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.

Comments

Silent?

[hafree]

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

If 55W is enough...

[zobo]

...here's one.

Use with care

[MountainLogic]

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.

uphill, both ways, in the snow, often drunk

[iamcadaver]

I never noticed the noisy fans on the noisy pc's when I was in college.

Oh, yeah maybe I do. I just don't remember it ever being a problem falling asleep. Sleep just sorta happens on command after thirty hours of mudding and/or codeing and/or codeing muds and/or mudling coeds.

The fan should be the least of your beauty nap worries.

Quiet PC Article

[hackwrench]

The Screensavers had a recent story on making a quieter machine.

You know you're a nerd when...

[SoCalChris]

Silence is required as this PC is being used in my dorm room, and it's hard to sleep next to a whining PC.

Ok, you know you're a nerd when you can't sleep because of your power supply fan, and you try to design a new external power supply instead of just turning the computer off at night. Haha, this poor guy is going to be a virgin for life.

Re:You know you're a nerd when...

[SN74S181]

must.... preserve.... precious.... uptime.... stats....

The PC case AMPLIFIES the vibrations.

[Judg3]

Actually, the PC case acts as a giant speaker, amplifying the sound of the fans in the PSU (And any other case fans as well). A small, normally un-noticeable imbalance on one of the fan blades would make a little noise. Screw it in tightly to your PC and it starts to make your PC shake as well.
I think a smarter solution then an external PSU would be a Quiet PSU like the Vantec VAN-520a Stealth and mount it using rubber gaskets where the screws go. If you wanted to take it a step further you could build a rubber gasket around the entire PSU itself to reduce any vibrations even more.

My PC is very quiet because of this method. I have 4 case fans + 3 PSU fans and I can't hear any of them for the most part.

Check out this article over at TechTV from The Screen Savers on how to make a Quiet PC

Obligatory plug

[cgenman]

The forums at Silent PC Review would be a great place to pose this question. I go by seishino there, but anyone will be able to help.

External? The asus in front of me shipped with a 3 foot cable... that's definitely long enough to take outside of the case, but that wouldn't quiet the problem. There are some amazingly expensive fanless solutions available if you look (200$+), but for most people replacing the fan is good enough. There are also water-cooled psus, but they are also too expensive realistically for college use. Pick up a low-flo panaflos (L1A) from one of the places listed in the "hot deals" section (if you are near boston, I can get one to you), and put that in place of your fan. That is enough to cut sound down noticably.

wire length is your problem

[TheGratefulNet]

I found this out the hard way. I wanted to 'remote' my ATX ps. so I bought an extension cable (atx to atx) and it almost worked - but the problem was that there wasn't enough wire 'capacity' to carry the current and not have a voltage drop screw up my voltage tolerances.

heck, even just adding 6 inches can mess it up and make your system unstable.

sorry, but that's reality. mobo's today need SUCH high current that you simply cannot just extend the wiring and have it work right. unless you use ungodly thick cable, that is.

Re:wire length is your problem

[CharlieG]

There IS a way to do it without "ungodly thick cable"

Power supplies CAN be built with what is called "remote sense", and in fact most lab grade or TRUE high power power supples use it.

What is done is that you have a pair of leads that carry the current, and a pair of leads that feed back the measured voltage at the load to the regulator. The regulator raises it's output to get the "correct" voltage at the point where the sense leads are connected

This is really about the only way you can do it with high power supplies. I worked on one supply that used to put out 5 volts, 100 amps +- 20 millivolts from no load to full load. The ONLY way to do that is have remote sense because the output leads have significant resistance when you talk about those tolerances

I've always been surprised that PC power supplies have not done this

Silence in a dorm room?

[D.A. Zollinger]

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.

silence is golden

[nocent]

here's my overall solution for a really quiet (not quite silent yet) pc:

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

Re:turn it off

[Bangback]

On submarines (my former job) there is a fairly loud fan that goes to each bed with an adjustable damper. It helps with airflow, but an equally important purpose is to increase the background noise and mask other peoples noise, things going bump, snoring, etc. It is much easier to sleep when these fans are working. A fan will be the least of your noise worries in a college dormitory.

I slept in a room with an aquarium most of my life (think fans are loud, try a reciprocating motor, especially if you can't afford the "Whisper" brand) and with my computer all through college and my first two years out. Never a problem after a few days becoming accustomed. Hint, don't get 14 cheapo fans in turbo mode. One or two appropriate fans are quite livable.