Alrighty, (Sorry if I'm in the wrong section, please move if appropriate!) Basically my computer is too loud! I want it silent, mainly its the PSU, but are there any make of fans which are especially queit? Or can i mod the PSU to quiet-ness? I'd like to be able to sleep with the comp running! any help much appreciated, thanks in advance Regards, Stuart
SilenX and panaflo make some pretty goddamn silent fans... In addition, try to mod that thing up to accept 92 or 120 mm fans. They will spin at lower rpms, reducing the whining noise, and give you more of the whooooosh noise, which is much much better. They can push as much or more air for much less dBa than 80mm fans. Then you can consider getting a couple of passive heatsinks if you don't care too much about performance. There are a load of reviews online for silent psus if you want to go that route (I know my PSU's fans are screeaaaammers). http://www.silentpcreview.com/
SilenX PSU. Expensive but dead quiet and ultra high quality. I'd suggest getting one of the Pro series ones but the normal ones are great too.
I have worked with a SilenX PSU as well as a Zalman PSU. SilenX and Ahanix are two very shady companies and I personally don't trust them or their products. I have Zalman's 400W PSU and LOVE it. It is as close to silent as you will get without going to a fanless PSU.
Could you elaborate on that? I've used SilenX products with great success, and its reseller rating is impressive to say to the least. The fact that Shuttle selected them for their PSUs says something too. Still, I am curious as to what is shady about them.
You could allways just run the fans off 7v, connect the 12v to 12v and the ground to 5v. 12-5=7 Fans wll run slower and effectively quieter, this can be done in the psu and no problems *should* occur. Use a rheobus for the rest of the fans. Heed the advice the other members have given also! Big fans = slow , quiet yet more CFM
Don't want to talk about it publicly. I sent you a PM. Beware with that thought. The Soyo Raptor, which has a 120 mm fan, is anything but silent.
SilenX is the real deal, Ahanix makes knock-offs using the same name which suck. SilenX products can only be authentically purchased at silenx.com or a reseller listed at their site. And don't get confused with SilentX which is also a knock-off (generally ahanix products). Ahanix is known for copyright infringement also... their website was (maybe still is) an exact copy of the Samsung site, save replacing the samsung logo. I've got a zalman too... when I cracked it open to sleeve it, it was absolutely identical to my silenx 350w. The fan's thermistor was even attached in the same place in the heatsink. Dunno about the fan specs on the zalman (didn't look, oh well I'm lazy) but it's also extremely quiet.
A lot of power supplies are pretty much Fortron PSUs with someone elses name on them. Which Zalman do you have? I have the 400b. As for the Ahanix and SilenX info you mention, it is true to an extent. If you want more info I can PM you. The owner of SilenX used to work for Ahanix and left because of problems between him and one of the members of Ahanix. Ahanix used to produce SilenX PSUs until the guy left and started his own company. They still argue over who has rights, but obviously the SilenX company registered the name before Ahanix. I'm not saying that SilenX PSUs are bad, I'm just saying I don't trust SilenX or Ahanix and will never use their products. EDIT: Interestingly enough, at CES 04, Ahanix got there late and didn't get a booth, so Zalman lent them a tiny corner of theirs
Check your harddisks, it's probably a major factor of noise too. Write noise is usually around 35dB at 1m for 7200 disks.
If you have some spare cash, you could also consider watercooling. A few companies are selling the passive water kits (Zalman for one). Even if it's not passive mind, it still tends to be quieter for no loss of performance. Also, you can come across some watercooled PSUs (I think Pug at http://www.wizarddesigns.co.uk/ has a few). They're pricey and I can understand why people don't want to put water in something with all the voltage, but perfectly quite. Also, if you're into electronics have a look at the software controlled fan speed gadget in these forums. You could then have your computer control all your fan speeds depending on heat.
Alrighty, thank for the recommendations, as for watercooling, i don't think i want to delve into that quite yet, but i'll sort out the fans based on the makes and tips, thanks
Zalman 300b I think. 300w with SATA on it anyways. Yeah, please PM me that info I doubt it will change my positive view on silenx but I'm interested to read it. I've had great experiences with all of their products that I've used. daba, good point, however I'm almost positive my computer wouldn't be measurable without very expensive meters that can go into really low noise, and I still don't have problems with an 800MHz overclock on top of two raptors adding to the heat. Just for reference, a zalman heatsink at 2/3 spin is the loudest thing in the case by a good margain. The air coming out isn't even that warm (although it did drop by about 30 degrees F outside, a nice change). You could have a dozen delta fans in your case but if you have bad airflow your temps will still be bad. Fan placement, cable management, etc all contribute to temps. Which reminds me... I really should work on reorganizing my cables *sigh* (waiting for upcoming mod... my modular PSU idea will be hard to do since the heatsinks inside are SO big!)
the best noise reduction ive managed so far has definately been to simply swap the fans from the 12 rail onto the 5volt rail. admittedly it does lead to a rise in temps, but my temps went from around 35-40 to 42-45. for a rise of 5 or so degrees the pc is now almost silent. its suprising how noisy they are on 12v, now the noise from ym pc comes from the hdd, and the cdrom when it spins up to full speed. you can do it pretty simply, with minimal expense. take a molex fan connector, and on one end, swap the red and yellow wires around. use caution though (and i mean it) that you *only* plug fans into your adapted plug, as i strongly suspect it will be terminal to plug anything else into it. personally, i painted mine red with a marker pen so i dont plug a white molex into a red one. as for the psu, you can do it on that too, but you need to go inside the psu, and the bligatory caution applies, discharge the psu, dont open it in the middle of a thunderstorm whilst standing on top of a hill in wet copper armour shouting "gods a *******" etc etc basicly, just open up the psu, and 'remove' the fan from the 12volt supply its on, then 'attatch' the cables to the 5volt power supply. i just spliced in the cables with a bit of insulation tape. i would be very carefull though, i dont know how much heat your psu produces, and with mine on 5v the air being blown out the back is warm, even in this hot weather. might want to try it out on your desk for a day or so just to make sure its not getting too hot.
