As such, I've never had the inclination to make it especially quiet or spend money on it to make it so. The visuals will prove that I didn't even bother with proper cable management. Still it contains some interesting ideas and the end result is surprisingly quiet.
First the case. It's an AOpen H600 case that was *once* nice and piano-black shiny!!. In my efforts to improve airflow I've messed up the case really bad. The rear 80mm exhausts are heavily twisted. I also made a 120mm hole at the bottom that didn't quite work out at the time. Now, maybe it will
Next an overall view:
The hardware is the following:
Epox 8KMMI+ board with VIA integrated VGA
Athlon XP 2000+ (The palomino core makes this a 70W monster)
Spire falconrock heatsink with a Yate Loon medium fan on top
A 3-year old 300W FSP PSU (300-60ATV, non PFC)
Seagate 40B Barracuda IV (the best part
)Antec 120mm fan from the Sonata case
Way too cheap supposedly soundproofing material that does absolutely nothing.
Folder cardboard for partitioning
I once talked about this PSU mod in the forums. In the below pictures you see how the 6-pin AUX connector from the PSU ended up looking like. That gives me two 3.3V and one 5V molex connections.
I tried a layout change in this case. I put the PSU at the bottom, right in front of the 120mm bottom hole. I cut out the rear PCI slots to allow easy exhaust. You'll see bits of melamine foam between the PSU and the case bottom - that's to keep the PSU from rattling the side panel.
In place of the normal PSU location, I used folder cardboard covered on both sides with that sound-dampening material to make sure the air goes in ONLY through the 120mm and speedily out the case. The area is pretty tight leaving no room for proper fan securing. I used bits of melamine to ensure the fan doesn't transmit vibrations to the case.
And the fastest, easiest suspension ever. Took me less than 1 min to rig it up.
The CPU fan (a Yate Loon salvaged from an old PSU, I don't even remember which one) is hooked up to the 5V line. I tried the 3V line too but the sound & temp difference was negligable.
The PSU has a Globe medium sleeve bearing fan inside permenantly hooked up to the 5V line. It's running at around 1400 rpm. The globe fan is directly comparable to the Panaflo M1A in airflow & noise.
The exhaust Antec 120mm fan is hooked up to the 3.3V line. With the melamine supporting the frame it's essentially silent.
Now for temps:
After an hour of folding:
Ambient: 28C
CPU : 49C
Seagate: 43C
Case : 41C
How quiet is it? I can distinctly hear the Globe fan in the PSU and the Seagate. Everything else is inaudible. There's also some disagreement between the PSU & the seagate
which is the most annoying part but the whine comes & dissapeares at times for no particular reason.Some melamine to absorb the hdd noise and a shroud for the PSU intake & exhaust would probably drop noise levels to those of my other rigs but I really can't be bothered - at least not for some time.
The assembly is very ghetto, normally I'd be ashamed of showing it around. But considering the amount of time and money I spent putting it together, I'm very pleased with the results. The top 120mm exhaust works great.
