LWN: Comments on "An Interview With Linus Torvalds (TechCrunch)"

An Interview With Linus Torvalds (TechCrunch)

strauss69 — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 01:15:24 +0000

Hi Cato,

Have a look of the following site for the case manufacturer ;)
http://www.streacom.com/products/fc8-fanless-chassis/

regards,
staruss

An Interview With Linus Torvalds (TechCrunch)

hitmark — Wed, 09 May 2012 19:35:13 +0000

Glad i was not the only one that noticed that.

thinkfan

mjg59 — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 22:43:34 +0000

The fan's behaving the way that the manufacturer programmed it to behave, so from their perspective it's already working out of the box.

thinkfan

wingo — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 21:35:36 +0000

Point taken, of course; though, if this laptop is (or was until recently?) the thinkpad of these days, why doesn't it work out of the box? I'm assuming hackers still use thinkpads; perhaps that has changed?

thinkfan

mjg59 — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 13:20:47 +0000

Because the fan is handled by the embedded controller, not the kernel. Overriding it is dangerous.

thinkfan

wingo — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 11:00:24 +0000

My X220 with an SSD was really loud until I installed thinkfan.

My config is at http://wingolog.org/pub/thinkpad-x220-thinkfan.conf. Copy to /etc/thinkfan.conf and then run "thinkfan" as root. Soooooooooooooo much better. (No warrantee of course.)

I have no idea why the kernel doesn't handle this already.

An Interview With Linus Torvalds (TechCrunch)

rahvin — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 00:50:02 +0000

There are several dozen boutique sellers that cater to water cooling. Water cooling done right is silent. I've got a water cooled system in my living room and the fan on the TV is louder than the computer. Even without the boutiques there are lots of self contained water cooling parts that are silent. With the proper case and water assisted cooling you won't even know if the system is on.

Even without water cooling it's relatively easy to get a noise less system. You just have to remember computer noise comes in two varieties, vibration and air movement. By isolating vibration sources and slowing down air movement you can bring decibels way down below the human threshold.

Realistically though the easiest way to get a quiet system is to find an under-clocked laptop with an SSD. Not only does the under-clocking reduce noise it reduces heat output significantly.

Tower cases for quiet PCs

epa — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 09:25:08 +0000

I thought that even basic onboard 3D acceleration was sufficient to run a compositing window manager. I've run GNOME 3 on such systems without trouble.

An Interview With Linus Torvalds (TechCrunch)

stijn — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 22:40:47 +0000

That's what a fan is for, I could not agree more. The design of the machine has an impact on the amount of noise it makes under various loads. I am not interested in creating such designs; Apple has done a good job of it and it used to be the case that noone else did. From reading the comments here not much has changed, even if the average off-the shelf computer has improved somewhat. Let the age of off-the-shelf Quiet Computing begin please ..

Tower cases for quiet PCs

dlang — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 19:02:27 +0000

or that you are trying to run a 'modern Linux Desktop Environment' (at least according to some DE developers who assume that everyone is using what was a 'gamer' quality card a year or so ago)

Tower cases for quiet PCs

jedidiah — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 16:44:37 +0000

It's not so much about being a "heavy gamer" as much as it is having something that's not total crap. If you can upgrade your GPU, then you can cheaply fix an old mistake or just keep up with current tech.

An Interview With Linus Torvalds (TechCrunch)

jedidiah — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 16:19:17 +0000

Silent is nice as long as it gets the job done and doesn't cook itself to death. PCs in general aren't nearly as noisy as they used to be. As long as you aren't pushing a machine hard, it should not sound like a leaf blower.

That fan is actually a good thing if you are generating a lot of heat. It means you aren't destroying your machine.

An Interview With Linus Torvalds (TechCrunch)

sorpigal — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 11:27:13 +0000

I think I must be the only one who just doesn't care about computer noise. I've had a computer sitting 4 feet from my bed for many years and the noise never bothered me; indeed, I find it hard to sleep if I turn it off! The on-again, off-again rattling that accompanies a dying fan can get irritating at times, but you learn to tune it out (or you replace the fan).

I can see for home-theater purposes why this might be a good idea, but it's not too hard to keep the computer away from the viewer and run longer cables.

An Interview With Linus Torvalds (TechCrunch)

nim-nim — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 11:15:36 +0000

If you want a silent setup a big case helps a lot

A big 120 mm fan spinning slowly will move as much air as a small fan spinning fast, except the first one will be nearly noiseless and the second one — not at all. The only part that can be difficult to silence is the gpu as there is no room for a big fan on a PCI card, so either you go totally fanless for the GPU or it will drown the other parts in noise.

