Reducing noise in a 7100 - thoughts?

[joshc]

Has anyone attempted fan replacement or other endeavours to reduce the noise of a 7100?

The 7100 has a front fan blowing air onto the 601 CPU, this is a 60x60x20mm fan. The fan itself doesn't seem to be too noisy, but the way air moves around the metal case seems to cause a bit of noise. The front fan is curiously mounted to a plastic bracket, so I wonder if anything further can be done to improve the mounting to reduce vibration through the case.

The 7100 also has a rear exhaust fan, drawing air through the machine and the power supply, pulling to the rear of the machine. This fan is located in the power supply, and is a standad 80x80mm fan. I used a Noctua replacement in another machine with the same PSU but didn't find it made things much quieter.

I'd be interested in hearing opinions of how to make the 7100 quiet - not necessarily whisper quiet, but just less noticeable. I've already removed the hard drive and replaced with an SD card device, so one source of noise is gone.

I want to retain adequate cooling because I've just put a G3 card in the 7100 and things could get rather toasty in there if the fans aren't up to the job.

I was also wondering about the impact of the metal enclosure on noise; would adhesive sound dampening foam applied to the top lid /front bezel help at all?

 

[trag]

You could line the inside top of the case with speaker batting.

I did that on a Power120 from PCC, which had four Seagate ST32550 (early, noisy, hot 7200 RPM Barracudas) drives in it.

It made a surprising amount of different in the noise level.

 

[joshc]

Thanks trag, that's what I was wondering. I think the challenge will be working out the thickness to use and where it can be applied - the top lid doesn't have much clearance in some areas. There is a bit of dead space down the sides of the logic board / at the front where some deadening material could go as well.

 

[trag]

IIRC, I ended up cutting the batting in a pattern to match where the clearance was. There were/are spots where things like drive cages are right up against the side panel on the Power120, so I had to have cut-outs in the batting in those spots.

 

[paws]

I put a Noctua in the PSU in mine and found it did make quite a bit of difference.

I also replaced the CPU fan, but I don't remember with what. As far as I remember it was hard to find something that fit. All in all it's quite a bit better now, but not perfect.