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

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.

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.

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

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.