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My Silent PC© Copyright Darrell Anderson. (Written approximately in late 2002) Surf the internet and you will find oodles of commentary about overclocking CPUs. Although I have a technical background, other than intellectual curiosity overclocking never has interested me. However, I long have been interested in a silent PC, long before the topic became more popular than today. A dozen years ago, on my old 486 I spliced some resistors in series with a chassis cooling fan to slow the fan speed and reduce the noise. I do not like unnecessary noise. Several years ago when I bought my Pentium-MMX 233 MHz with a “huge” 3.2 GHz hard drive, I truly began to loathe the related noise. Within hours of buying the computer I unplugged the obnoxious CPU fan and ran my system that way for many years. Yet, there seemed to be no solution for the remaining noise—mostly from the hard drive. A couple of years ago Seagate introduced their Barracuda IV hard drives. Those drives use a fluid bearing. I bought a 40GB model and after I installed the drive I giggled like a little boy! Along with replacing the hard drive I replaced my Pentium with a K6-III+. The K6 runs so cool that I use the original Pentium heat sink. Although repeated real-world finger testing revealed I needed no forced air movement around the heat sink, I nonetheless bought a Zalman fan kit. I run the 90mm chassis fan at 7 volts. The lower voltage reduces fan noise. Although tickled with the noticeable reduction in noise I still was challenged by the idea of a silent PC versus a quiet PC. With some more voltage dropping resistors and some of the same real-world finger-touching heat tests, I also silenced the power supply fan. With respect to the computer world my motherboard is old and the Intel 430TX chip set is rated “only” for a 66 MHz front side bus. After installing the K6-III+ I experimented at 75 MHz, and actually ran at 83 MHz for a couple of weeks; but I throttled back to 68 MHz, not wanting to press the issue of how much long-term stress the chip set or RAM could take. My CPU now runs at 408 MHz using its built-in 6x multiplier. The K6-III+ is a slick CPU. My system runs at almost twice the original speed—and with no obnoxious noise. My system is slow compared to today’s new systems, but I have no demands requiring Ferrari like speed. Like my old but trusty pick-up truck that provides me basic transportation, I am content with email, surfing, and “writing.” I do not need or desire the bleeding or cutting edge of technology. With my older NT4 configuration, I am pleased with how my system responds. I am even more pleased that I have a silent computer, not just a quiet one. I have a removable hard drive bay that allows for some easy experimenting with configurations. I also use a second hard drive to provide my system backups. When I connect that backup drive, I dearly live for the moment when I am finished and I can unplug the noisy old-style hard drive. My desire to migrate to Linux originally left me thinking I might opt for some new hardware. The older versions of KDE and GNOME puked on my old hardware. However, the newer versions seem to run well on my updated system, although I am not breaking any speed records. Many people run Windows and Linux using dual boot. That is how I configured my system, but often dual boot sucks. Especially when a person is in learning mode and wants to run both systems for comparative learning. I’ll continue to play dual boot, however. My current configuration is doable and costs no extra money. Regardless, if I obtained a new computer, you can bet I’ll investigate underclocking and undervolting the CPU as necessary in order to eliminate the obnoxious heat sink fan noise. A 2 GHz P4 Northwood would be a screamer compared to my current system, and with some tweaking probably can run without a noisy heat sink fan. Perhaps a Zalman flower heat sink is in order. Likely I would drop the voltage to the power supply fan. Possibly with some patience and experimenting I could run with no fans, but prudence is usually the best route. Silence is golden! Finis. |
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