0db PC

March 26, 2019 11:51 AM

On building a completely silent PC with passive cooling and no moving parts.

Update: Thermal curves under load
Update 2: Further testing

posted by Freelance Demiurge (53 comments total)

Dammit now I want to build one and I have no real reason to need one.
posted by aspersioncast at 12:04 PM on March 26, 2019 [7 favorites]

Behold, my completely silent computer.

haters to the left

It is impressive to build something like this with a beefy GPU in it though.
posted by dis_integration at 12:08 PM on March 26, 2019 [6 favorites]

Or, you know, buy a laptop? Engineers have been working to keep the fans absent or rarely used in them for years.
posted by Popular Ethics at 12:08 PM on March 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

My iMacs (one at work, one at home) are silent (or damn close to it – I can't hear anything coming from my work iMac right now).

They aren't cheap, but there are many models that cost less than the AU$3,000 / US$2,143 that this person paid.

dis_integration beat me to it
posted by escape from the potato planet at 12:09 PM on March 26, 2019

I've been admiring the cases made by HD Plex for some time now, but never quite had a use for them. So tiny and silent!
posted by vibratory manner of working at 12:12 PM on March 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

I like big fans and I cannot lie.
posted by Fizz at 12:15 PM on March 26, 2019 [8 favorites]

Anybody in here claiming their MacBook is silent is either lying, or has never booted a dozen separate Spring Boot applications on it simultaneously to support a freestanding React frontend. This here laptop runs real quiet-like most of the time, but when you lean on its CPU too hard, the thing can heat a large conference room and sounds like a semi in too low a gear.
posted by Mayor West at 12:19 PM on March 26, 2019 [26 favorites]

Anybody in here claiming their MacBook is silent is either lying

My 12" macbook is indeed silent. it has no fans or anything. Macbook Pros and iMacs have fans, and they spin up like wild while webpack is watching a directory. My MacBook just throttles and remains whisper-quiet.
posted by dis_integration at 12:22 PM on March 26, 2019 [3 favorites]

I'm no expert on non-Apple laptops, but I'd be surprised if there is a laptop out there for any price that is silent or near-silent, and has the GPU capabilities of a GTX 1050 TI like this guy's build.
posted by good in a vacuum at 12:23 PM on March 26, 2019 [14 favorites]

Um I want this and $2500 usd for a completely silent computer doesn't phase me even if it's not equipped for gaming. Unfortunately it's only going to work if you have it out in the open without any airflow obstructions which does not work for my media center application.

That macbook only comes with an Intel processor, no? He addresses intel processors right at the beginning. Also the chassis of a desktop computer + cooling kit is ideally one-time cost. It's not at all comparable to the price of a laptop.
posted by muddgirl at 12:26 PM on March 26, 2019 [2 favorites]

I bet google/aws data centers are pretty quiet the vast rooms of servers are hot and unpleasant but do not need onboard fans and TPU's can be water cooled. Fizz is right that a large relatively slow spinning fan is very quiet (wait what the hell is the mater with you, Fizz get back to the honeymoon :)
posted by sammyo at 12:33 PM on March 26, 2019 [3 favorites]

I'm pretty sure Spectre is an issue on AMD, too.

Other than that, carry on, great project.
posted by clawsoon at 12:35 PM on March 26, 2019 [2 favorites]

Beautiful build. See similar in the computer audio scene where people want a headless* machine that doesn't look out of place on overpriced racks of blinged-out gear. Personally I bypass the noise issue by sticking my server in a closet and streaming to cubox / pi endpoints, but I'd definitely take this! I did try an old Macbook Pro as an endpoint and turns out the current closed-display mode prevents this without certain peripherals attached, so that was out.

*many of which do, paradoxically, include high-end video cards for CUDA offload of high-rate upsampling
posted by Lorin at 12:45 PM on March 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

My PC got a whole lot quieter after I vacuumed out the heatsink for the CPU, which was literally packed with dust.

