Corsair HX620 - want to INCREASE fan speed

[trauma]

I have just purchased the Corsair HX620 PSU as reviewed by SPCR.

It is a nice PSU so far; except for one problem. It's fan runs TOO slow! Yep - you heard me right; the fan runs too slow (which is good for 99% of silent PC's wish lists but not for mine right now).

I have a fairly silent PC. Not sure of the DB but birds outside are louder than my puter inside a metre away from me so I am satisfied with it so far. Only problem is, I need the PSU fan to be running a little faster than the Corsair HX620's fan currently does.

I use my PSU fan as 'base load' cooling; as in I have heat pipe cooling on my graphics card; an MSI 8600-GTS - 512meg; and a 185 Opteron with a Ninja Scythe heat pipe cooler. I really need the airflow generated by the 120mm fan as my other case fan is turned way WAY down, to nothing. I don’t want to effectively have to have 2 running exhaust fans when I have a nice big 120mm sitting doing nothing.

I had my previous PSU; an Antec True Power 550 and modded it a bit; installing a Noctua 120mm fan hooked up through a Zalman Fan mate. It worked really well with the only noise being power 'whine' or resonance and turbulence from the fan; no vibration noise at all.

I live in Brisbane Australia and it gets pretty humid, hot, sticky; hey, its technically the tropics; so the setup I 'had' worked pretty well till I 'upgraded' to the Corsair HX620 with its 'non-spinning' fan.

Now, my motherboard and CPU temps are up 10c from 44c to 53-54c on the Mobo and up 9c from 48-50c on the Opteron to around 58-62c; both on idle. This is way too high, and come full-blown summer again I will be getting overtemp shut downs if keep running with the Corsair HX620 providing my base load cooling.

Question is; what can I do about it?

I am guessing I have to mod the PSU and I dont give a jack about the 'warranty'. But the question is, is there any way to mod the current fan OR FAN SETTINGS by simply changing 'a dial' or ‘shorting’ it or something inside the PSU so that it kicks in earlier at a lower temp or do I need to dispense with the Corsair / PSU managed fan entirely and go back to my Noctua either plugged in directly to the motherboard (A8N32-SLI), or though my Zalman fan mate again.

I have other fans in my system, an 80mm Noctua case fan and a Scythe 120 mm that came with the Ninja Scythe Heatpipe CPU Cooler.

Also, is the Corsair HX620's fan intimately' linked the operation of the PSU (will I get errors if I unplug it), or can I dispense with it without too many hassles as long as I take responsibility for keeping the thing cool? From here it looks like a standard old plug, leading me to believe that the HX620 PSU’s fan is ‘temperature’ controlled on board with the temp sensor as advised by some reviews and not ‘voltage’ controlled (meaning the fan freaks out when the PSU shuts down etc - bit fuzzy there I know).

I found these photo's http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/image.htm ... 9sLmpwZw== & http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/image.htm ... 9sLmpwZw==

I just want to know if the PSU will spit the dummy at my build if I disconnect the ‘on board’ fan and swap for a fan connected to the mobo?

Love a heads up on this if anyone has some suggestions.

ta


EDIT

you know what? Who gives a rats. Dive in. No fear! nothing ventured, nothing gained. back later (this isn't very difficult and I am making a mountain out of a molehill.)

[tehcrazybob]

Turning your case fan up and letting the power supply handle itself will get you the same kind of airflow and probably less noise (PSU fans are usually slow, rather than particularly good).

[Wibla]

ducting wouldnt be a bad idea...

One fan running fast or two fans running slow, I'd pick the two fans running slow...

What temps are you getting?

What exhaust fan do you have beside the psu fan?

What case?

[merlin]

The thing is...having more hot air go through a psu is really not a good idea. Minimizing psu heat/fan speed is a key for silence. You really do need a seperate exhaust fan to handle your non-psu heat. The whole purpose of that other case fan is to remove the heat that you currently don't want.

[Mikey]

The thing is...having more hot air go through a psu is really not a good idea. Minimizing psu heat/fan speed is a key for silence. You really do need a seperate exhaust fan to handle your non-psu heat. The whole purpose of that other case fan is to remove the heat that you currently don't want.

Yep, i agree. Ideally you don't want your psu exhausting any heat from the pc if you can help it.

[trauma]

Guys, thanks for the reply's.

Tehcrazybob: I have tried that and it isnt really an option in my system due to the number of heat pipe cooling options I have; graphics card MSI 8600GTS 512 heatpipe; Asus A8N32-SLI (heatpipe chipset cooler); & Ninja Scythe rev b on top of an 185 Opteron. = bit of heat (especially for Brisbane during summer – getting 50c MB & 52-55 CPU idle – with latent air temps around 30-35c.) – loaded system is a different story = 62-65c CPU during summer without to much noise.

