[plug] DFI Motherboards - Sound

[Brad Campbell]

William Kenworthy wrote:
> I am looking for a reasonable, quiet and reasonably priced power supply
> for a media box: is the thermaltake quieter than the similarly rated
> Antec (I already have one of these and it is quiet, but not silent once
> it hits its equilibrium temp)

I have a *cheap* Fujitech Viper 300W here. It has a thermally controlled 120mm fan inside and just a 
big grille on the back. It runs my media center PC.

Atlhon XP 2800+
1.5GB DDR
200GB WD 7200RPM hard disk (spun down 99.9% of the time)
WiFi PCI
Twinhan SAT card
Flyvideo98 BTTV
SMC GB Eth card
SB Live
loads of USB devices on several hubs.
KT600 Chipset
DVD-DL Recorder
DVD-ROM drive

This machine boots of USB key, runs the whole filesystem over NFS, has a thermally controlled 80mm 
fan strapped to a Thermaltake Aero7 heatsink and the 120mm PSU fan as the only moving parts and is 
for all intents a silent machine.

The hard disk is only used intermittently when I'm running Autocad under XP under Qemu, so is pretty 
much out of the power equation, but this PSU never cracks a sweat.

I used it to replace a Thermaltake Butterfly 480W that I cooked the PSU-MB connector on (The MB 
threw a regulator cap and the 5v current consumption went through the roof, over the course of a 
couple of months causing the connector to ignite one afternoon)
Replaced the MB with an identical unit and grabbed this cheapo PSU as it looked like it might be 
quiet with the 120mm fan.. I can't hear it over the very quiet CPU fan and it's certainly a load 
quieter than the DLP projector it's connected to. The whole machine is for all intents and purposes 
silent and it lives right in the lounge room where any noise would be immediately noticed.

If you can get one down there, I can't recommend this supply enough for silent applications.
It's certainly a load quieter than any of my thermaltakes and the antec in my server. (cheaper too)

Brad
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