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Pretty hard to achievePretty hard to achievePosted Oct 1, 2005 6:37 UTC (Sat) by drag (subscriber, #31333)In reply to: Pretty hard to achieve by man_ls Parent article: AOpen box inspired by Mac Mini (News.com)
It's a distinct possiblity it will be noisy.. but Aopen has been able to pull off some interesting stuff before.
Check out this silent PC review of their XC box. http://www.silentpcreview.com/article140-page2.html
Now the pandora box is much smaller and will use a hotter cpu.. but the computer they reviewed had room for expansion slots, full size harddrive, full size dvdrom, and used a internal power supply with it's own fan.
The pandora box will use laptop-style parts, external fanless power supply (probably will double as a nice feet-warmer) and will have a single fan for the entire box. Also the chip has the speedstep stuff to allow it to undervolt during normal use.
During cpuburn (which makes the cpu much hotter then any thing you'd ever do to it) the XC thing peak sound of 31 dBA measured from behind the computer, which isn't that load at all. Probably about the same as my Ibook at full tilt.
I give it a 50/50 chance of being quiet-enough vs being a load and annoying crapbox.
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Pretty hard to achieve Posted Oct 1, 2005 10:19 UTC (Sat) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] The review of the AOpen XC box makes my point nicely. With a P4 2.54 processor, it draws 51 W idle (29 dB), 97 W max (31 dB). However, when a P4 2.8C was used, it drew 81 W idle (36 dB), 150 W max (42 dB). The CPU alone accounts for differences of 30 to 50 W, which is more than the whole mac mini consumes.If the Pentium D is the power-hungry beast it seems to be, it will be difficult to make it quiet. I would take bets at 50/50!
Pretty hard to achieve Posted Oct 1, 2005 10:36 UTC (Sat) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] In the second test it included a Ti4800 card with a big fan. The fan on that card alone made 39 dBA outside the case.
Also those types of cards are notorously power-hungry, even at idle. The design of them is purely for performance with very little concern for economy of noise or energy.
At idle the cpu differences should be minimal. If the machine is not using the cpu power then the differences would, at most, be within a few watts of each other. But at idle there was a 30 watt difference. I don't think you'd get that from simply a 10% increase in clock speed, most of that from the vid card.
Pretty hard to achieve Posted Oct 1, 2005 12:12 UTC (Sat) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] Ooops, you are right. That explains a large part of it. Still, I would take bets at 50/50 :)
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