I love my upgraded workstation


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Thread: I love my upgraded workstation

  1. #1
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    Cool I love my upgraded workstation

    Since my previous Linux workstation (Celeron 466) was snatched from the jaws of the dumpster almost a year ago, I decided it was time to upgrade. So back to the dumpster I went and this time found an HP Vectra with a PIII 500!
    I have a 10gig Maxtor 7200RPM hard drive mounted at / and, with the help of a Promise PCI IDE expansion card, three 13gig Quantum Fireball drives running with a software RAID 5.
    Other than being a little bit faster than the old system, the most noticeable improvement is the noise level. The old one sounded like my Jeep Cherokee when both engine cooling fans are runnnig. The new one is quieter than my Dell laptop!

    That's it. If you've managed to read my little ditty this far, you really should go find something worthwhile to do!
    Slackware current (Dell Latitude D610)
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  2. #2
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    I don't have any dumpsters to dive, but I have acquired a lot of leftover computer equipment in that class. Aside from loud hard drives, these computers are very suitable for modifying into quiet/silent computers. Usually, flipping the PSU fan points the "exhaust" air at the CPU heatsink, and the CPU fan may be removed entirely. Even with the 80mm PSU fan undervolted to 5 volts, there's enough airflow--and the computer is SILENT.

    The bad news is hard drive noise. Older hard drives are typically pretty loud. You can cut down on the noise level with a suspension system (my favorite suspension method is a zero cost "ghetto" method involving an old plastic bottle and bubble wrap).

    My latest frankenstein creation is a slot 1 Pentium III 550. Other than the hard drive, it's completely silent (only the PSU's 80mm fan, flipped and undervolted to 5v). The hard drive is the quietest of my leftovers--an old 8gig Seagate. Its idle has relatively quiet drive whine, but its seeks are jackhammer-like. At least my ghetto-bubble wrap suspension prevents its Dual-Shock level vibrations from transmitting to the case.
    Isaac Kuo, ICQ 29055726 or Yahoo mechdan

  3. #3
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    Quote Originally Posted by IsaacKuo
    Usually, flipping the PSU fan points the "exhaust" air at the CPU heatsink, and the CPU fan may be removed entirely. Even with the 80mm PSU fan undervolted to 5 volts, there's enough airflow--and the computer is SILENT.
    hmmm... doesnt the psu blow out hot air?

    i hardly find anymore of those noisy hard drives that work.... most of the drives i find are either quite enough or they just dont work.. i just let my old systems boot off my network.. this will keep them silent
    Registered Linux User #388117

  4. #4
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    On an older slot 1 PII/PIII system, the power consumption is pretty low so the PSU heat is correspondingly pretty low. Even in the low airflow situation of a single 80mm fan undervolted to 5v, the temperature rise is modest.

    As for acceptable hard drive noise levels--I find that even the quieter modern 3.5" drives are not quiet enough. While the overall noise level is low, it is in the form of irritating high pitched drive whine. I can't stand the noise. Older drives are invariably much louder than the quieter modern drives in all respects.

    Even the quietest of 2.5" drives have unacceptable levels of drive whine for me. However, a 2.5" drive is designed to operate entombed in a zero airflow laptop computer. I can thus enclose a 2.5" drive within a heavily sound damped enclosure. This reduces the noise levels to what I find acceptable.

    Of course, 2.5" drives aren't cheap. Compared to the zero dollars spent on the rest of the hardware, a $70 Western Digital Scorpio is an extravagant luxury.

    I'd like to learn how to properly do network boot, but I know the performance hit is going to be hard to take.
    Isaac Kuo, ICQ 29055726 or Yahoo mechdan

  5. #5
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    Dude, you need some more case fans to drown out the hard drive noise.

  6. #6
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    I use two command line tools to manage ambient noise from my comuter case:
    mpg123
    alsamixer
    Slackware current (Dell Latitude D610)
    CentOS 5.2 (Servers)
    Registered Linux User # 375030

  7. #7
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    Quote Originally Posted by psych-major
    I use two command line tools to manage ambient noise from my comuter case:
    mpg123
    alsamixer
    heh...
    the fan in my room is controlling the noise from my box...

    for even quieter drives, y not try microdrives, they r dun seem to make any noise and hardly vibrate.. though performance and capacity is an issue.. and u need a cf slot that is bootable...

    my mb supports bootable usb devices perhaps i can give it a try...
    Registered Linux User #388117

  8. #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by WhiteKnight
    y not try microdrives, they r dun seem to make any noise and hardly vibrate..
    These are really cool, but very expensive...
    Slackware current (Dell Latitude D610)
    CentOS 5.2 (Servers)
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  9. #9
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    I have considered microdrives, and in fact already have a CF->IDE adapter. I have an old 384meg microdrive which is not big enough for me to squeeze a full Linux setup on, and 3+gig microdrives are expensive.

    I'm hoping that eventually newer technologies like vertical magnetic recording will reduce the cost of 3+gig microdrives.

    Until then, I'm thinking in terms of upgrading my LAN to gigabit and chroot to a fast RAID NFS shared directory. This should actually give me _better_ performance than a single local quiet hard drive.
    Isaac Kuo, ICQ 29055726 or Yahoo mechdan

  10. #10
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    DSL or SLAX would fit on the flash drive. But I don't think the performance would be all that great.

    Back to real hard drives, my coworker just purchased and installed 2 Samsung SATA drives and he was impressed at how quiet they are.
    Slackware current (Dell Latitude D610)
    CentOS 5.2 (Servers)
    Registered Linux User # 375030

  11. #11
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    Among 3.5" drives, Samsungs have been the quietest for a while now (ever since the Spinpoint series came out). They're pretty good pricewise, too. The only caveat is that they vibrate a LOT so you need to softmount them in a suspension to prevent case vibration noise.

    I picked up a 120gig Samsung recently and it's plenty quiet enough for me--in my server or HTPC. But I'm obsessive about my workstations (they are physically much closer to my ears when in use than the server or HTPC).
    Isaac Kuo, ICQ 29055726 or Yahoo mechdan

  12. #12
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    Yeah, my Samsung is so quiet I generally can't hear it even when I'm listening for it.

    You make a good point about the gigabit ethernet. We had a long discussion where I worked last summer because someone pointed out that you can't actually max out gigabit with a normal hard drive because the max theoretical transfer rate for gigabit is 125 MBps (1000Mbps/8), and even my 10k Raptor only gets about 60-70 MBps in hdparm. RAID would be a different story obviously, but we were only talking single drives.

    You'll have a bit of latency from the network I imagine, but it should be pretty fast anyway. I might have to try that sometime (like when I actually have gigabit). Fortunately I'm not nearly so sensitive to drive noise though since my Raptor is pretty loud, at least compared to my Samsung.

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