i'm be reading up on these sff machines

and I think this one here at newegg would be a perfect machine to recommend to a uncle who is now interested in getting his first PC.
And be a neat new projec for me=)

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDe ... 428&depa=1

according to here
http://us.shuttle.com/specs2.asp?pro_id=439

It already comes with the silenX PSU.

I was reading the SFF article MikeC did on the Zen sff with the outside PSU.
Would i need to suspend the HDD like in that article?

It only has one fan and that is a 80mm fan right? i should replace that with a 80mm panaflo M1A and cut out the back grill right? Is this fan thermally controlled? or do i need to set it at 7V or something?

I know that shuttle has this heatpipe deal for the cpu, does it have a fan anywhere on it?

How does a on-board video use ram? Lets say i put a 512 stick in there, would it take some of that ram and i only have like 384 for the computer use?

thx
~RaNDoM

In a word, no.

I've tried and have virtually given up (but with the SN41G2). Edward Ng has tried with the SN41G2V2 and has given up.

Remember that the SilentX PSU is NOT the external power supply that was reviewed with the Zen.

hey sthayashi

What was making all the noise?

I know the psu in the SN41G2V2 is inside, but i thought the silenX it comes with is pretty quiet.

I read Ed's gamma one project and i think i missed out on what was making noise. was it his vid card?

I was planning on using the on-board one, i dont think my uncle will be gaming anything hardcore.

and i was planning on using a mobile barton on stock speed, so wouldnt it run pretty cool?

And since i am not messing with bios, i wont get that no rebooting problem right?

~RaNDoM

If you run it with a Mobile Athlon XP at stock or understock voltage, you can get away with using a low speed case fan; mine was incredibly loud because the I.C.E. system is not the best system on Earth, not even close, and overclocking it as I was, I had to run a fairly fast fan. The video card was also quite loud, but it won't be an issue in your case.

Keep in mind, however, that SN41G2V2 has a serious hard drive noise issue as well, if everything else is quiet. The hard mounting and aluminum construction combine to cause this condition; my recommendation would be to suspend a laptop drive in it; the cage is far too tight to suspend a 3.5" drive, but a 2.5" drive with its smaller size, lower heat output, higher heat resistance and lower vibration would be an optimal choice to suspend within the Shuttle.

Also remember that the northbridge is actively cooled and there probably isn't enough space to fit a decent passive cooler on there (particularly considering you will be utilizing the onboard video, which will mean even more heat from the northbridge). I do not recall if my northbridge cooler was really loud or not, but that's mostly due to the rest of the system being on the loud side. The speed of that northbridge fan is controlled by the motherboard, based on temperatures.

The SilentX PSU is a massive improvement over the older PSU, MUCH quieter; however, whether as I said, it was hard to hear much of anything over the din of my case and video card fans.

Good luck to you, my friend, but might I recommend instead of the SN41G2V2, an Antec Aria with a mATX Socket A board with the Mobile Barton? Even if it comes with an active cooler, you can try it out and see if it's loud or not; if it's not loud, leave it and if it is loud, at least there's room enough to use a decent replacement sink like a Swiftech MCX-159 with the fan removed or maybe Zalman's passive cooler, which I've no hands-on experience with, but keep in mind Zalman does not recommend using their cooler on a northbridge with onboard video.

The fact that the Aria's PSU uses a 120mm fan alone makes it easier to mod for quieter operation, if it even makes much noise. Plus, the Aria is much more conducive to softmounting/suspending a 3.5" drive, which would save money (2.5" drives have higher $/GB cost). Those multilayer sound dampening panels look quite appealing, too.

-Ed

EDIT: PS I also want to just say that the Aria provides much more flexibility in choosing the cooler for the CPU, so you could utilize something better than the darn I.C.E. cooler, like an SLK-900A with a quiet fan.

For me, the two loudest components are the non-SilentX PSU and the Hard Drive. Since the machine actually sits about 3 meters away from typical operator position, the annoyance factor isn't that great for me (and thus why I haven't bothered to sink money into silencing it).

Someone on this forum actually complained about the SilentX PSU NOT being silent. You'll have to find out from them how loud it was, and how loud it is in comparison with other PSUs/fans.

I don't know why Edward Ng gave up on his Gamma One project. Again, you'll have to find out from him what was the problem.