Wibla: yes, I have resigned myself to 2 exhaust fans running reasonably slow, controlled by 2 fanmates. I had modded the Antec 550 truepower with a Noctua 1200 rpm that volts down to between 850-1100 rpm with the fanmate - removed the grill on the back (yep so I can zap myself more easily - which I have done in the past) and it ending up being practically 'silent' except for turbulence noise around the heat sinks which also dissipated around the 850-900 rpm mark.

The case fan is my 2nd exhaust fan and was a Zalman 92mm ‘quiet fan’ which wasn’t very quiet as the sleeve bearing in it was getting worn, so it was turned down to as low as it would go with the 2nd Fanmate which was about the 1100 rpm mark; yielded a slight ‘whine’ (db I have no idea) due to blade turbulence; which got noticeably louder the more dust built up on the exhaust side of the blades. – I have replaced it with a 1800mm Noctua which I am not happy with. Again I have blade turbulence noise due to having to run it at speed about 1500 rpm. It is too noisy compared to the 92mm Zalman – not due to being inferior quality but because trying to exhaust for a 8600GTS and 185 Opteron is probably a bit beyond an 80mm fan designed to run quiet.

Merlin: I know I shouldnt really have case heat being exhausted through the PSU fan as this will increase the temp of PSU and affect its performance, but, it has worked quite effectively with the TruePower even through the Truepower isn’t the best of PSU’s.

The reason I modded the Antec Truepower was that it originally had a 120mm fan and I have found through experience that utilising the 120mm fan for ‘base load’ exhausting was much more effective than relying on a single case fan. Also, I have 6 hard drives total (see sig) and loaded PCI slots so there is a fair bit of heat in there.

I do have an inlet fan blowing over 4 of the Samsungs which are set up in 2 x 0 raid arrays, so that generates a little noise, although it is indistinguishable against the other case noise. I have to turn all the other fans off in order to detect the inlet fan, a 120mm Scythe fan that came with the Ninja rev B.

My hard drives are all ‘soft mounted’ on custom (home made) foam rubber ‘brackets’ which alleviates most of the resonant hard drive noise transimitted through the case.

All the fans are soft mounted on rubber grommets, including the newly installed Noctua 120mm in the Corsair PSU, which I took out of the modded Truepower.

Guys: I appreciate that it would make sense to have the PSU take care of its own fan speed but in the past I was also getting ‘reverse airflow’ in through the PSU whenever I turned the Exhaust case fan up. I think it was happening again as from what I could tell of the Corsair’s temps, it was ‘nonexistent' – as in there was no heat transmission to the case above where the PSU was installed. This lead me to believe that the PSU’s fan speed was not high enough to prevent air being sucked in the back over the PSU from the outside; not exhaust air from the inside. I do not believe the speed of the Corsair ADDA fan at standard load was fast enough to ‘exhaust’ hot air at all, which is why I was getting such high temps in my case. I think the PSU was effectivly 'exhausting' hot air into my case. This seems to be borne out now that I have swapped fans and can get some speed out of the 120mm Nocuta. I am now getting heat transmission from the PSU through to the case directly above where it is installed and my CPU and MB temps have dropped. Now I have base temps approx 48c MB & 50c CPU at idle. I have a little ‘wind flag’ taped to the back of my case above the PSU and it flaps around when there is sufficient exhausting from the PSU. Until I changed the Corsair PSU’s fan, there was no movement of my ‘wind flag’ and it would stick flat against the grill which lead me to believe reverse pressure being generated by the case fan and cool air traveling in from the back instead of hot air out from the inside.

I need to find a 92mm case fan that is silent and will be nice to me. I have been eyeing off the Noctua NF-B9 (yes again with the Nocuta because they have SSO bearings and come with rubber grommets to soft mount) as it will fit my current 92mm exhaust hole next to the graphics card and Ninja.

I have a sneaking nagging feeling that I am going to trash this nice new Corsair HX620 by chopping out the grill in the back. There is too little surface area for exhausting and the grill, although nice and tidy, is very close to the fan and is contributing to turbulence noise in comparison to the Antec Truepower I chopped the back out of. I think it is also contributing to raising the static presure inside the PSU and reducing the effectivness of the fan and thereby contributing to noise levels.

Comments appreciated.

EDIT - I really should put some of my photo's of all this up for you guys to have a look at, but I might appear to be getting a a bit anal about it all. Just ... the noise ... really p*ss*s me off.