<div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 1:27 PM, Quinten Steenhuis <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:qsteenhuis@gmail.com">qsteenhuis@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
Hi,<br>
<br>
I put together a nice MythTV box about a year ago. Now, I'm wishing I<br>
spent a little more on silent components.<br>
<br>
I have a small case with a custom-sized power supply--the HEC 7K09. It<br>
is nicely sized--3.9" high, but I feel like this is tight for a lot of<br>
the truly silent components I've seen.<br>
<br>
I have a WD Green drive, which I think is pretty quiet. The noisiest<br>
components are definitely the fans. I've tried unplugging the front<br>
case fan, which mostly just makes the CPU fan work harder and noisier.<br>
I'm using fancontrol at pretty aggressive settings so that the fan<br>
barely spins at temps 50-60 C. But especially in the summer, it's just<br>
not enough to keep it quiet as the fan still has to spin constantly,<br>
and it's noisy even at a medium speed. At the highest speed it sounds<br>
like a jet engine (only spins at max speed now when it first turns on<br>
due to fancontrol). I have an Athlon XP CPU, AM2 form factor, and I'm<br>
using the stock CPU fan.<br>
<br>
Any suggestions on CPU fans that folks have used in similarly sized<br>
cases? I spent a few hours trying to digest some of the reviews out<br>
there, but it seems mostly you make a tradeoff between size of the fan<br>
and noise, and the best fans just don't come in a small enough size. I<br>
guess I want anyone who has real-world experience with these fans<br>
too--I don't know if I go with what looks like a good medium-range<br>
one, it will really be an upgrade on what I have now. I want something<br>
significantly better, otherwise it's not worth the hassle of taking<br>
out the existing fan, getting heatsink compound, etc.<br>
<br>
If not CPU fans, any other suggestions on what is the best route to<br>
take to make this case pretty quiet?<br>
<br>
Ideally I'd spend no more than $100 to make it quieter. I'd be willing<br>
to go up to $150+ if that $100 figure is just unrealistic.<br>
<br></blockquote><div><br>I'd also be interested in seeing suggestions for quiet CPU fans that'll fit in a low-profile case. I have a Sempron 3000+ (Socket 754).<br><br>You said your hard drive was quiet already, but what I did was use an 8GB Compact Flash card with a IDE/CF adapter (<a href="http://amzn.com/B000YUMLPI">http://amzn.com/B000YUMLPI</a>).</div>
</div><br>This is of course front-end only, and theres no video storage on it.<br>