Pimp'd my graphics card

There's something shiny PC hardware I can't resist. In my opinion, the shinier and harder to install it is, the better. Today saw the arrival of a Thermalright HR-03 Plus for my 8800GTS.

I have dealt with Thermalright before. Their stuff is always big and extremely functional but considering the size of the stock 8800 coolers (about the same size as a dinosaur mobile phone brick) even I was surprised at how big this was.

That's a 120mm fan I've stuck on there — mainly to keep the noise down. This introduced a problem: space. I have a mahoooosive HSU (Scythe Ninja) on my CPU, a pimped out, passive HSU on my chipset and trying to introduce this beast caused a bit of a squeeze:

How good is the HR-03 Plus? Awesome! Significant noise reduction. 10C cooler on idle (with the fan voltage at 50%). 30C cooler under load (100% fan voltage). Even with the fan at full-whack, it's really hard to hear it over other PC noises.

This PC now has 4 120-140mm fans and 5 HDs. This causes a lot of vibration and that goes straight through the wheels into the desk the desk where it amplifies. I've found a solution for this though: packing materials. Thankfully the HR-03 came with a buttload of plasticy insulation so I cut some up and stuffed it under the wheel axles:

Again, significant noise reduction.

Now I need a passively cooled PSU =\

Written by Oli on Thursday, 03 April 2008. Tagged with hardware. Read 2785 times. If you liked it, please give it a digg.

#1 /* 4 months, 17 days ago */

Oh wow! I've been idly toiling away at silencing a machine I use as a PVR for a while now. In a PVR application, silent operation is key, so I've been progressively swapping out for low-noise fans, routing the exhaust behind a shelving unit, rubber shock absorber 'spacers' on all the drives, etc, etc ... but never thought about the tower case's *feet*.

The feint thrumming I still get seems to emanate from "nowhere" and "everywhere" all at the same time. It seems obvious to me (finally! after seeing your setup) that this is the sound of the PC transferring vibration into the shelving unit it is stored in (via its "feet").

I am certain that within a few hours, my machine will finally be silent ... and I will feel very silly for having overlooked this for so long.

The FEET!! - they're all 'tucked up underneath there', so I guess "out of sight, out of (my) mind".

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Skeetskeetskeet Anonymous User

#2 /* 4 months, 16 days ago */

Oh wow! I've been idly toiling away at silencing a machine I use as a PVR for a while now. In a PVR application, silent operation is key, so I've been progressively swapping out for low-noise fans, routing the exhaust behind a shelving unit, rubber shock absorber 'spacers' on all the drives, etc, etc ... but never thought about the tower case's *feet*.
The feint thrumming I still get seems to emanate from "nowhere" and "everywhere" all at the same time. It seems obvious to me (finally! after seeing your setup) that this is the sound of the PC transferring vibration into the shelving unit it is stored in (via its "feet").
I am certain that within a few hours, my machine will finally be silent ... and I will feel very silly for having overlooked this for so long.
The FEET!! - they're all 'tucked up underneath there', so I guess "out of sight, out of (my) mind".

Instead of trying to absorb the vibrations why don't you eliminate them? Swapping out your hard drives for a Solid state disk drive and a file server in another room on a gigabyte lan and using a heat pipe cooling system for your cpu/gpu/chipset (heat pipes are enclosed liquid cooling systems with no pumps. they work by transferring heat from the cpu to a larger heat sink through evaporation. http://www.silentpcreview.com/article114-page1.html for more info.) and a Phantom 500 psu from antec, the psu has a fan but it only turns on when the unit reaches a user defined temperature.

Nate

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