These are all really old now, kept for historical purposes only:
Update 4 Sep 03
I've decoupled my case and CPU fans including the PSU (all Panaflos) with silicone sealant as below.
Here is the rear case fan. I sealed the gaps around the edge with electrical tape.
From the back, with the stamped grilles cut out and replace by wire ones.
Here is the CPU cooler with a decoupled Panaflo on top.
This one shows the fan control circuit and the thermistor attached to the CPU HS with silicone sealant. It controls both the CPU and PSU exhaust fan. The idea is to eventually shroud around the CPU so all the air goes directly into the PSU, thereby keeping the rest of the case cooler. The fan control circuit was encased in heatshrink after this.
I've now opened up the bottom of the PSU completely to extract the hot air from the CPU when I get around to doing the shroud.
19 Aug 03
My setup:
Abit KT7A Raid
Athlon 1.2GHz o/c’d to 1.33GHz
Radeon 9000 AIW Pro
Seagate Barracuda V 60GB
Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 120GB
El cheapo 300W PSU
I finally decided to do something about the noise in my PC when I started reading various ideas on the forums on www.silentpcreview.com and realised I could do it without resorting to water cooling or spending lots of money. My main philosophy was to do it all as cheap as possible without having to get all the latest Zalman stuff and replacing all my components.
The first thing I needed was a new case as the old one didn’t even have space for an 80mm fan out the back. So I found a cheap used case which was perfect. The first thing I did was spray it green, as I was fed up of the bog-standard beige look. Not a huge success as the colour matching isn’t perfect and it’s not totally resistant to scratches (I used car spray). But I think it looks a lot better than before.
Then I cut the front and rear stamped grilles and replaced them with wire ones, and cut an 80mm hole in the front plastic case to optimise air intake as much as possible. I also did the same in the side, above the CPU and made a cardboard duct to bring fresh air directly onto the CPU fan. I had done this on my previous case with excellent results, and it worked well again here. I had cheap (and noisy!) case fans – 1 intake, 1 exhaust – which I’ve recently replaced with Panaflo L1As (aaaahh, much better!).
I duct taped over all the extraneous holes in the case, so I could control airflow exactly where I wanted it. I also lapped my (cheap) CPU heatsink, and wow, did that make a difference! Together with Artic Silver it brought the temperatures down by 6-7 deg C by itself. I also decoupled the fan from the heatsink like this, and grommet mounted the case fans and hard drive (the wire running from the hard drive to the drive bay is to earth it – I’ve heard that it can build up a charge over time if it is isolated). I haven’t done this to my new 120GB ‘cuda yet as I have more plans for it (see below).
The noise levels from my PC were really starting to come down by this stage, largely due to improved cooling and airflow meant that I could adjust the temp control fans so they spin much slower and give similar temperature readings. In hot weather or under full load they tend to be a bit noisy still, but I have some more plans (see below).
I also tried to lap the HS and chip on my Geforce 2MX, but unfortunately I destroyed the card in the process! (hint: don’t try to lap a chip when there are other components nearby. In fact – don’t do it at all, it’s not worth it!). But it gave me a great excuse to upgrade my video card to a Radeon 9000 AIW, as I wanted good gaming performance and video capture. It comes with a whiny little fan, so I might have to replace it with a bigger passive one, but I haven’t yet as I’m a bit nervous about destroying it after the last one!!
When the time came to upgrade my hard drives, I first got a Seagate Barracuda V 60GB, then more recently a 120GB 7200.7, which made a wonderful difference to my old ball bearing screamers I had before.
To improve airflow I rounded most of the ribbon cables as shown in this article here and tidied up the other cabling a bit (I still need to round the HDD cable). I also made 2 temperature control circuits from this article, one to control the CPU fan and one for the case fans. My northbridge heatsink had a fan on it too, so I replaced that with an old 486 passive heatsink. I then drilled some holes in the bottom of my PSU to improve the draw of air from the CPU.
I still need to replace the CPU fan with one of my new Panaflos, and the cabling needs more tidying.
Overall I’m very pleased with the results I’ve got so far. It’s fun reading all about it and planning a strategy. But it’s true that it’s quite addictive and there’s always something more that you want to do. So mine is still a work in progress, and I’ll be updating this page when I have any more news to report.
My future plans are as follows:
But most of this is going to have to wait for the winter, as right now most of my spare time is being taken up by my T-Maxx! Now that’s a whole different ball game!
Pangit
