Theoretically can you build a PC with just the PSU fan?

Raumarik

Raumarik

Raumarik

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Going to be finally building a new PC in the next few weeks and I've been looking at fanless graphics cards. I like the idea of minimising the number of fans in my PC as it sits in the living room where even with "silent" fans any hum can get annoying quickly.

Has anyone built one with only the PSU fan and at most one case fan running and still had a fairly beefy PC?
 
yup, you can get totally fanless systems if you are willing to pay for it and don't mind a more limited range of parts to use in it :)
 
Could get a centrino chip and a desktop mobo, run nice and cooly (sp?). Quite easy to make a passively cooled system with one.
 
fanless designs are good but often cost an arm and a leg for their respective (with) fan counter parts, especially when looking at PSUs.

if you want TOTALLY silent the best thing you can do is go for watercooling, a little more hastle and a tad more expensive but you get a) no noise and b) a much cooler (in everysense of the word :p) system.

the only thing you've got to watch out for then is making sure you've got quiet HDDs and quiet optical drives... great no fans whirring around, but who cares if you can hear the hard drive speeding up every few minutes? ;)

as far as
Has anyone built one with only the PSU fan and at most one case fan running and still had a fairly beefy PC?
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my pc two upgrades ago was a P4 3.2GHz northwood (s478) with a passively cooled 9600pro (made of fairy dust i tell you! awesome card for its money) and only the PSU and the CPU fans were in there... no case fan, northbridge passively cooled etc...

if you need case fans, the Scythe S-FLEX is supposed to be pretty damn silent (around 8dB when fully powered)... the best thing on OcUK are the AKASA Ultra Quiet fans though (18dB i think).

you could look into buying AcoustiPack sound proofing kits, not used one myself but they're supposed to be quite good... i presume they'd raise temps inside the machine a fair bit though :confused:
 
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It is entirely possible - in fact i have built a couple of PCs this way - however it does require some careful consideration.

1st step is to eliminate the heat being generated in the first place - ie pick low power components, undervolt your processor etc.

A64s and Semprons are fantastic for this - undervolted they easily compare to laptop processors like the pentium-m and turion chips, yet you will still be able to run at stock speed or faster!

2nd step. Consider what else you will hear if you don't have all those fans running. Hard drives make horrible high pitch noises that are often more annoying that the whoosh of air from a fan. Beyond the hard drive you may have annoying coil whine from the motherboard or PSU.
A quiet, suspended or enclosed hard drive is essential. Use either a samsung spinpoint or better yet a quiet laptop drive.

3rd step. Consider airflow carefully. A very effective single fan system would use a PSU with a slow 120mm fan like a seasonic S12 placed above a large CPU heatsink. This will draw heat away from the CPU, and from the case. If all your other components are relatively low power, this should happily cool the whole system. The silverstone SUGO1 case is ideal for this.
Don't forget the other critical components though. You will need to make sure the graphics card, chipset and critically the hard drive do not reach excessive temps. Most graphics cards and chipsets will run happily a lot hotter than you ever imagined (I've run many at over 90deg for years with no ill effects) but especially if you have important data on your hard drive, I would be very wary of regularly letting it exceed 45-50deg.

By closing off ventilation holes etc to direct just a little airflow over these critical components you should be able to achieve your goal of a PC with a single fan. Completely fanless is possible, but you will have to compromise performance. Water cooling IMO is not an option as the pump will be louder than a single quiet PSU fan and without any fans at all, certain components could still reach critical temps.

Marc
 
My PC is silent AND relatively quick.

I have a P180 case completely sound proofed all over the inside with just the top fan vent open to allow heat to passively rise up and out of the case. My drives are all in sound proof enclosures and its all watercooled using 1-2 120mm fans. Gfx card is overclocked the max it will go and CPU (socket 939 opteron) overclocked to 2.8 - 3.0ghz. I keep it on the floor under my desk and I cant tell its on. CPU idles at about 5 degrees Celcius above ambient which is about 26 c and load temps never go over 38 c. GFX card idles at 30 c and load temps im not sure, but its fully stable.

Cost no more than a normal system would do except add the cost of watercooling and drive enclosures.
 
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