psychological and extra

I hope my experience of a psychological solution to the problem can
help other people, here it is-.

The root of many, maybe any, computer noise problem is psychological.
Personally, i've found that the noise bothers me if i'm doing
something depressing, like deleting lots of spam, or spending hours
trying to do something petty in macromedia director(I was forced to
use it once). Or if i'm tired and not concentrating on something, or
if the noise is very high pitched. I despise the hum of TVs which
happily i can drown out with the volume control, unless the tv is
really bad - the hum really loud.
It's best to be inspired to use the computer, once inspired, I don't
notice the noise. If I think "hey, i'm going to do some C programming"
then I won't notice it, whereas if I think "turn it on, I better check
my mail, oh no, recieving 10 messages, more spam" i notice it, the
worst thing I could possibly do at that time, is to try to ignore the
noise. If I do that, then the noise will bother me greatly even when I
use the computer the next day. I think a solution, is that if i'm
doing something uninspiring like deleting junk mail, then i'll put
loud music on to drown out the noise, it's not like i have to think to
delete junk mail. I'm going to leave quietening my computer for a
while, as it's too time consuming to do right now.
Also, places where computer noise is less of a bother, are cafes,
maybe libraries.
The worst thing anybody can do, and this is what *some* reviews do,
and magazines do more often, is they try to advertise the wonderful
idea of a silent computer, and the reader starts to think it's an
easily achievable reality as the author claims to have done it, and
appears to have a howto. Often the author doesn't admit that all he
has achieved, is to make his computer 'not really noisy', and that he
can still hear the noise clearly, but it doesn't bother him.
Once my attention was drawn to the noise, I'm became more vulnerable
to it, the more I tried to silence it, the more I noticed it, and the
only solution becomes complete noiselessness. The solution is
psychological, and music helps a lot especially if you feel like you
could reach that point of fast incerasing revulsion towards the
computer. But most of the time, it's best to be doing something you
enjoy, something inspiring on it.

Back to finding solutions!
-----perfect solutions---------------------------------------------------
Remember the KVM solution it's expensive but should work. Then you
could use a USB kvm to extend your USB devices.
Don't forget those 2 potential perfect solutions of the 0db PSU with
no fans and just a massive heatsink, and the really powerful fanless
cpu heatsink.
Air ducts may well be a perfect solution and would cool the power
supply and the case, leaving the CPU noise and HDD noise, and monitor
noise.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Solutions that couldn't give complete noiselssness, but are fairly
cheap.
------- PSU quietening part 1-------------------------
The panaflow route(this is an update, i've found out a little more
about electricity):
Regarding quietening a PSU, Panaflow fans are relatively quiet, but
there's no point replacing the PSU fan with a panaflow fan when a
better solution involving relacing fans would clearly be to replace
the 1 PSU fan with 2 panaflow fans running at 7v. This would also be
extremely efficient at extracting heat, just incase it's not clear
where to place the fans.

One of the faces of the PSU faces down towards the bottom of the case,
it's right above the CPU. Here I would put a 7v panaflow fan sucking
Another face of the psu is at the back of the case. Here you put a 7v
fan blowing.

Regarding the issue of how to make the panaflow 7v, and how to put 2
panaflows in the power supply, I've got an idea which i'm sure would
work, please do tell me if it won't, and please tell me if what i
state below is wrong. I'm no electrician!

