Building a silent pc

docetes

Did a quick google but it just gave me american links. Anyone had any experience building a silent PC? I'm only looking for a pc serve files. I don't want a graphics card.

Any links or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Dave

Krieg

Im gonna try and take a stab at this

I have no experience building one, but -

Hard drive: Solid state drive, very expensive 200euro for 64gig. I believe these are the only silent choice when it comes to hard drives.

Case: All i can think of are the cases that have a heat sink design, they have no fans and are of a compartmental design. Cant remember the name but Ive seen 2 before, 1 of which was posted on this forum a couple months back, but i think it was some limited edition type case.

CPU heat sink: I read a good review a while back on the "AC Freezer Xtreme", no fan.

uberpixie

docetes wrote: »

Did a quick google but it just gave me american links. Anyone had any experience building a silent PC? I'm only looking for a pc serve files. I don't want a graphics card.

Any links or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Dave

If all you need to do is serve files.... Don't build/buy a PC.

Buy a NAS (Networked Attached Storage) box. e.g. http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=331722
It will be smaller, much quieter and use much less power than a pc...

For just hosting files a PC is total overkill.

docetes

I will want to put apache on it and just play around with it in general. Would I be able to that with a NAS box?

uberpixie

docetes wrote: »

I will want to put apache on it and just play around with it in general. Would I be able to that with a NAS box?

You can get NAS boxes these days that will do:

itunes and windows media servers.
Tie in with Active Directory
Run scheduled backups
Host websites with MYSQL, PHP and Apache support

E.G.
http://www.synology.com/enu/products/DS207+/index.php

Webstation feature:
http://www.synology.com/enu/products/features/webstation.php

Now obviously NAS boxes range from very simple boxes that simply pop up a few harddrives on the network to something like the above example that are much more expensive.

Now you need to do some research and read some reviews: I have no direct experience of using NAS boxes, I simply don't have the money to spare atm to go buy one and play with one as much as I would like to, but if I needed something small and quiet to host files on the network with some fancy multimedia on top to mess around with I would consider a NAS box highly on the top of my list.

They are worth looking into: then again building a quiet PC is also an option.

You could go Mini ITX and build a very low power PC running an Intel Atom or a Via CPU and motherboard.

e.g http://www.mini-itx.com/

Have a look through here, might give you some ideas.

The advantage of going m-itx is you get a very small, midget PC that uses very little power, generates very little heat so there is always an option of going total passive cooling and you would be using standard PC software: you could configure a standard build of what ever OS you want to use and pick what ever software you want to run Apache etc...

This would be much more flexible than having to use what ever software that comes with a fancy NAS box.......

You could buy a standard barebones kit and add a few parts

e.g:
http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=50 (picked at total random....)


I think for what you want, building a standard sized PC is overkill and would not be small enough, quiet enough and power efficent enough for a box that will sit there and host some files and an apache server.

I would strongly advise to go do some research and decide yourself what would suit your needs best.