Yeah the article is a joke, but anyway... (Score 1)

... here's my recipe for a *cheap* silent PC. BTW I only post this because the parts I like to use for that kind of machine are disappering fast from the channel, and it doesn't look like anything suitable is going to come out anytime soon. That said: CPU: 1.4 GHz Intel "Tualatin" Celeron (basically a 0.13 u PIII), underclocked to 933 MHz because it's running on FSB 66. Undervolted to 1.2V VCore it works nicely with an Alpha PAL 6035 heatsink *without* fan. Mainboard: Any Tualatin capable i815 board that allows VCore selection to *undervolt* the CPU. An Asus TUSL2-C is a good choice. If you don't mind wire tricking your CPU to run at lower VCore, an ECS P6S5AT can be had for next to nothing and is a surprisingly well done board (picky on DDR-RAM though, but that's the only caveat). Harddrive: Seagate "Cuda" IV. This thing is *silent*. If you have to do with something else, it pays to dampen the drive by mounting it with rubber O-Rings hooked in a 5 1/4 drive tray. GFX card: if you like to have something with 3D acceleration, just get a late (i.e. built in 2002) Geforce 3, remove the fan it shipped with and stick a bigger passive heatsink on it (got one from the local electronics shop that works nicely). Dot of thermal paste in the center, 4 dots of superglue in the corners of the GPU, done. If you don't need 3D, any Matrox G Series or Ati Rage 128 will do and be passive cooled out of the box. Case: Old no name ATX mini tower with an FSP 235W CPU. Other super cheap cases and PSUs will do, because the components used draw very little amps. Just make sure the PSU fan is speed controled. If you don't leave the box on 24/7, just disconnect the PSU fan. Optical storage: Toshiba DVD 1612. This is a compromise because the thing is *loud* while at full speed but sufficiently quiet when playing DVDs. Voila. Cheap and not exactly a speed demon, but it plays Neverwinter Nights at acceptable framerates and does audio editing fast enough, those being the two tasks that hit the thing hard enough to make a difference WRT FSB. For anything else I do, it's simply good enough.