Replaced zalman for papst...but in a slightly unorthodox way

[zalmanhater]

Some of you might remember my post about a 15 days ago: I am the unlucky owner of zalman 7700 alcu thingie. While heatsink itself is a high quality piece of aluminum and copper hardware, the fan fails to deliver promised acoustic performance. It only got worse once the bearings started to hiss...so I got my hands on papst 4412 120mm fan, installed it and...WHAT A DIFFERENCE! The only thing I hear from underneath the desk now is slight humming of HDD (crappy old maxtor 6y120lo)...basically, I have to concentrate really hard just to notice compute is on.
Warning: the following picture might not meet high aesthetical criteria of this forum's members, it might even cause shock I didn't want to cut papst fan, because I think it's too good to be destroyed, even for such a noble cause.
It was completed in less than an hour.
And now, for your viewing pleasure:



I used cheap perforated tin ribbon (I hope this is its real name), cut and modified it so the fan sits directly on top of heatsink, used about 10 cable ties to attach these two rails to case and fan to rails. Piece of cake.
It spins at 1100 rpm (fanmate max setting), keeps CPU at 37-38 degrees C (idle)...about 3-4 dgrs. less than with zalman crappy fan at same speed.

Mission accomplished.

Step 2: replacing HDD for something faster and quieter. MY pick: 250GB diamondmax 10 (w/16MB cache). Whaddaya think?

Cheers.

[neo_tofu]

I've seen some other mods with the zalman but yours is the first done like that...

interesting

[ultraboy]

Just curious, how's the cooling effectiveness with fan above Zalman HS instead of inside it? I thought CNPS 7xxx design would make it best cooled with fan inside it to take advantage of wind coming out of fan blade tip.

[zalmanhater]

As I said before: CPU idles at 37-38 degrees, which is only 10 degrees above ambiental temperature (summer has finally come:)
Under full load (prime95, 1 hour test) temp goes up to 45 degrees. My guess is that it'll never pass 50 degrees even in the hottest summer days. But that's not even important - I'm just so happy system is *so* quiet now.
BTW due to large quantities of fresh air being pulled into the case, front air filter gets dusty and clogged pretty quickly. When that happens, idle temp goes to 40 - still no big deal.
Another interesting thing about these "rails"/ribbons is that they absorb all vibrations (even papst produces some). Good!

I also got a maxtor onetouch case with fried electronics from my cousin and used it to quiet the hard disk (until now by far the loudest component in the computer). This case features lovely, chunky rubber disk mounts, so I pulled the original disk cage, installed the maxtor drive case (modified, not to impede airflow) and voila: disk is a lot, lot quieter. No more vibration throughout the computer case, seeking noise is considerably lower. Bingo!

The only thing I now hear, when I sit next to the computer, is slight whooshing. My rig's bowels may not be visually and aesthetically appealing, but damn, this thing is quiet.

Mission accomplished.