Best Silencing Route

shmittty89 · March 8, 2013

I have narrowed down the most noisy part of my system to be my power supply fan (rosewill hive 650 bronze), which im not sure how to replace so if someone could tell me how to replace it that would be great. Do power supplies use regular 120mm fans or something special, if they use regular fans should i get noctuas or are corsair quiet sp/af120's any good, this would cost between $20-40 depending on the number of fans i want to buy. The second silence option i see is to replace my power supply entirely with a 450-550 watt silent power supply which would cost between $50-90, but would leave me with a perfectly working extra power supply. The last option I can see is buying a Define R4, which i've heard good things about, but I don't know if it would cover the noise of the power supply and would cost $80-100 more than buying quiet fans.

So out of those options which route is best? If you find a good PSU mod link please share it or explain it and recommend fans to do it with please.

iTonyy · March 8, 2013

I think to get the most quiet system you can get a psu that is fanless like the Seasonic x-520 however if you want to save a few bucks you can always change the fan to a noctua (which I don't recommend unless you really know what your doing around electrical wiring, see here -->

Also keep in mind that your system is only as quiet as the loudest noise source so unless the rest of your system is already quiet optimized, eliminating the psu noise source will only allow the next loudest noise to surface whether that be a fan, hard drive, etc. So it would make it pointless unless everything else is already quiet or else your just going to end up back where you started and needing to spend more money

razersum · March 8, 2013

like tony said, you can try changing the psu fan, but its quite risky, and personally, i wouldnt recommend doing it.

one thing i can say is that you can try cleaning the psu[with compressed air can/or something similar] there are chances the psu maybe making some noise due to dust build up in it.

or else just change to a new psu.

Jorge_lsca · March 8, 2013

Great advice from "razersum". First try cleaning your PSU with compressed air. If the noise is still there you might want to think about getting a new PSU. If you want zero noise, get a fanless one. Or if a little noise is not that much of an issue, you might as well get one of those PSU that turns on the fan at certain temps.