Quiet or Silent cooling...

I am looking to complete my server, but I can't stand the noise when I am trying to go to sleep. I leave my laptop on 24/7 and the noise dosen't bother me at all. Its a fairly new compaq p4 laptop. Is there any way I can get my comp to be that quiet?? I was thinking of those Zalman coolers, that might work. I was alos thinking, I can get maybe a fan controller and keep the case fans on from like 7:00am-11:00pm and then shut it off at 11:00pm when I go to sleep. This server would be folding and would definetly be on 24/7. The processor right now is an xp 1600+, but keep in mind I may upgrade it to something a bit faster. I was also thinking about watercooling, but the fans on the rad do make a lot of noise, too. Thanks.

Matt

if your not overclocking its possible, go with either a zalman solution, or maby an sk7 with a panaflo L1a. and use h1a's (if you have one intake/one exaust) or L1a's (if two in/two out) for case fans, and if that 1600+ is a palamino, you might want to consider a tbred b 1700 as they run much cooler.

panaflo L1a 24cfm@21dba
panaflo H1a 39cfm@32dba

Yup you definatly want a good heatsink with a super quiet fan on there. I think around 32db is where people draw the line with what is distracting and what is just background noise. Water cooling can be quiet but if you are not pushing a good deal of air through your rad you are giving up alot of the cooling capabilities, so why not go air?

If you spend a little more and decide to go with something that can fit a 92mm fan (like an slk-900u) or if you rig up a 92mm fan to the sk7 you can get good cooling with even less noise than with the 80mm fan.

Also there isn't anything better than 120mm case fans if you want to keep the noise down. You can push an amazing amount of air with just 1 or 2 120mm fans, and you don't even need to run them at full speed.