Just sayin'
posted by mikelieman at 12:51 PM on March 26, 2019 [4 favorites]

Anyone else read the article and start thinking “Mac Cube”?
Pretty cool project, though. I really love that case elevated on the feet.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:55 PM on March 26, 2019 [4 favorites]

I'd say one benefit of this design is that because there's no airflow inside the unit there is little opportunity for dust building up inside.

Cockroaches, of course, will happily live in it regardless.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 12:55 PM on March 26, 2019 [2 favorites]

So what do folks who build their own machines do when they are finished if they don't do videogames? I've been building my own computers for over a decade and it's usually done because the old one is unable to run contemporary games or is just breaking. I get this novelty build was just going for pure silence, but still, I can't help but feel like the final moments will be anticlimactic. Fire up that new machine, hear nothing, and then what? Open up a browser or email and click around?

edit: I'm personally just glad fan noise isn't a bother to me. Even if it was, seems unlikely to be audible over the active traintracks I live 200 feet from.
posted by GoblinHoney at 12:57 PM on March 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

I tried to make my current PC build quiet by getting a beefy high-efficiency power supply and putting a Corsair H100i liquid cooler on the CPU. (I can change the LED color, that's how you know it's ENTHUSIAST GRADE.)

Sadly, I neglected to give my GPU the same treatment so it still sounds and acts like a space heater when I'm playing games.

So what do folks who build their own machines do when they are finished if they don't do videogames?

Music production, I imagine? Or they're just sensitive to noise. Or they just want to flex their PC building skills.
posted by neckro23 at 1:01 PM on March 26, 2019

naw, as soon as you move the mouse, or click, or type, it's not silent any more. it's just for sitting there running screensavers.
posted by seanmpuckett at 1:01 PM on March 26, 2019 [3 favorites]

So what do folks who build their own machines do when they are finished if they don't do videogames?

There are lots of activities that need a beefy pc other than gaming. I use Photoshop and Lightroom a lot and know people who do video production all of which use a lot of power.

Also at work, I'll spin up a whole mess of docker containers to run our web application locally so that I can develop/test without having to push to AWS. That'll spin the hell out of my MBP's fan.
posted by octothorpe at 1:05 PM on March 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

Ever since I put a cheap SSD in my old MBP it's essentially silent, and it kind of freaks me out to not have any HDD noise or vibration telling me whether or not my laptop is actually turned on.

Sure I can get the fan to spin up but I have to throw a heavy load at it.
posted by loquacious at 1:06 PM on March 26, 2019

I used to muck around with trying to make a silent PC, now I just go for whatever is practical and not too noisy. A totally silent desktop is too expensive without a lot of compromise.

One of my hobbies is vintage computers. Ancient hard drives and floppy drives are failing and now it is possible to move them to completely solid-state storage. As computers of the 486 and earlier age (and even a lot of Pentium 1s) didn't require cooling fans, that means it is possible to build a completely silent vintage computer that would have been an impossible feat back in the day. Ironically, that means people go out of their way to add sounds back to their old computers so they sound authentic.
posted by fimbulvetr at 1:10 PM on March 26, 2019 [7 favorites]

No compact phono input? pass.
Actually, real-talk since I couldn't find it: does this help energy usage in anyway? That'd be awesome but I can't tell from the post.
posted by es_de_bah at 1:15 PM on March 26, 2019

The case is $350 on NewEgg, but they don't carry the heatpipe cooler. Most of the rest of the costs are just how to build a system to fit the case.

I've been moderately toying around with a cheaper passive cooling solution for my next build or upgrade.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 1:20 PM on March 26, 2019

So what do folks who build their own machines do when they are finished if they don't do videogames?

There are lots of activities that need a beefy pc other than gaming.

There's also reasons to build your own computer other than maximizing performance - all of mine have been NAS machines optimized for small size, low power consumption, and large amounts of hard drive storage. So what I do when I'm finished is I start transferring over data from my previous NAS.

