[mythtv-users] Fanless, not only quiet

[Raphael]

John Drescher wrote:
>> This was built by a friend of mine
>>
>> http://parker1.co.uk/mythtv_silent.php
>>
> I have made similar systems at work with antec cases with 120mm
> exhaust fans and no other modifications. It may be my 35 year old ears
> but I find myself frequently looking for the power light or seeing of
> the power supply fan is spinning to tell if the machines are on being
> that they are inaudible to me and they are not directly hooked to a
> display.
> 
> As for this site. That is good advice about the motherboard fan
> (replacing it with a large heatsink) although unless you are
> overclocking 99% of the time you can just unplug it and you will be
> fine. I know this because at work (over the last few years) dozens of
> these little fans have failed without me knowing and systems have not
> had any problems at all.
> 
> John
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> 

For me, the hard drives were the noisiest things inside my backend. 
Rubber grommets never helped me - they damp all high frequency noise, 
but what your left with is a muffled low frequency transferred through 
to the chassis. My solution was to make custom suspension mounts so that 
the HDs are floating (inspired by SPCR). It's so nice to be in peace 
without any noise at all from the HDs.

As far as removing fans from the northbridges of motherboards, I've 
found that on VIA boards this is in general perfectly ok. Recent Nvidia 
chipsets seem to run hotter, so I'm not so sure about them. ATI and Uli 
chipsets often come without fans anyway. My backend has been running 
with no chipset fan for two years now. I ran a remote frontend also with 
the chipset fan removed. As long as you don't overclock it's ok.

My frontend/backend actually has four fans in it, and it's still totally 
silent from 4 feet away, definitely silent from the couch, even when the 
house is totally silent. If you _have_ to have a fan, like I do, it's 
better to have more quiet ones than one loud one. Two half speed fans do 
not add up to the sound of one full speed one, but can move more air 
quietly. So all my fans run at 5 or 7 V. More fans do equal more chance 
for failure, but to me it's more than worth it. I hate being able to 
hear any noise at all from any of my computers.

Raphael