Power supply fans from what i've seen anyway, all run at 12v, i.e. the
power supply connector that powers the fan has 2 pins, 1 GND(0v)
another 12v.
The fans all seem to have a Red and Black wire. 12v travel along the
red wire, 0v along the black wire. Only the wires coming from the
power supply are colour coded as Yellow=12v, Red=5v, Black=0v When
it to wires attached to components, wire colour is irrelevant, except
for the fact that Black=GND=negative, and the other colour, whatever
colour it is, is positive.
So there are 2 apparent problems to deal with.
1. There's only 1 fan connector 2. It's 12v
Looking further into the second problem, there are only 2 pins, 12v
and 0v If there was also a 5v pin then we'd have no problem getting
7v out of it, we would just connect the positive fan wire(the red one)
to 12v and the negative fan wire(the black one) to 5v.
Given these 2 problems, I think the way forward is to grab one of
those power connectors with the Yellow,Black,Black,Red wires, take the
wires from there,
triple them up, so you've got the one you had, plus 2 extra ones for
the 2 new fans. To 'triple them up' add 2 extra reds to the red, 2
extra yellows to the yellow, e.t.c. Be sure to use wire of the same
thickness, a high gage, that can take all the current. Then you do a
strip and twist job with the wires connecting the panaflow fan wires
to the power wires. To get 7v, you need to use 12v(yellow power wire)
and 5v(red power wire) +ve(red fan wire) to the yellow power wire,
and -ve(black fan wire) to the red power wire. Do this for both fans.
Then use insulating tape to cover the bare bits of wire, and I think
that would work. I don't recommend following these instructions until
I've shown the idea to an electrician, or unless there's an
authoritative reply that it'd work.
Unplug the PSU(to prevent electricution) and leave it for a day(to let
he charge leave the capacitors) before doing any of this. I'm guessing
a day is enough, maybe it only needs a few hours.
It's best to have a temp probe in the PSU before doing any of this.
Maybe make the power supply look like the psu shown in part 2 below.
Poke holes in one side with a drill and stick 1 120mm fan in. Should
be a quiet deeper noise than the smaller fans. I don't know what
voltages it runs at though. Probably 12v.
------------psu quietening part 2--------------
www.maplin.co.uk A09BF
http://www.maplin.co.uk/media/mediumimages/37100i0.jpg
The nice thing about that one is that the noise probably isn't high
pitched, as it's a large 120mm fan. I did once have a computer that
came with a PSU like this one, it was quiet, and low pitched, I also
reduced the noise further by placing it in a little cupboard below my
desk, and of course, ripping the back of the cupboard so air could
come in and out, and closed the front door of it.
If you don't need noiselessness, or you do but you don't mind a
temporary solution, then this may be good, but i haven't tried it yet,
I've only tried a similar psu a while back.
---------------------------------------------

Here's another quietening thing for PSU fans
"Power Supply Fan Noise Silencer" A71AZ
http://www.maplin.co.uk/?userid=ARM_...etmodule=36198
I probably wouldn't bother trying this one.
----------------------------------------------------------------

David Taylor wrote:
I hope my experience of a psychological solution to the problem can
help other people, here it is-.

snip interesting stuff

Interesting idea about the psychological effect of PC noise. Personally
I find that when I'm doing constructive stuff with the PC, the noise is
*more* distracting. Especially if I'm writing a bit of music or doing
some programming. Just reducing the noise of my PC made a huge difference.

I live in a pretty tiny house so my 2 PC's are in the front room. My
server, which is on 24/7, is now virtually silent. My WIndows PC isn't
though and it can still be heard clearly when I am watching TV,
listening to music etc.

There is also some proof that background noise such as that caused by
PC's can cause various psychological effects even if you are not
consciously aware of the noise.

I guess we're all different so different things effect us differently.
Or something :-)


Back to finding solutions!

Solutions that couldn't give complete noiselssness, but are fairly
cheap.
------- PSU quietening part 1-------------------------
The panaflow route(this is an update, i've found out a little more
about electricity):
Regarding quietening a PSU, Panaflow fans are relatively quiet, but
there's no point replacing the PSU fan with a panaflow fan when a
better solution involving relacing fans would clearly be to replace
the 1 PSU fan with 2 panaflow fans running at 7v. This would also be
extremely efficient at extracting heat, just incase it's not clear
where to place the fans.

One of the faces of the PSU faces down towards the bottom of the case,
it's right above the CPU. Here I would put a 7v panaflow fan sucking
Another face of the psu is at the back of the case. Here you put a 7v
fan blowing.

Never fully understood this design. Surely if you have one of the PSU
fans above the processor sucking air then it is sucking the warm air
from the processor into the PSU and reducing the cooling effect. I
always have far better cooling results when I have a fan sucking in cold
air from somewhere.


The best PSU I ever bought was from quietpc.com. It really is pretty
damn quiet and is far easier than trying to butcher an exisiting, noisy PSU.

Cheers
Gareth

--
I'm a reasonable man, get off my case.

If the Air Vent is partially obstructed it will make more noise. Often it
is a problem with poor case design. Acoustics in the case can also cause an
effect to reverberate the sound.


"David Taylor" wrote in message
om...
I hope my experience of a psychological solution to the problem can
help other people, here it is-.

