Hardware advice : Silent server machine

BeatFreak

I've been toying with the idea of building a server for my room mostly because I can't sleep with this bloody vapo on :mad: and I'm wasting valuable downloading time, so I'm doing some preliminary research. The requirements are as follows;

1. Needs to be as quiet as possible, I'll be sleeping in the same room as it and I'm a light sleeper to boot.

2. Needs to be economical on electricity, this only applies to cases with built in psu's but I won't have much in this case except a few HDs and seeing as it will be always on I'd like to keep the electricity bill down. (not so much for my sake as for the other people live with, they arn't too happy about the vapo eating electricity)

3. Needs to be small and tidy, good looks are a help

No. 1 is the important issue here I've been looking into totally passive machines possibly involving this and a case something similar to this or maybe this. I'm not totally sure which road to go down. Would sff be a good idea? I've also heard about some Via setups which are supposedly nice and small and very quiet anyone any experience with them?

Any recommendations?

Xithus

Have you considered getting a shuttle ? Its what I use.. Set the fan speed to low and its nice n quiet.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/Online_Catalogue_Shuttle_102.html

BeatFreak

Would sff be a good idea?

Yup as you can see I have considered it, but the only worry with shuttles is the lack of upgradeabilty I'll have a few HDs in her and over time I'm sure I would throw a few more HDs in. This is my only problem with shuttles atm.

BigEejit

I think that you can get a quiet server, but it'll cost a bundle ... any time you go for quiet it becomes very expensive .... with a lot of hard disks its gonna be hard to keep it cool .... more fans (even the very quietest ones) add up and increase the noise floor ...
Is this a games machine?

Xithus

sorry I just glanced over your post. You'd fit 2 hd's in a shuttle, and you could always go external if you needed more..

joePC

Get a low spec DELL, no noise at all.

BeatFreak

Nope not a gaming machine (2 is enough for the moment), just a file server. I'm really going to try hard to make this fan-less (with the exception of the psu) I like the look of the Aerocool deep impact passive cooler, mind you with a passive cooler your going to need atleast one fan, maybe the Antec Sonata with its 120mm at the back, should be fairly quite. That and a few Samsung Spinpoint HDs sounds like a quiet system. Anyone else any ideas for a totally silent rig? I'm open to any suggestions and money is not really an object, within reason of course.
Thanks for the replies.

PS buy a Dell? No thanks thats far too easy

Matt Simis

The new Via EPIA Nehemiah (sp?) based Mini ITX systems sounds like a good fit for your needs. Super quiet and low power, dual NICs makes it a good server and the 1GHz CPU is more than fast enough. Even got onboard Mpeg2 HW decoder..

Prices are around $190 inc CPU or less.

http://linitx.com/shop/product_info.php/products_id/274
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?action=info&sku=121758&p=&t=1996&l=2&AvdID=1&CatID=10&GrpID=12&cks=PRL


Matt

Col_Loki

One thing to watch is your NB cooler should be passive & graphics card as they can be noisey.

Hard drives sound good, that cooler looks sweet (mabye a keep in mind a Zalman 7000 - €39). The sonata is a great case, the 120mm fan running around 7v is silent. I cant say for sure but i think the PSU is almost there too, definetly a quiet one (all i hear is the graphics card & NB cooler at the min - grrr) .

If that PSU is too noisey you could try ... This one - Fortron with 120mm fan , it will run perfectly fine running that fan at 5-7v which is silent and it is suppose to give out more like 380-400w ..... has gotten fantastic reviews.

Or if money no option - This one - 0db .... €199 thats the only problem.

unkel

Buy an ancient PII or early PIII both slot types to make sure no CPU fan is used. Replace the PSU with the Zalman silent PSU and use a fanless graphics card (if there is no on-board graphics). Use one Zalman noiseless case fan to blow out the air the PSU sucks in to maintain throughflow of air. Then use the quietest and coolest HDD's in the market (this is the most important and most challenging bit) and stick 'em in SilentDrive encasings.

Voila, a PC that generates less noise than the background :cool:

P.S. PII is more than sufficient for the task you have set for the PC. The bottleneck is the internet connection speed, nothing else

oneweb

is it worth putting rubber washers between the psu and the case to quiten the case?

OfflerCrocGod

The PSU doesn't vibrate (It shouldn't - much) so I dont see how dampening the connection between the two will make things quieter. The HDD are another thing - dampen them they vibrate like mad.

BeatFreak

I like the look of these Mini-ITX, boards 1ghz would be fine and from what I've heard they tend to be very quiet. Has anyone any first hand experience with a Via setup like this? Are they really that quiet? And could anyone recommend a good case which would hold a Mini-ITX board? Cheers for the links btw Matt

COL_LOKI, If I'm going down the ATX route I would definitely be using a Zalman passive NB and buying either a passive radeon 9200 or possibly a 9600XT with a Zalman passive GPU cooler thrown on top (XT because I heard the R360 runs alot cooler than previous chips). I'm still leaning towards the Sonata case, have yet to hear a bad thing said about it and I'm very impressed with that passive PSU, maybe it is possible to have a totally passive server after all, cheers for the link

I think I will stick with new hardware for the moment but thanks for the tip Unkel. As regards the HD's being a problem, I don't really consider it a problem I've been using samsung drives for a while now and I've found them totally silent unlike my 80gig WD which tends to have a high piched whine all the time, the Samsungs are barely audible even when reading. Oh and those nice (and by nice I mean incompetent) people at NTL are providing the internet which is nice and speedy

Cheers for the recommendations, I'm gonna google myself some links for this Via Mobo, I'm all interested now

Matt Simis

Originally posted by Beat Freak
I like the look of these Mini-ITX, boards 1ghz would be fine and from what I've heard they tend to be very quiet. Has anyone any first hand experience with a Via setup like this? Are they really that quiet? And could anyone recommend a good case which would hold a Mini-ITX board? Cheers for the links btw Matt

Havent tried them yet, but they are getting pretty rave reviews (as long as you arent planning breaking any 3DMark records). They should really be the quietest available, their power usage and thermal output is just so low.. Be sure to check reviews for the CL10000 "Nehemiah" model, as there are similar models with older CPUs that can be much slower.

LinITX have loadsa cases:
http://linitx.com/shop/default.php/cPath/8?osCsid=c89a101b2e887ab982b2e634d6d3b8e7


Matt