As a counterpoint to the recent thread on the latest and greatest in PC hardware I'm lookong to go retro-tech and build a PC based on the Via C3 chip. Silent running is the objective and as the C3 is able to run with just a passive heatsink it seems the ideal solution when coupled with a fanless PSU.

My main concern is how well Lame will run on a C3 bearing in mind it doesn't use the MMX or SST instruction sets.

If anyone here has experience with te Via C3 I'd be grateful for some reassurance that I'm not barking up the wrong tree.

...or barking mad

ß

It has been reported that Mitiok's compil doesn't work with C3 but mine works.

There should be no problem with lame on a C3. The C3 processor has MMX and 3DNow!-support; it should behave just like an AMD K6-2. The C3 has quite a poor FPU-Unit, so don't expect great encoding-speed...

Another option would be a P4. Without fan it should reduce its speed to 800mHz. Perhaps it is more powerfull at this speed than a c3.

If you want a quiet and powerful PC, you might wanna have a look HERE. I got most of my stuff from here, and its very quite! Although expensive!

I have such "silent" components: Power supply from Q-Technology (300W one), a VAS2 fan from Noiseblocker.de, and a Barracuda IV from Seagate.

They are nice, low noise, but honestly it is not silent at all.

computer case padding might make things more quiet.
They might also make you case hotter from inside!

I have such components as well. They cost a fortune and made the computer very quiet, but not silent.

If I could do it all over, I'd rip out the 10,000 RPM SCSI disk and replace with a Seagate Barrauda.

I'd also scrap the GF3 with a GF2 with passive cooling or a MGA400 (I was actually planning on using my MGA400, but it doesn't work with the Asus P4-S333 bloddy SIS chipset).

And then underclock the CPU.

Also, using low-noise components requires skill, experience and time. A friend of mine just made an Athlon 1400 very silent. It took him a whole week...

Thanks for all the input. Coincidentally I was reading today about some new Intel motherboards which have OS independent fan speed controls (ie controlled in the BIOS) that look interesting. I imagine a P4 running Winamp is virtually 'idle'.

My current system is a K6-2/400 and it cannot handle APS from stdin, yet happily encodes VBR MTRH in real time. I assumed the FP capability of a C3 933Mhz chip would be somewhat better than this ...but perhaps not ?

Gabriel, - that's an interesting idea running a P4 without a fan to force a clock reduction and I'll check it out on some of the hardware forums, but I suspect it would still need a hefty PSU for the system to post at all. Fanless PSUs seem to be about four times the price of conventional power supplies per watt output. (about GBP100 for a 150 watt unit).

I have a 60GB Barrcuda IV to be mounted in an elastic cradle which is as good as the QuietPC acoustic enclosure and without the overheating possibility.

ß

I have a Asus-board that supports lowering fan speed when the CPU is idle. It could go as low as 10/15 (in BIOS settings), but I don't know if that stands for voltage, speed or anything else.

A rather easy way to silence fans is undervolting: currently I run my CPU-fan at 5V (instead of 12V standard) which is significantly less disturbing (the volume is definitely lower than with just the board-option). CPU-temperature rises under pressure but stays in reasonable limits.

There are descriptions online, how to get 5 or 7 volt from a standard PSU-harddisk cable. It's not really difficult.

If this is to be a dedicated multimedia box, you might check out the cubes from Shuttle: review

Not intended to be a workstation, but a small and quiet box. With a heat pipe to cool the P4

You should be interested by the SpeedFan software....

There is also the "F@mily.net" computer made in France. Probably not avalible in USA. It cost around €250 in Denmark. It it quite silent and comes with a 10 Gb disk drive (upgradeable), Celeron cpu (upgradeable), dvd drive (flashable), c-media sound adapter with dig out (SSRC plugin + external DAC), USB (connect a stereo link...), 64 Mb ram (upgradeable), modem and net adapter. And it is quite small and nice to look at.

Danes can buy it at ComputerCity.dk
The rest: Google