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Thread: Spoons Dream PC

  1. #1
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    Spoons Dream PC

    Finally up and running. The PC was created with one goal to be as quiet as possible, yet at the same time be a powerful and fast PC, that can be used for development (and occasional games playing), front display:



    The PC has a certain car theme, the buttons are [start]=power on [air-con]=old turbo button, controls fans [boot release]=reboot. The circular dial is a water temperature meter, it is connected to the CPU.

    The case was an old AT server case, big and heavy, just what is needed to quieten everything (does not have a cover on yet):



    The power supply is a Thermaltake fanless unit, with a big heat sink that sits out side the PC (the AT case needed a little reworking to accomadate it):



    Onto the CPU, a 3GHz AMD 64 bit processor, it has a sythe ncu-2000 big 0.5Kg passive cooled heatsink. The motherboard has 'cool and quiet' which lowers the cpu speed by half and voltage when the cpu is usage is < 50% load, when idling the heatsink does not get warm to the touch:



    The graphic card is a Sapphire Radeon 9550, good enough for Halflife 2, but the original had a very noisy fan, so was replaced with a Zalman vga heatsink ZM80D-HP:



    The case has two fans (one front, one back), both modified (with 470 ohms trim pot) to be low speed (1000 rpm) and silent, they mount onto silicone mount to stop the transfer of noise to PC. The fans are wired into the old turbo switch to run the fans at full speed if required.



    The motherboard is an Asus K8V SE, the memory is 2x512 DDR 400 with fitted heat coolers, sound card is Terratec Aureon Space 7.1. Originally I had a 200GB Seagate Barricuda, but despite being a known for quietness it was too loud during seeks, so it was replaced with 2x Western Digital laptop scorpio drives (2x 80GB), these are very quiet, and have the advantage in not getting very warm. They are installed into SATA using two adaptors (not for speed, but rather because the first drive was SATA and this was ghosted across):

    Last edited by Spoon; 08-29-2005 at 03:02 PM.

  2. #2
    dBpoweramp Guru LtData's Avatar
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    Re: Spoons Dream PC

    Looks VERY nice, Spoon. And nice touch using the old Turbo button to speed the fans up. Very clever.

  3. #3
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    Re: Spoons Dream PC

    WowSpoon!, very sweet, a wonderful work of Art, I'm drooling,congratulations.

  4. #4
    dBpoweramp Enthusiast Smoggy's Avatar
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    Re: Spoons Dream PC

    Question...Why not liquid cooled?

  5. #5
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    Re: Spoons Dream PC

    Too noisy (they have pumps), too fussy (having 2 litres of water in a tub somewhere).

    I am a few weeks away from finishing and will post new photos then (the outside is looking as good as the insides).

  6. #6
    dBpoweramp Enthusiast Smoggy's Avatar
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    Re: Spoons Dream PC

    Springing a leak would suck too

  7. #7
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    Re: Spoons Dream PC

    OMG OMG Spoon! Nice computer!! What video games do you play that utlilize your video card? FarCry? Halo? UT2004? Pariah Multiplayer demo?

  8. #8
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    Re: Spoons Dream PC

    Just half life 2. The PC is looking more finished (just needs the case painting).

  9. #9
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    Re: Spoons Dream PC

    I didn't like the validation system of Half Life 2. You had to validate the DEMO, that was SOOO stupid. WHy does a demo need validation?

  10. #10
    dBpoweramp Guru LtData's Avatar
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    Re: Spoons Dream PC

    As far as I'm concerned, the validation system may have been a little annoying but its the best way they could find to cut down on the pirating of HL2. Don't know about the demo, actually bought the game myself.

  11. #11

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    Re: Spoons Dream PC

    At the bottom, on the front of your PC, what is that thing? I could guess, but I know that I would be wrong.

    :smile2:

  12. #12
    dBpoweramp Guru LtData's Avatar
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    Re: Spoons Dream PC

    Looks like a PC speaker to me.

  13. #13

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    Re: Spoons Dream PC

    That is one serious looking piece of pc.......

  14. #14
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    Re: Spoons Dream PC

    wow, thread bump.

    My brother just got his nVidia 6600. It's been softmodded to run like a 6800GT, beats yours, Spoon! (no offense, just friendly competition)

  15. #15
    dBpoweramp Guru LtData's Avatar
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    Re: Spoons Dream PC

    Yes, but his is quiet. You could probably stand beside his and barely hear it. The entire room can probably hear your brother's computer boot up. Remember Spoon is going for power but quiet power.

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