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"Nehemiah Via C3 CPUs"

Has anyone had any experience of these Via CPUs?

I've decided that when I upgrade my system I'll get two boxes - one for everyday use and one for gaming and any other heavy duty stuff I need to throw at it. It looks like it's possible to cool a Via system completely passively, which would mean virtual silence. I realise that the performance isn't going to win any prizes but I just want to be able to browse the net, email, write, do a little bit of programming (no huge compiles, and I'm happy making a cup of tea should I need to do one), and maybe some web design if I ever get my butt in gear.

I'm very tempted by the Hush PCs: http://www.hushtechnologies.com/

Other options are the Tranquil PC ( www.mini-itx.com/store/tranquilpc.asp ) or something I read about in PC Format called Bacata Blu Jour. Not much concrete info on the web about that one, mainly because it's French and the company website is high on waffle, low on prices/distributors etc.

Just wondered if anyone had any experience/opinions/rumours to share about these things.

What pump is it AMD Man? My Eheim has an annoying low frequency noise.

I have water cooled a couple of times (with both AMD and P4) and i would recommend it, It is not as scary as you think as it is well sealed, i have had 3 water cooling kits, 2 of which i have got the components individually and thrown it all together with no problems or leaks whatsoever and i have my P4 rig on 24\7, It keeps it nice and cool no matter what i am doing and there is no sound from the pump, the only sound that i can hear is on my Maxtor Plus 9 hdd which has liquid bearings so is not that load.

Colin

cookie monster wrote:
> The noise from my comp would probably drive you bonkers UK.
>
> Its got 4 fans, and is pretty damn loud. Thankfully it doesnt bother
> me.


Mine has 9 fans (case + other) but you can't hear them due to the hard disk sounding like an aircraft taking off

The noise from my comp would probably drive you bonkers UK.

Its got 4 fans, and is pretty damn loud. Thankfully it doesnt bother me.

OK, before I start I should say that I'm writing this at three o'clock and I've had had a stressful evening, so I might make some hideous errors but...

My current choice is a Hush PC which is completely passively cooled. Basically the heatpipe is the case, which is finned to help dissipate heat. The performance might (comparatively) suck but it is silent apart from the hard drive activity, which will be limited to what I throw at it. At the most basic level all I want to be able to do is write using Word or openoffice.org, use the web and check my email. It's not much, but it's what I what I spend 80% of my time doing.

Now that XP and OO are out I can use mainstream software fairly reliably, and I would much rather do that silently and slowly than speedily with a great humming in my ear.

I know almost nothing about water cooling, except that the stress and expense seem like too much trouble. And I know exactly nothing about phase cooling except that it probably doesn't impress girls.

AMN Man's right again, watercooling is the biz. The pump does make this annoying vibration noise, but you could damp them out with a pump mount or even a towel like I've done.

To make it completly silent you would need to have absolutly no fans in the unit and use a completely passive heatsink which would mean no fans at all, this would not be advised as the heatsink would either have to be of great size or the cpu will overheat because there are no ways of moving the air from the heatink this will mean any small sort of load put on the cpu will result in cpu and heatsink heating up and just getting hotter even with the via chips (which by the way lack in performance by a lot), You could try Not using a hard disk drive in this machine also and netowrking it directly to your other pc so you can initially boot to a Floppy and get is to boot directly from second machine (this is tricky as i have tried it). What i would do is remove all fans from unit, put passive heatsink on northbridge, now wait for it.........I would set up a water cooling rig with either the rad riggred internall with a silent 120mm fan cooling it or run the piping to the windows and keep the ram there, Put padding under the water pump to stop any noises from that, now i would have a near silent machine that would cool no problem under load and i would be able to use a descent CPU.

Turbonutter will now suggest phase change which is more expensive and has an irritating noise.

Colin

To be honest, it's the hard drive that makes quite a bit of noise. I switched off my fan yesterday (there's only one, all linked by tubes) and the HD started to bug me the most. It's only when you have complete silence do you not notice a thing.

At the moment all my fans are adjustable. Nothing as fancy as a baybus, but I've got two Zalman fanmates sticking out of a PCI slot and my case has two built in fans on an adjustable switch. When everything is on silent my PC is quieter than anyone else's I know, but the noise still bugs me when I'm working on it for a long time. The fans are Zalman and from what I've heard I could get it a couple of decibels quieter by using Panaflo ones, but I'd rather go the whole nine yards and get something that's passively cooled.

You can buy a Baybus which will controll all your fans and when it is not doing very stressfull high load stuff then you can have the fans running silent and you can up that when you want to play games.

Colin