Looking for suggestions and advice....
I've been wanting to rebuild my rig for absolute silent running.
I recently changed out the PSU, vid card, and added a fan bus.
It's currently:
- Antec SX835 mid tower
- Zalman 400 PSU
- (4) 80mm Vantec Stealth fans tied to a fan bus in a 5 1/4 slot
- Sony 52X cdrom (loud spinner)
- IBM 80GXP drive (i dont mind hard drive spin noise as much)
- Radeon 9700 pro with Zalman ZM80A-HP heat pipe (huge heat sink, no fan)
Anyone else notice a slight buzzing from the capacitors on a fan bus when you under voltage the fans? (PC Toys black with blue LED fan controller
http://www.coolerguys.com/Merchant2/mer ... Code=F-Con) Are they all like that?
Things I'm considering doing...
- replace intel P4 stock heatsink with a new heatsink Zalman CNPS7000-cu on an Asus P4T533(C) not 533. It looks like the vid card clearance issue doesnt exist for the (C) model.
- buy an Antec Sonata case (heavy duty, with some sound reducing features)
- swap out Antec PS 380W with my Zalman 400PSU
- Tie the (1) 120mm rear case fan to my fan bus (I prefer to control the case fans myself)
I have concerns that the Antec Sonata case with only (1) 120mm fan will not give enough airflow to keep my vid card with heat pipe cool. Right now I have the (4) 80mm fans [2 front, 2 rear] running at half voltage via the fan bus. If I notice some visual glitches during full load (games) I'll tweak the intake fans a bit.
So basically a heavier duty case, new cpu heatsink, and the (1) 120mm case fan...
Thoughts and comments appreciated....
It will cost me another $200 and I'm hoping it will make a difference.
Also any quiet CDROM's on the market?
tks
Napalm
Advice needed: new silent rig list....
Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee
The buzz you're hearing is from the PWM circuitry from the fanbus. If I recall, PC Toys Fanbus is just a rebadged Vantec Nexus (not the PSU, its a fan controller). There's a lot of talk in the forums about its questionable quality of circuitry. Most have had luck returning it due to the buzzing. Some units of the fanbus exhibit the buzz more than others while some are even silent ... so its luck of the draw. Otherwise, I think your system sounds great... try it out with the low power 120 and the grill cut out before adding more fans. That much airflow out the back would blow over the HP80a nicely.