It was easy in the old days!

The forum for non-component-related silent pc discussions.

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niels007
Posts: 451
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2004 2:18 am

It was easy in the old days!

Post by niels007 » Fri May 20, 2005 1:39 pm

A bit OT perhaps..

I'm (hopefully) in my last year of education, and am the only one who knows about computers in our house of four. One of my housemates computer randomly didn't start anymore. After some angry looks by me, it worked again for a week, until the problem came back. I've seen this problem before with slot P2 / p3 systems, and I figured taking it apart, cleaning the contacts of the pci cards / agp card / ram and cpu slot should do the trick.

It is a P3 (no heat spreader is all I know) slot type, with a rocket 5cm fan and a noisy low power psu. This system probably uses about 60W total and I recalled her complaining about the noise...

Since I had to 'rebuild' it anyway, I put a half decent YS-tech fan in the PSU and used my only left over 6cm fan on the CPU, which had no clearance for a bigger fan. Both set to 5v.

It was a 5 minute job, and transformed the computer into a 'pretty quiet' one. The PSU feels warm but certainly not problematic. It doesn't have a lot of power to deliver anyway. The cpu is cool, maxing out in the 40s. Prime95 stable, voltages very stable, and a happy housemate. The worst thing about old computers is the terrible whine from the harddisks! This one is not too bad, but the HD is probably the only part of a pc that got easier to silence over the last 5 years!

GenghiS_KhaN
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Joined: Sat Jul 19, 2003 1:40 pm
Location: Kortrijk, Belgium

Post by GenghiS_KhaN » Sat May 21, 2005 1:06 am

I did the same to my moms PC. It has a 700mhz slot a amd cpu with 2*40mms screaming to cool a bit. I knew one of them already died. And the second one was making a loud noise. I finally came to silencing it down.

I first checked the temps (45cpu) and then i opened it up. Took out both of the fans. Attached a yate loon i got from a loud PSU. I attached it a 7v. The temps were still fine; the noise wasnt. So i lowered it to 5v; now it's reasonably quiet and the temps are better then with the 2*40's (running at 35)

So it was an easy job to get it much quieter

ckolivas
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Location: Melbourne, Australia
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Post by ckolivas » Sat May 21, 2005 1:14 am

I distinctly remember the transition from silent computers to noisy crap when moving from amiga to pc based hardware after using silent pcs for 14 years :(.

StarfishChris
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Post by StarfishChris » Sat May 21, 2005 6:05 am

They were silent 'till you put hard drives in them, anyway. But even then it was quite quiet :)

ckolivas
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Post by ckolivas » Sat May 21, 2005 6:19 am

Yeah well I could never afford a hard drive even for my amiga so they were silent except while using the floppies.

lm
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Location: Finland

Post by lm » Sat May 21, 2005 6:53 am

I still have a P3 in heavy use. Don't need more power on my server.

It's a slot1 733MHz model and I'm using a big heatsink with 80mm papst @5V attached to a self-made ghetto metal fan bracket holding it near the sink but not touching it.

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