Fanless or Very Quiet PC?

[lo3q]

I've read online a few stories of people who have quietened a noisy PC by building a large box to put it in. For example, a wooden box lined with something noise-absorbing, like carpet. An optional feature is a large diameter, low speed fan that pumps air into the box - perhaps through a muffled right-angled pipe to prevent sound escaping. -- oops, now I just noticed omalley's post

The original poster's request for a small, quiet rackmount system with a fast CPU seems pretty difficult to achieve.

VIA C3 CPUs are good at what they do, but I doubt they have enough CPU power to be practical.

You could look into the Zalman Reserator (sp?) - that could probably cool a rackmount CPU without any fans, but it's huge, and quite expensive, $200+

How do you feel about water-cooling?

[hlmst]

those Via c3 cpu's have no fpu!!! No matter if it'll be 1ghz or whatever they'll perform about like a p1 233mmx in the average situation. Get a socket A amd and try lowering voltage. Most can do 1800mhz around 1.2V power - even a little passive heatsink can handle that.
And btw building a noise damping box around a pc is a stupid idea. In the end u'll need more coolers to get rid of the extra heat inside. Better go for an ultralight case and remove all the covers and walls that are not mandatory.