Audiophile quality PC

I am thinking of building a PC with a slight budget. I have a spare PIII 733 motherboard which is very small so it will fit in any Micro ATX format case.

The PC will sit on my HIFI shelf will use an M-Audio sound card and will be connected to my TV wirelessly for output.

It will also have WIFI capability.

I have all the equipment apart from the sound card, hard drive and case.

Can anybody recomend any virtualy silent HIFI style cases?

Intend to put my entire record collection on it at 256kbps WMA.

 

The noise will come from the PSU and the CPU fan. Get those sorted and you will be onto a winner. A pIII should not be too hard to cool without a fan but the fanless PSU will cost you around £80 minimum.

 

I know There are some ITX alternatives which use laptop style PSUs and a doughterboard but they are only 55w which would be useless.

A little bit of noise is not a problem, I am not wanting a totaly silent solution but nothing more than what you would get from a typical domestic DVD recorder.

I've replaced the CPU fan and its virtualy silent the problem is always the PSU.

 

Get a normal PSU with the minimum watts you can run on (300watts?). Remove the heatsink thats inside it and the fan. Cut the grill away from the fan hole. Unsolder the power transistors. Mount a new heatsink, say a large one from a CPU (Something like those Zalman flower things) over the fan hole and mount the transistors on that heatsink using as short wires as possible. Use mica pads between the transistors and the heatsink or it will blow-up.

 

seagate db35 series hdd

 

Nexus real silent PSU's are very quiet and stay quiet when provided with reasonable airflow through the case. Cost about £30-£35.

 

I was looking at the hiper Micro ATX cases but I don;t know how quite their PSUs are. They are rated at 230w which is fine for a PIII but I don't how loud they are.

 

Always remember bigger fans at slower speeds are quieter.

 

Indeed I run a technology company so I know a lot about PCs, I've just had no experience of building a virtualy silent cheap audiphile PC

This is a system where processing speed dosn't matter, the only two concerns I have is fan noise and the quality of the sound card.

This PC shoudl sound as good as a £200 CD player.

 

Having built silent PCs for project studios before, I have a bit of experience building them. I have not really found any components that have fans quiet enough for use in the same room as quality gear even if they are called 'silent'. Fanless is the only way to go IMO, but I am a bit fussy. The CPU is not too bad with a quiet fan but I think it is worth the £80 for a fanless PSU. Or maybe you can find a second-hand one?

 

Get This Antec sonata "http://www.antec.com/uk/productDetails.php?ProdID=08141" from ebuyer. fantastic looking and ultra quiet. Big wow factor, great power supply. But won't fit on shelf.

 

Yeah, I have the Sonata II for my near-silent HTPC and it is luvverly. Only downside is the PSU, though very quiet, is NOT silent - if you want silent you'll have to swap it for an expensive fanless one (something I plan on doing at some point in the near future). It's also a full-size case, so perhaps not much use in this case!

Dunc

 

Music at the end of time

HI Dunc noticed your sig, have no problem with you being DJ but please play vinyl for the last track, what would be your choice of music and what would be your system. Given, that one would like to dance, to be a dancer at the end of time.

 

I had a P3 850 with passive heatsink in a stock case with a Nexus supply (also tried it OK with an Antec) that was as close to silent you could get without blowing stupid money on it.

If you don't need the processing power by the time you've got an ATX machine quiet you may as well have spent the same money on building a mini ITX machine. IMHO

 

Well put it this way my CD player transformer makes more noise than my IBM Thinkpad PIII laptop does

I don't need silence, I don't want a vacumn cleaner. I have always been put off ITX because they seem to so expensive although the VIA fanless 500Mhz board should be fine.

 

Get some sheets of spiralex from Simon to line the case. that should do the trick with sound deadening and vibration control and stick it on some Final lab durama balbearing feet. have a look around for a valve output sound card. I don't know what it sounds like but it looks good with a couple of valves on it

Thanks for turning up.

 

Just to point out I think Hi-Fi Addict means Simon Carrington of Aeon Acoustics, not myself. However, you could get some thin acoustic foam from any old place and line the case with that. Maybe some ‘Brown Bread Sound Dead’ if Maplin still sells that.

 

How about an Antec 2400 comes with power supply, good cooling and looks nice (to me).
http://www.antec.com/uk/productDetails.php?ProdID=00241