I can't help but feel like the final moments will be anticlimactic

In the case of a NAS the climactic moment is logging in and running df and having feelings about how much free space there is
posted by vibratory manner of working at 1:22 PM on March 26, 2019 [9 favorites]

I'm pretty sure I saw an older version of this page a while back, and this is at least the second iteration to use that case. So yeah, the case is a one-time expense that could be amortized over many years and many systems. A sealed-system computer like an iMac or Macbook won't do that. (Also, the only Macbook that's fanless is the 12-inch non-Air, non-Pro Macbook. I'm not going to say it's a bad machine, but it's sort of like comparing a Honda Civic to a Mack truck. If you're just using a web browser, a big desktop machine is probably overkill in 2019, but if you're doing the sort of things one does on a desktop in 2019, you're sure as hell not going to have fun on an entry-level Macbook.)

I also think totally silent PCs are probably a bit unnecessary, unless you're planning on putting it inside a well-sound-insulated recording studio. The acoustic noise floor in a typical house certainly isn't zero; in my place I have wind noise from the trees outside, occasional traffic, the HVAC system, the refrigerator... a desktop with large-diameter, slow-moving fans is silent enough to make those sources of noise louder. So it'd be silly of me to spend money for a totally silent system until I took care of all that stuff first.

But still... that's a damn fine looking case. TBH I think it's better than anything Apple is putting out right now (hey guys you want a design for the new Mac Pro? yes you do, that trashcan design sucked and we all know it) and I'm very tempted to see if you can get a Hackintosh-capable mobo in there with some nice big slow fans.
posted by Kadin2048 at 1:23 PM on March 26, 2019

I'm guessing - though someone correct me if I'm wrong - that going completely fanless would also reduce dust buildup, even compared to a big, slow fan.

Plus your snake can warm itself on the case in the morning.
posted by clawsoon at 1:30 PM on March 26, 2019

does this help energy usage in anyway?

Sure, whatever the fans would have used. A few watts, relative to something like 150-175 watts under load.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 1:35 PM on March 26, 2019

From vibratory manner of working's HD Plex link:

It is a crime to use aluminum base in a passive CPU heatsink system.

Sure, aluminum is simply useless at conducting heat - in fact I'm shocked I haven't died from undercooked food made in my aluminum pans.
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:36 PM on March 26, 2019

Another way to make a silent computer: immerge it in mineral oil.

I once built a custom water-cooled PC with a huge radiator and water blocks for the video cards. Sadly one of the cards died and it was too much trouble to troubleshoot.
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 1:42 PM on March 26, 2019 [3 favorites]

The silent PC crowd represents the some of the best of the web. They have opinions they need to share but they generally back it up with actual testing and the result is something useful. I have built several computer labs and intentionally picked units for a quieter environment. It's nicer.

I owned and adored a Mac cube. Part of the magic of iphones and tables is their silence. Now let me tell you how much I hate my work Dell laptop that hums when you put a finger on the touch pad. It has an ssd. It could be quiet, but alas, every time I pick it up I'm reminded of its cheapness.
posted by zenon at 1:44 PM on March 26, 2019 [6 favorites]

Ironically, visiting that page made the fans on my laptop kick in.
posted by slogger at 1:46 PM on March 26, 2019 [3 favorites]

At one point last year I really screwed up a bios upgrade for my thinkpad and had to send it in for repairs. My backup was a raspberry Pi. No fans, no moving parts!
posted by pwnguin at 1:47 PM on March 26, 2019 [5 favorites]

So what do folks who build their own machines do when they are finished if they don't do videogames?

