NEC puts Transmeta in silent desktop PC
PrintFanless all-in-one
Posted in Personal, 9th May 2002 19:34 GMT
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The first all-in-one desktop PC to feature Transmeta's low processor is now available in Japan.
The NEC Mate features the 900Mhz TM5800, but the remarkable thing about it is that it is its noise output. There's no CPU fan, and no power supply fan either. The hard disk drive - the third source of noise in desktop computers (or the fifth, but we lump case fans and graphics cards fans in the same category as CPU fans) - is in a silent enclosure, too.
Surely this is the quietest no compromise x86-compatible to arrive on the market: although we stand to be corrected. It's not alone.
Redwood-based Tiqit recently announced a PDA-form factor PC, the "eightythree", and later this year start-up OQO will follow suit with a modular PC also based on the Crusoe tiny low-power machines too. We wrote about the latter here
NEC's Mate an all-in-one LCD model, a form factor, and press material boasts the ability to mirror to a RAID array. Alas it's only available in Japan right now.
The new iMac emits about 25 decibels, and special quiet power supplies alone emit 20 decibels or more. The Mate emits 20 decibels in all, which the press release poetically describes as the noise made by "leaves touching".
Very Zen. But still louder than "one hand clapping"? ®
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