Tools for writing: Silent PCs
Thomas Carlyle, the 19th century sage and writer, had the attic of his house in Chelsea sound-proofed. He couldn’t concentrate with all the noise of the house and street. You can still visit 24 Cheyne Row today.
My first proper computer was a Mac Plus (with a whole 20mb of hard disk space). It too was completely silent thanks to a fan-less design.
Put these two concepts together and you get the Chillblast Phantom System C2D. Which I bought yesterday. This custom-built PC is almost completely silent. Occasionally, you can hear the DVD drive doing its thing like a small mouse reading a newspaper but that’s about it.
I installed Windows Vista Ultimate and it totally rocks. It’s got a dual core processor, 2GB of RAM plus another 2GB of flash memory as a ReadyBoost disk cache.
It comes in an aluminium case (and regular readers will know about my obsession with aluminium) that is lined with soundproofing material. It has a low-noise hard disk, PSU and fan. The Geforce 7950GT graphics card is passively cooled with a giant radiator. I opened it up and the interior looks like something out of HR Geiger.
Silence is golden (and productive).
Technorati Tags: silence, productivity, Thomas Carlyle, Chillblast, computer, concentration
David Bradley wrote:
This isn’t a computer it’s a gadget junky’s orgasm in a box…where can I get one?
db
Posted on 05-Mar-07 at 9:02 pm | Permalink
Jeremy TB wrote:
Did you look at Hush? They produce a wide range of ’silent’ PCs orientated to the high end/ very high end user. I always hesitate because there is a definite premium in the prices. http://www.hushtechnologies.eu
Posted on 03-Dec-07 at 2:30 pm | Permalink
Matthew Stibbe wrote:
I have a Hush PC as a media center. The construction is excellent but I had a lot of trouble upgrading it to Vista because of drivers etc. The Chillblast is definitely quieter than the Hush though.
Posted on 03-Dec-07 at 2:42 pm | Permalink