August 12, 2003
Power supply testing
The AnandTech folks have done a comprehensive review of PC power supplies. Their Power Supply Roundup offers a rather extensive report about price, performance and noise.
I've got all my stuff rackmounted in an adjacent room. But even with doing that, the noise level from multiple boxes gets pretty annoying. I may well invest in replacing some of my current power supplies with the units they recommend. That's probably going to be less expensive than ripping apart the walls to install noise insulation. It'll certainly be less hassle.
Unless you are using absolutely bottom-of-the-line power supplies, which is not likely to be the case if you are running P4s or Athlons, you will likely find that the vast majority of noise is generated by the CPU fan and case fans, and not so much by the PSU.
For the CPU, take a look at the Zalman line of CPU cooling solutions. Their "flower"-style coolers are remarkably efficient considering their low noise level.
For the case fans, its largely going to come down to case design: if the case doesn't allow good airflow just about any case fan is going to cavitate and generate noise instead of moving air. With that in mind, the cases themselves are the first thing to check, followed closely by checking the quality of the fans (there can be quite a variety across manufacturers).
I took my main workstation from "damn that's loud!" to "is it still on?" by changing the CPU cooler and case fans and I haven't even gotten to changing to a case with better airflow just yet. :)
Jeremy
Posted by: Jeremy Gray on August 13, 2003 11:34 AMAs an additional note, you could also be getting a surprising amount of noise out of vibrations within the case. I had a case fan in my workstation for a while that made easily 3x as much noise before I wrapped the fan's enclosure with a bit of tape so that it more firmly and securely fitted into the push-fit case fan holder, cutting down on vibration by quite a bit.
Posted by: Jeremy Gray on August 13, 2003 11:39 AM
