Hi
I have the enermax PSU as used in the quietenin thermistor PUS article.
I modded it in a different way though, and wish to know if you guys think it is safe....? Or safish :p
I opened it and have disconnected the 92mm TOTALLY, so no noise there. I took the thermistor off the coil, and have it wedged in open space away from lots of heat. Hopefully quieten it down
ANd then i have turned the RPM right down using knob on back.
Its a LOT quieter, but will it be safe?

It is powering an athlon 1.2, 2 cd drives, 2 hard drives, sb live platinum and a fan.

A factor that should work in my favour is the case. It is in a YY cube - please look http://www.thewarfields.com/YYCubeCase6.htm there to see what i mean. (its not my site, but i have the same case ) The PSU is in its own compartment and i have nothing above it, and nothing near it producing heat.

20mins at idle its still cool air coming out of it, which is reasurring. I am going to put it under load and see if it stays cool....

Comments appreciated

That sounds pretty good...

I've got the exact same PSU as the article. The inner fan screams loudly all day long but the outside fan never ever spins (too cool? or just dead?).

When I stop the inner fan with a screw driver the whole PC is insanely quiet. My goal now is to either replace the noisy Enermax PSU fans or to get an entirely new PSU.

Can the inner fan be replaced or is it stuck on the circuit board? If both fans can be replaced what brand/part numbers should I get? Panaflow??

If the inner fan can't be replaced, can someone please recommend a PSU that is >truly< 100% quiet.

Chunker,

I have the same Enermax PSU you're describing. The outer fan (the 80mm) will only spin if you have its power lead connected to the 3 pin fan header on your motherboard. You might want to check it see if it's plugged in. Look in the wire bundle coming out of the PSU for a lead with a little 3pin fan plug at the end of it, that'll be it.

Yes, you can remove the internal fan. (the 92mm) its a stock fan mounted conventionally to the inside of the PSU shell.

For replacement fans Panaflo's or Papst's are a safe bet.

In my PSU I removed the 80mm fan completely and replaced the 92mm with a Papst running at 7volts. For more details of my PSU mod, as well as the rest of my weirdo system check out: Rusty's Quiet In-Desk PC

I just did a similar mod to my parent's Enermax PSU this last week. I took out the 92mm fan completely, grill and all (and brought it home with me :p). The thermistor for the 80mm fan wasn't stuck right on the coil as seen with others, but I placed it on the outflow side of the CPU cooler.

I removed a couple other fans at the same time (side intake and front intake) so its tough to know what the difference is just w/out the 92mm fan. However, running an Athlon 1800 w/ one Seagate 60gb Barracuda IV drive, the temps are staying put just fine. The exhaust from the PSU is a bit warmer than the exhaust from the case fan right below it, but I expected that.

However, I just got a comment from my mom about a 'noisy fan', so dunno what's up yet. Hopefully not too much, as I just got home to SoCal from their place in Washington state.



Zyzzyx
- back home, cozy in his 3 computer heated bedroom

Yeah, the PSU lead for the outer fan is in the "system fan" plug on the mobo. It has never ever spun. The bios util says it runs at 0 rpm. Is the mobo responsible for telling the fan to spin or is that cable just to inform what its RPMs are?

Can I join 2 wires on that plug to get the outer fan spinning or is there more to it?

I'm just trying to track down some Panaflow fans in Vancouver so I'll be opening the PSU very soon. Considering the noise made by just the inner fan maybe not having the outer fan spin is a good thing..

The wires on that plug are what provide the power to that fan, as well as RPM monitoring. Do you have the version that has the manual adjustment knob on the back? You might try fiddling with that. Even if you're PSU is running cool that fan should be running, albeit at a lower speed than when hot. You could clip the little 3 pin connector off and attach a normal Molex power connector to it. That way you could plug it directly into the power supply, althoug you would lose RPM monitoring that way.

Just a hunch....Try plugging it into another fan header on your motherboard, if you've got one. If you don't try switching them around; plug the cpu fan into the "system fan" header and the PSU fan into the CPU fan's header. Then see fire it up and see if they both start. I've had a couple of boards that have had dead fan headers. But if the System Fan header is dead then your fan that you have on your CPU isn't going to start. If that happens turn your system off right away!

When i remove the 80mm/unplug it, the psu cuts power after a few secs?
Where should i unlug it?