"Most of Intel's CPUs are manufactured by other companies overseas such as Samsung. There are guidelines they must follow, but they can deviate somewhat.

Rob,
I think you may be speaking from unfounded information. If you buy an Intel branded processor it was made by Intel, in an Intel fab.

While I am a new Intel employee and I may have overlooked something, I do not believe they outsource CPU manufacturing. Even that aside, your statement is completely incongruous with one of their key strategies.

Best regards,
Tim

You're right. I heard that on the net once. I shouldn't have presented it as fact. Shame on me.

Thanks Tarkie for the link! Phew 550Watts? AND they're supposed to be "whipser quiet" ? Wow!

Thanks tracer for the links and the info!

Actually, I do know those Volcano 5 coolers. AND I know they're noisy as hell. A perfect example of how it SHOULDN'T be.

I think I will go with the Zalman cooler on my video card, but there's just one thing that bugs me. The cooler on my Gforce3 also covers the Dram on the card. If I remove it and replace it with a Zalman cooler, I doubt the memory will still be cooled. Does anybody advise against this?

When a CD drive spools up it's far and away the loudest part at that point...

Wow! Now THAT'S the kind of sound damping I'm aiming at!

And I love my AMD!

Well, good for you! (sorry, couldn't resist!)

Of course, no matter which processor you prefer, they're all going for cheaper now! All the prices were lowered recently. And I was suprised to see it show up so quickly even on pricewatch. The price for a retail box Athlon 2100+ dropped from about $250 to $190 shipped. At least that's what I saw. So it's good for us all.

Well yeah, though I'll probably never have AMD in my own system, I am thankful that they are around.
Competition is always a good thing. In fact, I would welcome a third or fourth CPU manufacturer for mainstream desktop PC's. If only to keep Intel on their toes and not having them rise their prices up to insane levels. (before anybody says so, I'll say it myself : yes, even more insane than they are now! )

No no, I was saying BOTH processors have dropped prices. Seems everyone's doing that these days (thanks xbox/PS2/GC). I only used the Athlon as an example because that's what I'm looking at.

What's cooling the AIW if you've taken off the fan?

I'm building a small PC in a Shuttle SV25 casing which apparently is loud as hell. I did actually think of using a C3 but decided against it in the end. The rest of the components in it would drown out the noise of the CPU fan.

You're lucky that they even put a bigger fan on the P90s. I've had to inspect the junk created by dodgy system builders just overclocking the CPU without any attempt at improving cooling. It works for a while but as you've seen it will just die horriblely. The magic smoke gets let out!

I thought Intel manufactured everything in their own fabs? Their website mentions that they've got 13 fabs of their own

- Trevor

What's cooling the AIW if you've taken off the fan?

The heatsink the fan screws into is still on the Radeon chip. This seems to be enough. Probably not though.

I thought Intel manufactured everything in their own fabs?

Yeah, It seems you're right. As mentioned in an earlier post, I was just regurgitating some crap I heard on the net years ago.

I'd say if it works then leave it. If you're not doing anything too strenous then it probably is fine.

Oops. Didn't see it mentioned anywhere else. Sorry to bring it up again

- Trevor

I'd say you'll probably won't run into problems until you'll start playing some heavy FPS games (like quake 3) for an extended period of time. Those things really stress your GPU.
Otherwise you'll probably will be fine. If the unit were to crap out because of the lack of the fan, it probably would have done so by now.

Ok guys!

Yesterday I finally received all the stuff I ordered to silence my pc.
I've got a :

Q technology 400Watts PSU
1 Zalman CPU cooler for P4
3 pabst case fans, each with their own Zalman Fan mates (to control their RPM / noise level)
1 pabst 40mm x 40mm 12dB fan to replace the one on my Gforce3.
Sound absorption mats to put on the inside of my case.
MacPower Digidoc temperature and fan controller (to monitor the whole thing when in use)

Total cost : about $350

Findings :

The sound level has definitely decreased, but not really to the level I wanted it to. I found out the biggest noise pollutors are actually the two 7200 RPM harddrives AND THE NEW PSU! Concerning the harddisks : currently I have no solution to fix this. The only option to fix this I know of (the silentdrive enclosure) will not work for me since that is a solution for 5400Rpm drives ONLY.
The new PSU however is a different matter. I put my old PSU back (a chieftec 340 Watts), and the difference in noise level was very noticable. Needless to say that new "silent" PSU will be returned on monday.