Other things I've done towards silencing it, is to cut out the fan grill and replace the stock fan with an M1BX (and set the bios to spin the fan at a low setting). You'll have to determine whether this is a 'simple' job or not. Certainly, my silencing task is not done with this computer, but I don't have the cash left (after doubling my efforts to quiet my main machine again) to attempt to silence the SN41G2.

There is also a 3rd NB fan on the motherboard, though I have no idea how loud it is. It's another thing to keep in mind. Also, typical hard drive silencing techniques are more difficult to apply in this situation as well, since there is very little space available. Again, not a simple task, IMHO, especially compared to normal-sized computers.

PS - I just noticed that it sounded like YOU would be doing the modding and not your uncle. I would definitely not recommend this as a first time silencing project, but it's certainly a worthy challenge if you've silenced other machines in the past.

My reason for quitting on that project was already mentioned in the gallery thread for it at the very end; I killed two FN41V3 mainboards just trying out mild overclock settings in the CMOS. Such flimsy logic is highly nonconducive to my overclocking prerogatives, so I nixed that project and moved on to Gamma Two.

A tip for the Shuttle reps who will never read it anyway: If you're going to allow adjustment of voltages in your CMOS, do it right, so the board doesn't commit suicide when you change a voltage setting, save it and reboot. ABIT can do it, ASUStek can do it, Gigabyte can do it, EPoX can do it, AOpen can do it, MSI can do it; I can probably name another ten or so companies that do not have this ridiculous issue with their boards. Shuttle must fix this problem, or cut out the voltage control options entirely.

-Ed

Hey guys thx for the replies

I was not aware of the NB fan, i had one on my abit-nf7-s and i replaced it very easy with a cheap 5 dollar zalman thing, no problem for a long time now.

@Ed

I looked at the Antec Aria and i was not able to find any mATX mobo that were even decent in price and specs. Can you recommend any?

@sthayashi

This wont be my first quieting project. I was acually looking forward to a SFF machine as i have never even touched one yet. And since this will be a low power comp, i was thinking a SFF would be great for my uncle since he likes to save room and doesnt need a great vid card and extras like that.

He was impress with my quiet computers and would like me to make him one and i dont want to get him a SFF and be unable to do that.

o well, i'll think of something else.

thx for all the help guyz, you guyz prolly saved me some mad trouble as i am leaning to not getting this now

~RaNDoM

One last thing to consider is user position.

With most tower cases, it's more convenient to keep it under your desk rather than actually ON your desk. With an SFF computer, that's not necessarily the case. And with a computer that's actually ON your desk, you will have to work harder at silencing it since there is no desk in between the user and the computer. And often the computer is a lot closer than the 1m standard that we use for noise.

Were I to build a machine now, using an Aria, I'd go with this EPoX board.

And it happens to be passively cooled, to boot!

Just be sure to heed the reviewers' comments and avoid using GeIL RAM on this board (however, personally, I've had nothing but good experiences with my three sticks of GeIL Platinum PC3500).

-Ed

Whoa... Unless my eyes are deceiving me, they replaced the serial ports with VGA ports. Clever....

Yes; actually, I've seen that done several times; it's a pretty good idea, considering nowadays there's probably more people who want to use onboard video and even dual displays than a serial port.

-Ed

the epox mobo says something about 1.5V on the AGP slot. is that not normal? i never really thought about how much a card needs?

Are you building a system with the aria box Ed? i notice it doesnt have a floppy drive area.
People still need floppys dont they? i know my professors ask me to have a floppy with my report on it.

~RaNDoM

The only machine I own (four in my home, one is mom's, three are mine) that has a floppy is Sigma One, and that only because I had already put it in before for when it was my dad's computer. I keep one USB 2X Floppy drive laying around for doing BIOS updates, and that's all I ever use it for. The reason being that for all my professors that I had to submit files to, anything that fit on a floppy was more conveniently dealt with by e-mail. 1.44MB floppy is virtually worthless at this point.

No, actually, I've no reason for building a machine using Aria, being that I have built Gamma Two using the truly stupendous ABIT AN7 mainboard, a board among many whose featureset and overclocking capabilities couldn't even remotely begin to be challenged by any of the mATX boards on the market.

-Ed

Keeping the SN41G2-V2 is actually not that difficult. If you are comparing it to a fanless VIA mini-ITX board, you are gonna be disapointed no matter what you do. A more reasonable comparison to average mid to high end systems (which is what it is) can be a very different experiance. Keeping the unit relatively quiet simply requires a little reaserch on component selection, and a bit of common sense.