An Interview With Linus Torvalds (TechCrunch)

jezuch — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 08:59:27 +0000

There is still hope for Quiet Computing (I think I should trademark this term). Moore's law can go two ways: ever faster hardware or ever more efficient hardware. The industry is still mostly obsessed about speed, but fortunately the "power wall" forced them to think about efficiency as well. But my humble opinion is that the hardware is already fast enough and have been for quite some time (for desktops, at least, absent special requirements). I have a pretty old 2-core Athlon64 and it's fast enough for everything I need to do; if I could get a CPU with the same performance but 10 times more power-efficient, I would happily buy it, especially if it allows me to throw out the CPU fan :) I already have a fan-less GPU and GPUs are historically more power hungry than CPUs.

Tower cases for quiet PCs

epa — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 08:48:51 +0000

You're right, a big graphics card would not fit in a smaller case. I was assuming that most users would be happy with onboard graphics, but then those who are techie enough to build their own PC are more likely to be heavy gamers or otherwise have special requirements.

A tower case doesn't guarantee that the card will fit - my HP x8400 'workstation' at work doesn't physically fit a Nvidia 4500 x2 double-width card, which is a bit shocking really.

An Interview With Linus Torvalds (TechCrunch)

epa — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 08:45:38 +0000

Yes, some people have specialized requirements for lots of storage but I was thinking more of the 95% of users who do not need more than a few hundred gigabytes of disk space. Still, I guess most of that 95% do not build their own PCs anyway.

Tower cases for quiet PCs

khim — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 11:52:02 +0000

The problem is that quiet PCs are treated as a black art, with magazine/web reviews barely mentioning noise levels (and never quantifying them)

Never say never. For example: cooler review and diagram from it, videocard review and diagram from it, here is review of PSUs without fans and when regular PSUs are reviewed there are diagrams too.

It depends on who does the review, really.

Aleutia case

man_ls — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 08:34:30 +0000

No clue, sorry. I found the H3.SODD fanless case to be nice too, although a bit big.

An Interview With Linus Torvalds (TechCrunch)

Cato — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 07:50:48 +0000

I like the case used by the Aleutia Relia - any idea of the case manufacturer?

Tower cases for quiet PCs

Cato — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 07:43:19 +0000

Mostly a tower case is useful for larger graphics cards, essential still for gaming, more than one hard disk, and general upgradability while still staying near silent. Instead of a floppy I have one of those "8 in 1" memory card readers - more convenient than having a separate one. Large cases give you more space for large, quiet 120mm fans.

I have a Core 2 Duo E8200 with NVidia GTX260 in an Antec P180 case, with a good (large) CPU cooler and a good quality quiet PSU - all this would not fit in a minitower case while still retaining good airflow for quiet cooling. I can only just hear a soft fan sound while gaming, and the setup could be upgraded in various ways and still stay quiet.

The problem is that quiet PCs are treated as a black art, with magazine/web reviews barely mentioning noise levels (and never quantifying them), consumers not knowing what to look for, and PC makers generally not building quiet PCs. Once you know the sort of parts to use, it's not hard, but quiet PCs will cost more than a typical one.

Quite expensive

man_ls — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 21:20:37 +0000

I bought a slightly larger AOpen case too, the S110. There is a healthy supply of mini-ITX motherboards since Intel entered the format, which is very nice. You can fit a couple of hard disks and an optical unit easily into one of these.

I expect that when ARM processors with multiple cores enter the market in full force, we will get much smaller and quieter computers by default. I share epa's comment above about the dislike for towers.

Quite expensive

sfeam — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 21:09:32 +0000

I have been very happy with a fanless AOpen Core2 system I got from Logic Supply a couple of years ago. Unfortunately they show it as "unavailable" now, and don't seem to have picked up the newer AOpen i3/i5/i7 equivalents. But you can find either the older ones (e.g. DEX4501) or new ones (e.g. MP65-D) elsewhere on the web. From a quick search it looks like they currently run about $700 + whatever you want to pay for a SSD.

Quite expensive

man_ls — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 20:36:28 +0000

$1k for a fanless Atom PC? Plus, even the "Micro" Business PC is huge: 23x24 cm (9x9.4" in legacy Imperial units). The HFX fanless is 43x45 cm and will set you back about $2.5k. It is in the category of "fanless i7 monsters that make the iMac look cheap" that drag referenced higher up.

