Hey everyone,
I'm new to this whole silent PC thing, and bought a Thermaltake 480W Butterfly PSU.
Now I do find this PSU fairly quiet, the only noise I can hear from it is the air flow through the vents at the back of the PSU. Is there anything I can do to try and stop this noise?
Thermaltake 480W Butterfly
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1398342003
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SometimesWarrior
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Hi toonz, welcome to SilentPCReview!
I checked Thermaltake's site, and it looks like the PSU is using wire grills for the fans. You can try removing these grills, but they are already pretty unrestrictive, so you're unlikely to get much of a noise improvement from this mod.
The only way to lower airflow noise further is to slow the fans more. If the supplied fan controller is already at minimum speed, you can either control the fan voltage manually, by taking the fan leads and feeding them a constant voltage (perhaps through a fan controller that doesn't ramp up with temperature), or by replacing the PSU fans with slower-running models.
Beware that, by further lowering the airflow in the PSU with a DIY mod, you could be endangering the stability or reliability of the PSU (and voiding the warranty, of course). If you choose to do this, you should monitor the temperature of the PSU exhaust with a thermal probe or your hand. You will probably need to duct cold air into the PSU to keep the exhaust temperatures reasonable, and account for the subsequent increase in case temperature (because you just eliminated an exhaust fan).
Good luck with whatever you choose to do, toonz! This forum is a great resource, and you can read all sorts of success (and failure) stories about PSU mods to help you decide on your best course of action.
I checked Thermaltake's site, and it looks like the PSU is using wire grills for the fans. You can try removing these grills, but they are already pretty unrestrictive, so you're unlikely to get much of a noise improvement from this mod.
The only way to lower airflow noise further is to slow the fans more. If the supplied fan controller is already at minimum speed, you can either control the fan voltage manually, by taking the fan leads and feeding them a constant voltage (perhaps through a fan controller that doesn't ramp up with temperature), or by replacing the PSU fans with slower-running models.
Beware that, by further lowering the airflow in the PSU with a DIY mod, you could be endangering the stability or reliability of the PSU (and voiding the warranty, of course). If you choose to do this, you should monitor the temperature of the PSU exhaust with a thermal probe or your hand. You will probably need to duct cold air into the PSU to keep the exhaust temperatures reasonable, and account for the subsequent increase in case temperature (because you just eliminated an exhaust fan).
Good luck with whatever you choose to do, toonz! This forum is a great resource, and you can read all sorts of success (and failure) stories about PSU mods to help you decide on your best course of action.
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Nowhere_man
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I have a Tt 480w powersupply (un-modded) and it sometimes fails to override the manual fan setting causing it overheat and shut down under load with the exhaust fan manually set to the lowest setting.
For the record, this started happening when I switched from an AMD Athlon XP to a P4 Prescott, added a harddrive and bumped the ram up to 1 gig. This seems to be a bit more than it can handle with stability despite it's hefty ratings.
For the record, this started happening when I switched from an AMD Athlon XP to a P4 Prescott, added a harddrive and bumped the ram up to 1 gig. This seems to be a bit more than it can handle with stability despite it's hefty ratings.
I'm thinking of modding the PSU with 2 Arctic Cooling TC fans. I'm not too concerned about the reduction in exhaust fans, I've got the BQE case with a 120mm fan at the back. I've noticed that not much air at all comes out of it, because I've got more exhaust than intake, as soon as I take the side of the case off, a HEAP of air comes out of it, so I figure if less air goes through/out the PSU, then it will do more work.
I'm still a newbie to the whole modding scene, and having only bought this PSU about 2-3 weeks ago (before I found this site!), not too sure about the whole PSU mod thing. What are the chances of completely killing my PSU doing this?
I'm still a newbie to the whole modding scene, and having only bought this PSU about 2-3 weeks ago (before I found this site!), not too sure about the whole PSU mod thing. What are the chances of completely killing my PSU doing this?