I just picked up a Shuttle SB51G Neon Series refurbished from newegg for $150 shipped (not a bad deal if I do say so myself) and have instantly grown to hate that little psu fan. I am about to order a Panaflo L1A and a Fanmate to take care of the case fan, but the power supply noise still remains a problem. I have thought of 2 solutions so far and would be open to any suggestions or comments. (p.s. im a starvin college student so money is tight, so im trying to fix this as cheaply as possible). 1. Add a second 40mm fan to the psu and try and reduce both of their speed to try and copy the Shuttle Silent X power supply. 2. Mod my psu to be fanless. I have 3 large heatsinks laying around from such things as a radeon 9700pro, a P4, and an old PII. I was thinking I could hack them up and have some big headsinks sticking out of the back of the case or possibly make the whole psu external to improve the passive cooling. My only question about this one is, can it be done safely and reliably? I don't want to burn my apartment down. Thanks!
the answer is both of um. put another fan in, 7/5volt both of them, and add the heatsinks where u cna just in case.
Try to first take the fan out of the PSU, run it for whatever amount of minutes you wish and then feel how hot the heatsinks get. If you get that burining pain sensation (Can't stand it for > 1.5sec) then most likely the extra heatsinks won't work and you will have to utilize the extra fan, but if they get maybe lukewarm or something close to that then it's allright to add the extra heatsinks.
What that means is that you should convert them to run at either 7 or 5 volts. Most all fans run at 12 volts normally. Given the tiny amount of air that a 40mm fan can move, I strongly suggest 7 volts. For your mod, I assume you have very limited space. Since most 40mm fans have 3-pin connectors on them, you could make an adapter very easily. In order to keep all connections inside the casing, here is my Idea: take a couple of male 3-pin fan connectors, and then solder the RED ends to a YELLOW 12v wire, and solder the BLACK ends to a RED 5v wire. That will cause 5 volts to run up the ground wire for the fans, cancelling 5v of the original 12v power and leaving you with 7 volts. Another alternative would be to run the wires out of the PSU casing and attach a fan master to them or something.
It also appears that the 40mm fan that came with the psu is wired with two wires into a little seperate circuit board that could possibly be a speed controller/temperature sensor. If this is true, I fear that disconnecting this fan and hooking up to a molex for 7v could make the power supply angry. Are my fears plausible?
you could do what i did, and buy a 40mm fan that has a three pin connector. put that in your psu, and control its speed using either speedfan (in windows) or the bios controlled fan speed. eitherway it works better than the original and a lot quieter also. (excuse the bad speeling and grammar, have just got in from a night out) and no, the psu wont be angry, have been running mine for abot a year with no problems
they certainly are - can you get further details on the PSU? can you maybe replace the fan with a larger one - would need to cut holes in the PSU and the case of course, but one fan could then do the job of two...
re: larger fan some people on the sudian forums have used a 40mm to 60mm fan adapter on their psu, but it sticks out the back of the shuttle, not to my liking, but then it is up to you.
That actually sounds like a pretty good idea. I found this 60mm fan which pulls about 12 cfm at 20 dba. Would this be enough cfm to match the original? And, would using a 60mm to 40mm adapter externally increase the noise level at all?
Yes, it will act like a speaker cone and amplify the fan noise by about 2 or 3 dBa. But it'll still be less whiney than the 40mm fan...
centrifugal fans move air from the center of the fan to the outer ends of the fan... in a PSU it will be worthless since it will move air along a flat surface you mount it on and cooling the psu wall
well i just picked up a 60mm silenx fan rated at 12db . Ill be using a 40mm to 60mm adapter to attach it to my psu which i have already cut the fan grill off of. Ill let you guys know how it works!
