can get a 120Gb drive, new motherboard, new processor and replace my perfectly-fine-bought-from-Kustom-only-last-summer-but-soon-to-be-incompatible RAM with some DDR RAM (what's the difference anyway?) next month hopefully.
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