My fans arrived! See my previous blog for what I'm talking about.

I ripped out all the fans from every machine I could find and replaced them with my new silenx fans.

The first step was putting the 120mm fan where the case fan was. Let's just say I've never done this before so it wasn't as simple as it should have been... but it was simple. I dashed into the other room to plug it in, turn it on and hear some awful grating noise. Turned it off, pulled it apart and took off the guard that was in place which it was hitting. Turned it back on again and heard.. cdrom spin up and down... hard disks spin up... cpu fan ticking ever so slightly and thats about it. HOLY SHIT this thing ROCKS! Put my hand over the fan outlet and I think subjectively it doesnt have any more flow than the previous one. Hmm not quite what I expected but ultimately it was the silence I was after. Actually it is audible once I close the box (which dampens down the sound of the 20dB cpu fan).

Tried to put a 80mm case fan in and bloody hell it was noisy. I looked at it for a while, tried it on lower voltage settings, checked lm sensors which showed it running in the right speed range and thought, hmmm I guess I got ripped off. Perhaps the claims were bullshit after all. However I remembered the 120mm fan was quieter so I started investigating. I put a 92mm fan in place instead but couldn't mount it so I just held it there and it was a lot quieter. This made no sense since the 80mm one has a thermistor on it and the max SPL should be 14dB which is equal with the 92mm one. I plugged the 80mm one in again and checked it standalone. Dead quiet. Slight buzzing blowing sound when you get real close to it. What happened? I tried putting into the case again and discovered it was the turbulence created by the grill that it sat in front of. Damn. So much for using 2 or 3 quiet case fans and no cpu fan.

Oh well with the box closed the cpu fan is muffled quite a lot anyway and is pretty damn quiet really; the 20dB cpu fan enclosed in the box is about the same sound level as the 14dB PSU fan so it's a decent compromise. Really if you look at other solutions that have better air cooling some produce sound pressure levels 40dB higher!

My cpu is running flat out and at an ambient 26 C with lm sensors I get:
M/B Temp: +30°C (high = +80°C, hyst = +75°C)
CPU Temp: +46.5°C (high = +60°C, hyst = +56°C)

Absolutely fine. I'm happy with that... and I only jammed my fingers in a running fan five times tonight.

Damn it's quiet in here now and I love it :D Yes the pc is audible (it's not a true silent solution) but it's about the same loudness as the noise from breathing through my nose.

Shhh! I think I heard a mouse fart.