Silent data / storage / file server

D

dandv

n00b
Joined
May 7, 2009
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It's been 5 years since I've assembled my last PC and it's time to have a real system in addition to the laptop I've been using. The downside is that I'm way behind with regards to the state of CPU, motherboard, RAM, storage, video, casing, cooling, sound and other technologies.

I want to buy or build a silent (or very quiet) PC to primarily store a few TBs of data with RAID redundancy. I haven't done gaming in years so this is a lower priority, although it would be fun to try. The box would be a silent media server / HTPC but powerful enough to use as a video processing machine.

With the tremendous amount of options on the market, I'm at a bit of a loss as to what to choose. So far, the best option I've found would be a preconfigured Alienware desktop with liquid cooling (are they actually silent?). Of course, that means less control over specific components. I want a blu-ray writer and if I do the research, it may turn out that Alienware's is not top-notch.

I'd be happy to pay more but spend way less time researching, comparing and deciding. It's not that I want to be spoon-fed, but I really don't want to spend months comparison shopping. However, if it comes to assembling a PC, that would be fine, as long as I have a pretty clear shopping list of parts.

So what would you guys recommend?
 
I'd say if you REALLY want quiet, you should build the system yourself. Most NAS units have a power supply fan (if not all), and they tend to be small 40mm fans that spin at high speeds, not exactly great for quiet. With PSUs however, you can find fanless. Same with the CPU, you can simply not put a fan on a good heatsink. The rest will depend on your hard drives. While seeking, they will make noise, so you can't prevent that, unless you go purely SSD.

Some NAS units are probably pretty good but generaaly aren't as customizable with fan speeds.
 
The hard drives should end up making most of the noise in the system... so liquid cooling the CPU isn't really useful.

Buy a Antec P182 case if 6 drives is enough, you can fit more but you gotta use the 5.25 bays. Get some WD GreenPower Drives, get 2TB drives even tho their $/GB is a little higher. Prolimatech Megahalems heatsink, a c2duo mobo, some core2 cpu... dual or quad up to u, get a dual for less heat/noise or a quad if u plan encoding anything. Enermax Modu82 PSU. Uh... then get a single 800/1200rpm Scythe S-Flex fan for CPU heatsink, and get 1 Scythe Slipstream fan @800rpm for the back of the case. Get any passive GFX card or if you want a little more get like a GTS250 which when idle will be silent enough that you can't hear it.

Without hard drives should be ~20db or so. I can't really estimate with hard drives but 25-ish. Put it under your desk in a corner and you'll cut that down more.

Thats actually almost exactly my system too, except I have two quadcore xeons but they're like ridiculously low watts @ 2.33ghz. I really can't hear the system unless I put my head under the desk and then I can hear the hard drives (8 GreenPower drives)-- still quiet as they can be. If you want to be quieter you need to just build a server for the storage adn put it in another room.
 
The P182 would indeed be a great option, although maybe a bit overkill. For a file server, you don't need much computing power, therefore you don't have too much heat to handle. Any case that can take 120mm fans and silent HDDs is fine. I'd go with WD Green or Samsung F2 drives, a cheap AMD combination (4850e CPU + any mainboard + any ram). Pick some low-speed fans and you're good to go :)
 
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