Mini-Review: Be-Quiet 320W PSU

OfflerCrocGod

Ok I sayd I would review this PSU when I got it on the previous tread , well I payd HiTiDE on tuesday and it was mailed on thursday and delived on friday over-all quiet happy with the service. I was going to take pics of my probe utils measuring the voltages of various parts of my computer; so as to compare the new PSU with the old...but after looking at my old PSU voltages it was obvious that would have been pointless as my voltages were rock steady. So I gave up on that and just bungled the PSU in.

Now ill describe the PSU it's bloody heavy for a 320W one, which to my mind was a good thing, the heavier a PSU the better is my motto. It was well finished and the grill in front of the fan was crome so it looked good, thats important!:D . It had a good more cables then my old PSU, including 3 just for fans. Anyway after an easy installation I flipped the switch the computer turned on and.......the noise was practically the same. Well I was non-plussed I checked the PSU to see how much noise it was making using the old ear to the grill test, it was noiseless :eek: . So what the bloody hell was making the clatter?, the only other fan in the case was my Zalman Flower CPU Cooler and well Zalman are not famous for noisy products, so I decided to turn down the fan to its slowest revs(1500), from it's top revs.

Using the termistor that comes with the fan I flipped it down to the lowest setting; I had done this before, but it had no effect because the PSU fan was so noisy, all it had produced was a hot CPU with practically no noise reduction, but this time it worked. With the zalman on lowest and with my quiet PSU the noise plummeted. I was happy:) <- see diagram, but I was not exstatic:D <- see second diagram. Why? well because now my roaring fans were replaced with a whine, an electical whine, so you could guess who I though was the guilty party here the PSU. It had quietened down my computer you must understand; the zalman(on low revs) and the PSU were VERY quiet.....but the whine was annoying, its the kinda noise that gets on you're nerve. Since I had never heard it before I assumed it was the PSU, but I could'nt actually place it...it was all over the case and high pitched so it spread everywhere. I decided that the whine would afto be ferreted out because a misterious noise should'nt exist in ANY comp.

So I tested each component seperately firstly I unpluged my HDD and checked the kinda noise reduction i'd get without it, pressed the button..... nothing it was whisper quiet...HEAVEN:D well as you understand it did'nt solve my problem cause I kinda need my HDD. So I started checking if I could cover my HDD with metal bits and bobs to dampen the noise. I stuck it at the bottom of my case with all kinda metal junk over it...HS, HDD Coolers with fans off etc.. I placed all this inside an old PSU casing. All my fans were sprayed with WD-40 now to see if that quietened them down even more, flick switch...... Smoke, smoke everywhere :eek: :eek: , you get the idea.

I shat myself I flicked the comp off checked the HDD were all the smoke was coming from...it was fine that I could see so it must have been the newly Wd-40'd fans(I had just put them in i've had them for a while but not installed, cause of the extra noise) it caused them too go up on fire, ohh well new fans I took them out(since they were not there before taking them out meant no loss of air flow compared to before) and turned the comp back on..... smoke everywhere, again. I turned off my comp and took out my HDD to check if it was ok...look over it, it was fine, I then noticed all the metal at the bottom of the case had fried the speaker cable.... I had lost my BEEP, but found the source of the smoke; I unplugged it, no great loss really. Any which way the noise was not reduced both the PSU and the Zalman did what they were supposed to but my HDD let me down. Drastic action was called for!, inhaling lots of chemical smoke I set to work. Taking all the metal Dohdahs and the HDD together I placed them into the PSUs very nice box and rapped that within a jacket rapped that within a dressing gown and left it all well outside my comp case I then turned on my comp, yet again......smoke, no i'm messing no smoke this time:D , this time there was Silence(with a capital 'S'), it was truly golden.

Now my CPU is at 40-43C Idle from 36-40C before with the zalman at full blast and at lode.....I'm scared to test it, probably 70C+ easily, but the silence it's brill! my sys is at 27C Idle, most it would be at load would be 30C, thats no problem. Anyway the moral of the story is it's the sum of the parts when it comes to noise all your components afto be quiet or your wasting you're time. Mine are, are yours?:D

Next Week: What to do when you HDD goes on fire....for real that is:D.

RicardoSmith

Buy a seagate Barracuda V HD. Save all that messing with Blue Peter stuff. The 92mm fan thats came with my Zalman Flower is quiet, but not very quiet. You need one of the Papst fans to make it really quiet. Note none of these things are silent. What GFX card are you using BTW?

