rec.autos.simulators

   While it will run them, 1 ghz will not cut it with F1c or Nr2003.  If
you want a silent racing, then consider a water system to cool your cpu, mb
chipset and video card chips.

But to put my 2cents, the vid cards in a lot of "typical" systems are the
Piece Of Sh*t Intel 3d chip, wont do NR2003 for crap...  Best choice would
be
one that at least had built in nvidia (Geforce MX) or ATI video chipset.  I
seem to tell this story a lot, so It should be a .sig file for me by now,
but my 1000 mhz machine with my Hercules Prophet (Geforce2 MX 32 meg card)
saw little improvement when I swapped out that card for the geforce4 ti4600
128 meg card.  but I did see some more details in NR2003.  2nd, my buddy
just bought him a 1.6 equivalent AMD machine,  by HP.  until he put in a new
fx5200?  series card, he couldnt load tona or dega, and his FPS were sub 20.

What you need to do is just find those fans that are low noise, they usually
cost more.  I have 3 low speed high cfm vent fans, and like you I wish the
vid card
could be made to run quieter, because it is the only sound I hear most of
the
time.

Its easy. Just wire a resistor in series with the fan. That'll reduce the
speed of the fan (less noise but less airflow). If you want the fancy
shancy rig, wire a potentionmeter instead of a resistor and you now have a
variable speed fan.

dont skimp on any, go here,,,
http://www.zalman.co.kr/english/product/cnps6500b-cu.htm

for power supply go here,,,,
http://www.enermax.com.tw/product-01.htm

An Intel system is easier to get really quiet than an AMD system, the
new P4's with 800 FSB in particular runs very cool and there are plenty
of aftermarket fans/hs that runs very quiet, the more high end
Coolermaster and GlacialTech springs to mind, other brands have similar
products I'm sure

GlacialTech Igloo4310 for up to 3,0GHz CPU's for instance, rated at
25dB(A) at 2800 RPM, not completely noiseless, but fairly quiet, slap
this on a 2.4C and activate the fan control on the MoBo and you probably
won't be able to hear it most of the time, it will probably spin up a
bit while you're playing games, but that will drown in the noise from
your speakers anyways

Add a couple of really low speed 80 mm fans to your case to make sure
it's properly ventilated, Enermax has a series of really nice adjustable
fans

Make sure you get a case with a decent PSU, cheap cases come with cheap
PSU's, cheap PSU's often have noisy fans, some even come without fan
control, if possible, get a PSU with dual fans and fan control

Vid card.....ATI's cards tend to run cooler than nVidia's cards, at
least the high end ones, and thus the fans usually runs slower, Sapphire
even does their "ultimate edition" cards without any fans at all

So, basically there's no need to sacrifice performance in the quest for
low noise, just chose your bits and pieces carefully and be prepared to
spend a little bit extra on your parts as that's one place where the
El-Cheapo bits tend to skimp

Beers and cheers
(uncle) Goy
"goyl at nettx dot no"

http://www.theuspits.com

"A man is only as old as the woman he feels........"
--Groucho Marx--

You can't do without a proper AGP graphics card, period.  I've seen
enough of those motherboards with onboard graphics and they run like
sh*t.  Perhaps the nforce type ones may improve things, but you have to
pay extra for those and you could probably spend the money you would
save on a GF2 anyway, which would probably outperform an nforce board
graphically. If you're trying to avoid noise though, most g/fx cards
have a fan on them, I'm afraid.
--
Peter Ives (AKA Pete Ivington)
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If you know what's good for you, don't listen to me :)
GPLRank Joystick -50.63 Wheel -21.77

  On a small PC, you should really watch out for the hard drive, it can be
incredibly noisy for some reason.  Smaller cases don't automaticly make for
quieter machines, either.

I highly suggest an Antec Sonata case.  The HDs are mounted on ***
grommets, the rear fan is 120mm, and the included 380W p/s only has one fan.
And yes, the 380W p/s should be fine.  I run dual 2400+'es with two "pro
audio" PCI cards for recording, a Radeon 9700 Pro, 2-3 HDs, a burner, and a
couple other PCI cards.  I've yet to experience problems.  IOW, the heat and
power issues aren't issues at all.

Regarding the HSF, the Zalman flower cooler works well as does the
Thermaltake Silent Boost.  Both are very quiet with the fan speed down in
the ba***t, and cooling remains adequate for a system at stock speeds.  If
you don't obsess over getting your system in the super low temp range,
you'll be fine.  If you want to go a step further, you can install the
Zalman heatpipe HS for your video card to eliminate that fan.

I also suggest using something like the Vantec fan controller.  It provides
front mounted pots for controlling the speed of four fans.  I've found it
mostly set and forget, but easy access is still a nice luxury.  I have to
run my CPU fans a little below half power due to the number of devices
producing a lot of heat.  Still, it's very quiet, and with all fans at or
just above minimum, it's as close to silent as it gets.

Building a very, very quiet PC isn't terribly difficult, it just takes a
little cash to get there.  An environment that isn't sweltering to begin
with doesn't hurt either.

Alan

   An interesting topic...  I've been thinking about a new PC and
looking into "silent PCs", and so on.  (Of course, I may already have
a silent PC, since I don't have a 3gig CPU with a 7200rpm HD and

5400rpm drives, and  a Voodoo5. :)  I'm not really in touch with the
new hardware, but here's some stuff I've read...

   On CPU vs. GPU for sims, the answer is "yes".  Both are important.
Shortcut either and you may fall short of expectations.  I think the
1GHz level would be too slow (particularly if you are thinking of a
VIA CPU [since you mention 1GHz and fanless], since I hear they have
poor FPU performance, so they would be even slower for sims than a
comparably-clocked AMD or Intel CPU).  One other thing to think about
is I understand that most CPUs nowadays have the multiplier locked, so
you would have to alter bus speed and I'm not sure if motherboards
have the range to underclock that far if you are talking about a
moderately fast CPU (2+GHz)  (or I could be totally wrong. :)

   On integrated graphics, Tom's Hardware had a good report:
http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030903/index.html
which concluded that the best integrated graphics was the NVIDIA
GeForce 4MX included with the AMD nForce2 boards.  Even so,
performance was notably below a modern low- to mid-range stand-alone
card (ATI 9200).  BTW, I've also heard that the nForce2 video is
greatly benefitted by using dual-channel memory on the Ultra
motherboards (which is how it was tested in that report).  Looking
into a fanless or low-fan-noise graphics card is a better bet.

   Depending on how you feel about such things, perhaps an pre-built
system from someone like Dell (which has a good reputation for quiet
systems) might be better than a home-built or local-store-built system
(which, unless you are willing to spend time and/or money and fuss
over it, will probably be built from a much smaller base of experience
in this [silent PC] area).

   Aside from Tom's Hardware, check www.anandtech.com  Notably for
simmers, their most recent video card tests use F1Challenge in their
benchmarking suite.

   Good luck.  One of the problems with the silent PC concept is that
so much information is subjective or anecdotal, and the small amount
of quantitative data is hard to compare.  :|

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Thanks for all your suggestions!
Jerry

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Cheers,
Jerry