Massive Power that is Inaudible for us Watercoolers !

[jayhall0315]

(This post was orginally in another of my threads but I thought it might help some folks out)

Hey Fellow Watercoolers,

I know that many of you have super-rigs and that you are always looking for upscale power supplies that are very quiet (like the Corsair 620). I having been getting some traffic lately about folks watercooling their power supplies and the resulting noise levels. At this time, I do not recommend this course of action. So, I suggest something along the following lines (although you do not have to use this specific PSU):

(WARNING - Please undertake this only if you know what you are doing and have some experience working with electronics. I assume that many here at XS do, but one never knows. Placing your hand into a PSU, even a just turned off PSU with the power cord unattached, can result in you getting to the Big Man with the Beard and Cane/Nirvana/the 79 Virgins in the Desert faster than you had planned)

1 - Buy the Thermaltake 1200/1000/850/750 Toughpower (which absolutely no one would ever need but does include only one fairly quiet 140 mm YL fan).
2 - Carefully crack the unit open.
3 - Remove the stock fan and replace it with this: http://www.performance-pcs.com/catal...ducts_id=20771
4 - Now remove the special 2 pin plastic fan header from the stock fan with a safety pin and snap on or solder this plastic header to the new fan (in this case I had to solder two small fan pins to the wires on the new fan to fit into the stock 2 pin header from the stock fan) and undervolt the fan to 7 volts before it reaches the PCB
5 - Remove the crap plastic shorting strips, cut them and then glue two patches to the side to prevent shorts (if not removed, your PSU will whine over 700 ~ 800 watts load)(All Toughpower and many other PSUs have these to prevent shorts)
5 - Rescrew the fan to the top and reinstall carefully. While your at it, put some heatshrink on the wires coming out of the Toughpower.
6 - Now listen to that monster go at only 17 ~ 20 dBa! (of course your exhaust temps will now run 49 deg C instead of 44 at 350 watts load, but still not bad)

Caveat: I would only do this mod though if you plan on drawing 700 watts or less from the Toughpower. If your really are in that 0.1% of people that has Quad SLI, 10 RAID 0 arrays and five water loops, just leave in the stock fan. It is not that loud, ~30 dBa.

Jay

Pic #1 - This is the replacement D14 SM-12 YL fan
Pic #2 - The replacement fan beside the TT Toughpower 1200 watt PSU
Pic #3 - The reinstallation is almost finished (You will not hear this baby now unless you put your ears three inches away)