Building silent PC DAW

[pix]

I'm getting a new desktop specifically for audio use, leaving my laptop my work and net reated stuff. My nedds will be good and stable audio recording and streaming. cpu is not a desperate priority, although I want a fast system of course. What I am aiming is at a quiet system. This is one of my priorities.

I'm thinking in a 3GHz Northwood based system on a Antec Sonata case. I've seen great reviews on this case. Only one 120mm fan though., so my doubt is what are the limits for this case in terms heat dispersion. I plan to add some powercore and UAD cards so they'll probably heat the system a bit, not counting with 2 fast hard drives always at full throttle.

What do you think of this? Is this a good case but not suitable for a DAW setup?

These were the specs I was thinking of:

Antec Sonata
3 GHz Northwood
Intel 865PERL mobo (any good alternative with intel chipsets?)
1GHz Corsair PC3200
10k rpm 80gig Raptor SATA
160 Gb Seagate SATA
Samsund DVDRW
cheapo video card (any suggestion?)

Any suggestion would be great. I've been out of the loop for a while in terms of harware since my 2 last computers were laptops. Last PC I assembles was a 1GHz Athlon with a beastin Radeon 9000 card....



thanks!

[nebulae]

The Sonata is a KICK ASS case. I've had it for over a year, and it's amazingly quiet. A couple of reasons why: 1. Good design of the case - it's sturdy and doesn't rattle much. 2. Rubber grommets, so taht none of the hard drives have metal contact with the case - which keeps the rattlings down even further.

A great site to research quiet PC parts is www.quietpc.com. I got a tip from that site about Zalman fans, which are really quiet and do a good job cooling the CPU.

My desktop went from close to 50db of noise to about 20db - SIGNIFICANT. Another test was when we moved from an apartment with carpeting to a house with hardwood floors. Hardwoods are notorious for creating reverbs and for being literal sounding boards for noise. The Sonata is still quiet...I wouldn't build a PC without it.

[jer]

get in touch with Jeremy at StudioGhost ( http://www.studioghost.net ) .
He can build you the quietest system you can imagine or the quietest system for your price range...antec is good but you can possibly do better. Even if you are intent on building the system yourself give him a try as he is always willing to chat and has a very good understanding of the quiet computing market (more so than what you will glean off quietpc.com)
you can reach him at info@studioghost.net or by phone which is on the website.
best,
Jermain

[pix]

Thanks! I'll give them a look. studioghost.net is based in europe though, but I'll write Jeremy anyway asking for his opinion.

Any other thoughts?

[Urbem]

I have spent a lot of money on quiet PC stuff and it did indeed came quiet but not dead silent. Recently i've moved my PC to the room next to my working area. The PC is actually 2 meters form me but in another room with 2 small holes in the wall for the cables (USB, VGA, MIDI, Audio, etc...). I can highly recommend this scenario for people that have the physical layout to do it.

[jer]

That's a way to go if you can afford the space and don't mind the extra cables and getting up if you have to restart or change cds, etc... The new top of the line in silent computing is passive cooling which essentially uses the computer case as a big heatsink for the whole computer. This leaves the hard drives as the only noise making components in the system and these can be put in sound isolation sleeves that reduce noise by over 80-90% depending on which one you use.

I wanted a system like this and looked into building one myself but the Zalman stuff that's available in the states is rediculously expensive for what it is, over $1000 just for the computer case I find excessive no matter how quiet the system is! So I got in touch with Jeremy (studioghost.net - see above..) who uses a different case that is not the zalman but is equal or superior in how much heat it can dissipate. He recommends fitting these hard drive sleeves that are not the ones in his normal systems but a special order from japan I think and they are even quieter than the molex ones Carillon uses and have technology that keeps the hard drives extra cool too. Anyway mine showed up a couple of weeks ago and this thing is a work of art in all respects! I truthfully can't tell that it is on sometimes and theoretically it is just as quiet as a computer can possibly get right now since it uses the best components on the market... anyway I was and am still totally blown away which is why I recommend him so highly. It cost me 250 euros I think to ship the thing over to the states from spain and I think it still came in lower than what I priced the system at if I wanted to build it myself and he did a much better job than I could have.

my experience and 2 cents,
Jermain

[pix]

Thanks again folks.

I actually don't need a silent system..A quiet one should be enough.

I'm thinking in going with the sonata case (1 fan for starters and see if it is up to the task, and a 20dB Zalman cpu sink + fan. It should be quiet enough.

Only possible problem is that I'm thinking in going with the new raptor HD from WD and I've heard they're a bit noisy...But we'll see.

I'm also considering switching to a AMD 64 system. I'll use it to run live mainly and there's no doubt that they're better at it.

I think I'll go with the 3000+ venice and an ASUS A8N-SLI. Priority is audio bandwidth so I prefer to spend the bucks on good RAM, HD, and mobo.

Should be around 850$ to set up the whole system...

[stevestevejay]

Hi there,

Best source of impartial quiet PC info is here (forums and a review section). You can check what hard drive makes are recommended there. Try to get a quiet model as the ticking from a noisy hard drive is likely to get annoying, especially if the PC is otherwise quiet.

I chose a Sonata last year, replaced the case fan with a quiet 120mm model, and used the combination of a ThermalRight heatsink and (I think) an Antec thermostatically-controlled fan for it.

The best trick, though, that massively reduced the main source of noise (which was the case fan) was to stick a Noise Control NMT-2 fan speed controller on it (in the UK, it can be purchased from here). It correctly gives the fan the full 12 volts on PC start, but after a few seconds it throttles the fan speed right back, and the fan speed only increases whenever the temperature inside the case starts to rise, and even then it's only for a few moments. It works much better than the Zalman fan speed controller, and best of all, it's cheap! (I've bought two of them to date, one for each of the two PCs I have).

Bye,
Steve

[basetwo]

Here's the specs of my system so far:

CoolerMaster Centurion case
SuperFlower 550W PSU w/ blue led 14cm fan and "silent mode"
Gigabyte K8NS Ultra 939 motherboard
AMD64 Winchester (90nm) CPU
Zalman CPU fan w/speed control
1Gb Corsair RAM (2x512) for dual-channel
1 Seagate 80Gb SATA HDD

I'm still working on making it more silent. The case has a mesh front which is awesome for airflow, but can also let sound from inside the case out the front. Right now the chipset fan needs to be replaced with a Zalman heatsink and the 80mm case fan on the front will be removed or replaced, I'll just have to see if I need it blowing air to the back of the case over the HDD area or not. The 14cm fan in the power supply is quite quiet as is the 120mm fan in the back of the case and the Zalman CPU HS/Fan at it's lowest RPM setting.

One problem with the rubber grommets on HDD mounts is that it decouples heat transfer from the HDD shell to the case, so be aware that if you have a drive running hot, you shouldn't isolate it with rubber grommets. I have no vibration issues with this case and the seagate HDD (which doesn't make a lot of noise either.

Truly silent only comes with no moving parts (i.e. heat pipes, massive heat sinks, no HDD. I also don't like adding sound dampening foam to the case, it acts as insulation and makes the internal case temp warmer as well.

my .02

BaseTwo