The Sunnon ICE fan is noisy, no doubt about it. A Vantec Stealth is much quieter and commonly available. There are quieter fans out there, but none of them are available at your corner computer store. Setting the Bios fan controls to "Fan 1 & 3 - Automatic" does a resonably good job of keeping the ICE and Northbridge fan speeds (noise) low during normal operation. While in the Bios, enable the "C1 Disconnect" option to reduce your CPU idle temperatures.

Harddrive noise transmitted through the cage into the frame of the machine has been examined at length in the past and there is a simple solution, buy a Samsung Spinpoint HDD. These are the quietest drives in production, and are very competitively priced to boot. (Two of these will soon be replacing the drives in my system.) I have used them in machines I have built for others using nothing more exotic than a soft washer from the Vantec fan vibration isolation kit on the four mounting screws for the drive, and they were dead silent.

A good choice of CPUs for these machines is the Mobile Athlon. They are factory unlocked due to the nature of "Power Now Technology" used in notebook systems, and they are rated to run on much lower voltage than a destop processor. Less voltage = less heat produced and less heat that needs to be dissipated by the fans. You can see in my sig that my own 2600M is slightly overclocked @ 2GHZ and undervolted @ 1.4v versus the rated 1.45v.

The SilentX PSU is unfortunatly not silent. It is however, much better than an unmodified 200w unit from the older G2s. The PSU in my girlfriend's E-Machine is no more powerfull but is much louder, so it is a very relative point. (I am in the process of quieting this unit even more than it already is, and I will post my results at a later date.)

These simple steps will bring the V2 to a much more livabe level with no exotic fans or major modifications. This is not an end all, be all setup for silencing the V2, just a good place to start. There are many more specialty parts and software temp monitoring / fan speed control programs that can be used to tune your system even more. My own quest for silence is leading me further, and further into the realm of the exotic and I have been enjoying the journey. Next mod up will be an external mounted 92mm Noiseblocker fan on my ICE cooler, we shall see.....

What is this, "Dual BIOS Mod," that you speak of?

I installed an IOSS Bios Savior that I puchased from PCmods.com, which is now sadly going out of business. The kit adds a second Bios chip that I can switch to when doing a Bios flash. This way I can use winflash to load the newest Bios for my machine without worry of a bad flash (a common problem on nForce2 systems). If it goes bad I can switch back to the good Bios and try again, luckily I have never had to do this.

You can read the tutorial I did on this install on Sudhian Forums. The origional install was performed on an SN41G2 and was later updated with minor changes when I transfered the unit to my current rig.

@ Nieko

You are the second person i have read that says the silenx psu is not quiet. is it because your system is generating to much heat?

I was planing on building a pretty light system

mobile athlon 2400
512 ram
80 gig samsung
either on-board vid or radeon 9200
changing the exhaust fan with a panaflo M1A
passive cool the NB
no OCing


how quiet is ur system from a meter away?

~RaNDoM

My box sits one meter from my head on my desktop. The SilentX250 isn't really noisy, it just isn't silent. It is less noisy than an unmoddified 200w Shuttle/Achme PSU, but more noisy than the same 200w unit modded with an ADDA 0412MS-G70 fan. I have had both, and I wish I had my 200 back.

i'm sorry

it is kind of late now and i dont think you answered my question if i am reading it right.

about how quiet is it from a meter?
Can you compare it to anything? a little fan noise? wind being push? any clicking? humming?

Is the modded 200 silent? or just quieter then the 250 silenx?

Could you mod the silenx with those adda fans?

thx for the input
~RaNDoM

Nieko --

Can you be sure you are not hearing the 2 rather noisy drives in you rig? You can isolate the PSu noise that clearly?

It is not seriously noisy. It has a high pitched bearing noise in the fans that can be mildly iritating if you have sensative ears like I do.
The modded 200w unit I had was almost totaly silent, I had to put my ear less than 12" from the case to hear it.
I don't know if the ADDAs will move enough air in the 250. Factory it comes with (2) 40x20mm fans the ADDAs are only 10mm thick.
I will be in posession of a spare PSU next month and I will be modding that one to try to silence it. I'll post my results.

My Seagate is silent (except for the seek noise) the way I have it mounted. I tested for PSU noise before I installed the Raptor (going bye-bye soon!) by momentarily turning off the ICE and Northbridge fans. So yeah, I'd say I isolated it pretty well.