Quiet 60mm fan to silence Playstation 2?

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zsazs
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Quiet 60mm fan to silence Playstation 2?

Post by zsazs » Sat Jan 25, 2003 10:41 am

Due to some rather unfortunate events, I've had to make my PS2 my main DVD player. The PS2's fan noise has always bothered me but when watching movies it's even worse. Fortunately, it looks like the PS2 uses a fairly standard 60mm fan, just modified a bit for a nice fit in the unit. No idea what voltage it is though, as I don't want to clip the leads just yet.

Unfortunately, it seems like there's not many quiet 60mm fans out there. Only one is mentioned in the Recommended Fans article, the JMC 6025-12MB TB. I haven't yet found a place that sells it. I'd like to keep using a 60mm fan to keep my PS2 looking as stock as possible.

By the way, just disconnecting the fan makes the unit shut down according to this page (Babelfish translation), so it's there for a good reason. :)

GamingGod
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Post by GamingGod » Sat Jan 25, 2003 12:02 pm

i feel your pain Ive been using my ps2 to watch dvds and that sucker is loud. Ive been thinking about putting it in some type of enclosure to block some of the noise, but i would be careful cause after playing games for several hours you can really feel the heat coming from that little fan so dont even think about going passive with it, it definately needs at least the amount of airflow its getting. If you find away to quiet it down maybe you could tell me what you did so i can do the same :D

SilentButDeadly
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Post by SilentButDeadly » Sat Jan 25, 2003 2:32 pm

Vantec makes a 60mm fan that uses a thermal sensor,
Very quiet when it is cool, will spin up when the going gets hot. Not sure if a 60x25mm fan will fit (don't have a PS2) but you can mount it external to the case intake and see how it works. 8)

Justin_R
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Post by Justin_R » Sat Jan 25, 2003 6:06 pm

In this thread, mudboy says he got a 60x15mm Panaflo from Digikey that's rated at 21db.

Phoner
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Post by Phoner » Tue Mar 11, 2003 9:00 pm

Did anyone ever do this mod? I just found this thread and I would love to quiet down my PS2.

GamingGod
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Post by GamingGod » Wed Mar 12, 2003 10:39 am

I would be cautious, the stock LOUD fan pushes a good bit of air. And at least on my ps2 after a few hours of gaming it is pushing out fairly warm air. But if you do try it, I would love to hear about it. Im just too much of a wuss to try it myself.

marc999
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Post by marc999 » Mon Jun 16, 2003 1:57 pm

Im just too much of a wuss to try it myself.
What, you don't mind messing around you ~$1000 computer but you're afraid to touch your $200 PS2 ? :D

Anyway, I was just wondering about this too so I decided to do a search and low and behold he's the post. Unfortunately, no concrete info. Any new developments / info anyone ?

AndrewC
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Post by AndrewC » Mon Jun 16, 2003 3:06 pm

If you find someway to attach an 60 to 80 adapter on the outside you could put a L1A on it and that would be quiet. Is there any possiblity of just hot glueing the adapter on?

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Post by Wedge » Mon Jun 16, 2003 4:42 pm

AndrewC wrote:If you find someway to attach an 60 to 80 adapter on the outside you could put a L1A on it and that would be quiet. Is there any possiblity of just hot glueing the adapter on?
This is just a guess, but I doubt the L1A would put out enough air to keep it adequately cooled. I'm just basing that off of the info in this thread. I do not own a PS2.

marc999
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Post by marc999 » Tue Jun 17, 2003 11:15 am

Well I just opened my PS2 last night. This thing is packed pretty tight and not very easy to work with. I cut away the plastic fan grills with tin snips. Anyway, you should see the heatsink at the top. Totally bunk !! It looks like something out of the dark ages (please note I didn't look at the bottom "layer" just the top as I would have to take out more ribbon cables to get to the bottom layer and they are really tough to get back in). This puppy could easily have been passively cooled if weren't for economics (I guess you can't really complain when they sell you the thing for less than what it costs to make). Anyway, I accidentally cut the wires to the 60mm stock fan, so I'm just going to do a twist with electrical tape job. Based on the bunk heatsinks, I'm sure an L1A will do just fine, I may even add a Zalman resistor which Mike said would put it around 9V (of course, I assume the stock fan is receiving a 12V feed ..... hopefully I am correct). I think I'll just velcro it to the back, I would like to use the adaptor as I think I would get better airflow but I don't know where to get them here in Calgary and I've already ordered a tonne of stuff from the States. Anyway, I'll let you'all know how it goes.

