Modifying my Dell Precision

[RoachycaL]

Hey guys,

A few of you might have seen the thread I made a couple of weeks ago - basically I got a Dell Precision 530 Workstation off a well known auction site for £90. Specs were as follows:

Single Xeon 1.7ghz (dual cpu capable)
1Gb of ram
128mb 3d labs "wildcat 5500"
40gb IDE
the usual dvd drive etc etc

Basically I plugged it in and switched it on - the fans were making an awful whining sound and I immediatly thought the bearings were dead as I read the system was ment to be silent.

Picture shows the original fans in their brackets before I attempted to change anything

So I immediately began thinking what can I do to stop this noise. I tried a number of different noise dampening techniques but none really worked. I made a sacrifice and grabbed one of my 80mm asaka's, cut the end off and attached it to the board and hey presto it worked and the BIOS passed with no errors

I wouldnt recommend doing this with having the computer plugged in and yes I made sure none of the wires were touching when I switched it on.

So I ordered 2x Asaka 92mm fans and received them today (3 days late) - got them in and now the pc is working silently! I can only hear it when placing my ear right next to the actual tower itself.

Also a few things to add - when I opened the case I found this MASSIVE graphics card in there, unfortunately it didnt support widescreen and wouldnt let halo pc run so I took it straight out and swapped it for a spare Geforce 2 which will soon be replaced by a Geforce 4 Ti4200

I also added a fan controller which I wont attach the pic as it looks crap!

A quick view of the insides of the clamshell:

Any comments, tips, advice all welcome.

RoachycaL

 

[Joe42]

Whoever said its supposed to be quiet was having you on.
The way its designed it requires a massive ammount of airflow for the rear fans to cool such a small cpu heatsink from such a distance.

Be careful, the original fans will have had just enough airflow to cool the cpu, replacing them with low airflow quiet models is very likely to cause overheating. I very much doubt that those ambers can keep the cpu cool from that distance, particularly if undervolted with a fan controller.

Thats a good deal though, i'm keeping an eye open for something to put in my fileserver and that would have done nicely.

 

[RoachycaL]

Well luckily because its Dell, the fans were going at 700rpm's (approx), before i changed them, i checked when I changed them and their still about 700 (its always changing slightly). The CPU temps are showing about 30-35, i'll post pics later. Thanks for the advice though

 

[Its_Me]

IIRC they usualy have some styrofoam ducting insert that sits inside to actualy get the airflow moving through the heatsinks.

 

[RoachycaL]

I am using that - I just took it off to take the pic's so you can actually see the rest of the casing.