I need a plan for a Quiet PC for recording

digitalscream

Yeah...I have a Mac Mini for work testing, and it's the noisiest machine I own. Bloody horrible thing.

Cirrus

I built one last year through PC specialist. It's not silent, but it is quiet enough that it's a non issue for me. The main things are that SSD drives are silent, so there's a huge advantage there, and that the PSU is designed to be quiet as some of the cheaper ones can be really bloody noisy. I used one of the Corsair "Ultra quiet" ones.

Then with CPU and case fans there's like a billion quiet ones on the market, pick your poison.

I don't think a quiet case really does a lot. The PC initially arrived in one of these but I found that waaay too bulky. I put the whole lot into one of these instead. Kinda funky looking, easier to transport between studio and home every now and then and much more open but the extra airflow seems to keep it nice and cool and there's space for a single big case fan that runs slowly.

Snap

PC Specialist do very good audio PCs, I have one, was about a grand, a year or so ago. Near silent and good and fast.

Superb after sales too.

ToneControl

I think Scan or Quiet PC have a better range

ToneControl

wondering about IO for a proper PC:

looks like these have the best latency:

http://dawbench.com/audio-int-lowlatency3.htm

HDSPe AIO 

GuyBoden

Years ago, when computers were very noisy, I put my recording computer in another room and extended the cables for the Monitor, keyboard etc

ToneControl

GuyBoden said:

Years ago, when computers were very noisy, I put my recording computer in another room and extended the cables for the Monitor, keyboard etc

that's my current setup

but I'd like to merge the rooms

Fretwired

TTony said:

Over the 30-odd years that I've been building/buying/using PCs at home, I've concluded that it's fairly pointless trying to get something "future proof" today, because you never know what disruptive new technology is going to emerge.

Inevitably, the new technology completely undermines the future proof protection that you've tried to build-in today - and for which you've paid a price premium today.

So, I've just adopted a 2-3-4 year upgrade cycle instead.  The cycle period has stretched out recently as I'm using the desktop less, and the laptop/tablet more.  

Every 3-4 years I spend c£1000 on a main PC.  That sort of spend gets me more than enough (power, RAM, disc, etc) for today, and generally more than enough for the next couple of years.

It might be slightly different in the more specialised DAW market, but I'd guess that speed of storage is going to be the limiting factor?

My other observation is that PCs have got a lot quieter in recent years - so it might not be worth the price premium of QuietPC's stuff?  Having just ordered the latest replacement, I just fired up my previous gen machine (I always keep the previous one as a backup) to remove software/licences before binning it.  Wow, noisy!  Current machine was upgraded with a load of QuietPC components when I got it, to cut out the noise.  Next machine seems to have a lot of the same tech built into it - though I'll only know for sure when it arrives and I power it up.

With the Macs, there's more of the purchase price that's paying for the design premium rather than component performance.  You're also a bit more limited in terms of what you can change/upgrade during the life of the machine.  I'd always stick with the PC platform for a machine that you think you might want to tweak through the years.  (I'm not anti-Apple, I'm typing this on a current gen MBP).

^^

This is excellent advice.

I use Cubase Pro 8 on a modest off-the-shelf Dell PC (i7, 16Gbyte RAM, 2 x 2GB 7200 hard drives, Win 8.1) and NI Komplete and can rack up a hundred tracks with plugins without an issue.

ecc83

In all this talk of very expensive processors etc there has hardly been mention of sound level MEASUREMENT!

To kick things off I have set my Maplin Special SPL meter* (# N33GJ) 300mm from my living room,PC which is mainly use to run a printer/scanner and BBC iPlayer. I have taken no special measures to silence the Asus home build and it reads 31dB C. The PC is clearly audible in the  room making a faint "shushing" noise but there is no discernible whine or rumble so you hardly notice it. Not good enough for recording tho'but.

Next up, HP 1170 i3 Laptop. At 300mm from the fan port, 25.1 dBC near as. I say"near as" because I can find nowhere in the house quieter than 25.0dB atmo, 08:50. If I remember I shall take a reading at 01:00 tonight.

