How Do You Build A Powerful Quiet Computer?
• Understand a few principles of computer cooling[1] • Moving parts get much noisier as they move a little faster. Two big, slow fans will be quieter than and move as much air as a big medium-speed fan, or one or more small or medium-size medium-speed or fast fans. • Air flows more easily thorough a large continuous space than through a series of narrow spaces with the same total cross-section. A heatsink with very-closely-spaced fins is for maximum performance with a powerful fan, and is not better with a slow fan, though it’s not much worse than a heatsink with further-apart fins. • Heat needs to be removed from components, and from the case. Exhausting it to the outside directly avoids unnecessary work and noise removing it with a separate fan. • Don’t rely on the power-supply fan for removing much heat from the inside of the computer. The power supply needs to be kept cool too. If most of the rest of the computer’s heat has to flow through the power supply, the power supply’s life
