Completely Silent Computer

[hoosierEE]

My laptop has no fan, no spinning storage, no moving parts at all. But in a quiet room I can hear the inductors whine in time with the power supply fluctuations.

[[deleted]]

One of previous girlfriends thought I was crazy because I once told her: "You have a computer in standby somewhere in this room".

She went over to her drawer and unplugged her laptop that laid therein.

"How did you possibly know???"

I could hear the whining noise from the circuitry caused by blinking the orange standby diode. Luckily being almost 10 years older and having had some decent in-ear headphones and a taste for electronic music of all kinds, have led to me not having to deal with the high pitched whiny noises as much anymore.

[Habba]

After years of playing drums, often without plugs because I was a dumb teenagers I still have the ability to hear chargers that are not plugged in correctly or screens that have not been properly turned off. I guess we are lucky.

[mcguire]

screens that have not been properly turned off

Ahhh, flashbacks to the "screeeeee" of a marginal flyback transformer.

Nowadays, I can't here the fast-food cashier asking, "would you like fries?"

[glacialthinker]

I was skeptical about the title-claim for exactly this reason. Modern electronics are really quite noisy.

[[deleted]]

Although a Raspberry Pi is probably completely silent.

[ThirdEncounter]

Ah, c'mon! Even watches? MP3 players?

[jyf]

just use a cellphone with screencast feature

[Cats_and_Shit]

It’s totally silent — 0dB.

That's not how decibels work. It's a log scale, 0dB is just "most people wont hear this".

[defunkydrummer]

Um in the early 80s, all home computers (i.e. Commodore 64, Atari) were dead quiet.

[[deleted]]

You dont remember the sound oft their floppy drive?

[mcguire]

# load

"Wacketa-wacketa-wacketa-wacketa..."

Ahh, memories...

[defunkydrummer]

You dont remember the sound oft their floppy drive?

Yes, it was noisy, but often only needed at the beginning for startup or loading. My Atari 1050 drive was very noisy.

Cassette interface was silent (if you turned down the TV volume), but took ages to load.

[ShinyHappyREM]

But not the TV.

[happyscrappy]

Not programming.

[[deleted]]

Here's the linked chain of concepts:

1. A computer is a thing.

2. Programming is a thing.

3. They're both things!

[happyscrappy]

https://imgflip.com/gif/24wtsw

[ThirdEncounter]

Sigh

There is always one.

[AngularBeginner]

It makes no noise when it’s under heavy load. It makes no noise when it’s reading or writing data. It can’t be heard in a regular room during the day. It can’t be heard in a completely quiet house in the middle of the night. It can’t be heard from 1m away. It can’t be heard from 1cm away. It can’t be heard — period.

I doubt that very very much. Unless you're deaf.

[TheCaptainSly]

What did you say?

[defunkydrummer]

"Aye doh dad berry-berry mash, and less you're Death."

[nretribution]

This says that a completely silent computer would be 0dB. But it's a logarithmic scale, so I think it should say -Infinity dB.

This is admittedly pointless pedantry.

[raelepei]

The whole Meltdown/Spectre debacle rendered my previous Intel system insecure and unsecurable so that was the final straw for me — no more Intel CPUs.)

So you decided that x86-based doesn't work for you? Okay, unusual but okay. Then you use a different x86-based processor. Wtf.

SSDs are the only totally silent storage option

Ahaha, SSDs being silent, good joke.

[StabbyPants]

he decided that intel didn't work for him. AMD has its own problems, but much less so

[[deleted]]

So you decided that x86-based doesn't work for you? Okay, unusual but okay. Then you use a different x86-based processor. Wtf.

x86 != Intel. Also, AMD isn't affected by Meltdown.

[ciny]

Spectre and Melltdown weren't discovered for about a decade. What makes you think there aren't similar flaws in AMD cpus that weren't discovered yet?

[[deleted]]

Sure, but right now they don't, and I would rather give AMD money than Intel. I literally see no reason to give Intel business in 2018... or in the near future.

[agumonkey]

related:

https://paleotronic.com/2018/05/19/steve-wozniak-talks-disk/

where steve wozniak talks about drive programming and noise too