The Zalman CPU cooler, though I had my doubts about its effectiveness at first, really turned out to be the big surprise of the lot. While the stock Intel CPU cooler cooled my CPU to a decent 36°C, the Zalman cooled it to
32°C !! (in quiet mode, so this is with the supportive fan at only half speed - I think 30°C should be obtainable with full speed, but I don't see the point). Actually I believe the temperature would have increased, wile in fact it decreased. Quite a nice surprise!

Would I do it again ?
Mmm, hard to say. While the noise level had definitely dropped, it has not dropped to the amount I thought it would. Mostly this is because of the HD's though, so if I could find a solution for that, chances are I will look entirely different upon this.

I found out the biggest noise pollutors are actually the two 7200 RPM harddrives

I made a similar discovery a while back. I was interested in quieting my PC down, and I tried an experiment where I simply disconnected every fan in the case for a moment (already had a "silencer" PSU) so that the only noise remaining was the hard drives. I decided that it was still too noisy, so I didn't bother with spending any more money.

Yeah, I tend to agree with you.
If I was to do it all over again I would get :

1) the Zalman CPU cooler
2) Those zalman Fanmates to control the RPM of the case fans.

That's it! The PSU I already owned turned out to be very silent in the first place.
With all the case fans turned to half their normal speed, they're barely noticable while still providing adequate cooling for my system.

Now, I some company could just come up with a way to silence those HD's I would be totally happy.

In looking around once, I found a different hard drive quieting solution. It's based on the fact that the hard drive ends up using the case as an amplifier to its vibrations. The NoVibes product isolates the hard drive by suspending it via some rubber bands (O-rings, actually). I've never seen one of these in person, much less ``heard'' or used one, but it seems to make sense. Try removing your hard drives from the case and holding them in your hand while they power up to see if they seem quieter. If so, you might want to look at getting some of these.

Also, keep in mind that the SilentDrive enclosures are not recommended based on spindle speed, but on heat dissipation. If your drive generates 5 or fewer Watts of heat, then it should be okay inside a SilentDrive. 5400RPM is just a guideline if you're unable to find specific information on your drive.

I've read about this Novibes thing. The online store where I got some of my other silencing products also sells it.

Actually, it gave me an idea. Yesterday I packed the insides of my PC in with sound-damping mats, also in the spirit of killing as much noise as possible. These sound damping mats are made of a soft carpet-like material and get glued onto the iron of the case. (on the inside)

So I figured I'd remove my HD's from the hd rack of the PC and just lay them onto the 'carpet' on the bottom of the case.

Result? AMAZING! A whisper-quiet PC! Incredible!

This would be ideal, but I don't think I'll keep it this way. For one, there's an 80mm fan on the back of that drive bay containing my two hd's that actively cools them (I believe this is necessary for 7200RPM drives.) If I lay my Hd's on the bottom of my PC case I can't use that fan anymore to cool them. I don't like that very much.

Though that Nvibes option sounds great, I think it's a pity it requires a 5,25" drive bay. I've got two HD's in that case, and only one 5,25" slot free. (of course)...

However, the difference in sound level is just too big to ignore. I'll see if I can manually mod my case somwhat to allow me to use it in this fashion AND keep the HD's adequately cooled. This should be do-able.
I'll look into this next week. I don't have the time for it this week.

Well, I guess this is where different people want different things... If I got it down to my hard drives being the noisiest thing, I'd call it a success! Although perhaps there are other differences...

I'm running off Western Digital's, 120 Gig witht he 8MB cache on them. I think there's something about a fluid bearing in them...? Perhaps a different hard drive would be quieter, but - a lot more money, for what really? Also, my Antec 840 case is really heavy! It *feels* like about 40-50 pounds. It's heavier than my 19" Hitachi monitor is. It's possible that the hard drives are just no match for it, and end up relatively quiet.

