[wellylug] Power Supplies

[Ewen McNeill]

In message <Pine.LNX.4.44.0308070918380.8858-100000 at linux-wlg.prowse.co.nz>, Fra
ncois Prowse writes:
>Warning, it is very earie when you have absolutly no sounds at all from 
>the computer. 

However, you get very used to it, and then cannot stand working in a
room with noisy computers for long periods of time.

I've done variously:
- network boot a diskless machine as an X term and use that (as a remote 
  xterm; VNC is too slow for my liking):

  http://www.naos.co.nz/papers/diskless/

- put the server in another room, and close the door;

- put a quiet power supply and quiet CPU fan into my server (the noisest
  thing now is the disks; I must get around to (a) reducing the number
  of disks (currently 3) and (b) putting the quiet disks I've got in
  there instead);

- bought a laptop specifically because it ran quietly (CPU/case fan
  almost never turns on in the "battery optomised" I use).  It's a bit
  noisier now that I've replaced the hard drive with a 5400rpm drive
  (rather than the default 4200rpm drive), but still quiet enough that I
  have to listen carefully to tell it's on:

  http://www.naos.co.nz/hardware/laptop/acer-361evi/

The remote X term approach is fairly practical with either 100Mbps or
1000Mbps (ie, gigabit) networking for everything except _really_ graphics
intensive things (real time games, video streaming, etc).  It's a bit
slow at 10Mbps.  Do get a video card with good, well accelerated, video
drivers though.

Another approach I suggested to someone else that I haven't tried yet,
is to simply load a machine up with lots of RAM (and quiet CPU fan and
quiet power supply fan, and so on), and then boot with a large ram disk
and run everything from RAM on the machine (using a network file system
for anything needed permanently).

Ewen