Trey wrote regarding 'Re: [SLE] Any disadvantages of the AMD 64 vs. Pentium 4?' on Thu, Sep 16 at 09:53:
I'm wondering because as I mentioned earlier I was considering upgrading last weekend. I did upgrade to the P4 3ghz. It's very fast, so no worries there, but it's pretty noisy. The company I bought it from has a 7 day, no questions, return policy. So I'd like to know before those 7 days are over two things. <snip> #2 - Is the AMD 64 quieter? And I think what I mean when I ask that is if it runs less hot and thus the fan is quieter. I've heard this argument made. I'm wondering if there's truth to it.
I could, of course, always go buy an ultra-quiet fan and heat sink. I've heard they make those and that may be the way I go because even with my new Antec Sonata the P4 is noticeably louder than my P3 was.
Any thoughts are appreciated.
the noise depends entirely on your choice of hsf (heat sink/fan) and case/psu (with this being antec, you're probably ok here), not cpu. the hsf that comes packaged with cpus is designed to provide just enough cooling without any regard for noise levels. if you're looking for a quiet system, it might be a good idea to look into replacing the hsf with something that is designed to be quiet. probably one of the best brands for this is zalman. everyone i know who's looking for a silent system swears by them. i've got a cnps6000-cu (looks wierd, but works great) on my athlon xp 2500+ and i can barely hear it (my hard drives are loudest part of the system). i would've gotten a cnps7000 if it'd fit on my mobo.
regardless of whether you have an amd or intel cpu, there's cooling solutions that work while being quiet. that being said, i personally recommend amd over intel all the time.
Lots of sites cater to the quiet/silent PC market. I personally use Vantec Stealth and Vantec ThermoFlow fans in every PC I build - I usually replace the heatsink fan with a ThermoFlow, too. Zalman makes some good stuff too, I just happen to prefer a different brand. For heatsinks, I'm normally using either Thermaltake or the AMD-bundled sink. There are 4 PCs running behind me, each with 4-5 fans, and I can't hear anything but the air moving (which is mostly due to the 120mm fan in the DB server) and a faint hard drive whirr. As an aside, I've also found that those silicone fan insulator gasket things that some people sell do actually help out some... --Danny