So, surely it would not be beyond the vendors of claimed quiet PCs and components to provide an SPL reading and a RTA plot so you could look for discrete tones? Fekkin stuff is pricey enough!

*The meter is only specced down to 40dB and so my readings are suspect. However, looking at 600 and 1000 quid meters on the RC comps site I find nothing going better than 30dB so the cheapy will do for relative tests?

Note, you need the C weighting. Most of the noise is moving air and rumble, an A meter will give a VERY optimistic result!

As has been said, you only need the PC as "silent" as the job demands.

Dave.

Cirrus

Quite often cooling fans do have a dB figure quoted, but of course no particular clue as to how that was measured, and I suspect very little consistency between manufacturers.

On the other hand, in isolation it's a pretty pointless number because the case it's in and how it's mounted will have a big impact. Also with something like a laptop they're often near silent - until halfway through a take the thermostat controlled 2" fan starts whirring away at max RPM for 5 seconds.

Jeremiah

The Mac Pro is meant to be very quiet even when putting high load on the processors - if you have that much money to throw around.

Lodious

I've spent years building expensive PC's based on recommendations from SoundOnSound. The conclusion I came to is that all the 'nearly' silent stuff is actually a total waste of time. If you live in a city, and the background noise level is high, they might be OK, but they are long way off silent.

I've bought loads of slow speed fans and CPU coolers which are supposed to be 'inaudible' and they were all pretty noisy. Scythe, Noctua, Zalman 800 rpm fans, despite what the reviews say, they are noisy.

Last year I bought a silent PC, from Silent PC. a bit like this one....

http://www.quietpc.com/sys-a470s...and it doesn't make any noise. I love it. Seems plenty powerful enough, and finally the job is done....no noise, no more arsing around with expensive cases, fans and coolers to find you can still actually hear it, even from 5 feet away.

ToneControl

Lodious said:

I've spent years building expensive PC's based on recommendations from SoundOnSound. The conclusion I came to is that all the 'nearly' silent stuff is actually a total waste of time. If you live in a city, and the background noise level is high, they might be OK, but they are long way off silent.

I've bought loads of slow speed fans and CPU coolers which are supposed to be 'inaudible' and they were all pretty noisy. Scythe, Noctua, Zalman 800 rpm fans, despite what the reviews say, they are noisy.

Last year I bought a silent PC, from Silent PC. a bit like this one....

http://www.quietpc.com/sys-a470s

...and it doesn't make any noise. I love it. Seems plenty powerful enough, and finally the job is done....no noise, no more arsing around with expensive cases, fans and coolers to find you can still actually hear it, even from 5 feet away.

that's my plan

the same model too, or the Scan equivalent

I too tried everything, in the end putting the PC in a different room

I'm unconvinced the MacBook pro would be quiet enough

ToneControl

ToneControl said:

latest comparison:

my old Dell T7400 from 2009

2 x x5482 Xeon, CPU mark = 8547

my old M6700 Dell laptop from 2012/2013; 1 x 3840QM = 8907  CPU mark

latest top of the range £2,5k macbook:  4980hq = 10107 CPU mark

totally silent passive cooled  £1.25k Quiet PC Nofan A480S Skylake: 6700K CPU = 10916 CPU mark

£1k passive from Scan,  4790S = 9623 CPU mark

Quiet PC Serenity Wavestation Pro £1.75k, 2650v3 = 15453 CPU mark

for extra £1k, 2695 v3 = 20923 CPU mark

Scan: 3XS FWX99 PowerDAW £1.75k 5960x = 16010 CPU mark

so basically

£1.25k gets you a fanless with 10916 CPU mark

£1.75k gets you a quiet Scan or QuietPC with 15500-16000 CPU mark

£2.75k gets you 21000 CPU mark

maybe the silent ones are best for me

I'm still deciding what to get

a silent one to self-build from scan

or maybe

Quiet PC Serenity Wavestation Pro £1.75k, 2650v3 = 15453 CPU mark

for extra £1k, 2695 v3 = 20923 CPU mark

I could get

a 2630v3 CPU (8 core, 12,669 CPU mark) for £400 less than the 10 core 2650v3 (15,660 CPU mark)

the Intel Xeon E5-2680v3 (12 core, CPU passmark=19,468) is £900 more than the 2650v3

