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Water cooling For the longest time, I was annoyed with how loud my computers were, but apart from throwing a blanket over them (not the greatest for thermal control) I never thought to actually DO anything about it. In 2004 I found the site Silent PC Review, which is all about quiet computing, and since then it's been a constant project to make my computer as quiet as possible. The machine I built in 2006 has been quite a quiet one, using the very nice Antec P180 case, huge heat sinks, and slow fans controlled by a a Matrix Orbital MX212 LCD display/fan controller using my home-rolled PID control loop. The biggest obstacle was always the graphics cards, which tend to have small, noisy fans on them, and these days they use more power than the CPU, too, so they need a lot of cooling. When I upgraded to an ATI HD4870 card in December 2008, things came to a point. The card was hugely loud, and no really effective aftermarket air solution exist. So I decided to go water. Water cooling is definitely more complicated (and quite a bit more expensive) than air cooling, but you have the advantage that you can put the heat where you can dissipate it quietly. And from the wrecked Ninja, I had an extra motorcycle radiator lying around... It seemed like a fun project, and it paid off -- the machine is now practically silent, except when maxing out the processor and video card, when the large radiator fan makes a low whoosh from all the air passing through the radiator. |
