By: Adrian (a.delete@this.acm.org), August 13, 2019 7:01 am
Room: Moderated Discussions
Gian-Carlo Pascutto (gcp.delete@this.sjeng.org) on August 13, 2019 6:00 am wrote:
>
> You run into silly problems:
>
>
> b) Resonance issues like a certain HDD at a certain workload, or worse, the
> AIO pump at a certain workload resonating with the case. Not much to do about
> it but it takes time to track down and figure out a solution for.
>
Yes, when I was still using HDDs it was much more difficult to make a silent computer and I have also encountered annoying resonances.
However, I have abandoned HDDs many years ago.
> c) GPU reviews tend to be completely unreliable with noise measurements. They often claim that cards are silent
> when they're in fact very loud at full load. I have a Gigabyte Windforce 2080. Most reviews claim it's a very
> quiet card. It's actually extremely loud (what they call loud cards must be like jet engines I guess). Originally
> there were RPM speeds at which it rattled. They fixed it with a BIOS update that permanently runs the fan faster
> and louder (of course also the kind of thing you'll never see in a review). MSI Gaming X cards tend to *actually*
> be very quiet, but they have silly power draws due to the factory overclocks.
>
Yes, finding silent GPUs is indeed more difficult than finding silent cases, PSUs or CPU coolers.
Fortunately, in all the computers that I am using as workstations I am content with 75-W graphic cards (e.g. Quadro P2200), and most of those are silent enough.
I use high-power GPUs only for computation or for offline rendering, so they are in servers which are sleeping much of the time. When I have to wake them up, I no longer have perfect silence.
>
> You run into silly problems:
>
>
> b) Resonance issues like a certain HDD at a certain workload, or worse, the
> AIO pump at a certain workload resonating with the case. Not much to do about
> it but it takes time to track down and figure out a solution for.
>
Yes, when I was still using HDDs it was much more difficult to make a silent computer and I have also encountered annoying resonances.
However, I have abandoned HDDs many years ago.
> c) GPU reviews tend to be completely unreliable with noise measurements. They often claim that cards are silent
> when they're in fact very loud at full load. I have a Gigabyte Windforce 2080. Most reviews claim it's a very
> quiet card. It's actually extremely loud (what they call loud cards must be like jet engines I guess). Originally
> there were RPM speeds at which it rattled. They fixed it with a BIOS update that permanently runs the fan faster
> and louder (of course also the kind of thing you'll never see in a review). MSI Gaming X cards tend to *actually*
> be very quiet, but they have silly power draws due to the factory overclocks.
>
Yes, finding silent GPUs is indeed more difficult than finding silent cases, PSUs or CPU coolers.
Fortunately, in all the computers that I am using as workstations I am content with 75-W graphic cards (e.g. Quadro P2200), and most of those are silent enough.
I use high-power GPUs only for computation or for offline rendering, so they are in servers which are sleeping much of the time. When I have to wake them up, I no longer have perfect silence.