Slashdot Mirror

I've always had success with 7volts mod using 7 volt instead of 12 volt to power supply fan http://www.7volts.com/. PS is amazingly quiet and I didn't have to buy expensive PS.I've set up 7 volts for all the PS and CPU fans. However it's better to use rheostats and change fan speed according to the need.

Several years ago... actually 5, I almost silenced my Duron 700MHz PC by dropping the fan voltage to 7V.

This is all explained beautifully at 7volts.com. The site is a bit fancier now, but the details still seem to be in the same place.

Dropping the voltage to 7V is very easy (just move a wire) and the noise is considerably reduced. The air flow does drop as the fan speed is reduced, but if you're careful, it's fine.

Basically, as the poster says, you want big, slow fans. The 7V solution is great and has given me many hours of extra sleep over the years!

Not a problem... just wire your radiator fan to run at 7 volts and you'll hardly be able to hear it. 5 volts tends to not get enough air flow... 12 volts is too loud. I had one beside my desk for a year or two...

http://www.7volts.com/

There are some good drives these days that are very quiet. Seagate Barracuda series drives are legendary among the Quiet PC crowd. Although other manufacturers are also bringing out quiet drives.

If you really want a silent computer you might as well get some information:

How to Quiet the Thing
Silent PC Review

--
Simon

You may look here

Without the need to implement that bulky bowl of water. :)

Brand name computer maker (Dell, IBM, Compaq, etc.) do that on many model of business class PC.

You may not know, but there is a whole culture that had developped around cooling and case modification. People do air duct all the time out of cardboard, soft metal, acrylic, etc. There are many other option : mounting a larger fan right on your HS with an adapter, throttling your fan down (7volting, rheostat, voltage regulator [my favorite], PWM), using a quieter fan (Panaflo L1A are popular), etc. Check out the Case and Cooling Fetish forum of Arstechnica. 7 volts is another site I like very much.

7 Volts

If you read the article, it describes the benefits of using 7 volts instead of 12 volts to run your fans. I have had my Duron and GeForce2 GTS both running on 7 volt fans for a long time -- the GeForce2 fan is now inaudible!

Take a look at 7volts.com for some more analysis.

Why don't you put up a link to a picture? I'd love to see a picture of it. Maybe you should send a a picture to 7 Volts. That is a pretty interesting site for folks who customize their computers. Check it out.

Check out http://www.7volts.com. There are a number of tricks you can do to make your entire PC quieter. I've done the grommet mounting of hard disks and the rheostats for reducing fan speed and I can now hear myself think. The grommeting is amazingly effective.

One thing that I tried out recently was 7 volting my fans. Instead of hooking up 12 volts and ground to a fan, you hook up 12 volts and 5 volts. The differential is all that matters. I've heard concerns that pushing current from the 12 volt plane onto the 5 volt could cause problems, but the 5 volt plane is pretty beefy usually.

Of course, you are reducing air flow so you will get a little hotter, but you will get a hell of a lot quieter.

It is a simple idea, but I can't take credit for it. I read about it on http://www.7volts.com

-prator