Fan-less silent PC

[Sal1950]

Humans should not have settled in places where they think it's "necessary"

ROTFL, Humans should not have settled in places where heat is necessary or you'll freeze to death.

Uk - almost no-one has it in private residences. We just sweat through the (increasingly less) rare heatwaves.

That does surprise me. For the 60 years I lived in Chicago I never had AC, for the few months of warm weather there I was fine with good fans. OTOH when I was selling my 32 year home there the realtor looked at me like I was from Mars cause I had never installed a central AC unit.
Now living here in FL is a bit different, the sun beating down on a home for 6 or more months a year could quickly have internal temps over 100f. Could we survive without it, folks did for millennia without it. But would I chose to? Oh HELL NO. LOL
Humans have become spoiled with comfort everywhere

 

[JeffGB]

I live in Vancouver BC and we never had AC when I was younger. Summers were rain and moderate temps. Highs reached 25c during a heatwave. This last few years, thanks to global warming, we are hitting temps in the Spring of 30c and during a heatwave we hit 40c. One city in my province hit 50c in the last couple of years. Over one weekend, 600 people died in Vancouver's lower mainland from the heat. AC is now manditory for most areas. Concrete high rises are the worst and nearly unlivable in the summer at times.

 

[Keith_W]

A lot of the "need" for air conditioning is due to the failings of architecture and the pursuit of cheap, quick homes that fail to take into consideration the environment. Humans have survived for millenia with no air conditioning, they simply designed their homes for passive cooling. There are plenty of examples if you look around. Australian homes built before the war were elevated on stilts (Queensland) or on bricks (Western Australia, Victoria, NSW) so that air could circulate under the homes and rise up and expel heat. Traditional South Asian homes and Colonial homes were designed with cross ventilation systems so that any wind would expel warm air. Homes in Morocco and other parts of Northern Africa had high ceilings with chimneys. The chimneys were not for fireplaces, it's to let hot air escape and draw in cool air from ventilation at ground level. Traditional Japanese homes were designed for summer (hence the light construction and paper walls). When it got cold, they wore thicker clothes.

Anybody who is interested should read about passive houses which are designed to be energy efficient before the first brick is laid.

 

[Berwhale]

A lot of the "need" for air conditioning is due to the failings of architecture and the pursuit of cheap, quick homes that fail to take into consideration the environment. Humans have survived for millenia with no air conditioning, they simply designed their homes for passive cooling. There are plenty of examples if you look around. Australian homes built before the war were elevated on stilts (Queensland) or on bricks (Western Australia, Victoria, NSW) so that air could circulate under the homes and rise up and expel heat. Traditional South Asian homes and Colonial homes were designed with cross ventilation systems so that any wind would expel warm air. Homes in Morocco and other parts of Northern Africa had high ceilings with chimneys. The chimneys were not for fireplaces, it's to let hot air escape and draw in cool air from ventilation at ground level. Traditional Japanese homes were designed for summer (hence the light construction and paper walls). When it got cold, they wore thicker clothes.

Anybody who is interested should read about passive houses which are designed to be energy efficient before the first brick is laid.

Humans have not survived their infant years or lived to old age in good health for millennia. Life expectancy has changed dramatically over the last 150 years.

 

[Sal1950]

Anybody who is interested should read about passive houses which are designed to be energy efficient before the first brick is laid.

The best are under-ground/hill homes where below frost line temps are 50-55f.
Super easy to heat and no cooling ever needed.
Just not too much to see.
Amazing there aren't more

 

[john61ct]

passive houses

Yes my family owner-built a passive mud brikkie off grid in the Bendigo goldfields over 5yrs hard yakka living in tents and a humpy cooking over a campfire trucking our water in from a tap five miles away.

The top ridge was all openable, bottom floor vents with intakes under the slab. Angles all figured with deciduous pergola in front. Poured our own 5k gallon tanks up the hill, captured rainwater, pumped water up from the bottom dam, separate faucets.

Mobs of roos passed thru, maggies serenaded at sunset, magic!

Long time ago now...

 

[Keith_W]

Humans have not survived their infant years or lived to old age in good health for millennia. Life expectancy has changed dramatically over the last 150 years.

That is due to advances in medicine and public sanitation. Not in architecture. I can't help but feel that architecture and public planning has regressed. We live in cheaply built homes which are unbelievably expensive, in cities where we are forced to drive, which look the same no matter where you are.

If it weren't for that building in the foreground, nobody would know where this is. Those skyscrapers have an architectural sameness, it may as well be an American, Australian, Canadian, or Chinese city.

 

[Sal1950]

If it weren't for that building in the foreground, nobody would know where this is.

Where is it ?

 

[8bits]

Where is it ?

