Project silence

[xb-70]

I recently got a drive silencing kit from Silent PC USA in an effort to make a completly silent computer, i used the kit on my 7200 RPM Maxtor, it is so much quieter, there is no high pitched whine when it is on and the read/write noise is almost nil, im very happy with it. They say you may have to worry about temperatures, but i havent had any problems teh temperatiure in the enclosure only goes up to 33 deg. C, and thats way below the 60 deg. max. The only bad thing is that it takes up a 5.25" bay. As for the rest of the system everything except the CPU is passively cooled, and the CPU has one of the Zalman sinks on it with a 120mm fan. The only thing i have left to work on in mine is the fan situation, im using old 80mm fans which i pulled from some HP's which were 4 years old
Any way good luck silencing,
xb-70

 

[Turd Furguson]

I am probably going to go pick up a dremel next week and remove the fan grill restrictions on my case. Plus I may add a window or something.

 

[Turd Furguson]

Well folks I am at it again. I moved out of my Chieftec case and into a Enermax Centurion case. I also have changed components so I had to do some more fine tuning.

I purchased a Abit NF7-S about a month ago. Stock NB heatsink fan was very loud and I believe it was an Iceberg style heatsink.

Also the case I have has very restrictive fan grills. So my remedy was a nibbler. Took me a while but I got the back grill out and lazy old me doesn't feel like filing down the jaggies. I ended up cutting myself slightly but nonetheless I did draw blood.
Removing this restrictive fan grill has allowed my Panaflo L1A fan to run almost with no restriction. The only thing blocking the exhaust is a rear open fan grill to protect myself as well as kitty cat paws that may be headed back that way.

My Antec Truepower contains 2 fans. An 80mm and a 92mm which both are controled via a thermistor internal to the PSU housing. When I stopped all fans in my system I could still hear the whining of a fan and I ended up tracking it down to the 92mm PSU fan. So my remedy was simple, VOID my warranty and remove that fan. That cut out quite a bit of noise and from what I believe will benefit in my case airflow.
The 92mm fan pushes more CFM into the PSU than the 80mm exhaust can handle. The result of this inbalance in CFMs pushes warm air out into the case through the grills that have the PSU wires exiting. I am still in the process of testing out my PC to see if temps are rising.

The NB heatsink was replaced with a Zalman blue heatsink. Stock fan was too dang noisy for my taste.

But attempting to silence my HDD, I ended up purchasing a Enermax Cooldrive 3 HDD cooler. It mounts in the 5.25 bay with a 40mm fan. Of course I chose not to use the fan at this current point as I am going for as silent as possible.

With my room dead silent, I sit roughly 1 foot away from my PC and I can barely hear the whine of the WD SE HDD that I have. I feel like I improved on my little hobby at this point.

Hopefully I can get pictures of my little project up for you guys. I have finals here at my college next week so I am about to have a nervous breakdown so this was my only stress relief for the day.

Happy modding folks.


MODS PLEASE MOVE THIS TO THE CORRECT FORUM. THIS PROJECT HAS GONE IN THE DIRECTION OF MODDING. THX IN ADVANCE.

 

[Westside05]

My friend owns a system, full of zalman..its absolutely noiseless. Zalman powersupply, 7000alcu, graphic cooler, bracket, southbridge, northbridge etc..It'll cost some money but simple =]

 

[ProBoner]

The fan in the TT silent boost is a panaflo slightly modified and it puts out 27.5cfm @ 21dBA (I wonder if you can find these for sale anywhere?)

 

[Ffats]

Holy Thread Ressurection...

 

[Turd Furguson]

Holy Thread Ressurection...

No kidding but I thought I would expand my project and share.

 

[Turd Furguson]

Another Update:

I ran my system very hard for roughly 10 hours of constant gaming. CPU never rose above 50*C.
80mm PSU fan in the power supply did speed up considerably but was significantly quieter than the combo of both the 92mm and the 80mm.

 

[Turd Furguson]

Time for yet another update. I went to change out the rear 80mm PSU fan for my Antec PSU b/c it was a little too noisy for my tastes. Evidently I killed the PSU connector for any internal PSU fan as well as the PSU controlled fan molex connections. I am doing some testing to see if that will affect anything.

