The delicious absence of computer noise

I am not a big fan of noise from computers (which is typically caused by other fans..). Even if the noise can be close to avoided with with certain head phones or drowned out by other sources of sound I still hope computer noise is something that quickly becomes an artifact of the past.

The noise is a symptom
Computer noise caused by fans is a symptom of power inefficiency by spending a lot of energy producing heat rather than doing computations (of course some physical reasons for this). This is as I see it analog to old-fashioned light bulbs that used more energy to produce heat than light, fortunately light bulbs can be replaced with LED lamps.

Fixing the symptom (sort of)
In order to get a less noisy home office I drilled a hole in the floor between the office and my (cold) basement, put up a small shelf near the basement roof and moved my ubuntu box to the shelf with usb and monitor cables through the hole, and it certainly made a difference sound-wise.

Fixing the problem?
But energy-wise it has gotten worse since I am less likely to (manually) turn the box off and don't have any fancy time or usage-based power adjustments for it. So I believe my current home office solution is a only temporary patch, but uncertain what the real solution should be. Suggestions?

Upcoming PhD defences at NTNU

October 11th - Computer Enhancement of Digital Images, candidate: Peter Boros

October 12th - Impedance Diagrams of the Electrodes in the Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cell, candidate: Anne-Kristine Meland

October 19th - Digital Control of a Zero Voltage Switching Inverter for Distributed Generation of Electrical Energy, candidate: Pål Andreassen