Singapore

 

[Sernyl]

@Roland68:

• I doubt that all the info stocked in AI will surpass the imagining capacity of some humans. And not only in technology :-(

• "Another fact" , as you wrote :

Do we still know how to USE a scythe ?
And sharpen it with a hammer ? Is it doable with nowadays steel ?
Now we have sophisticated and costly/noisy/pollutant engines.

Regards,

 

[somebodyelse]

Do we still know how to USE a scythe ?
And sharpen it with a hammer ? Is it doable with nowadays steel ?

Some of us still know how to use one. As for sharpening with a hammer (peening), that's reshaping the soft steel because it's getting so worn by repeated honing, which is only necessary because the unhardened steel won't hold an edge. That's been known for hundreds of years too, but hardened steel needed more skill and time from the smith so was more expensive - probably prohibitively so for someone needing a scythe. It's still possible to make an unhardened blade if you really want one, and occasional peening would not only be possible but necessary. Why you'd want to when hardened steel is no longer an expensive luxury is another matter...

 

[dlaloum]

I find this thread title silly when even a gaming PC with proper fan selection and fan curves is still gonna be quieter than any air conditioning.

My heatsink case, with an AMD APU, makes no noise, collects no dust, and runs silently and reliably, and has done so for quite a few years.

When the time comes for an update, I will strip out the motherboard and CPU, and fit a new motherboard and cpu into the case.

It is standard rack width and rack aesthetic, and sits quite invisibly in with my other components.

Any PC requiring a fan would need to have other considerations considered as well - periodic cleaning for dust accumulation, air flow considerations (in and out), etc... - with the passive system where the sides of the case are the heatsink (much like many amps) - I just need to make sure that there is natural convection air movement up the side of the rack.

I previously had a Rack format fan driven traditional PC (Silverstone HTPC case) - and I messed about with various heatsinks, Noctua fans, etc....

I strongly recommend the fanless heatsink case approach to those willing to jump to heatpipes and heatsink sides - it is a little more complicated to set up initially, but it works better over the long term, and the case should be good for a multitude of generations of PC's (as long as the manufacturer can provide the necesary heatpipes and copper mountings for new CPU's)

 

[DY2]

was using the great KDE.

The thing with Linux is that it doesn't really have any advantages over Windows.....only drawbacks.

I have a fanless PC with Q4OS, just for REW measurements of the audio system.
I guarantee it's better than Windows in this regard.

 

[john61ct]

My heatsink case

Please state your model, ideally with current links

 

[somebodyelse]

(as long as the manufacturer can provide the necesary heatpipes and copper mountings for new CPU's)

These days you don't even need manufacturer support - heatpipes and the tools for bending them are available, and suppliers like JLCPCB will do one-off metalwork for those without the skill and/or tools to do it themself. If you're really lucky someone else will have done it before and shared their design.

 

[john61ct]

Would be great IMO if this thread just stuck to hardware issues.

 

[Berwhale]

cpu is an i5-3570k and will not run W11.

i was in the same boat last year, so was more than happy to sign up for the ESU. (which cost me nothing in the end).

plenty of options out there, also considering a Mac Mini, but would like to ideally defer until next year.

Consumers just got another year of ESU...

"Windows 10 support has ended. You can enroll in ESU any time until the program ends on October 12, 2027. If you’re already enrolled, your coverage will automatically continue through that date—no action needed."

Source: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/extended-security-updates?r=1#cw

 

[pablolie]

Consumers just got another year of ESU...

"Windows 10 support has ended. You can enroll in ESU any time until the program ends on October 12, 2027. If you’re already enrolled, your coverage will automatically continue through that date—no action needed."

Source: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/extended-security-updates?r=1#cw

It's a terrible time to build or buy a new computer... and may stay that way for a bit. And honestly, for music streaming any 20 year old laptop will do just fine anyhow.

 

[Berwhale]

It's a terrible time to build or buy a new computer... and may stay that way for a bit. And honestly, for music streaming any 20 year old laptop will do just fine anyhow.

Yes, agreed. I suspect that is why MS have extended the program for consumers, they would be forcing people to Linux otherwise. It doesn't really cost MS anything to extend this for consumers, the commercial ESU is already running until October 2028, so the patches are going to get written anyway.

Micron are locking in current margins for 5 years with their big customers, I wonder if the 'enthusiast PC builder' market can survive that long...

Micron locks in historically high memory prices for five years

Big buyers agree to deals that will deliver historically enormous margins and profits

www.theregister.com

 

[Mike123]

It's a terrible time to build or buy a new computer... and may stay that way for a bit. And honestly, for music streaming any 20 year old laptop will do just fine anyhow.

The new RPI5 with passive radiator copes well with both music and room correction.