VLUG Meeting Notes 2003.05.13

TOPIC: Quiet PCs

Presenter: Steve Paul Shack

NEWS

• RIAA Stanford case settled for ridiculously low amount (something in the area of $6kUSD)
• Linux Lunacy brochures available courtesy of Carl

Newbie Minute: no newbie minute this month

Main Presentation: Quiet PCs by Steve Paul Shack

Exhibits

• Steve's Shuttle system with florinert-assisted cooling
• Daniel Germain's machine with large-diameter, low-RPM fan and flower CPU heatsink

Steve's General Points:

• large, slower EBM Pabst fans instead of small fast fans
• flower heatsink
• dvd and cd drives are just noisy, and the same model can vary from lot to lot
  or even from unit to unit
• liquid-cooling so that radiator and associated fan can be remotely located
  - note, however, that pumps are not always rated in dBA of noise generated by
  their operation
• put the computer in another room and run long cables to keyboard, mouse and monitor
• Dell now makes quiet PCs, so buying one of those is always an option

Steves Advice on Building a Quiet Machine

• use quieter hardrives and/or hardrive sound-insulating kits (although these will impede
  airflow around the drive, and therefore the efficient cooling thereof)
• Athlon vs P4 CPUs:
  AMD expects the cooling to happen from the back silicon (ed. flip-chip) die whereas
  Intel provides a large metal heat-spreader to allow easier CPU-heatsink interfacing
• variable speed fans
• Quiet PC can supply very quiet PSUs for ATX systems
• Steve indicated that he's seen a fanless PSU which used massive heatsink fins which
  projected out of the rear of the PSU casing (and thus the computer case)
• when upgrading components look at how much noise they will generate
  (ie small, high-RPM NorthBridge fans and their (anectodal) related failures)
• use tricks like using ZipLock containers to make an intake funnel for the case
  cooling fan (front)
• Some pricing info:
  1. new PSU $90
  2. flower cooler $55
  3. video card fan $20
  4. Barracuda (IDE) drive $120 to $150 typically

Meeting Comments

• Knoppix CD given away, as well as $5 off of computer gear until the end of the month for people likely to buy "Geek Shirts"

Book Raffle

1. Network Perimeter Security
   New Riders
   - Won by Manfred Moser
2. Python Web Programming
   New Riders
   - Won by Victoria Li

Meeting Adjourned  to (mostly) Boston Pizza.

Next Meeting

Where: University of Victoria, Cornett Room B-108
When: June 10, 2003
Topic: Win4Lin (Tentative) by Andrew Willard

Notes by Mike Pfleger - VLUG Secretary.
secretary@vlug.org