quiet at high load psu's

gb115b · Post by **gb115b** » Mon Jun 11, 2007 11:29 am

hi...need a bit of advice..

my system is as follows

quad core 6600
9*500GB HDs (mix of seagates / samsungs / wds etc)
1* areca RAID card
1* 7600GS passive video card
4* 1GB ECC DRAM

and 1* Seasonic S12 650W PSU

at idle the noise fromt the seasonis drowns out 9HDs...doesn't seem right, i've tried another seasonic - same problem.

any advice??

nutball · Post by **nutball** » Mon Jun 11, 2007 11:50 am

Are you sure it's the PSU making the noise? How have you tested this?

What's your airflow configuration?

For info I have a server with a Seasonic 380 and seven hard drives, and the hard drives dominate the noise of the PSU.

s_xero · Post by **s_xero** » Mon Jun 11, 2007 12:12 pm

I agree with the balls and nuts

Wibla · Post by **Wibla** » Mon Jun 11, 2007 12:16 pm

My Tagan 480W is running near silent with almost the same setup.. 9 HDDs, 3ware card, 2600+, 1.5GB ram... what kind of case do you have?

gb115b · Post by **gb115b** » Tue Jun 12, 2007 1:20 am

it's a chenbro sr106 (with a lot of acoustic insulation added)

it contains 4 fans (scythe E models - 120mm) which are controlled by speedfan. (oh, there's one inaudible 40mm fan on the areca controller)

i can turn the fans off and all i hear is the psu (and some whine from the HDs)

i just set my areca card to spin down the hds when idle...seasonic goes quiet...nice very quiet server...

but as soon as the drives are accessed and they all spin up, the psu kicks into overdrive again... i can't do any proper measurement, but it's loud.

gb115b · Post by **gb115b** » Tue Jun 12, 2007 1:23 am

any idea what my idle power requirement would be?

Wibla, it could be that the Q6600 combo with 4GB Ram is suckign down too much juice...

Das_Saunamies · Post by **Das_Saunamies** » Tue Jun 12, 2007 9:30 am

A single, high-quality 120mm fan drowning out 9 HDDs just sounds wrong. Have you tried stop-and-go with the fan to verify that it is, without a doubt, the actual source? Listening and even logic may fail, or at least that's what happened to me, so now I use a small screwdriver to stop a fan I suspect of making noise, 100% certainty.

It's strange for the PSU to go full blast right away after the HDDs start spinning, so maybe that's a problem for a rail or inner mechanics otherwise. Tried other manufacturers' PSUs?

continuum · Post by **continuum** » Tue Jun 12, 2007 10:00 am

gb115b wrote:any idea what my idle power requirement would be?

Wibla, it could be that the Q6600 combo with 4GB Ram is suckign down too much juice...

Not much... 150W tops.

Are you sure you're getting enough airflow through the chassis so that the PSU isn't providing a majority of the cooling?

gb115b · Post by **gb115b** » Tue Jun 12, 2007 10:05 am

psu is in a seperate chamber...

also the fact that the noise is only on HD spin up indicates its a power issue but if you say my cpu + ram would be 150W
+ 10 HDs and GPU would easily make 250-300W with everything...

then i guess my PSU is behaving roughly according to the review on here...

jaldridge6 · Post by **jaldridge6** » Tue Jun 12, 2007 11:45 am

PSU is probably broken...... an idle seasonic drowning out 9 harddrives? that is impossible on a working unit. the seasonic will be quieter than ONE hd, let alone 9!!! My samsung 501LJ is at least four or five times louder than my seasonic 380. In fact, the harddrive is that much louder than the rest of the system combined. my one harddrive is the only thing in my case that makes even the slightest noise.

gb115b · Post by **gb115b** » Tue Jun 12, 2007 11:51 am

2 PSUs? both broken?

the seasonic is not idle - it had to power a fair bit of kit in my rig!

so i wouldn't say impossible...esp as my HDs are surrounded my sound insulating foam.

if it is down to power draw (and i reckon i could be pulling down 300+W ?maybe?) the 650 would be hovering round 25-30 db...

i think that'd be louder than the 9hds...

is there any good way of measuring the power draw of my machine?