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Off-board/External ATX Power Supplies?
atomicretro asks: "Basically I'm on a quest for a silent PC, so I am looking to take my ATX power supply unit, external. I was simply wondering if anyone else had tried this with any success, or any commercial companies sold them.
Silence is required as this PC is being used in my dorm room, and it's hard to sleep next to a whining PC. I've got the sound levels pretty much down to a minimum by adding various silent PC parts, but a separate power supply would be pretty cool. Any help or ideas accepted!" There was a similar question that was posted about
two years ago, and it would be interesting to note if anyone in the market was listening.
Just curious, how is making it external going to make the power supply's cooling fan any quieter? If anything it will be louder since it wont be inside the case, and now none of your power cables will reach the internal components... First post? :-P
The longer your run from your PC to your PC the greater the change you will spiky your PC &/or PS. The greater impedence between the two units allows any ESD (static) to bounce the ground lines and can kill your system. Also, there is a reason that the case of the PS is bolted against the case of the PC, a greatly reduced chance of ground differential. You're also more likely to see your keyboard lock-up.
Silence is required as this PC is being used in my dorm room,
You are living in a dorm room. I would think that the guys playing Xbox with the volume at max until 5am down the hall would keep you up more than some fan on your computer.
I ended up purchasing a fan that I could run at night just so I could drown out the noises down the hall. Now I can't sleep without it.
I haven't lost my mind!
It is backed up on disk...somewhere...
1. buy components which make less or no noise. the less noise you have to start with, the less you have to get rid off. eg. get a video card that doesn't require a fan rather than one that has one or choose a hard disk based on its quietness. seagate barracudas are a good choice.
2. replace noisy case fans with quiet ones. this makes a huge difference. the most popular quiet fans are Panaflo L1As. even quiet fans can be made even quieter by running them at lower voltages. do a search for "5 volt trick" or "7 volt trick".
3. use less fans. monitor your motherboard, processor, power supply and chip temperature. run a system intensive program like 3dmark. use the minimum no of fans that keeps the temperature within acceptable limits even at 100% CPU usage.
The number one concern when doing this is overheating. slower fans + less fans = less airflow so you gotta keep a close eye on that.
some other things i did which helped:
replaced the intel fan on my P4 with a quiet one. didn't get an expensive heatsink. just replaced the fan.
replaced the fan in the power supply with a quiet one. a quiet, slower fan = more heat. to reduce the chance of overheating, i removed the case on the power supply (not the computer case). DO NOT open the power supply and do any of this unless you are technically competent. you might get a nasty electrical shock! you've been warned.
as always, be sure to ground yourself and unplug everything before making any changes.
some sites which are useful:
Silent PC Review
Yahoo Groups- Silent PC