Hi Guys,

When I bought my PSU a few years ago I wasn't realy into silent PC. In the meanwhile my eyes have opened and a year ago I changed the noisy fan in the PSU with a more silent Noctua 1200rpm. However, as you may no, quiet is never quiet enough. Therefore I'd like to turn down the rpm of the fan. I'm planning to do this by connecting the Noctua to a 7 Volt molex. My questions are:

-Will this provide enough cooling to prevent my house from burning to the ground?

-Will the PSU start when there is no fan connected to the PSU itself?

-I read that the pressure of the Nocuta's is not that good. Is it wise to change the fan for, for example, a Nexus real silent?


Used hardware:

TG480-U15




Noctua

NF-S12-1200

Short version:
My 480W U15 PSU has been working for months with an S-FLEX 1600rpm at 5-6V without problems. I have a quite power hungry system (160W+ idle) in an Antec P182

long version:
I have the same PSU and have replaced the Fan with an S-FLEX 1600rpm. At first I connected the fan to the PSU's fan controller which I measured to provide ~4.8V when my system was idling. Because it was in the middle of the summer and the (little) air coming out of the PSU was rather hot, I connected the fan to an external fan controller and fed it with ~6V (lowest setting on AKASA fan controller). Note that I did that only because I felt the air rather warm for my liking, although the PSU had already worked fine for several days like this.
Now that the winter has finally kicked in I'm thinking about connecting the fan again to the PSU's controller to lower the speed.

My system consists of a MASSIVELY overvolted Athlon XP (~2.1vCORE) running at 2300Mhz on an Abit NF7-S, with a GF4 Ti 4600 VGA, TV tuner, 3 optical drives, 1 raptor 74Gb and one plain 7200rpm storage drive. The PSU is in the bottom chamber of a P182, along with the 2 hard drives, with the Fan removed. I always have the door of the case open and have also moded the front grill to make it more open (I have kept the filter on).

I don't have the idea that my Noctua fan is controlled at all. It is always very audible. I have another one in my system which runs at 5 volt and that one is very quiet. I'll try placing the PSU at the bottom of the case (cooler master stacker). I think this should be possible. Then I'll let the fan run at 7 Volt (fixed).

Anyone alse have suggestions?

Bad news: My heavily modded Tagan U15 has died with a bang. I haven't checked yet if it has taken anything else down with it (Mobo etc)

I just switch the PC on one morning and heard abuzzing of increasing volume, until after 5-6 seconds it ended with a bang and the PC shut down immediately. Some smoke came out of the PSU.

To the PSU's defense, it has been working hard for a lot of time now, and has undergone various mods, to raise the 3.3V line to 3.7V, replace the fan with a slower S-Flex etc. Some time ago I replaced a bunch of badcaps inside it. It had developed a loud whine which ended with the cap replacement.

I will crack it open soon to see if there is anything fixable, or at least claim my precious S-Flex back!

For what it's worth, a while ago my Tagan also died. Same bang after startup...

Well my PSU has been through hell for about 5 years, so I can't complain, although I would have liked it to last longer

EDIT: I just took the PSU out of the PC and opened it up. There was a blown 10A fuse inside, which I tried to replace. When I tried to turn it on with a new fuse it blew it again. So the problem is deeper and the fuse was just doing its job there.

Fuses don't cause smoke