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Post by AndrewC » Tue Jun 17, 2003 4:53 pm

Pics please for those of us without a PS2 to open up and you could use a multimeter to measure the voltage for the fan feed.

marc999
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Post by marc999 » Wed Jun 18, 2003 10:11 am

Good news, found a place here in Calgary where I can get the 60->80mm adaptor. I may have to wait until early next week though. Hopefully it'll be here on Friday so I can work on it on the weekend.

AndrewC, thanks for the tip. I will go buy a multimeter today. And yes I'll snap a few pics too. My computer at home is having some serious problems so I've been using the computer here at work, but I won't be able to use it for uploading pics, so it may take awhile. Especially considering it's a MOBO issue and to get it fixed may take awhile. Maybe I'll just install WinXP on my spare Barracuda/Gigabyte until my new MOBO is fixed (if they can/will fix it).

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Post by marc999 » Tue Jul 15, 2003 9:28 am

Bad news. I've failed miserably. :(

Okay, now down to the details. The PS2 is probably about the most annoying, un-userfriendly thing to work with. Everything is cramped up and they have this stupid ribbon cable thing going on to connect things, and unless you have hands the size of a two year old, two pairs of hands, needle-nose pliers, and a whole $hit load of patience, you're in BIG TROUBLE. Anyway, when I took the stock fan off, I accidentally tore the wires, which is fine I guess since I would have had to anyway to connect a new fan. Last night I tried attaching a fan to those wires but nothing hapenned. I tried switching the polarity, nothing. I checked the voltage with my new multimeter and it gave me really wonky values that made no sense. I've never used one of these things before, so maybe I'm doing something wrong, however the one I bought is auto-range selecting, and I did choose DC voltage, so it's not either of those two things. So I don't even know what voltage the PS2 feeds the fan.

There is the option of trying to get the new fan's bare wires to attach to the power source, instead of twisting them together with the old fan's wires, but to actually get to where this happens is beyond my patience level. It's hard to explain, but it's like a giant maze of metal plates and silicon wafers sandwhiched together layer over layer and I just don't know how to get there.

Anyway, I don't know if I'll be able to get all those damn ribbon cables back where they're supposed to go, and even if I do I won't have a fan, so needless to say it looks like I'll have to buy a new PS2.

It's frustrating though because there is enough room on the back of the PS2 for an 80mm fan. In a way, I was close to success though. If the fan spun when hooked up to the old fan's wires I would have been in the clear (assuming the fan didn't draw too much power - the "power supply" in the PS2 was so small I couldn't even ID it, so it must not be able to put out very much DC power). I finally got the logistics down of how I was actually going to do it. I basically removed the old fan and it's frame, and cut out the grill on the back, plus a little bit more to make everything look clean. I was going to just mount the new 80mm on the back with Velcro on the flat surfaces around the grill that I trimmed.

With an NMB or Panaflow I'm sure there would be enough air flow. Unfortunately, at least for me, it sure doesn't seem like a simple "fan swap". Damn Sony (and the whole other computer world for that matter) for not taking SIMPLE steps to reduce noise levels. :evil:

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Post by marc999 » Tue Oct 07, 2003 2:55 pm

Well, now I've got good news: SUCCESS!! :D

Things changed on my brother's birthday party. He invited a bunch of guests, one of which was a really nerdy/smart kid. Anyway, I showed him my system and he offered to help. He came over one Saturday and was able to get everything back together (which is difficult because of the ribbon cables) and measure the voltage that the PSU feeds the fan.

Turns out the voltage to the fan is 4.75 to 5V. I suspect that the fan didn't turn because I was assuming a 12V feed from the power supply so I hooked up an extremely low RPM fan (NMB B19 with is slower than an L1A at 12V). Either that or maybe it was because I didn't strip the insulation from the wires of the PSU feed. Duh!! :D It sounds kinda obvious but I thought the wires were already stripped because they were so incredibly thin and the wire insulation looked and felt metal like.

Anyway, so I figured a Panaflow M1A would be good and we hooked it up. Everything would be OK except one of those damn ribbon cables had a tear in it. I called around and found out that Sony does not provide parts for PS2 to electronic shops, and that you had to get all repairs done by them for a flat rate of $140 CAD. That was no good so I finally found a shop that would kinda work around this restricion. The shop must have got the cable from another busted one - for $90!! Oh well, better than $140 and this way I could keep my mod.

So I got it back from the electronics repair shop this past Saturday and attached an M1A with a bungee cord. It's kinda ugly but it works. I cut away the grill so that there is a slightly larger hole for the larger 80mm M1A fan. The fan overhangs the hole somewhat (so little that I didn't think using the 60 to 80mm fan adaptor was neccessary or even a good idea). I had it on for six hours straight Saturday night, playing it most of the time. No problems. The air coming out is just slightly warm.

