Oh so quiet
Benchmarking will not be undertaken in the usual manner, simply because this is an unusual machine. We'll investigate just what steps Tranquil have taken to make this an uber-quiet machine. Remember that it's fan-less, and one simply cannot hear it above even the most basic background noise. Decibel rating don't mean all that much to the average reader, especially if they're taken from arbitrary distances from the machine. We'd go so far as to say that if the front wasn't illuminated by the blue LED and the user was in a normal office environment, it would be impossible to discern whether the machine was switched on or not. It was difficult to tell from just a couple of feet away when testing in a quiet room.
Let's first have a look at the CPU again.
A processor built for low power and possible passive running. The Nehemiah iteration has reached 1GHz with a 133FSB, and it now uses SSE instruction to boost its multimedia performance. That, allied to a full-speed FPU, helps it take off where the incumbent Ezra core left off. The CPU's 0.13-micron manufacturing process and relatively low clock speed all combine to push out 'only' 11w of power, That's exactly how and why a massive heatsink is able to keep things cool enough without having to resort to fan assistance.
The heavy steel case not only lends a certain gravitas to the PC's overall look and feel, the thick steel should provide further help in negating any internal sounds. The CPU, motherboard and PSU are all fan-less and exceptionally quiet, but most PCs function from moving parts. We're thinking along the lines of hard and optical drives, so unless we venture into the expensive world of RAM drives, moving parts are always going to be present in quiet machines.
Tranquil chose a Seagate Barracuda IV 7200RPM 2MB cache hard drive for its balance of performance and quietness. The 'cuda IV is an exceptionally quiet drive with AAM (Automatic Acoustic Management) employed. With the surrounding components producing little or no noise, any noise emitted by the hard drive would sound unnaturally loud. However, even in full seek mode, the 'cuda IV produced only a faint rumble.
That's a pretty good HD Tach graph for such a quiet drive, and the CPU utilisation is commendable for such a low power CPU. We can already foresee some of the potential uses of a Tranquil PC.
The optical drive, manufactured by Panasonic, wasn't quite so effective in combatting noise. The drive sounded just a little loud when playing a DVD, but we must remember that the lack of PC noise only highlighted the drive's noise profile. We'd have no problems with the Tranquil as a DVD player. Indeed, the S/PDIF and TV-Out connections on the rear positively demand it be used in the living room, as the hub of your multimedia activities, perhaps.
We'll now list a number of possible uses and see how well it manages to fulfill them.