The root of many, maybe any, computer noise problem is psychological.
Personally, i've found that the noise bothers me if i'm doing
something depressing, like deleting lots of spam, or spending hours
trying to do something petty in macromedia director(I was forced to
use it once). Or if i'm tired and not concentrating on something, or
if the noise is very high pitched. I despise the hum of TVs which
happily i can drown out with the volume control, unless the tv is
really bad - the hum really loud.
It's best to be inspired to use the computer, once inspired, I don't
notice the noise. If I think "hey, i'm going to do some C programming"
then I won't notice it, whereas if I think "turn it on, I better check
my mail, oh no, recieving 10 messages, more spam" i notice it, the
worst thing I could possibly do at that time, is to try to ignore the
noise. If I do that, then the noise will bother me greatly even when I
use the computer the next day. I think a solution, is that if i'm
doing something uninspiring like deleting junk mail, then i'll put
loud music on to drown out the noise, it's not like i have to think to
delete junk mail. I'm going to leave quietening my computer for a
while, as it's too time consuming to do right now.
Also, places where computer noise is less of a bother, are cafes,
maybe libraries.
The worst thing anybody can do, and this is what *some* reviews do,
and magazines do more often, is they try to advertise the wonderful
idea of a silent computer, and the reader starts to think it's an
easily achievable reality as the author claims to have done it, and
appears to have a howto. Often the author doesn't admit that all he
has achieved, is to make his computer 'not really noisy', and that he
can still hear the noise clearly, but it doesn't bother him.
Once my attention was drawn to the noise, I'm became more vulnerable
to it, the more I tried to silence it, the more I noticed it, and the
only solution becomes complete noiselessness. The solution is
psychological, and music helps a lot especially if you feel like you
could reach that point of fast incerasing revulsion towards the
computer. But most of the time, it's best to be doing something you
enjoy, something inspiring on it.

Back to finding solutions!
-----perfect solutions---------------------------------------------------
Remember the KVM solution it's expensive but should work. Then you
could use a USB kvm to extend your USB devices.
Don't forget those 2 potential perfect solutions of the 0db PSU with
no fans and just a massive heatsink, and the really powerful fanless
cpu heatsink.
Air ducts may well be a perfect solution and would cool the power
supply and the case, leaving the CPU noise and HDD noise, and monitor
noise.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Solutions that couldn't give complete noiselssness, but are fairly
cheap.
------- PSU quietening part 1-------------------------
The panaflow route(this is an update, i've found out a little more
about electricity):
Regarding quietening a PSU, Panaflow fans are relatively quiet, but
there's no point replacing the PSU fan with a panaflow fan when a
better solution involving relacing fans would clearly be to replace
the 1 PSU fan with 2 panaflow fans running at 7v. This would also be
extremely efficient at extracting heat, just incase it's not clear
where to place the fans.

One of the faces of the PSU faces down towards the bottom of the case,
it's right above the CPU. Here I would put a 7v panaflow fan sucking
Another face of the psu is at the back of the case. Here you put a 7v
fan blowing.

Regarding the issue of how to make the panaflow 7v, and how to put 2
panaflows in the power supply, I've got an idea which i'm sure would
work, please do tell me if it won't, and please tell me if what i
state below is wrong. I'm no electrician!

Power supply fans from what i've seen anyway, all run at 12v, i.e. the
power supply connector that powers the fan has 2 pins, 1 GND(0v)
another 12v.
The fans all seem to have a Red and Black wire. 12v travel along the
red wire, 0v along the black wire. Only the wires coming from the
power supply are colour coded as Yellow=12v, Red=5v, Black=0v When
it to wires attached to components, wire colour is irrelevant, except
for the fact that Black=GND=negative, and the other colour, whatever
colour it is, is positive.
So there are 2 apparent problems to deal with.
1. There's only 1 fan connector 2. It's 12v
Looking further into the second problem, there are only 2 pins, 12v
and 0v If there was also a 5v pin then we'd have no problem getting
7v out of it, we would just connect the positive fan wire(the red one)
to 12v and the negative fan wire(the black one) to 5v.
Given these 2 problems, I think the way forward is to grab one of
those power connectors with the Yellow,Black,Black,Red wires, take the
wires from there,
triple them up, so you've got the one you had, plus 2 extra ones for
the 2 new fans. To 'triple them up' add 2 extra reds to the red, 2
extra yellows to the yellow, e.t.c. Be sure to use wire of the same
thickness, a high gage, that can take all the current. Then you do a
strip and twist job with the wires connecting the panaflow fan wires
to the power wires. To get 7v, you need to use 12v(yellow power wire)
and 5v(red power wire) +ve(red fan wire) to the yellow power wire,
and -ve(black fan wire) to the red power wire. Do this for both fans.
Then use insulating tape to cover the bare bits of wire, and I think
that would work. I don't recommend following these instructions until
I've shown the idea to an electrician, or unless there's an
authoritative reply that it'd work.
Unplug the PSU(to prevent electricution) and leave it for a day(to let
he charge leave the capacitors) before doing any of this. I'm guessing
a day is enough, maybe it only needs a few hours.
It's best to have a temp probe in the PSU before doing any of this.
Maybe make the power supply look like the psu shown in part 2 below.
Poke holes in one side with a drill and stick 1 120mm fan in. Should
be a quiet deeper noise than the smaller fans. I don't know what
voltages it runs at though. Probably 12v.
------------psu quietening part 2--------------
www.maplin.co.uk A09BF
http://www.maplin.co.uk/media/mediumimages/37100i0.jpg
The nice thing about that one is that the noise probably isn't high
pitched, as it's a large 120mm fan. I did once have a computer that
came with a PSU like this one, it was quiet, and low pitched, I also
reduced the noise further by placing it in a little cupboard below my
desk, and of course, ripping the back of the cupboard so air could
come in and out, and closed the front door of it.
If you don't need noiselessness, or you do but you don't mind a
temporary solution, then this may be good, but i haven't tried it yet,
I've only tried a similar psu a while back.
---------------------------------------------