I remember someone in an Apple store trying to convince me I didn't need the processing power of the large machines since I didn't do gaming. I tried to explain that Photoshop + Acrobat Pro + Finereader (no Mac version available) + browser and a dozen tabs + Word + Excel + image viewer + couple of Explorer windows + 3-5 copies of Notepad + chat programs (these days, Slack, Discord, and Telegram; those days, Skype and Pidgin) will cause the machine to slow down and eventually freeze entirely. I like to have music playing, but I can't afford the processing power.

He insisted I couldn't possibly need the 17" laptop and tried to steer me to the (admittedly, cheaper) 13" screen. Since dude seemed to lack comprehension that no, I really need monitor space, and also, non-game programs can actually use up enough RAM to freeze the computer... I didn't buy a Mac. When I was looking for a power laptop a few years later, I didn't bother even looking at Macs, because my last experience was "Mac salesfolks have no idea what heavy-use requirements are, if they don't tie to gaming or video editing."

I don't build my own machines, but I'm starting to look at the options, because I hate Windows 10 nothing is optimized for document-processing work.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 1:48 PM on March 26, 2019 [4 favorites]

Part of the silent/quiet equation includes assessing how much computing power you actually need, and picking lower power options to match.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 1:52 PM on March 26, 2019 [3 favorites]

0 dB (SPL) would actually be audible to a person with reasonable hearing. A truly silent would actually not have a dB (SPL) measurement, as the number would be below the detectability threshold of any device (even the best anechoic chambers are at -5 to -10 dB SPL). The sound pressure of silence would approach -∞ dB SPL.
posted by saeculorum at 3:01 PM on March 26, 2019 [4 favorites]

I too have a computer optimized for quietness, and as I lived alone for a number of years, I would enjoy the pin-drop silence in the evenings. I only realised how unusual this was when moving in with someone who enjoyed having the TV on during the day for "white noise". I'm also the kind of person who drives a 1 hour commute in total silence without the radio.

Ironically, you know what made the most noise - it wasn't the fans. The 7 billion transistors in the GTX1080 and the coils inside the 500W PSU generated enough eddy currents / magnetic flux / whatever you call it, that moving the mouse around on the screen generated a small but detectable squeaking noise, that would stop the instant you stopped moving the mouse. Depending on the load, frame rate, etc they would generate various whines, squeaks and clicks.

(I was also the only one in the house who could hear the occasional drip from leaking over-pressure valve behind a wall panel in the bathroom, which led me to opening it up to investigate, so...)

I decided in the end I'd rather hear the computer fans than the squeaks and whines from the components...
posted by xdvesper at 3:14 PM on March 26, 2019 [4 favorites]

The sound pressure of silence would approach -∞ dB SPL.

The optimal silent PC also absorbs and eliminates sound waves in the surrounding room, so I can't hear traffic outside or the doorbell or my phone in the next room or the carbon monoxide detector going off in the basement
posted by AzraelBrown at 3:27 PM on March 26, 2019 [6 favorites]

AMD Ryzen 5 1600
Geekbench score: 3925 single-core, 17833 multi-core
GeForce GTX 1059 Ti
3DMark, Ice Storm: 324705

iPad Pro 11" (A12X Bionic)
Geekbench score: 5006 single-core, 17902 multi-core
3DMark, Ice Storm: 194856

Closer than I would have expected.
posted by Pruitt-Igoe at 3:30 PM on March 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

Another way to make a silent computer: immerge it in mineral oil.

Last time I visited Puget Systems (from whom I've bought my last couple of quiet-but-not-silent PCs), the receptionist's tower PC, immersed in an aquarium full of oil, was very prominently on display right near the front door.
posted by The Tensor at 4:13 PM on March 26, 2019 [2 favorites]

I'm on my 4th Mac Mini. Decades of silence.
posted by humboldt32 at 4:30 PM on March 26, 2019 [3 favorites]

So you guys can't hear solid-state power supply hum? I can hear phone chargers.