Of course, maybe the quality of the thing is worth it; I would certainly consider it if I was Linus and made $200k/year and had a huge house. As it is I prefer a slicker and cheaper machine, preferably custom built.

Silent hardware

man_ls — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 20:21:29 +0000

Ah, that must be it. I thought maybe it was burning some excess fat to run faster.

I promise I did not overclock it, if anything I underspecced the PSU (and other components) to make it run cooler.

iMacs and loud fans

bluss — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 20:14:43 +0000

That's six years ago. A one year old Air is quiet using linux.

Silent hardware

tonyblackwell — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 20:03:22 +0000

"the thin wisps of smoke I have seen twice are not a good sign they tell me."

And you thought computers run on electricity?
Wrong, they run on smoke, and if you ever let it out they don't do so well!

An Interview With Linus Torvalds (TechCrunch)

rgmoore — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 17:00:01 +0000

The hard disk will be an SSD (unless you are really strapped for cash - in which case why are you building a system from scratch instead of buying secondhand?).

What makes you think there's going to be just one hard disk? The largest available SSDs are still under 1TB, and that's just plain not enough space for a lot of users. You can fill 1TB with digital photographs and video very quickly. Not to mention that people who are keeping things that are precious to them are likely to want some kind of redundancy in the event of a drive failure, which means having multiple drives. That may not call for a full tower case, but it certainly justifies something with some expansion room.

An Interview With Linus Torvalds (TechCrunch)

jthill — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 15:58:24 +0000

You're asking him to leave Golden Slumbers in the dust, dude. I think that'd stretch even the meaning of "omnipotence".

An Interview With Linus Torvalds (TechCrunch)

clump — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 14:39:21 +0000

Look at the discussion quality of sites like Digg and Youtube. I'm very glad there is no "+1" here.

An Interview With Linus Torvalds (TechCrunch)

RobSeace — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 14:35:40 +0000

I bought my last computer from these guys... They aren't exactly super-cheap, but they do specialize in quiet/silent PCs... And, they really do a great job of it as well! And, as a plus, they let you select Linux as the install OS, so no need to pay for a useless Windows license! (They used to offer more distros, but it looks like they only offer Ubuntu these days...)

An Interview With Linus Torvalds (TechCrunch)

leoc — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 12:03:57 +0000

It depends on what you need the computer for. In this particular case it needs a lot of CPU horsepower and a lot of disk space. This system has a ~240GB boot SSD drive plus 4 2TB drives for data, and will probably need more over time. The P280 holds a lot of drives and they will probably all get used eventually. I don't bother with DVD drives at all any more, but the extra PCI slots are handy for holding the necessary SATA controllers for all those drives.

An Interview With Linus Torvalds (TechCrunch)

juliank — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 09:39:25 +0000

You could get a liquid (oil) cooled power supply. Those work silently.

An Interview With Linus Torvalds (TechCrunch)

epa — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 09:09:17 +0000

Fifteen years ago I could see the value in tower cases for PCs but I don't understand why people still use them. Your motherboard has almost everything built in, the only expansion card you need is for video and perhaps not even that. The hard disk will be an SSD (unless you are really strapped for cash - in which case why are you building a system from scratch instead of buying secondhand?). There's no need for a floppy drive so all you need is a single drive bay for a DVD player. Why have all that empty air inside your computer?

I know that mini-ITX motherboards and cases are available but why not have a smaller case for an ATX motherboard?

An Interview With Linus Torvalds (TechCrunch)

josh — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 02:38:41 +0000

I still wish a decent fanless Core i5 or i7 laptop would exist (ideally also with decent screen resolution), but as for quiet desktops, I eagerly await one of these: http://intensepc.com/

An Interview With Linus Torvalds (TechCrunch)

leoc — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 01:17:55 +0000

You don't need to go completely fanless, you just need to pick high efficiency parts and a case with some sound deadening material. I recently built a single die 6 core Xeon (W3680 I think it was) Linux workstation for my wife, I put it in an Antec P280 case with a gold certified power supply (not fanless, I think it was this one) and this cpu cooler and with the case fans set to their lowest RPM (done with physical switches on the back panel) the system is extremely quiet. The only fan less part I used was the video card (an ati firepro 4800 I think it was). A fanless power supply is not a bad choice but a fanless CPU cooler will not give you a good return on your investment over a normal (high quality) cpu cooler like that cooler master part in a sound deadened case.

An Interview With Linus Torvalds (TechCrunch)

drag — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 23:57:50 +0000

> The link just shows a fanless PSU

Yes, yes it was.

