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How in the world are Dell systems so quiet?
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Blazestorm
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They only have 1 PWM fan + PSU fan?
Riddlinkidstoner
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AMD Cool n Quiet or Intel Speedstep.
Fans they toss in are probably cheap but are controlled and/or undervolted intentionally.
Have you heard the Dell Studio Hybrid? I didn't even know it was on until I touched the mouse.
Fans they toss in are probably cheap but are controlled and/or undervolted intentionally.
Have you heard the Dell Studio Hybrid? I didn't even know it was on until I touched the mouse.
D
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What are you putting in your builds (CPU's, HS's, HDD's, number of fans and speeds, video cards etc)? What Dells are you talking about? The loudest thing in my rig is my HDD, and it is far quieter than most off the shelf rigs I have come across.
Dell uses custom-designed heatsinks and they have their fan set up in a way that the entire system can be cooled by one. That fan is then temperature-controlled, and they set it fairly conservatively so that it doesn't spin at a very high speed unless the CPU gets to an excessive temperature. The fans they use are actually quite good quality. It is the combination of those factors which allows them to keep their systems very quiet.
thebeephaha
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They often use Delta fans for anyone curious.
Astronomica
Gawd
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My dad bought a Inspiron 530 from a friend and its pretty simple. The only fans in it were the psu, the cpu cooler, and 1 outake. All were 80mm and low RPM. The cooler was actually quite larger and better then usuall retail stock heatsinks shipped with intel chips. Fan runs almost completely silent and still manages lower temps compared to the my intel box cooler.
Yeah, one of the first thing that jumped at me when I first started to build was the noise. I moved from a quite dell system to a not so quiet custom built. Say what you may, but prebuilt often are much quieter than custom unless you have a fan controller 
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.Neurofreeze
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The case and internal layout is also specifically suited for that system so often their airflow is much more optimal than our general cases, which is why they can have such low airflow yet still have such low temps.
neodark088
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Just guessing, but i believe the over all case design and fan selection works well even with minimal airflow to get things running under rated temperature specifications with the lowest possible amount of noise. And yes they do use delta fans that push a good amount of air even if its spinning at dead rpms
Besides enabling strict control of airflow case being actually case and not some holes everywhere cheese grater makes it also able to contain component noises.
Every directly visible hole leaks lot of noise and if there's fan on that hole that's going to increase noise level further so having single fan as exhaust and no direct noise escape path in front cuts noise of case fans notably.
Right...there are no direct sound paths from the fans to the outside of the case.....the fans spin much slower than most custom builds.......the cases are much heavier and have substantially more material in them than most custom cases.......Dell does not "over cool" their components as most home builders tend to do. All this adds up to a near silent computer.
This plus strategic ducting.
everything that has already been said in this thread.....
plus, if you look closely in some of the newer dell chassis, there is small(usually grey) soft foam strips anywhere theres potentially metal on metal contact, such as the side panel and sometimes where things may touch in the toolless builds as well. say what you may about Dell computers but for the higher end desktops and the business Optiplex systems quite a bit of R&D goes into attempting to keeping the human that has to use it every day happy.
plus, if you look closely in some of the newer dell chassis, there is small(usually grey) soft foam strips anywhere theres potentially metal on metal contact, such as the side panel and sometimes where things may touch in the toolless builds as well. say what you may about Dell computers but for the higher end desktops and the business Optiplex systems quite a bit of R&D goes into attempting to keeping the human that has to use it every day happy.
Yup...the two dells that I have at my workplace, XPS 720 and some old dell from 2005 both use pwm Delta fans.
I wish that was so. Just for kicks I ran IBT on my dell xps 720 at work and the fans never kicked in even when the core temps shot up past 70C. Needless to say I shut IBT of as soon as it started producing errors because of temps.
11jkarrasch
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they have fewer fans aand the fans they have are made to be quiet
zero2dash
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Q: How in the world are Dell systems so quiet?
A: Because they're BTX, they have low power requirements, and they run everything at stock.
Their cases have only 1 thing that gets airflow and that is the cpu. Everything else would be a heatbox if not for the fact that most HDs run cool and don't need active cooling, optical drives don't need cooling, and all of their systems (short of XPS or customized) use onboard video and not a dedicated graphics card.
It's really not that hard to figure out.