Just an idea, not sure if this would work: For a lot of applications (ie browsing), I wonder if setting the hard drives on a very short power cycle (turn off after 3 minutes of non-use maybe?), combined with several sticks of 256MB RAM would help keep the drives from spinning?

Lastly, you might think of a creative way to leave the drives in their holder, and the holder pretty much where it is, but with some sort of dampening right around it - that is, a piece of rubber between pieces of metal. You'd have some tight fits in spots, and may have to create holes in it for your bolts to run through, but could be another idea?

One more thing - any specifics on your video card fan? Sound, temps, brand you used?

It seems our systems are VERY similar. I too use Western Digital SE Hd's. I too am using an Antec case, be it a SX1030B series. (sold under the name Chieftec here)

I just couldn't resist, and this is what I've done : I've drilled out the supporting mechanism of the drive bay, and thus cleared a lot of room in the bottom of my PC. This way I can just let the harddisk bay rest on the carpet on the bottom of the PC. The fan on the drive bay still works since it can draw its air from the hole in the bottom of the front panel.

This works remakebly well. Of course, this way my harddisks (still screwed in the drive bay) are not fastened to anything in the case. But since I NEVER move my case this is not a problem.

Leaving the harddisk in the bay is not an option. It's a VERY thight fit and it would always pass the vibrations through somehow. It's simply not possible to seal every piece of iron of the case off from the harddisk bay. I've tried. The way I've ended up doing it was by far the easiest solution.

My video card now is an Asus Gforce3 Ti200. The fan on that one was REALLY noisy (possibly the noisiest one of the entire system). The really bad thing about it is that it uses ONE big heatsink (in an odd shape) to cover both the GPU and the Dram chips. (see here). So I unscrewed the small fan an put a new one on top of it (this one, the one on top). I just couldn't fasten it to the card since the fan that comes with the card is is not as thick as the new one, so I couldn't use the screws that came with it. If finally atached it with four rubber bands that I attached to the VGA card itself. This works pretty well. The fan gets held firmly where it should be held. The temperature rises no more than 46°C, a very acceptable temperature I would think. (I can check this real time with the Macpower digidoc5 unit I purchased)

BTW, anyone know the max operating temperature of a Gforce3 Chip?

This Macpower unit is really great! It show the temperature of 8 different temperature sensors that can be placed inside the case. I placed one on my VGA card, one on each HD and I let one floating in the case.
The average temperature of my HD's is now 28°C, the case ambient temerature 31°C and the VGA card runs up to 46°C. The Zalman cooler on my CPU makes sure my CPU never warms up above 35°C.

So in my case I now have :
* four 80mm case fans (two on the back of the case, one on drive bay and one above my CPU cooler). All of these fans are turned to half speed ("silent mode") with Zalman's Fan Mate 1 RPM controllers.
* one 40mm 12dB fan (on VGA card)
* The standard case PSU itself - turned out very quiet in the end (I'll return that Q technology PSU and save myself $120)

So in the end the total cost was :

Four Zalman fan mate RPM controllers @ 10$/piece
Three 80mm fans @ $15/piece
One 40mm fan : $16
One Zalman CPU cooler : $40
Sound absorbing mats : $65
Total of +/- $200

I can now hardly hear my PC running. The window in this room is open, and the ambient noise of birds chirping is actually louder that the noise produced by my PC. Now THIS was what I was looking for!

So I'll re-word my previous statement :
Would I do it again? YOU BET! The difference (now) is amazing ! For $200 I now have a system that's about as quiet as my i386 was ten years ago (you know, when the only thing in your pc that contained a fan was the PSU)

For a lot of applications (ie browsing), I wonder if setting the hard drives on a very short power cycle (turn off after 3 minutes of non-use maybe?), combined with several sticks of 256MB RAM would help keep the drives from spinning?

Only with certain programs now. Unless your browser allows for a no disk cache option, browsing would spin the drive back up every change of the page. And most applications now auto save your work in case a crash occurs. I have to admit that browsing on a completly silent machine is awesome, but rare. I used to queue up several pages on my Solo laptop, let the drive spin down, and read web pages in the silence of my room at night.