AS I WRITE THESE words, I'm comfortably reclined in an overstuffed chair in my
living room, laptop perched on my lap, sipping on a homemade cafe latte. Sunlight
streams in through a window across the room, and every so often, I can hear the
shuffle caused by my oldest child turning the page in the book he's reading. All is
well, or so it would seem. But in the background, just above the sound of the air
conditioning system forcing air through the vents, I can hear it: the ever-so-slight
but unmistakable whir of the fans spinning in my home theater PC, piercing the
silence like a faint whisper.
I'm sure you're aghast. Why, you ask, should a computing device be audible in one's
living room? Good question. The short answer, in my case, is that our HTPC is based
on an Athlon 64 X2 4200+ processor that requires a little more relief than passive
cooling or inaudibly low fan speeds will allow.
http://techreport.com/reviews/2007q2...0/index.x?pg=1