quiet PC

[Chris Aitken]

Madison Kelly wrote:

> Hi,
>
>    May I make a few suggestions?
>
>    I build (and have been building) systems for some time now and to be
> honest the current crazy to stick a fan on everything (which I admit to
> being swpet up in a few years ago) is a waste for almost all
> applications. The hard drive cooling fan can almost certainly go. Even
> the Seagates, which I love and get notoriously hot, are fine without
> auxiliary cooling.
>
>    Now I assume by chassis you mean the fan built into the power supply.

Yeah - you're right - it's not on the chassis - it's attached to the power
supply.

>
> Am I right or is there a seperate auxiliary case fan?

Interestingly enough, no. Odd for a full tower (maybe two feet tall), no?

> At any rate, Antec
> Inc. makes an 80mm cooling fan with a hub-mounted thermistor that only
> raises the speed of the blades (and thereby the sound levels) when a
> certain thresh hold temperature is exceeded (lowest thresh hold is 20oC
> where it start to climb from 1630rpm @ 21dBA pushing 28CFM and climb up
> through to 50oC where it hits 2900rpm @ 34.5dba pushing 45CFM).
> Replacing the PSU fan with this one would require a little monkey work
> and would have to be comfortable working IN a power supply but if you
> know how to be safe around capacitors then it is a relatively easy hack.
>
>    On the more expensive but easier front I would recommend the Antec
> VAR series SX1000 II mid tower chassis with an Antec TruePower 330 power
> supply. I build alot of boxes around that chassis and power supply and
> it is about as quiet as they get. In fact, if  Micheal Galea here on the
> list is willing, he has one of my boxes with that chassis and PSU. It
> has two auxiliary 80mm fans that are powered by a variable speed circuit
> built into the PSU. It also has two more 80mm variable speed fans built
> into the PSU exhausting the chassis air in series. All this translaets
> to a chassis that exhausts plenty of air without producing virtually any
> noise. In fact, the CD-ROM spinning up usually doubles the audio
> pressure leaving the chassis :D.

Well, thanks for all the information here. I'll print this out and take it
with
me to Honson - I'll probably get them to do this. I'm up in Timmins now - I
guess I should really develop a relationship with a PC store up here.

Chris

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