In retrspect, this mod is not that hard, as long as you follow this one simple rule: DO NOT TAKE THE PS2 APART!!! Just cut out the old fan and grill while the unit is intact. The only scary part is to make sure you don't pull the fan wires (from the power supply) out from the unit itself. The fan wires are integrated into the lower left part of the grill if I remember correctly. As long as you go slowly and gently, you should get a clean break in the fan wire near your grill cut-out. Then you can strip that and hook up the M1A. (I cut out the tach wire and shortened the black and red wires considerably so that I didn't have a bunch of wire restricting airflow).

I would post pics but I don't have anywhere to host them and I don't believe the SPCR server will. If anyone wants to see pics (of the final product - I'm not doing this all over again) and can provide me a place to host them, I'd be happy to provide them!!

PS2 is so much more enjoyable now that it doesn't give me a headache. The M1A at 5V is pretty much silent!! :D

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Post by Wedge » Tue Oct 07, 2003 3:13 pm

marc999 wrote: Things changed on my brother's birthday party. He invited a bunch of guests, one of which was a really nerdy/smart kid.
Thanks, this is the kind of appreciation I get ???

j/k wasn't me :lol:

Congratulations on this. Took you a while to sort, but I bet it feels worth it. Did you happen to test out that M1A at 12v?

starsky
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Post by starsky » Tue Oct 07, 2003 3:52 pm

marc999, I am happy to upload images to my box if you want.

just mail them to me [email protected]

Trip
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Post by Trip » Tue Oct 07, 2003 6:37 pm

Is there a way you could just take some card out or something and attach it to your computer and allow it to play PS2 games? ought to make it like that, doubt they do. Saw an article where some people actually removed the whole thing and added it in addition to several other gaming consols to a PC. Guess it'd be quieter and cleaner, don't see any other advantage.

ADDA seems to make good 60mm fans by the way. SPCR has a really complete fan list somewhere on this site. That other one is older from what I understand.

marc999
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Post by marc999 » Tue Oct 07, 2003 8:18 pm

I just spend like twenty mintues typing out this great response, and now the SPCR server didn't take it and when I hit back it's now all gone. :evil:
So anyway, it's late and I'll have to make this short and to the point.

Wedge,
the M1A @ 12V is way too loud (as I've tested it at 12V on my PC before). Anyway, at 5V I believe it is actually cooling better than the stock 60mm fan because of the increased pressure that an 80mm fan offers, and the increased air flow that the cut out grill provides.

starsky,
Thanks, I will take you up on that offer and email you some pics soon. By the weekend the latest, but hopefully tomorrow. Oh yeah, and you may want to edit your email address a little so the spammers don't get it.

Trip,
I'm not aware of any card like that. I believe PS1 (not 2) had something like that made by a 3rd party.

Trip
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Post by Trip » Tue Oct 07, 2003 8:34 pm

Thanks for the response, Im gonna look for that 3'rd party card you're refering to, wonder if it's legal (though I wouldn't really mind as my roommate had one of those things til we dropped it so we really already purchased it) I had heard of software that allowed you to download a copy of the game onto the computer but never something that allowed you to read an actual PS game from an optical drive. I have nestical on my comp. (for NES games) but don't know too much about those type things.

"I just spend like twenty mintues typing out this great response, and now the SPCR server didn't take it and when I hit back it's now all gone."

I hate that, use Ctrl+C before you send.

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Post by GamingGod » Wed Oct 08, 2003 2:44 am

LOL im glad i didnt try that, I would have murdered someone if I had to go through all that stress. Im glad it worked out for you though.

marc999
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Post by marc999 » Wed Oct 08, 2003 4:45 pm

Trip,
I just had a flashback and the product was called Bleem. It actually may be all software based. I'm not sure if it's available anymore. Here's a link I found about it:
http://www.megagames.com/psx/psx_bleem!.shtml

GamingGod,
Yes is kinda insane isn't it? When I tell my friends that I modded my PS2 because it was "too loud" they look at me like I've got a dick on my forehead or something. Well, except for one friend of mine, who can actually meet my level of nerdiness and perhaps even exceed it!! :D

P.S. - Natalie Portman is hot. She looks especially good in Episode 2 in that tight white outfit. Mmmmmmmm. I wonder if silent PS2s make her HOT and WET. If so I'm like soooooo in.

GamingGod
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Post by GamingGod » Wed Oct 08, 2003 5:04 pm

lol there are some pics of her on the beach ;) other than that shes been a good girl, damn paparazi tainted her perfect image, but im not complaining.

starsky
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Post by starsky » Wed Oct 08, 2003 8:18 pm

Here are Marc999's Pics. Enjoy.

Image
Image
Image
Image

wumpus
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Post by wumpus » Wed Oct 08, 2003 10:00 pm

Ghettotech! ;)

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