Specifications

A Principled Technologies report 4
Workstation heat, sound, and power usage: Lenovo
ThinkStation S30 vs. HP Z420 Workstation
QUIETER IS BETTER
Any user, given a choice, would prefer a quiet system to a noisy one. As
Figure 2 shows, the Lenovo ThinkStation S30 was considerably quieter than the
HP Z420 Workstation 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 9.7dB, the ratio for loudness is
1.959x, or 95.9 percent louder.
Using this approach, we determined that the HP Z420 Workstation was
95.9 percent louder than the Lenovo ThinkStation S30 when the systems were
idle and 104.2 percent louder when they were under load.
Another way to look at this same data is that the Lenovo ThinkStation
S30 was 48.9 percent quieter than the HP Z420 Workstation when both systems
were idle and 51.0 percent quieter when they were both under load.
Figure 2: The Lenovo
ThinkStation S30 was
quieter than the HP
Z420 Workstation both
when idle and when
under load.
24.4 24.4
34.1
34.7
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Idle Under load
Decibels
Acoustics (lower is better)
Lenovo
ThinkStation
S30
HP Z420
Workstation
2
http://www.sengpielaudio.com/calculator-levelchange.htm