[mythtv-users] Re-finishing a low-profile case w/ silent parts

James Orr james.orr7 at gmail.com
Wed Jul 21 17:39:58 UTC 2010


On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 1:27 PM, Quinten Steenhuis <qsteenhuis at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I put together a nice MythTV box about a year ago. Now, I'm wishing I
> spent a little more on silent components.
>
> I have a small case with a custom-sized power supply--the HEC 7K09. It
> is nicely sized--3.9" high, but I feel like this is tight for a lot of
> the truly silent components I've seen.
>
> I have a WD Green drive, which I think is pretty quiet. The noisiest
> components are definitely the fans. I've tried unplugging the front
> case fan, which mostly just makes the CPU fan work harder and noisier.
> I'm using fancontrol at pretty aggressive settings so that the fan
> barely spins at temps 50-60 C. But especially in the summer, it's just
> not enough to keep it quiet as the fan still has to spin constantly,
> and it's noisy even at a medium speed. At the highest speed it sounds
> like a jet engine (only spins at max speed now when it first turns on
> due to fancontrol). I have an Athlon XP CPU, AM2 form factor, and I'm
> using the stock CPU fan.
>
> Any suggestions on CPU fans that folks have used in similarly sized
> cases? I spent a few hours trying to digest some of the reviews out
> there, but it seems mostly you make a tradeoff between size of the fan
> and noise, and the best fans just don't come in a small enough size. I
> guess I want anyone who has real-world experience with these fans
> too--I don't know if I go with what looks like a good medium-range
> one, it will really be an upgrade on what I have now. I want something
> significantly better, otherwise it's not worth the hassle of taking
> out the existing fan, getting heatsink compound, etc.
>
> If not CPU fans, any other suggestions on what is the best route to
> take to make this case pretty quiet?
>
> Ideally I'd spend no more than $100 to make it quieter. I'd be willing
> to go up to $150+ if that $100 figure is just unrealistic.
>
>
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).

You said your hard drive was quiet already, but what I did was use an 8GB
Compact Flash card with a IDE/CF adapter (http://amzn.com/B000YUMLPI).

This is of course front-end only, and theres no video storage on it.
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