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Unread 08-12-2002, 01:53 PM   #8
airspirit
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Join Date: Jul 2002
Location: Moscow, ID
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The less air flow through the rad, the larger the rad needs to be to compensate. pHaestus is right on the money when he suggested a bigger radiator to you. For ultimate silence think 1-ton truck radiator. If you mounted the thing outside of your case (bolted via a rack mount to the always closed side, for instance) and ran four (this is going to sound sick, but hear me out) 120mm panaflos or papsts pushing through it, you could achieve your goal. What you'd need to do is put a voltage regulator (aka, cheapy potentiometer from Rat Shack) on a four way splitter to the fans, and that way you could raise or lower the voltage to the fans as needed and "tune" your system to the perfect performance/loudness for you. You'll find, though, with a radiator with a surface area of 2-3 ft^2, not much airflow is needed for some serious cooling, especially since the PIVs are relatively cool chips.

Like the others said, forget the chipset and HDD (aka Con Job Cooler) coolers. Those parts can live without active cooling (make sure there is a decent sink on your chipset). It'll cut down on noise.

Further, invest in an Antec TruePower power supply. They have a function that measures the temp in your case and controls the case fan speed relative to that. If you have a hot day, it'll run a bit louder. If it's the dead of winter, it'll practically shut your case fan off. Kind of like the voltage controller described above but it is automatic. Plus, the power supply is relatively quiet as well.

With a system setup like described above, you should be running quieter than that Dell you were describing.
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