It has been a couple of weeks since I sold off half of the 'WERKz. The Backup Tower, COMPAL IFL-90, MacBook, Samsung Q1 Ultra, Toshiba Satellite M305,and Nintendo Wii...all gone. There is a serenity about the network now that has escaped my ability to articulate. My computer geek alter ego now seems to no longer be assaulted with the constant cacophony of thoughts that go along with trying to push projects on ten PCs. But the true vacuum that has been left is in terms of noise and heat.

My friend, B, is one, as an expert in acoustics, who has always been focused on keeping a set of gadgets and his own home-built frankenbox's as quiet as possible. B also gets concerned about total heat generated in his house by his electronics. As I saw this trend grow to prevalence amongst the technorati, it was never one that I got wrapped around the axle on. Noise was acceptable if it meant providing supreme computing power on my home network. Additionally, the first methods of combating noise involved stuffing your case full of cheesecloth and other baffle-inducing foam. This could lead to increases in heat, of which my boxes produced enough of already.

I did fall in-line with the concern about total heat generation. I resisted buying LCDs for the longest time, believing the widely held thought that early LCDs could not keep up with the frame-rates required in fast-paced games. So rather than fully converting to LCDs as some of my brethren were doing, I initially chose to set up my Main Tower of the time with just one LCD and a CRT. I was going to use the LCD for my primary working monitor, with the CRT as a secondary display. I would then shift over to the CRT for gaming.

I tested the LCD for gaming a few times and its performance was passable. The big whoop was that upon it arrival, I almost immediately recognized the drop in temperatures and ambient noise in the computer room. Realize that I was running two desktop PCs each with a dual monitor setup, and all monitors were CRTs. Between the temp/noise drop and its gaming performance being passable, I quickly decided that LCDs were the way to go and that any drop off in gaming performance would be acceptable.

So it was ok to take measures to reduce thermals. My current apartment's cooling system was struggling to keep up with the heat generated by two desktop PCs constantly putting out heat, along with the USB hard drives and other always-on components. Still, I was not and do not plan on dealing with the pain and added maintenance required to shift to liquid cooling.

Since reducing the footprint of the 'WERKz back to its historic norm, there has been another drop in ambient noise and thermals. And it is good. I liked having the two towers, especially back when I was really hosting a good number of LAN events at my place. As that activity has dropped off, the need for two towers has lessened. And I'm not inside the main tower messing with its hardware all of the time, so a "You broke your Main Tower" backup desktop is not as much a necessity.

The three laptops are normally in standby when they are not actually in use, whereas the Main and BackUp Towers used to run all of the time. When I go out of town, I shut the Main Tower down and do not actually turn it back on after I get back until I am actually ready to use it, which can sometimes be weeks.

The funny thing about noise is that its impact is much like buying a new TV. It is frequently not until you finally buy a bigger TV that you realize how small your other one really was. In the like vein, it was not until I got rid of my second tower that I realized how loud my Xbox 360 and PS3 really are. But they get the legacy pass. The noise is acceptable because the two systems provide the best and most powerful console gaming experience on the market. And that is good, too.