So I had to replace the 80mm fan completely so I chose a Panaflo L1a and it is currently at 7v. I am going be monitoring the heat output of this PSU and if it gets too warm for my tastes I am going to crank it back to 12v. I know the threshold of what this PSU will prolly take due to an AAS in Electromechinal Engineering and it won't be very high temps.

 

[macklin01]

Sounds like a fun project!

Actually, just yesterday, I also replaced the stock fan in my cheapo 300W TTGI PSU after cutting out and filing the stamped hole. I also swapped it with an 80mm Fanaflo low, and I put rubber washers between the metal casing and the fan to reduce case vibrations.

I saw your problems with the molex connectors. Just what happened? Were you trying to unplug the molex connections in order to swap in the new fans? In such a situation, I find it to work well when you snip the wires a few inches from the connection, put some heatshrink tubing around the leads of the fan, twist the wires, solder, and then slide the heatshrink tubing over the solder joints.

Because the original config of the system varied the fan speed with temp, splicing the fan in has retained this temp-controlled feature. (No 7V modding required, which is nice for simplicity's sake, as well as for the fact that if for some reason the PSU starts warming up too much, I can count on the fan kicking in to where it needs to be.)

I also removed some of the punched slats on the front side of the PSU to enhance air circulation through the unit, although the dremel started running low on batteries and I was getting low on patience and stopped early. Even with a tungsten carbide bit, it took some umpfh to get through the steel!

All said and done, the air coming out of the PSU now is cooler to the touch than it was before the mod, and the PSU is for all purposes silent. Now, all I can hear is the fan on the Ti4200.

Oh, and on a point you raised much earlier, I've also found the Panaflo LO's to be substantially quieter than the Vantec Stealth fans, ratings notwithstanding. The fluid bearing has a lot to do with that, as well as the fact that these dBA ratings aren't all that accurate to begin with ...

Well, at any rate, best of luck with your mod!

-- Paul

PS: One question: If you were to replace the fan / cooling system on your Ti4x00 today,what would you choose?

 

[clocker2]

The muffler idea that Yoshi had was silly.

Have you actually tried it?
I mocked up a prototype out of some styrofoam sheeting and tried it out and found it to be quite effective.
Airflow is not comprimised at all, but the sound of the fan is noticably diminished.
A beneficial side effect is that the bafflebox acts kind of like a duct, moving the fan further into the case and (in my rig at least) thus putting the airstream closer to where I want it to be.
I think it could be very beneficial, properly implemented.

 

[Turd Furguson]

PS: One question: If you were to replace the fan / cooling system on your Ti4x00 today,what would you choose?

If you want silence I would get the Zalman Heatpipe. It does a very good job for me dissapating heat compared to my stock Albatron copper cooler. I was even able to get about 12mhz more out of my core OC. Granted the cooling fanatics out there will badger this post really quickly if they read it, but it does the job it is intended to do.

I have reason to believe that the temp control feature is what went kaput on me. I tested the connections all the way to the PSU circuitboard with no luck. The entire Fan only molex connectors went out also in the process b/c they are temp controlled also. So I ended up wiring the PSU fan into a floppy power connector.

Well my system passed an overnight test of F@H. Highest Load temp I have seen so far is 49*C, chipset temp at 32*C, and ambient around 72*F. Now all these fans are at 7v except the CPU fan which I require to be at the full 12v otherwise there isn't enough pressure to force air through my SLK900u.

This has been a fun project to say the least. Of course I don't think its ever gonna end but sure beats spending loads of cash to get the ultimate watercooling possible ie 100+ bucks.

 

[Turd Furguson]

Have you actually tried it?
I mocked up a prototype out of some styrofoam sheeting and tried it out and found it to be quite effective.
Airflow is not comprimised at all, but the sound of the fan is noticably diminished.
A beneficial side effect is that the bafflebox acts kind of like a duct, moving the fan further into the case and (in my rig at least) thus putting the airstream closer to where I want it to be.
I think it could be very beneficial, properly implemented.

I eventually think I am going to try some sort of funneling. Right now I have the front air intake blocked off. It isn't messing with temps very much at all.