[Cialug] Small and quiet Linux box suggestions

[Daniel A. Ramaley]

On 2014-04-23 at 12:15:05 Matt Stanton wrote:
> You can build a relatively small mini-tower machine that is quiet. 

The last time i built a machine, in 2008, i basically did what you 
described. I started with a rackmount case that i had on hand though. I 
bought a SuperMicro motherboard (i've had great success with their 
reliability in the past) and put the lowest power consumption CPU in it 
that i could find. Then on that put the largest heat sink i could find, 
and attached to it the largest fan it would accept, but i bought a fan 
that was designed to run at a lower speed than most fans. I found an 
nVidia card that didn't use a fan. Testing revealed that it got too hot 
for my tastes, so i attached a fan to it, but a big, near-silent one 
like i used on the CPU. I think the northbridge had a fan on it; i 
removed it and replaced it with an adapter so it could accept a larger 
fan, then put a larger fan that runs at a slower speed. For the case 
fans i did something similar and found large fans that run slow. The 
machine is pretty reliable, and runs cool. But clearly i'm not a good 
designer of quiet systems because it is still loud for my tastes (though 
*much* quieter than my previous machine!). Maybe the spinning disks are 
part of the problem; at that time SSDs were far too small and too 
expensive to seriously consider, but today that's a different story. Or 
maybe the case i used is the problem; rack cases are wonderfully sturdy, 
but not designed with sound damping in mind.

I'm guessing if i built or bought a new machine, that i could make it 
quieter that my current one. Because as you said, machines today use 
less power, so i could put fewer fans in it. And if i found a different 
case and used SSDs, that would help too. It would take some research 
though, of a type that doesn't excite me like it did 15-20 years ago. 
Buying something pre-made might be the easier path, even if it is a bit 
more expensive. I will look a bit though at components though; maybe i 
can find a recent silent PC guide or something that would get me most of 
the way there.

__
Daniel A. Ramaley
Network Engineer 2

Dial Center 122, Drake University
2407 Carpenter Ave / Des Moines IA 50311 USA
Tel: +1 515 271-4540
Fax: +1 515 271-1938
E-mail: daniel.ramaley at drake.edu