MadKevo

would strongly advise you to monitor the temps of the drive in the "HD enclosure" you've created. Sounds kinda cosy, maybe too cosy...
Low tech: put a small thermometer in there
Med tech: temperature probe off a digital thermometer
Hi tech: use a S.M.A.R.T monitoring tool to keep an eye on HDD health stats...

There was a recent story about a guy who sandwiched his HDD in thick aluminium top & bottom, with foam at the sides to get rid of high-frequency noise. Temps went down as well as noise levels - kinda like what you were doing but brought to "the next level" as Joey/Friends might say...
HTH,
MK

OfflerCrocGod

Ye I was thinking about getting a barracuda they are meant to be very quiet it's just that the cuda V is meant to be noisier than the IV, but they are still one of the best I'll give it a shot I suppose... The papst fans are not the quietest the Nexus are its just that they dont have them here in Ireland, that I could find anyway. no-one seems to sell quiet fans here in Ireland!, not good ones anyway. I know about the HDD sandwitch thats why I have my drive inside an aluminum HDD cooler(with the fans off), which is itself covered with tons off aluminum and cooper Doohdas. I'm trying to suck as much of the heat away from the HDD as I can, I'll measure the temp later on when I have time, till then no Defrags.

Over all though I'm real happy with the setup cause when I turn it on in the morning I wonder wheter it's on or not!:D. Sweet and not something I wanna lose!. My Graphics fans is off and has been of since I bought it cause of the crappynes of the fan....over a year and half. So I have no worries over the Card, it's only a GeForce4 MX 440, not a performence king.

RicardoSmith

I've a Barracuda IV 80gb and a V 120gb. The V is quieter. Certain models of Papst are inaudible (12dba) .

ssh

I just picked up a Seagate Barricuda 7.2krpm S-ata 120gig drive, and I'm a little disappointed with the noise of it. It's the noisiest part in my PC now, before it was probably the 92mm cooler over my Zalman flower, which was effectively inaudible.

My other drive, a Maxtor has a rubber cover on it, maybe I should pick up another one.

Sir Random

Slightly ot, but you say you sprayed your fans with WD40?? :eek:

To silence dry/screeching fans, I half-remove the sticker on the fan and place one drop of WD40 on the spindle. I give it a few spins to let the oil cover the sleeve bearing before GLUEING the sticker back on. I test the fans on a 12v transformer just to make sure no surplus oil is thrown out before replacing them in my PC.

I wouldn't recommend spraying WD40 anywhere near your PC (or fans) as it's highly inflammable and can easily short circuit any electrical components.

RicardoSmith

Originally posted by ssh
I just picked up a Seagate Barricuda 7.2krpm S-ata 120gig drive, and I'm a little disappointed with the noise of it. It's the noisiest part in my PC now, before it was probably the 92mm cooler over my Zalman flower, which was effectively inaudible.

My other drive, a Maxtor has a rubber cover on it, maybe I should pick up another one.

Their not all quiet only the ones with the fluid bearings, and even then you can get unlucky with them, no matter which make of drive it is. I haven't any experience with the s-ata ones myself. Like I said earlier my Zalman Flower 92mm is considerably louder than my HD's. So its pot luck.

OfflerCrocGod

Well I didn't actually spray WD-40 all over the place, I'm not THAT stupid just inside the bearings I gave them a tiny spray, that's all:D . There are two diffrent Seagate models the cuda V 120Gb - which seems to be quiet and the 7200.7 - which seems to be noisy. So I'll look around for the cuda V then, pity cause I dont have a CC and HiTiDE seem to be the only place with a few HDD that I could buy, except they dont have the cuda V. Anyone know of a place that accepts bank-lodgements, with the cuda V???. 12Db is exelent!, but where can I get those(again HiTiDE doesn't have those) and what kinda airflow are we talking about?. Ohh ssh(Unix Guy?:D ), how cool does you're CPU run at?, with my Zalman at the lowest I can hit 46C at idle!.

jow

Hi,

first: I am pleased you like the be_quiet! psu. I was right when I told you they are _very_ quiet.... aren't they?
(but when looks are important to you why haven't you took a colored one. They look _very_ pretty!!! Indeed the iron one you bought is discontinued... they are now only available with the titan housing, which looks very good, but is more expensive)

second: the papst fans, used with 7 volts are _very_ quiet too. believe me

third: have you ever though of using one of the innovatek hd silencers? they are not cheap but the drive noise will be reduced. when you place the hd in an airflow you won't even recognize a big rize of the temperature (I use one of them and my hd (maxtor 40GB 7200rpm) has around 36 degrees. And the airflow is just the 120mm fan of the radiator.