Jalapeno

For my previous silent PC, which was inaudible, I just got a bog standard ATX case/Mobo from Overclockers, and over time replaced fans and coolers with QuietPC ones - the big 120mm case silent fans were excellent and really moved the air through the case. Finally I got a silent psu that made all the difference.

My new "silent" PC from Overclockers is anything but - considering I went for SSDs too I'm not impressed - will probably go down the same QuietPC bits and bobs path again eventually, but as I'm not recording much at the moment it isn't an issue.

Heartfeltdawn

@Jalapeno what's causing the noise on the new PC then? 

Jalapeno

PSU, CPU cooler, graphics card ... fans (I dunno really yet tbh not need to get into it) ... but defo it's noisy fans

Drew_TNBD

Get a Fractal Design case. They lower the noise floor quite a bit.

ToneControl

I'm thinking fanless with 

digitalscream said:

It's worth bearing in mind that although you get 14 cores with it, you're sacrificing an awful lot of single-threaded performance to get there (not to mention that 14 cores kick out a lot of heat, which has to be dealt with somehow). There's a law of diminishing returns here - the overhead of managing 14 cores uses up a fair bit of CPU power, too.

By comparison, the Core i7 5960X has 8 cores (16 logical threads) and runs up to 3.5GHz. It'll set you back £800, as opposed to £1900 for the Xeon. Memory for the Core i7 will be cheaper, too (it uses DDR4, as opposed to the way-more-expensive ECC DDR4 the Xeon uses). For the price of the Xeon CPU alone, you can build a damn high-spec (and silent) machine around the i7. I know, I built the spec for Adji's machine around the hex-core version for a fair bit less than the cost of the Xeon, brimming with SSDs.

Don't forget that with Apple's thermal throttling, you're losing CPU power the harder you work the CPU (I believe the latest ones even shut down whole cores to save heat, but don't take my word for it). That puts you in an even worse position than you were before.

very wise, the 5960x does seem to be the most economical choice

achieves about 15,000 CPU marks

the fastest Xeons would cost  about about £4,300 for a pair, and achieve about 30,000 CPU mark for a pair

(Xeon 2697 v3)

My old Dell tower has 2 Xeons, and the server memory has always been very expensive, and even with huge cooling in there, I've had 2 modules die

ToneControl

digitalscream said:

It's worth bearing in mind that although you get 14 cores with it, you're sacrificing an awful lot of single-threaded performance to get there (not to mention that 14 cores kick out a lot of heat, which has to be dealt with somehow). There's a law of diminishing returns here - the overhead of managing 14 cores uses up a fair bit of CPU power, too.

By comparison, the Core i7 5960X has 8 cores (16 logical threads) and runs up to 3.5GHz. It'll set you back £800, as opposed to £1900 for the Xeon. Memory for the Core i7 will be cheaper, too (it uses DDR4, as opposed to the way-more-expensive ECC DDR4 the Xeon uses). For the price of the Xeon CPU alone, you can build a damn high-spec (and silent) machine around the i7. I know, I built the spec for Adji's machine around the hex-core version for a fair bit less than the cost of the Xeon, brimming with SSDs.

Don't forget that with Apple's thermal throttling, you're losing CPU power the harder you work the CPU (I believe the latest ones even shut down whole cores to save heat, but don't take my word for it). That puts you in an even worse position than you were before.

Scan offer the 5960x overclocked to 4.1Ghz, presumably under warranty, for no extra charge

I'm starting to think that's my best option - since I can't go totally silent until mass SSD storage gets mega cheap in 2 years