Weird Sonata Setup

burcakb · Post by **burcakb** » Sat Feb 12, 2005 12:45 am

Hi folks,

Meet Loki. This is still a work in progress (cabling & foaming & fans & mounting needs work) and sorry for the lousy pictures. This is the result of some tweaking and general playing around with the Sonata that gave me better temps than before. It has several strange ideas I picked up in the forums.

First the strange part: The exhaust fan is an intake !!

Temp probe is on the southbridge which runs hot. resistored & fanmated, it runs at average 650-700 rpm. The CPU fan is a Nexus running resistored at about 1100 rpm.

I also like the idea of a 120mm PSU but I don't like the idea of the PSU competing with the CPU fan (hear hear Bluefront

) Also the 80mm Acoustifan in the 380s PSU is having a devils time cooling the thing. So instead of adding a 80mm at the back to help, I added a 120mm. Covered the sides with melamine foam. The fan is the v1.6 Antec fan that comes with the 3700AMB. It's connected to the fan-only connector from the PSU and runs at average of 7.2V (multimeters are nice things)

No PC should be without suspension. Also notice the gutting I did on the Sonata drive racks. The bits the sleds ride on are still there so I can plug in another drive there if need be. The Samsung is unfortunately JVC nonFDB.

With the exhaust blowing in, the HDD and the southbridge require extra cooling.

The L1A is also connected to the Fan-only connector (7.2V)

The addition of the L1A mucked up the case internals & CPU temps. So I decided to seperate the HDD cooling from the rest of the case. I opened up all unused PCI slots and put it some melamine foam on the hdd & vga. nothing airproof but it works.

I didn't realise how whiny HDDs are - even when suspended. It turned out to be the greatest noise source. Some cheap foam on the door worked wonders.

Oh and since the PSU now has a helping fan, I closed off the Antec holes with more foam. Sorry no pictures but you get the idea.

All these mods started as a fun project - I really didn't expect any gains. But right now, this weird setup has become quieter than my Thor rig I was so proud of.

A full writeup will follow when the thing is finished.

Trip · Post by **Trip** » Sat Feb 12, 2005 1:31 am

HDD is louder than Antec 12cm fan?

Foam works wonders. I like the idea of putting it on the side of the fan.

burcakb · Post by **burcakb** » Sat Feb 12, 2005 7:24 am

Yes. The Antec v1.6 (the one that comes on the 3700AMB) is pretty quiet (quieter than that of Sonata which is v2.0) when undervolted. Especially in my setup as it's almost in free air, no intake or exhaust hindrence. And it runs at 7V - Comparable to a Panaflo L1A @ 9-10V.

Trip · Post by **Trip** » Sat Feb 12, 2005 10:33 am

The fan and HDD suspensions look like they worked out pretty well too.

burcakb · Post by **burcakb** » Sat Feb 12, 2005 3:10 pm

The fan suspension worked really well. I wouldn't carry the case any long distance with that setup but it did work from my room to the living room

Being in total suspension I have to stick my head inside the case to hear anything (this is not a particularly quiet japanaflo)

The JVC motor has a high-pitched whine. Most people with 30dBA + computers wouldn't hear it. Suspension worked but the whine remained. The cheap foam cut that down a lot. Melamine works even better at those frequencies so the final setup will have extensive melamine packing.

The cage is still to restricted. Even the slightest bump sends the hdd banging against the cage

BOT_toNka · Post by **BOT_toNka** » Sat Feb 12, 2005 7:10 pm

What tools did you use to gut your HDD cage?
I'm thing of doing the same thing.
I have a dremel and tin snips.
You should post your suspension picture in this thread:
Sonata HDD Suspension... Show your pics!
http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewtopic.php?t=19147
What are your temps?

burcakb · Post by **burcakb** » Sun Feb 13, 2005 2:42 am

I used a dremel.

Temps:

CPU socket: 43C
Case : 45C
Samsung : 37C

The CPU Diode has gone wonky (shows 30C) but from previous experience I guess it to be around 55C.

CPU (Barton 2500+ default is 166x11 = 1826) is running at default 1.65V and at 185x11 = 2035 MHz

I used to get 60C diode temps with 175x11 = 1925 MHz but wit VCore at 1.5V. So overall, great improvements in CPU temps.