PSU is generally the noisiest and crapiest part on a modern PC when it comes to keeping it quiet. With those fanless ones then it makes making a quiet PC massively easier.

> In my recent research I have not found a single fanless computer with anything fancier than an i3 2120T or i5 2390T, and those cost about $200 more than a normal desktop; the Aleutia Relia I mentioned above is an example. It features a CPU cooler made exclusively with 6 heatpipes connected to the case, which acts as a huge heatsink.

> Update: I found this monster which apparently can do the feat, but it is going to add a bit more than $200 to your computer (hint: the iMac will appear to be cheap in comparison).

That is why you have to build it yourself.

Notice how they call them 'industrial'. You can go to logicsupply.com and see a whole mess of different fanless models. I would never think of purchasing one of those things for a home system.

They have to meet specific requirements about being able to operate in certain temperature ranges, survive vibrations of certain levels, exist in dusty environments, deal with humidity, and other things that don't matter for home systems. This is why they are expensive. Compared to traditional 'rugged' systems they are dirt cheap and much faster, but I still wouldn't care to buy one for personal system.

Seeing how you will likely just run a computer in a air conditioned living room there is no good reason why you want to spend money on a system like that. Especially if you don't care about it being small and pretty. Just get a nice case and buy the biggest ugliest heatsink you can. Worst case if convection isn't good enough you can slap a 120 mm fan on it and put a resister inline on it and run it at a very low speed. You won't be able to hear it above the central air conditioning in your house.

I've built a number of 'quiet' PCs in the past. My last one only used one fan beside the power supply.

The last one was on a Pentium-D. It was dead quiet with a single undervolted 120mm fan for the entire system. I even bothered to build ducts for it out of cardstock and tape. The heatsink was one of those 'tower' heatsinks and the cpu ran barely above room temperature, literally. Total overkill. That was with what amounted to 2 3Ghz Pentium 4 cores with a TDP of 95 watts. It probably was about 200 mm tall and featured 6 heatpipes in a 'U' shape so that you effectively had 12 heatpipes. I still use it as a server system in my basement.

The CPU barely matters nowadays because big aftermarket heatsinks are good and cheap. The biggest problems are the video cards, hard drives, and power supply. With a fanless power supply, SSD drive, and a integrated GPU then it's relatively simple.

Nowadays I just use a laptop, though. If you want something smaller or pre-built then just buy a laptop and place it behind your desk or something. That is essentially what a iMac is anyways.

An Interview With Linus Torvalds (TechCrunch)

man_ls — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 22:13:39 +0000

The link just shows a fanless PSU, which is not a complete fanless computer. In my recent research I have not found a single fanless computer with anything fancier than an i3 2120T or i5 2390T, and those cost about $200 more than a normal desktop; the Aleutia Relia I mentioned above is an example. It features a CPU cooler made exclusively with 6 heatpipes connected to the case, which acts as a huge heatsink.

I am not sure that a completely fanless computer with an i7 is possible at this moment, no matter how many heatpipes you use: in fact anything with a TDP bigger than 35W is going to be hard to cool without fans. Update: I found this monster which apparently can do the feat, but it is going to add a bit more than $200 to your computer (hint: the iMac will appear to be cheap in comparison).

Silent hardware

man_ls — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 22:01:19 +0000

I am in the process of putting together some mini-ITX hardware with just the CPU fan from the i3 2120T. This cool little guy draws less than 35W but it should be about 10 times faster than my current Atom processor. The PSU is a wonderful PicoPSU. Jeff Atwood has a good overview of the integrator's options.

On the logistic side my operation has been a triumph: all bits from five different providers (one international) in less than a week. But the assembled result did not work and I am still trying to figure out why, now with the (paid) help of a local shop. Probably a faulty motherboard, the thin wisps of smoke I have seen twice are not a good sign they tell me.

As to pre-built options, there are some almost fanless and a few truly fanless like the Aleutia Relia, but the options are quite limited. For instance I wanted an SLC SSD disk and I have not found any preassembled machines. I would have considered a Mac mini if I could be sure its Debian support was good enough.

An Interview With Linus Torvalds (TechCrunch)

drag — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 21:33:52 +0000

You can go completely solid state nowadays without resorting to those bizare water pipe cases or anything like that.

I figure a fanless, or nearly fanless, i7 system should be able to be built with just spending a couple hundred more dollars then a normal desktop.

example of what you can get...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKgOxPIKdP4