Noisy Fortron

florecilla · Post by **florecilla** » Fri May 20, 2005 1:48 pm

Hello people. As a newbie in computer silencing, I have made a few stupid mistakes that now I am trying to solve after the screw up (did I know better before, I wouldn't be making this question). Well, one of the things I have learnt is that a quiet system is not just going out there and wasting your money, but thinking first how to build the rig from a scratch, paying attention to airflow and such.

My computer is an Athlon core Barton 2600+ (phisically 1.922 I think), 2 sticks of 512 Mbs each, 2 hard drives Seagate Barracuda, Asus a7n8xe del, radeon 9700, beantech aluminum case (a waste, aluminum enclosures are not any cooler, I know), fortron 400w (another waste, that's overkill, I know).

My Fortron is quite noisy. For the beggining, as I boot up the computer after a night to cool down, the fan whispers stlightly (it is audible, though). But soon it ramps up and stays whooshing. The air coming out of it feels warm to the touch.

I have an vm101 vga passive cooler for my vga and a ht101 for the processor. The fan of the ht101 sucking air from the vm101 and using it to cool my athlon. First problem is said fan then throws de air against the botton of the psu, were there is no intake hole. I have thought of either making a duct to make the air turn 90 degrees and throw it out throuth the exhaust of the case or feed it to the psu intake, making both processor and psu fans work together in a wind tunnel.

Which is the best solution? May be it would be better to get a nice psu that sucks from below and make a wind tunnel, exhausting all air through the psu exhaust? I can get a Fortron Aurora; a Seasonic would really cost me a little more here ... What would you do? Btw, I have swapped the Fortron fan with some an evercool one because I didn't want to compromise airflow ... it is supposedly , 28 dba and 32.4 cfm. May be a low speed papst or panaflo would suit better?

Thanks in advance

wsc · Post by **wsc** » Fri May 20, 2005 2:06 pm

You have alot of options to explore without spending alot of cash. The 90 degree duct is better than piping the CPU exhaust through the PSU, you want to keep the PSU's air flow as cool as possible. You can also try moving the thermistor inside the PSU to keep the fan from ramping up. Additionally you could fanmate your PSU fan, or install a rheostat or beefy potentiometer to allow you to manually crank down the speed. You didn't say whether or not you have a case fan, but if you don't, there are lots of case fans that will not add any noticable noise but will help your PSU out with case cooling duty. Hope that gives you some ideas... Also, welcome to SPCR

florecilla · Post by **florecilla** » Fri May 20, 2005 2:30 pm

upppsss ... forgot: I made a test with the cover off. I played 40 minutes of ut2004 ... I think my cpu stayed close to 47C, the air out of the ht101 felt cool and.... shouldn't the psu be quiet under that circumstance? shouldn't that prevent its fan from speeding up? Without cover, there shouldn't be any air recirculation, isn't it?

May be it is the thermistor, wich is very close to one of the coils, so gets hot ... where is it? anyone has experience with the entrails of his Fortron and can tell me where is the thermistor located?

IsaacKuo · Post by **IsaacKuo** » Fri May 20, 2005 7:00 pm

One simple Fortron mod which is easily reversible is to flip the fan. This will make it suck air in from the rear and blow it downward. This means the PSU is getting fresh cool air, so it shouldn't ramp up.

You'll want to flip your case fans (if any), so the case airflow is reversed from the "normal" direction. It sucks air in from the top rear, and pushes air out of the bottom front.

Don't worry about "fighting" the hot air rises theory--the upward force of hot air rising is minimal compared to the power of even a single undervolted fan. If you really want to be anal about the hot air rises theory, flip the entire computer upside-down and see if it makes any difference.

mathias · Post by **mathias** » Fri May 20, 2005 7:12 pm

IsaacKuo wrote:One simple Fortron mod which is easily reversible is to flip the fan. This will make it suck air in from the rear and blow it downward. This means the PSU is getting fresh cool air, so it shouldn't ramp up.

Another way to give a 12cm PSU fresh air is to put it outside the case. With that arangement I've replaced the 2200rpm yate loon in my fortron with a nexus. It only demands ~750 rpm from it.

alglove · Post by **alglove** » Fri May 20, 2005 7:30 pm

I am not sure he has a Fortron with a 12 cm fan at the bottom, though. From the way he describes his problem, it sounds more like he has one of the "standard" Fortrons, like the FSP400-60PFN

florecilla · Post by **florecilla** » Sat May 21, 2005 2:26 am

Yep, hello guys and thak you for your answers. Yes, my Fortron is the fsp400 model with just one 8 cm fan. Now this is weird, isn't it? the fan should not speed up (I am probably not even asking half the power it can give) and since the thermistor is glued to the aluminum heatsink, an accidental displacement seems not very likely (I have to look, although I don't want to ruin my first cablegami).

I am planning to drill more holes in the case intake, wich is very restrictive, and mod the ht101 so it sucks air from the vm101 vga cooler as it does now but then throws it through the exhaust and not against the closed side of the psu (no intake).

If I can get some nice low speed Panaflo or Papst, I'll make another swap.