Completely Silent Computer
tp69.blog
tp69.blog
I've used completely silent computers before --- some laptops --- and actually found the experience rather unsettling --- to me the fans, the soft humming/whining of the CPU voltage regulators, and the grunting of the hard drive all give subtle cues as to what's happening with the system at any given moment. Without them, I have to spend extra effort looking at the indicators (if any) or monitoring apps. The white noise is somewhat comforting too.
There are certainly people who like the silence, but I prefer the extra feedback; I wonder if it's related to how I'll easily get nauseous in a car that's too quiet and has a very soft suspension, but have no problems if I can hear the engine and "feel" the road.
Because that's literally the only sound I hear from my computer unless it's heavily loaded. Most annoying is an intermittent whine when it's idle. Loud enough to hear from the other end of my - admittedly small - apartment.
The thinkerer approach: find the noisy coil and bury it with a generous amount of hot glue or some other similar dielectric material. You are trying to reduce the coil "vibrations" and dampening the noise.
Personal anecdote, both mine and my sister's Dell XPS 13" (9333 model) have an annoying coil whine that is really evident on quiet rooms, in a normal office environment I can't hear them tho. From what I've read online recent XPS models still have that defect. Baffling, a lower specs Latitude 15" that was provided to me in a previous job didn't had any.
In my case an user has solved the issue disconnecting the audio speakers, don't recall if it was one of them or both, if someone is interested the post is somewhere in the Dell support forum.
it just shoudn't leech into or out of anything and be chemically inert in the relevant ways. most oils are pretty cheap and probably every little bit matters in this kind of setup. removing components would be pain though. (everything oily).
And yes, it does work - but it's a maintenance nightmare, since oil can eat some types of plastic that are commonly used, especially at their seams.
I am the type of person who is unsettled until I pinpoint the origin of a sound and my partner will find me with my ear against the wall tracing a drip or creak in the house.
I guess I must also still have some high frequency hearing left because I can still hear every electronic device hum at least under certain conditions.
It got very hot to the touch and probably was rather bad for the chips long term.
The electrical whining was terrible! You could hear all CPU and GPU activity depending on load.
Now I use a macbook and it's far less irritating...
Sigh. Totally silent is -∞dB. 0dB just means that it matches the reference volume, which is nominally the threshold of human hearing. (And the definitions vary depending on whether it's dbA, dbC, or something else.)