[sdiy] new computer

[Magnus Danielson]

From: Simon Gatrall <gatrall at pacbell.net>
Subject: Re: [sdiy] new computer
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2004 17:07:38 -0700
Message-ID: <p06002008bc98f3e5c211@[64.172.21.178]>

> At 1:38 AM +0200 4/7/04, jhaible wrote:
> >Remember my deep aversion against noisy fans in the
> >music studio? Kept me from doing any music related
> >stuff on the PC so far. I hope this will change soon.
> >I ordered one of these today:
> >http://www.deltatronic.de/int/pc/index.html
> >Can't say if it's worth the extra money yet, but I'm
> >eagerly waiting to find out. (It will come by the
> >end of next week.)
> 
> I do product engineering for a living.  I've worked on a number of 
> computer enclosure projects.  I do not understand why convection 
> cooled PCs are so rare.  I realize it is harder/more expensive, but 
> if more companies sold computers without fans, I bet that only really 
> cheap people or people interested in performance over all else would 
> buy noisy computers.

You need to solve one particular problem, that of certain heat sources being
very tiny objects while producing much heat and not really handling high
temperatures well. One of those is the CPU, but other sources naturally exist,
such as the chipset, memory, graphic card, and hard disks. Add that most PCs
don't have a fully engineered air-flow as components are done by numerous
unconnected vendors, and stuff is still mounted with lots' of cables going
all directions and often being too short to be laid nicely anywhere.

That's at least what I find in 99,99999% of all machines I see or expect to see
of any recent vintage. I've seen machines that are marvelous, but then it was
old vintage workstations.

With CPUs reaching for ~100W on a 3x3 cm surface or something, and not all
space around it is free to use for cooling gear, there is a definitive problem
to solve. I'm not saying it is not possible, but it does take some rethinking
to go to selfconvection. I'm all ears to listen to what you propose!

> I know the noise bothers some people like me a lot, but it seems that 
> many people have just gotten so used to it that they don't care.  It 
> really shouldn't be that way.  Apple is the only major computer 
> company that has sold a lot of fanless desktop computers (original 
> Macs, many of the early iMacs), but even they are not as consistent 
> about this feature ("wind tunnel" G4, Xserve).

You have to balance the compromise differently if you want the high
performance.

Cheers,
Magnus - "Senior System Architect"