You can make practically any case quiet. Fan controllers (or resistor/cable mods), sound dampening, undervolting...it's not rocket science. If I run my SFF21E's at 7v, my V1000 is barely audible (and that's a feat given the design nature of the case).
A: Because they're BTX, they have low power requirements, and they run everything at stock.
Their cases have only 1 thing that gets airflow and that is the cpu. Everything else would be a heatbox if not for the fact that most HDs run cool and don't need active cooling, optical drives don't need cooling, and all of their systems (short of XPS or customized) use onboard video and not a dedicated graphics card.
It's really not that hard to figure out.
You can make practically any case quiet. Fan controllers (or resistor/cable mods), sound dampening, undervolting...it's not rocket science.
If I run my SFF21E's at 7v, my V1000 is barely audible (and that's a feat given the design nature of the case).BinarySynapse
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Q: How in the world are Dell systems so quiet?
A: Because they're BTX, they have low power requirements, and they run everything at stock.
Their cases have only 1 thing that gets airflow and that is the cpu. Everything else would be a heatbox if not for the fact that most HDs run cool and don't need active cooling, optical drives don't need cooling, and most of their systems use onboard video.
It's really not that hard to figure out.
Dell no longer uses BTX. And not all of their systems use onboard.
zero2dash
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News to me.
I edited my post but it's still 99% of their systems that don't have a dedicated gpu. (As edited, other than XPS or a customized build.) I'm sure the higher end Optiplex's have Quadros or FireGL's, but otherwise - Inspiron, Vostro or Dimension - almost all of those are onboard.
BinarySynapse
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News to me.
I edited my post but it's still 99% of their systems that don't have a dedicated gpu. (As edited, other than XPS or a customized build.) I'm sure the higher end Optiplex's have Quadros or FireGL's, but otherwise - Inspiron, Vostro or Dimension - almost all of those are onboard.
The Inspiron 530 desktop I bought over a year ago had an Nvidia Geforce 8300GS in it off the shelf. A lot of them also came with 8800GTs as well. But your right, most Dell are sold to people and businesses that have no use for discrete video and thus are only equipped with onboard.
Ditto, well, for my previous system... The one in my rig I've just built and I'm still tweaking it and settling on an OC, so I'll mess with the fans after that. On my previous system I even had the main HD decoupled (i.e. not in direct physical contact w/the case) so it'd make a lot less noise, other than the seek whines, most HD noise is due to vibrations transferred to the case... Even if you don't hear any obvious rattling it's there. There's a ton of ways to decouple a drive, from the simple (rubber grommets) to the extreme (hanging it in bungee cord) and most of them have been implemented in at 'least a couple of case designs these days. Mine was probably the simplest by far, I just had a thick slab of foam on the bottom of the case and the drive sat on it, temps weren't really a problem (HDs conduct more heat out the sides than over the top or bottom anyway). I'll probably do the same again for the primary drive.
But yeah, Dell doesn't really do anything special, besides the fact that a lot of the time they barely have two fans inside the whole case... Sometimes it's literally the PSU fan (temp controlled) and the CPU fan which doubles as case exhaust (also PWM). That's one of the reason a lot of Dell systems seem to suck up inordinate amounts of dust, lotta negative pressure in there so it's seeping in thru every nook and cranny. Most of the time you don't really need an intake fan (it's a rarity amongst OEM systems) unless you have a lot of drives sitting on top of each other or a tiny case w/an ultra hot video card... I still toss one in even on smaller cases just to try to keep most of the air intake coming from one (filtered) location to avoid dust buildup, and for the sake of the video card(s). But even w/a high powered GPU and a nicely OC'd system you don't need much more than one low-RPM intake and one exhaust, the loudest thing will probably end up being either your HD(s) or your video card.
Buy low RPM fans, get a fan controller, or use something like SpeedFan (or RivaTuner/EVGA Precision or w/e tool for your GPU's fan) and adjust accordingly... You'll probably end up noticing the HDs the most then, decouple those and you might end up noticing your PSU more under heavy loads if it's not a particularly silent one, heh, Corsair ones seem to be pretty tuned for quietness FWIW. After that it's down to the construction of your specific case...
That's the only thing Dell's doing particularly well that might be out of your grasp (if you don't want to spring for a new case), as others mentioned, their cases block the direct path of noise to you pretty well... Highly vented cases or flimsy ones will transfer more noise out, a solid hunk of steel w/thick panels won't (think Antec P180). Case doors aren't a fashion statement either, they do help.
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