First fan mod

[Daijoubu]

Call be a noob or so but I had an Antec SLK1650 (yes the cheapest one) and the rear 120mm fan was quite noisy

I just bough an molex pin extractor tool and used it on an molex male to female connector (from an old HSF) and swapped the 12V+ lead for the 5V+

Now I can't even hear my PC being on IT'S AMAZING!

It's idle now:
CPU: 34C
MB: 33C

Room temp is 24C

For the record: A64 Venice 3200+, ASUS A8N-VM CSM, OCZ Premier 2x512MB, Seagates 250GB 7200.9 (the loudest thing in the PC when seeking...)

[willy]

Good job. I run all my case fans at 7V ... coz some of the fans have the starting voltage of 7V. 5V may not be enough to kick start them.

[ShadowVlican]

that's a good free way to lower noise

i prefer the use of fan controllers though

[jollyeskimo]

Good job. The pinmod/undervolt mod is the cheapest and easiest way to shut things up.

Seagates 250GB 7200.9 (the loudest thing in the PC when seeking...)

It's a shame the 7200.9 doesn't have AAM.... would've done it some good. You might want to consider a HDD suspension/dampening mod to dull the seek noise.

[Cafe_333]

Welcome to the world of silent computing!!

Those considering on trying out the fan volt mod should instead consider purchasing a Precision Screwdriver Set like this one here - much more useful than buying an actual (hard to find) molex pin extractor that only does one thing. Of course you'd have to be halfway competent to figure out how the molex pins are plugged in. They use the pushpin concept and look just like the following, so just squeeze the flaps in and pull, then pry the flaps back out after:

--->--

[Daijoubu]

I got the tool at a local electronic surplus for $8
And yeah, the only thing it can do is to extract the female connector unless i'm missing something...
But it's so damn handy

[cjpark]

I found the molex pin tool actually saved quite a bit of time over the screwdriver method. For $8(or $5 in my case) its definitely worth it if you plan on modding many fans or sleeving cables.

[Ziggy007]

Put some rubber grips between the drive and mount to reduce noise, that will take care of 80% of your HD noise.

[Daijoubu]

The SLK1650 comes with rubbers already
Maybe I should try untightening the screws more to allow more room for movements

[Daijoubu]

I went ahead and tried to quiet my older P3 system, first I got rid of the tiny fan on the GF4MX440 and put a bigger heatsink from an GF2MX
Seems to be working fine fanless (~46C idle)

Second, I got rid of that cool looking Golden Orb and put an regular heatsink on it (from an IBM PC) and supplied 7v to the 50mm fan

PC is now almost inaudible

But can clearly hear the HDD and it's making a weird, constant noise every 2 seconds or so
It sounds like "tiinnn..grr grr", SMART status looks very good
It's a WD120GB that was RMA'ed for whining and is about a years old
Maybe I should try recording it

I tried to check with the task manager and Sysinternal's FILEMON but I couldn't pin point the culprit
Windows XP's auto optimize is turned off...

[Daijoubu]

Bump, anyone got a clue?
It doesn't do it in the BIOS, tried booting into safe mode and it does it

Maybe I should try sliping in unbuntu's live cd

[jollyeskimo]

Have you ran the manufacturer's utility for a deep scan?

[Daijoubu]

Not yet, the quick 2 mins smart test reported no errors

And btw, I got another drive of the same model that hasn't been rma yet, it's making a scary high pitched whining and the complete scan didn't detect anything wrong

Maybe I should stay away from WD...