Quieting the PSU

[Dolla]

Hello,

I would like to try and make my computer as silent as possible.
Currently I have Lian Li with the 2 front fans on the lowest setting...
The exhaust fan is replaced with a Enermax adjustable fan (set at a decently low setting)
And I have a fan controller on my Dr. Thermal CPU cooler (V77L).

I have noticed two things:
My Enermax EG365P-VE (FC) seems to sound somewhat loud (despite the "whisper" name).
The fans are supposedly an 80mm (25db) and a 92mm (27db).
Is the noise jsut all the air that is being pushed through and not the fans themselves? Should I replace the fans with even more quiet ones? (although 25 and 27 db is supposedly pretty quiet)
Any suggestions on what fans to replace them with? Also where can I get the adapter so that I can plug the replacement fan into the connector (inside the PSU)?

Also why was the whipser model discontinued?

The other thing I noticed was that I can now hear the whine on my harddrives... I am going to replace them with Seagate Barracuda IV HDs in the near future. A good option? Do they run hotter than other HDs? Are they really as quiet as I've read about?

I think these are pretty much the only two things that are making considerable noise in my pretty quiet system...
Any other suggestions on ways to make the system super quiet?

-$-

 

[ShadowDJ]

I have heard the Barracuda IVs are very quiet. Some people have said you cannot hear them with the case on.

 

[Thegonagle]

I just replaced the PSU fan in my old generic PSU with a quieter Panaflow. I have my doubts that an adapter is readily available. I found a little solder and two inches of small gauge heat-shrink tubing to be my friend.

A two dimensional cross-section would look something like this:

??????????????????????? <? heat-shrink tube
-------X--------------------------------------------------------- <? positive wire
---------------------------X------------------------------------- <? negative wire
??????????????????????? <? heat-shrink tube

The X?s represent where I made the twist?n?solder connections. As you can see, the solder connections are staggered, so I can put them both within the same length of tubing without them touching each other.

 

[Becks2k]

Even tho the fans in the powersupply are not that loud, air moving though the powersupply makes more noise than the fan sorta.

My case right now is 3 panaflo la1s 7ved (2 out 1 in), a 12v la1 on my pal8045, and a 12v la1 in an antec pp412x ps, and a 80gig cudaIV

Wheres the most noise come from? The powersupply, its the same fan thats on the heatsink, and even when i switch the case fans to 12v i can still hear the powersupply over them.... just the turbulance of the air moving though the ps that makes noise.

Yes the cudaIV is very quiet, when seeking it can make some noise that you can hear, but just idling its really hard to tell that its on. If the seeking noise bothers you, www.plycon.com sells that hd suspension cage thingy... and that should remove any seeking noise I think.

About the powersupply, a single 80mm fan, or a single 92mm fan should be fine, 2 isn't needed.
Instead of messing with fan connectors, when I put a la1 in my powersupply I just ran the wire out the back with the rest and connected it to my mobo. Didn't want to cut and splice crap just to plug it in where the old fan was pluged in.

IMO the best bet is to get a la1, or an enermax adjustable and turn it way down till you're happy.

 

[DrVos]

Hi Dolla,

If you dont want to deal with opening up your psu and messing with soldering, you might want to consider getting the Antec TruePower line of PSU's. From what I'veread, they are much quieter than the Enermax so called "whisper" series. I am in the process of making my computer as quiet as possible as well and my TruePower 330w should be coming in today! I'll post again tonight with the details!

 

[edc03]

i have the cuda iv, and its super quiet. i thought my hd was broken from the start b/c i couldn't hear a thing when i turned it on for the first time. then i put my hand on it, and felt it spinning. seriously, i couldn't even hear it when it was outside of the case.

 

[Dolla]

Hey guys thatnks for the replies...
I just bought two enermax adjustables and I'll see how those work in the PSU.

As for the Barracudas IV, I was reading insome of the other forum posts that there were problems with the drives? Were these major problems or jsut little things that I shouldn't have to worry about?
Lemme know what you think.

-$-

 

[Becks2k]

The only problem with the cudaIV is it doesn't like to be raided. I think its something like if you have 2 cudaIVs on the same channel it just goes really slow. You get no speed improvement or something i forget.

But if you don't use raid, theres nothing wrong wtih the cudaIV

 

[Dolla]

Ok so just to make sure...
The Cudas work fine if I were to run them in a IDE configuration?
I plan on using them in a simple IDE master slave setup... no RAID.

-$-

 

[Pheran]

Dolla,

I'm in a similar boat; I'm in the process of building a new system and one of my objectives is to make it as silent as possible. Anyway I just ordered the 300W ATX power supply from QuietPC. I haven't received it yet but when I do I'll let you know how it is.

 

[mcvan]

Two articles will interest you all:

Run a Power Supply without a Fan?
http://www.silentpcreview.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=15&page=1

Quieting the Enermax & other thermistor fan PSUs
http://www.silentpcreview.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=9&page=1

 

[satori]

I swapped out the stock Enermax fans in my 365-Whisper tonite with a 92mm and 80mm Panaflo. They're rated at ~28 and ~21, respectively. This is quite a bit less than the stock ones that were originally in the PSU (strangely, both of these were 33 dB, even though they were different sizes). Anyways, there little, if any, improvement in the sound levels, so I'm gonna agree with Becks2k and some other anandtechers that it's the turbulance of going through such a cluttered space.

I've got 2 of the Seagate Cudas in my system. These are definitely the quietest drives I've ever seen. I'm willing to give up some performance for the lowering of noise. There's been a couple threads of www.storagereview.com about the bad-RAID phenomenom (sp?). But, as Becks2k said, if you don't raid, you won't be disappointed with the performance.

BTW, I think I've found the perfect solution to get rid of the noise from my PSU... buy an Antec 1080b. Everyone's raving about how little noise those Tru-Power PS's make.

 

[hmsrolst]

I modded my Enermax 365 Whisper with an 80mm L1A, but got rid of the internal 92mm fan. If anything temps went down a bit, and it was much quieter. I think the two fans just create turbulence and inefficient airflow. I covered the opening with a 92mm aluminum mesh filter.

I'm also a little worried that the Barracuda IV's may turn out to "have problems." I sometimes pivot the front of my case about a foot while it is running to get off the side panel. I always do it very gently. Since I've been using the Barracuda IV, I've had two incidents (one major) after doing that. The major incident was an unrecoverable W2K registry error. Fortunately, I was able to reinstall everyhing from an image of my C drive. I can't think of any reason for it, except that the very slight motion caused the heads to damage something on the disk. I never had this problem with Maxtor or IBM drives.