How to quiet a $500 PSU

I love this PSU but hate the noise. The three bladed Delta stock fan had to go. Armed with the Cooler Master Aluminum 120mm fan, an 80-120mm fan adapter, cable-ties, and a screwdriver ... I took a leap of faith. End result ... silence at last!

I assume its sucking air out ?, hard to tell from the photo.

Also, did you disconnect or remove the fan or fans in the PS itself?

Great idea, I did this exact thing with a thermalright SP97 with a mobile XP, hard to fit in the case but I got it to works and keep the niose down.

850w!!!!! damn!
Nice work. But was it really necessary to get such a powerful psu?

Vio1 said:

Nice work. But was it really necessary to get such a powerful psu?

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If you run dual GTXs heavily overclocked, perhaps, if you have multiple hard drives + dualcore/dual OC'd CPUs + dual graphics cards, then definitely yes.

That looks like a really nice, clean job...I assume no hacking was involved, just unscrewing and cable ties? Did you connect the fan to the PSU or to just another molex? Once I get my rig up I might very well do this to my 850. Thanks for the tip

Jesus God! I would only pay that for a topline video card. 850watts is just not needed unless you have a stack of 10 drives running, a triple cascade phase arrangement, SLI'd 7800GTX's (more like 4 7800GTX's), an OC'd Dual Core or 2, and then you'd need about 20 more fans and 10 DVD's running simultaneously before you'd even get close to needing that much. A 520watt PSU will power anything out there even OC'd to 5+ GHz with all the latest stuff on it.

200 dollars maybe (even that's too high), but 500 dollars? No way. It's one of the few things that i can definitely say is overkill, and overkill is usually a word that is not in my vocabulary, because I'm one that believes there is never enough, and even the most high end stuff still isn't enough. hehe

Earth to PC P&C...come down...it's time to come down to earth on those prices...they are stratospheric! How copy?

The price is a bit too high, but before the 700 watt units it was the only game in town. I plan on running two highly overclocked Irwindale Xeons, an overclocked high-end graphics card, at least 6-7 HDDs on a real hardware RAID controller (some small 15K SAS and 500 GB SATA2), plus watercooling, so I felt it was worth it for me. A pair of Prestonia Xeons at only 3.2-3.4 GHz plus an X800/6800GT plus 6 7.2K/10K HDDs stressed out my 550 watt enough to make me jump for my next long-term build.

mateo said:

The price is a bit too high, but before the 700 watt units it was the only game in town. I plan on running two highly overclocked Irwindale Xeons, an overclocked high-end graphics card, at least 6-7 HDDs on a real hardware RAID controller (some small 15K SAS and 500 GB SATA2), plus watercooling, so I felt it was worth it for me. A pair of Prestonia Xeons at only 3.2-3.4 GHz plus an X800/6800GT plus 6 7.2K/10K HDDs stressed out my 550 watt enough to make me jump for my next long-term build.

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mateo,
You have to admit, that's getting almost into a server type rig you have there. Heck I've seen server rigs that weren't that extravagant. That's a machine you have there. That is a LOT of stuff, and that is a load of an array or array's (don't know how you have them configured) there.

Now with the system you're running can see the need, but for most people that would be total overkill.

I don't have anywhere near all of it yet

I know its almost server type stuff, but its all stuff I plan to use. I've been waiting a while for SAS stuff, and the whole disk subsystem I get will last me for years. I'm looking at one 36 GB 15K OS/scratch/etc, perhaps two in RAID 1, one-two 36/73 GB 15k app drives in either RAID 0 or 1, 3 to 4 36 GB 15K RAID 0 for photo work, and starting at 3x 500 GB RAID 5 for storage, expanding as my needs go. That's what you get being a sports photographer , I've been fine on a pair of Raptors and 4x 250 GB RAID 5, but I figure one big splurge and I'll be done until solid state.

As for the rest, its just enthusiast gamer Xeon, not even SLI...

I cant believe they didnt put a good quiet fan in such an expensive powersupply.
Thanks

That's crazy... hopefully it blows a lot of air to keep it all cool

Do you have other pics of your rig? I'm interested to see.

wow, you just kissed your warranty bye-bye on a $500 PSU

Nice. Good job on that.

But if you had taken the delta on the inside of the psu out... wouldn't soldering of splicing the new fan on be better?