At least it's not as bad as a friend of mine who can hear LCD backlights. When she was young she could hear 32 kHz watch crystals. She claims not to be part bat.
posted by scruss at 4:40 PM on March 26, 2019 [14 favorites]

That's a simply beautiful case, even better than the old Mac Pro ones. But extruded aluminium walls that are 13 mm (half an inch) thick? That seems excessive. On the other hand, I suspect the limiting factor will be heat transfer to the environment, not internal conduction. He'd probably do better with his motherboard fitted into some spiky assemblage of radiator fins than with everything folded into a cube.
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:03 PM on March 26, 2019

I don't like silence at all. Which is to say, in the absence of external sounds, I become hyper-aware of the sounds my own body makes - I can hear my eyelashes rubbing together when I blink, not to mention joints moving about, digestive sounds, heart, breathing, the squishy sounds of the mouth... all that stuff. My PC is pretty close to silent, which is just down to the quality of the fans and the soundproofing of the case. I'm not sure I actually want my environment to be really quiet, though. Total silence just feels unnatural.
posted by pipeski at 5:18 PM on March 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

As a PC person, I like this a lot. Not sure I can be bothered actually actioning it, but yeah. We have cats, so heat sink and case fans are the bane of my existence, because a lot of cat ends up in those.
posted by turbid dahlia at 5:19 PM on March 26, 2019 [2 favorites]

iPad is silent.

Also, imagine that line being voiced by Demetri Martin.
posted by sonascope at 6:32 PM on March 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

I'm on my 4th Mac Mini. Decades of silence.

Ha. I’m still rocking my 2012 Mac Mini and the thing sounds like a hairdryer whenever the CPU is pegged, more often than not by random OS X processes than me doing any actual work.
posted by alidarbac at 6:50 PM on March 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

So what do folks who build their own machines do when they are finished if they don't do videogames?

He says in the comments:

I’ve been running and tuning a simulation for several years. The hydrologic cycle, in particular, takes up a large amount of memory.

posted by unliteral at 7:03 PM on March 26, 2019

>So you guys can't hear solid-state power supply hum? I can hear phone chargers.

Honestly I can't hear shit over this tinnitus.

>Ha. I’m still rocking my 2012 Mac Mini and the thing sounds like a hairdryer whenever the CPU is pegged, more often than not by random OS X processes than me doing any actual work.

Really? I just replaced my Late 2012 I never heard the fan once. Never had is ramp up in any way. I used it quite a bit to play some games via Bootcamp.
posted by humboldt32 at 11:35 PM on March 26, 2019

So what do folks who build their own machines do when they are finished if they don't do videogames?

As someone who has assembled two Raspberry Pi-powered MAME cabinets (one with screen, one with HDMI cable) and a GameShell and is about to attempt to assemble a PiGRRL Zero Advance, I can vouch that sometimes building the means to play videogames can be more compelling than actually playing videogames. After all, you can only play so much Gyruss/Bubble Bobble/whatever in one sitting.
posted by acb at 3:21 AM on March 27, 2019 [3 favorites]

I have 3 mac mini's in that see occasional use - used to be a plex media system. All I want now is a media station that I can put all my ios pics on from all those devices and that I can play the fav pics back on the tv, play all my tunes, or the radio. I have lots of digital media. And I don't want it in the cloud. But Apple doesn't build a mac mini with 2 TB storage. Or raid. So I built my own. And it works. I've built many PC's. But it was a chore. It doesn't simply do what it needs to - it requires me to work on it, to ensure updates don't break everything.
posted by zenon at 7:40 AM on March 27, 2019

@zenon you can indeed buy a Mac mini with a 2tb ssd, it just costs an arm and part of a leg.
posted by thedaniel at 12:32 PM on March 27, 2019 [1 favorite]

That mini is 2,200$USD - for a base model with a big drive! And wasn't available when I put mine together. Mine has an ssd for the OS and big HGST drives for storage. If it's good enough for Backblaze they're good enough for me.
posted by zenon at 8:24 AM on March 29, 2019