Specifications

A Principled Technologies report 4
Workstation heat, sound, and power usage: Lenovo
ThinkStation C30 vs. Dell Precision T5600
QUIETER IS BETTER
Any user, given a choice, would prefer a quiet system to a noisy one. As
Figure 2 shows, the Lenovo ThinkStation C30 was considerably quieter than the
Dell Precision T5600 under both load conditions.
We calculated the difference in perceived volume with the two
workstations using the following formula
2
for sound level change:
        
The change in sound level (  L) is related to the ratio for loudness (or
volume) by using the calculated  L as follows:
  


 


For example, if the level change (  L) is 6.4dB, the ratio for loudness is
1.558x, or 55.8 percent louder.
Using this approach, we determined that the Dell Precision T5600 was
55.8 percent louder than the Lenovo ThinkStation C30 when the systems were
idle and 114.4 percent louder when they were under load.
Another way to look at this same data is that the Lenovo ThinkStation
C30 was 35.8 percent quieter than the Dell Precision T5600 when both systems
were idle and 53.3 percent quieter when they were both under load.
Figure 2: The Lenovo
ThinkStation C30 was
quieter than the Dell
Precision T5600 both
when idle and when
under load.
24.8
27.7
31.2
38.7
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
Idle Under load
Decibels
Acoustics (lower is better)
Lenovo
ThinkStation
C30
Dell Precision
T5600
2
http://www.sengpielaudio.com/calculator-levelchange.htm