You can probably gain a little improvement by removing the 2nd 120mm fan. That will raise your HDD temps, though. If that were mine, I would leave the CPU/MB temps alone as they're way under where they need to be and set the fan speeds to keep the HDD under 40C. I can do that easily with a single fa...

Air that comes in through the bottom of the bezel does not bypass the air filter on a Sonata like it does on the 3700BQE.

Air that comes in through the Antec holes is not filtered.

My quest for silence began with the purchase of three Antec Sonatas. It continued with the purchase of many different types of fans and heat sinks. I'm pleased with where I've ended up. I've spent a lot of money, though. My brother complained about noise from the $35 case/PSU I gave him. A few minut...

Ralf Hutter wrote:So where does cool air enter the PSU?

The same place but my understanding is that it's now a different style grill. I'll try to get a picture in the next couple of days.


-- Tom

But how do you know this foam you bought is equal in noise reduction to the Acoustipack pre-cut for Sonata? I don't know this. I've built quite a few speaker projects both as a hobbiest and projects while I was an engineering student. I've played with quite a few different damping materials. It is ...

A buddy just receive a Sonata yesterday and he tells me the PSU has SATA power connectors and it doesn't have the slats in the front of the PSU, either.


-- Tom

*** The $6.99 CDN Princess Auto PC hush kit While at Princess Auto, I noticed they have PC hush kits on sale for $6.99 CDN. They were mis-marked as 0.5x19x48 closed cell foam mats. I picked up two. Princess Auto is the Canadian equivalent to Harbor Freight in the US. http://www.CarlsonSpeed.com/~tom...

JVM (or anyone), do you think it was worth it? I'd like to quiet the gentle whirr from 7200.7 drives inside my Sonatas. Will the foam make a noticable difference?

*** Opinion: stock sonata case fan versus OEM Panaflo I tried the Panaflo FBK-12G12LH in place of the stock sonata case fan and I find that it is not an improvement. At higher voltages, the Panaflo is definitely more quiet than the Antec. At 5v, however, I believe the Antec to be more quiet. Note th...

*** Antec vent closing on a Sonata Without the airflow mods, I found my MB and CPU temps went up 3 or 4 degrees when I plugged the Antec vents. Now that my case flows extremely well and I have fan speeds cranked back to ultra-low, I find that closing the Antec vents doesn't seem to make any differen...

*** Shot glass mod The feet on my Sonatas are very short, perhaps 1/4" high. They sink into the carpet in my office and this blocks airflow to the bottom of bezel. To fix this, I have my Sonatas sitting on shot glasses. The cases aren't glued or fastened to the shot glasses in any way. I'm not in an...

*** PSU airflow mod As well as the bezel mods, I also like to do the L1A fan swap on the PSU and bend the slats to improve airflow. The bending is done with a pair of needle nose pliers. Here's a Sonata PSU with the top slats bent, bottom slats stock... http://www.carlsonspeed.com/~tombrown/SilentCo...

Ralf Hutter wrote:Think you could fix it?

Ask and you shall receive, my silent computing friend.

Sorry, Sazarks. I thought you were talking about the power adapter cable.

I saw the sticky thread on sheet metal tools, but for things like the Sonata plastic mods, is there one tool that stands out (let's assume I have none right now, which I don't)? I used aviation snips (which have often been called tin snips... incorrectly, though) on my bezel. The Sonatta plastic cu...

lenny, Are you using sorbothane in your Sonata? I've got my 7200.7 mounted in the standard sonata frames with their little rubber bushings. I turned AAM on with an old Maxtor 5400 RPM (80 GB) drive and it made a big difference to the seek noise and some difference to the spindle whirr too. I recall ...

Sazaks, I bought my SATA power adapter at VibeComputers in Vancouver and it works just fine. It's not even that tight in my Sonata. Are you sure you've got your drive in the right mounting holes?

TrekNW, I have found the 120mm Panaflo L1A fans to be extremely noisy. They are vastly inferior to both the the OEM low speed Panaflos and the Stock Sonata case fans. As per lenny, I have found the stock Sonata case fan to be quieter than the OEM low speed Panaflo. The difference is extremely small,...

I think it's a good idea but unnecessary. You can buy a Rheobus from Vibe in Vancouver for 26 bucks CDN, a couple of 80mm L1A fans at 10 bucks each (plus 2 bucks each for the tails... chizlers), and you've got a quiet PC. If you have a 120mm fan, run it at 5v.

Something I think helps is to mount the drive in the second lowest slot and remove the other drive cages. I used to keep it up one slot (the second highest) and I used to leave the other cages in too. I thought the higher slot would put the drive more directly in the air flow and I thought the other...

I like the stock Antec Sonata fan but it was loud until I slowed it down from the "Fan Only" speeds. I'm using a Sunbeam Rheobus and like it quite well.

...But so far, my observations are that the new 7200.7 160 gig seagate 'cuda is relatively noisy, and too hot to run in a silent system. Very disappointed with the heat generation (running 42 currently, out of case, in smartdrive enclosure with lid off, ambient=20). My ST3160023S runs hot too. It's...

Unfortunately the only 80mm Panaflos I can find here in the UK are L1As, and I'm afraid that they're too slow to keep the PSU at a safe temperature. Any ideas? I'm running L1A fans in my Sonatas and I think they're fine. I've bent the intake slats to be parallel to the airflow and that seems to hel...

During a bunch of fan speed benchmarks I was doing on my desktop, I found that the MB temp went up by two degrees when the CPU fan is at it's highest setting on my Rheobus. The CPU cools better the faster I run the CPU fan but at it's max setting, the MB temp pops up two degrees, despite not having ...

I'm not that familiar with the various bus controllers, Rich. I browsed a lot of specs but the only controllers I've actually used are the Nexus and the Sunbeam Rheobus. I like the Sunbeam. They are extremely simple. It's just a 0 -> 11.5 volt pot for each channel. I run my 120mm Antec around 4.5 vo...

davidstone28 wrote:Cheers Buzz - I'll get I'll have to remove all the drives and poke a screwdriver in there!

That's what I did. It wasn't that difficult, actually.

Is it worth performing the L1A PSu fan swap? Does the supplied rear 120mm case fan need replacing / undervolting? (how?) Do I need to consider a front case fan? Will a 92mm Panaflo cut it (I can get those here in the UK but not the 120mm). I think the L1A PSU swap is very much worth it. At the same...

Oh another question, is on my SLK 800 if I use a panaflo 80 L and combine it with a zalman fanmate will I be running the 80 L too low for a hs fan? Should I just stick to default 12v on the hs fan? The 80mm Panaflo low flow will be fine. I run L1A fans on both my O/Ced Bartons (both have SLK-800A c...

I just swpaped back to the Antec fan in my desktop system. There's no question it is quieter and my system board temp shows 1C lower temp and my CPU temp shows 2C lower.


FWIW.

Marc, use USPS air. It will get here about as quickly and at a fraction of the price. No brokerage, only tax and a $5 handling fee on arrival. With one exception, I do not deal with any US organization which ships UPS only (which is most of them). The exception is TigerDirect.ca. They ship from a wa...