Also beware though the they put in a delta for a reason. Since its 850? w its probably gonna put out alot of heat. just beware of that.

other than that. Good job mate

The 120m fan is exhausting the air from the PSU. The power for the 120mm fan mod is from a HDD molex connector fed from inside the case going on out from the top empty PSU slot (remember, the CM Stacker has two PSU locations). In other words, the power connector that is supposed to power the stock fan inside the PSU is just dangling there ... thus powering no fan. And since it is only a 2 pin connection, the PSU does NOT record fan speed. I am guessing that some thermal sensor speeds up/slows down the stock fan based on temperature. The 120mm fan is running on full speed at all times.

Luckily the stock fan has a 2 pin quick release connector for easy disconnect/reconnect from the PSU. I can put the stock fan back in at any time. No splicing and no soldering required. No warranty worries here.

Since the stock fan is removed, screwing the adapter to the PSU was impossible. I then decided to use the cable ties to connect the 80mm side of the fan adapter to the fan screw holes on the PSU. That is why you can't see the cable ties on the fan adapter after I installed the 120mm fan in front of it. The cooling is great! I had the system running for a few days 24/7 and the PSU is cool to the touch and warm air is felt exhausting from the 120mm fan. In fact, I believe that the quieter 120mm fan is cooling BETTER than the stock fan because I can feel a slight vacuum suction from the other end of the PSU (the ventilation holes near where all the connectors come out). No issues as of yet (knock on wood).

For some who want to see my rig, here are some pics. Thanks to eBay and buying and selling, I can keep up with the latest and greatest without breaking the bank. I just keep selling my parts before it becomes obsolete, spend a little more, and get top of the line parts. I have done this for years and somehow managed to have a great system everytime. Saving up for the initial investment was the hard part.

That is a sweet rig!

So you just removed the loud-*** delta? You wanna mail it to me?

But seriously, if you don't want it anymore I'd be glad to pay for postage and a little extra to take it off your hands. Deltas are hard as hell to get in the UK.

i am so so tempted to do that on mine. all my fans are low 20s and everything stays cool. but that pc p&c is always honking away. I really feel nervous about opening it up, though they do such a good job making their units, I wouldn't want to hurt the reliability. But in fact a 120mm fan would put much more air through it, right?

are your rails still all solid?

veryhumid said:

But in fact a 120mm fan would put much more air through it, right?

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Not necessarily in this case, because it might not exert enough pressure compared to the Delta and therefore wouldn't pull its rated capacity through the crammed PSU, but it sounds like that's not an issue here, which is good . The ultimate check would be the rails, but he says its running just as cool if not cooler, and I'm sure a PC P&C could stay rock solid with a few degree increase anyway, if there were one.

The stock fan the PSU uses is the Delta EFB0812EH which at rated speed pushes out 52 CFM of air at 5000 RPM with acoustics of 42.5 dbA.

The Cooler Master AAF-B12-E1 120mm Aluminum fan at maximum speed (manufacturer's rated values + 20%) pushes out 67.32 CFM of air at 1440 RPM with the acoustics of only 27.6 dbA. This fan pushes more air at lower dbA! Since I am running a molex adapter to it, it is running at max speed at all times!

The difference in noise is quite noticible. The Delta was just too loud and even my wife complained about it when I first used the PSU. The Cooler Master fan mod was a necessary move if I wanted to continue using the PSU without waking up my wife and my two little girls.

Here is a picture of the Delta that I removed from the PSU. Notice the connector I was talking about. I can put this fan back in if need be (whether for warranty service or selling it on eBay).


The "infamous" Delta EFB0812EH

There were no "Void Warranty" tapes along the casing on the PSU and taking off the casing and fan was very easy.

I am going to test out the rails tomorrow after running Prime all night tonight. I will then post some results up. So far I have not had any issues, but we will see if my FLUKE multimeter tells a different story.

Stay tuned ...

Rails results!

After running Prime for well over 20 hours, I hooked up the good ol' FLUKE and took some rail readings. For each rail, I took a reading after 10 minutes for each with the case closed AND while Prime was still running. Here are the results:

The 3.3V rail ...


The 5V rail ...


And finally the 12V rail ...


The numbers were rock solid throughout. Not too bad in my opinion ...

I get close to those same readings w/ my OCZ Powerstream 520 in PC#1 in my sig FWIW (no fluctuations either) . It is also quiet "out of the box", and looks really nifty with the Titanium finish and Blue LED's...

Just sayin'

Gotta remember that it is also powering up my Koolance EXOS-2, dual 7800GTX's, two blue CC lights, the CM Stacker crossflow fan, three 120mm fans, one 80mm top exhaust fan, three hard drives, and two DVDRW drives. I am positive that the OCZ Powerstream 520 could power this rig, but it maybe stretching its limits. I bought the PCP&C 850W to ensure the best in performance and efficiency.

After spending over $1100 for the video cards alone, $500 for the PSU isn't too bad.