Here's another quietening thing for PSU fans
"Power Supply Fan Noise Silencer" A71AZ
http://www.maplin.co.uk/?userid=ARM_...etmodule=36198
I probably wouldn't bother trying this one.
----------------------------------------------------------------

Never fully understood this design. Surely if you have one of the PSU
fans above the processor sucking air then it is sucking the warm air
from the processor into the PSU and reducing the cooling effect. I
always have far better cooling results when I have a fan sucking in cold
air from somewhere.

good point, though I think the point of the design, is that because
hot air rises, if you look inside, then as soon as it rises it hits
the case of the PSU. My case actually has a fanhole right adjacent to
the CPU heatsink. Perhaps the fan won't suck all the CPUs hot air out,
some air will rise above that fan and up to the base of the PSU. A
sucker fan would naturally use the fact that the hot air rises.
Though you have a good point, that it would seem to be to the
detriment of the PSU. Though a temp probe would be the true check.

.. If your PSU needs 2 fans (for quietness- 2*7v) then perhaps a fan on
the back and a fan on the top (cut a hole in the top of the case).



The best PSU I ever bought was from quietpc.com. It really is pretty
damn quiet and is far easier than trying to butcher an exisiting, noisy PSU.


everybody loves that one, except me. It's the worst one i ever bought!
The noise was very high pitched. I actually recorded the noise in a
wav file and put it on a disk and sent it to them. If you want then
i'll email you the wav file, let me know if i got a dud! I sent it
their PSU back and got my money back. In my previous post, I
mentioned loads of ways of quietening PSUs, I think a good bet for
making it a bit quieter is the maplin.co.uk one with the 12cm fan. The
possible perfect one is the silentmaxx one.

On Mon, 29 Sep 2003 16:51:27 +0100, Gareth Jayne
wrote:
Never fully understood this design. Surely if you have one of the PSU
fans above the processor sucking air then it is sucking the warm air
from the processor into the PSU and reducing the cooling effect. I
always have far better cooling results when I have a fan sucking in cold
air from somewhere.

Dun quite understand your issue though. If the PSU is sucking hot air
out, cooler air will be forced to come into the case, so it helps with
cooling. Being next to the CPU also means that it will draw the
hottest air away from generally the hottest part in the system.

Though experimentations did show that the PSU intake fan only had a
slight 1~2C kind of effect. A standalone exhaust fan at the top rear
had a lot more impact than that as well as in comparison to an intake
fan.
--
L.Angel: I'm looking for web design work.
If you need basic to med complexity webpages at affordable rates, email me
Standard HTML, SHTML, MySQL + PHP or ASP, Javascript.
If you really want, FrontPage & DreamWeaver too.
But keep in mind you pay extra bandwidth for their bloated code

"The little lost angel" wrote in
message ...

Though experimentations did show that the PSU intake fan only had a
slight 1~2C kind of effect. A standalone exhaust fan at the top rear
had a lot more impact than that as well as in comparison to an intake
fan.

I think you are probably right. I seem to recall reading somewhere that
effective cooling is the removal of heat, not the 'insertion' of cold. ;-).

Regards,
Dean.

--
L.Angel: I'm looking for web design work.
If you need basic to med complexity webpages at affordable rates, email me

Standard HTML, SHTML, MySQL + PHP or ASP, Javascript.
If you really want, FrontPage & DreamWeaver too.
But keep in mind you pay extra bandwidth for their bloated code