XFX 4850 whirring? loud zalman psu?

dan-fish

dan-fish

dan-fish

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27 Jul 2010
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40
Hey guys
I've recently got fed up with the noise my pc makes on idle. When i turn down the fans, it starts hitting 50c. So i decided to see what was making the noise. I disconnected all my fans, turned off my cpu fan and tried to see what was making the noise. I seemed to hear a faint (but very noticeable) whirring noise from my 4850. This card performs fine as i have seen from the crysis 2 demo. However, I also have a zalman zm-600hp which i'm not sure about. I can't turn off the gpu fan because ATT won't let me and my control center won't seem to work. I bought the psu used and it was quite old. Do psu's get loud over time?
Any help?
 
Yes they can do. As the fan wears it will start to make more noise.

The 600hp seems to be a FSP unit similar to the SXS 600Wand the GXS 600W supplies but with the addition of the heatpipe and heatsink. The fan in my OCZ needed to be replaced after one year as it developed a ticking noise. Once I removed the fan I found it be quite grindy when spun by hand. I didn't much care about voiding the warranty.

You can always put your finger on the centre of the 4850 fan to stop it to check what difference it makes to your case volume.

If your 4850 is anything like my 4890 it may respond well to underclocking at idle. I noted that the idle clocks were 240/1000 which I have changed to 240/250, which has reduced idle temps by 13 degrees and dropped my fan speed down. I used ATI Tray Tools.
 
I could try RMA'ing the psu but i just cannot be bothered going through removing my psu and putting a new one in. How would you go about changing the fan in a psu? And where would the fans be available from?
 
That rather depends on what Zalman have fitted to the PSU. If it's a 120mm fan then a simple swap with a Scythe S-Flex 1600rpm or so would probably be the best option. You have to choose a certain type of fan that has a certain type of bearing to run in the horizontal plane. I think the S-Flex has some form of fluid bearing.

Fitting is a matter of opening the PSU (voiding warranty unless you can remove stickers without leaving traces), removing the worn fan and fitting your new fan.

If the Zalman is wired the same as my OCZ then it will have a two wire fan hot glued to the mainboard. I needed to cut the wires of the fan and splice the new fan in place. I took the opportunity to route the speed sense wire out of the PSU at this stage so I could monitor the speed.

The Capacitors in a PC PSU carry lethal charge so you need to take precuations. Such as discharging the powered off PSU by pressing the case power button or leaving switched off for a couple of days, or both. Don't go licking or touching the exposed caps or heatsinks in the power supply afterwards.

I discharged mine by pressing the power button a few times while switched off. I then removed the PSU immediately from the case, just disconnecting the main connectors from the mobo and grfx card.

This sort of mod is done all the time over on silent pc review forums and there are guides but it's not tricky.

After 1 year of using my S-flex 1600rpm fan I have now removed the PSU and fitted a brand new FSP Aurum 700W unit and noticed that the fan is still silky smooth in operation, which is nice.
 
So the fluid bearing is required for a psu?

also do i have to completely disconnect the psu? because i just spent ages on the damn thing hiding all the wires out of plain sight.
 
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