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Cheap and quiet ATX PSU?

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dukdukgoos

Golden Member
My GF is looking to quiet down her system, and I isolated the PSU as the main noise source. It's not the PSU fan that's noisy, though. Disconnecting the PSU fan doesn't effect the noise much. There just seems to be a high-pitched sound coming from the PSU itself.

Anyway, are there any cheap, quiet replacements for her PSU? If it's quiet except for the fan, that's ok, I'll change it...
 
That seems kind of bad that the PSU itself is making noise apart from the fan. PSUs should be completely silent except for the fan.

If you unplugged the fan and are sure that it's the PSU making the noise then you should just have her buy a new one. What kind of computer does she have? If it's older you could probably get by with a cheapo 250W one. If it's newer a 300W or higher name brand one would probably be a good idea. You could even replace the PSU fan with a quiet Panaflo L1A fan if you wanted it to be nearly silent.

Have you made sure that her hard drive(s) aren't making the high pitched noise? I know I have an IBM drive that I had to toss into a SilentDrive enclosure because it started getting annoyingly loud...

 
Color cases sells a really cheap AMD Approved 400w PSU for under $30. Take that one and replace the fan with a panaflo.
 
Did the process of elimination and it is the HD making the high-pitched noise. Thanks gaidin123 for pointing me in the right direction. Now I just need one of those drive enclosures you were talking about... 😉
 
Just a word of warning, a hard drive that suddenly becomes noticeably louder than it used to be could be an early warning sign of failure. It may mean nothing like in my case but if she has important data on there it would probably be a good idea to burn a backup CD or 2 just to be safe (of course we should *all* be doing that on a regular basis right? 🙂).

Check out http://www.quietpc.com/silentdrive.html for the silentdrive thing I'm using. Several stores sell them online so I'd suggest doing a price search on them. The only catch with these enclosures is that your hard drive must dissipate less than 6.8 Watts of heat (or so). My IBM 75gxp 30GB drive falls under the max and I've never had a problem with drive heat. You can use SpeedFan (or is it FanSpeed?) to monitor your hard drive temps if your drive supports S.M.A.R.T.

Good luck in getting a quieter PC! 🙂

Gaidin
 
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