Regards,

jow

RicardoSmith

Actually mines a 7200.7 plus and its quieter than the IV I have. Go figure. Heres a link to the specs. When I bought it I noticed it had a 8mb cache and not all of them do. Mine is a ST3120026A. Theres a few variations of the 120gb one. Like I said my 80 gb IV one should be quieter, but it isn't.

http://www.seagate.com/cda/products/discsales/marketing/detail/0,1081,580,00.html

Dunno where sells those Papsts anymore. I used to use one on a AX7 heatsink and it was inaudible. I've kinda given up with the whole silent thing as its just too expensive. As fans and other components get older they make more noise anyway. So you'd have to replace them. These days I'm too busy working on it to care about the noise.

OfflerCrocGod

Well I depends on how well you rate the noise of all your components, cause now my set-up is bloody quiet!, so the only thing I really need to quieten is the hard drive if I could get a near silent HDD I'd be extatic!. So any hum that is in any way way noticable would mean it being placed in a box!. I dont really care about the fact that my HDD is not in the case cause my pc doesn't usually go out jogging:D, jow stop pimping you're wares on me!:D , ye I'm not prepared to spend a lot on the hard drive, I would on a CPU cooler thats all(water set-up), but to my mind it's bizarre that a HDD can make so much noise!. I mean it's mad, you would swear it's a drill, with all the high pitch whining. Umm the panst at 7v could hardly replace a zalman cooler fan(which make a tremendous amount of noise!) though?

RicardoSmith

HD these days seem to be a lot less reliable than they used to be a few years back. As the papst that would depend on what it is cooling and the airflow in the case.

Col_Loki

Glad to hear the PSU did the job . I hate a noisey pc aswell, have went from an ear bleeding Volcano 7 to Innovatek Water cooling and my god theres some difference .

OfflerCrocGod

Ummm... I'd like to replace the Zalman fan with something that can push more air quiter then the zalman, it would be best to have a fan the same size as the zalman(92mm), or bigger I'll look into it next weekend. See what I can get, I'll keep the papst in mind, since we dont have a huge range here in Ireland:mad:.

<edit>
Ohh ye thanks COL_LOKI for you're advice !, it works a treat:D .

RicardoSmith

Lots of people try 7v 120mm fans. But I find that, that isn't enough to start a 120mm fan. Also getting a quiet 120mm fan is hard. They do push a lot more air.

ssh

Don't forget that the the larger the fan, the faster the fan-tips are moving, and hence the more noise is made.

OfflerCrocGod

Yes but the larger the fan the lower the RPMs afto be to move the same amount of air(CFM), speaking of CFM, does anyone here know of the CFM of the Zalman 92mm fans?, there website doesn't say anything. A bit odd really. Cause if I know what the zalman pushes I can replace it with an equal fan that's quieter, all I know is that the zalmans are not good fans.....

OfflerCrocGod

I just did a little research on the net and found this which states that the zalman pushes 38CFM in silent mode, which is how I'm running it right now. To put it plainly I think that's crap Exhibit A 33CFM for the same noise, Exhibit B little less noise just 27CFM, finally Exhibit C a lot less CFM(20) a lot less noise(12Db:eek: ). Well should I believe this? does anyone know of contrary evidence?. So to replace my zalman I'd need a fan that make less then 20Db and moves more then 38CFM, ummm a tough assignment, and let me tell you the zalman at lowest revs is no silent operator!.

RicardoSmith

I found the 19Db one a lot more audible than the 12Db one. Another point to make is that sometimes with a Zalman fanmate you can find a speed that is somewhere between max-min that works best. Something you can't do when 7 or 5volting fans. Personally I believe the 120mm ones are noiser than the 80mm ones.

OfflerCrocGod

Well it would be nearly twice as noisy, since Db is a log^2 scale every addition of 10Db is a doubling of the noise level. So you have the 12Db one?, how much noise those it make? have you got more then one cause 3 of those could be real quiet(21Db) and still move a bit of air(60CFM?)....if those numbers are right I think I have a winner!. Just string all three together over the zalman, haphazard yes but they would end up moving just as much if not more air then the zalman with less noise!.

RicardoSmith

I used to have a few on another rig which I sold. I don't have one at the moment, but I might buy a few soon myself. I think two fit ok on a flower bracket.

OfflerCrocGod

Ye but what kinda noise are we talking about?, my very rough calculations show three to make the same noise as a zalman, would that be a correct assumption in you're opinion , I've never dealt with these fans but 12Db is nothing!. I'm really thinking about replacing the zalman because it is nowhere near "silent".

RicardoSmith

I think they have a "nicer" noise than the Zalman.