Well, I found that without a chassis fan, Fozzie was running much hotter, as in, ~10 degrees F hotter, which is no good. So, I reconnected the fan, but I had gotten spoiled on having a quieter computer, so I didn't like all the noise. So, I ordered a Zalman ZM-F1 silent chassis fan, and installed it today. Does seem much quiter (although slighter louder than no fan). This fan comes with an adapter that regulates the voltage, so it's quieter because it has a lower RPM when the adapter is attached (you can install it without the adapter and move more air). Seems fine with the adapter right now. Since this fan goes on the side of my case, the cable that connects to the motherboard was too short -- I wouldn't be able to open the case if this was attached! Luckily, I ordered a 99-cent 3-pin to 4-pin adapter as well, so I can connect the fan directly to my PSU, which gives the cable more flexibility. Unfortunately this means I can't monitor the RPM of the fan. But, that doesn't really matter (my old fan was an old-style fan that could only connect to the PSU anyways, so I've never been able to monitor chassis fan RPM).
February 14, 2005
February 04, 2005
Swapped out Fozzie's Q-Max power supply that came with my case today in favor of a 400W silent power supply from CoolMax. It really is silent! This power supply actually came about 2 weeks ago, but the unit I recieved then was defective -- whenever it was powered on, there was a very loud clanging noise that would come from the unit. This unit seems to work. Unfortunately I discovered that most of my computer's noise does not come from the PSU in this case, but from the side case fan. I've never operated without it, so I am going to have a test run and see how the temperatures react to not having it. Fozzie is much quieter with that fan disconnected, especially combined with this silent power supply. The only sources of noise are the heatsink fan and the video card fan at the moment.
