Noise Reduction On The Cheap

[Skillian]

My current pet project is to try and quiten my PC. Current noise makers are 2 case fans, stock AMD 60mm CPU fan and the PSU fan.

I'm soon to be getting a 60-80mm adaptor for the CPU fan, so I'm thinking of hooking that and the two case fans to a fan controller. Hopefully I'll be able to turn the CPU fan (and the case fans) down at night or when the CPU is idling.

My PSU is pretty cheap, and pretty noisy. I have already replaced the fan in the PSU with an old case fan I had lying around and it's now a bit quieter, but it will be the loudest thing in my system as I can't control the speed.

Main question is: should I replace the PSU fan with a thermally controlled case fan such as this Antecand stick the temp sensor to the side of the PSU or would this be dangerous?

I'm not sure how these fans work and at what temps they start speeding up or down.

[Virtualbody1234]

All those ideas are very good except... Don't use a fan controller on a CPU fan. Some fans don't start at lower than rated voltage so that is deadly for a CPU. Get a slower rated 80mm fan.

Antec makes power supplies (True series) where the fan is thermally controlled and that also have power connectors made for (only) controling case fans. The case fans end up turning at the same speed as the power supply fan. They run at about 1500 RPM. Very quiet.

Then there are the graphics card fan, the northbridge fan and the hard drive that are the remaining noisemakers.

I have fitted a 80mm fan to my graphics card. Removed the northbridge fan and added a large heatsink instead. And installed a Seagate hard drive.

[bigdawgfoxx]

How did you remove the small fan and put an 80mm fan on ur GPU?

[Virtualbody1234]

Originally posted by bigdawgfoxx@5 April 2004 - 14:12
How did you remove the small fan and put an 80mm fan on ur GPU?

A 80mm fan is supported by a bracket (mounted to the PCI slot at the back of the case) that is independant of the graphics card. Placed right under the card and blowing upwards.

[FlyingDutchman]

When you need help Skillian, I'll try to offer some.

For the moment, don't buy anything yet.
First make a plan, then execute it.

Provide pictures and specs of your rig so we can visualize your problem.

What's your budget?
Can you make things yourself (craftsman ?) ?
What tools do your have?
What is your goal? Somewhat quiet, or almost silent?

Regards.

[bigdawgfoxx]

Well I know how to put a fan underneath the GPU, but there would still be the 60mm fan on there to make noise. So putting an 80mm fan on it wouldnt make it any quieter.

[Skillian]

I can't do any any close up pics, my digital camera is bust at the mo, but there are some general pics and specs at this thread from the day I built it.

350W generic PSU
XP2500+ Barton oced to 2.08 GHz
2 X 256 Crucial PC3200
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 200 Gb
MSI K7N2 Delta-L mobo (NForce 2, FSB 400)
Sony DVD Burner
1 X side intake fan, 1 X exhaust fan
I broke my Ti4200, so I'm using a passively cooled GeForce 2 MX for now. This will be updated sometime after April 13th B)

Got pretty much standard tools, no dremel though.

I don't have a particular budget, if it's worth it I'll spend money but I'm not a rich man so cheap is good.

I would rather spend a little money for a decent improvement than spend loads on an almost silent solution. I also consider looks to be important which is why I want an aluminium case fan with a controller rather than a quiet black one.

I am no craftsman but I am reasonably handy and I'm willing to try most things, replacing the PSU fan is about as technical as I've done so far.

I'm thinking now that Vantec Stealth fans might be a good idea for the CPU and the PSU, 21 dBA sounds nice and quiet but is 27 CFM a good enough airflow for those important positions?

Thanks VB and Flying Dutchman for your input. Bigdawg, I assume VB took the 60mm fan off the GPU, the 80mm is to replace it.

[tesco]

Originally posted by bigdawgfoxx@5 April 2004 - 15:47
Well I know how to put a fan underneath the GPU, but there would still be the 60mm fan on there to make noise. So putting an 80mm fan on it wouldnt make it any quieter.

obviously he took the 60mm off

i sorta did the same thing, my vidcard had no fan on it and the memort gets really hot so i get artifacting at stock settings in some games (actually all direct3d games) so I took an 80mm fan and sceqed it onto the heatsync using one screw in one corner hole and one along a beam that holds teh fan together (hard to explain) but its on there pretty tight and the fan hangs over the edge of teh heatsync cooling the memory on the bottom of the card, the ones on the top get cool air from my intake fan at the back...i wish my cpu would run at right coltage so i could see what my temps would be if i had a normal cpu

[atiVidia]

a wierd idea i came up with earlier

i still think it mite work

[Virtualbody1234]

Originally posted by bigdawgfoxx@5 April 2004 - 14:47
Well I know how to put a fan underneath the GPU, but there would still be the 60mm fan on there to make noise. So putting an 80mm fan on it wouldnt make it any quieter.

The fan on a GPU isn't 60mm. It's more like 40mm.

Anyway, I did remove that small fan. I still have intentions to add small heatsinks to the video ram chips and to replace the GPU heatsink with a better one. Perhaps a stock AMD cooler that I could cut so that it would be a low profile heatsink.