Thursday 30 June 2011

Upgrading PSU Fan for a silent or quiet fan.

PSUs are pretty cheap, but if like me you like fixing things, here below is a method described for replacing the fan in your PSU with a quieter / silent alternative.

CARRY OUT THIS PROCEDURE AT YOU OWN RISK

Introductory video:



I replaced the 92mm fan in my rather noisy PSU with an Arctic cooling F9, which is soooo quiet, although I expect there are better fans to be had.

You will need:
  1. A soldering iron.
  2. Some solder.
  3. A replacement fan of the correct size (mine was 92mm)
  4. Various scredrivers
  5. Electical tape.
  6. Wire cutters and strong scissors.

All manufacturers say never to open a PSU as it is dangerous in there, and you will certainly void any warranties by doing this procedure. If you break anything, damage your computer, or electrocute yourself or your dog, then I will not be held to account. If all this makes you feel scared then buy a whole new psu with a large low rpm fan. . . . if its doesn't then please read on and I will explain a method o follow if YOU so wish.

Remove the psu from the computer, some people say to let the PSU rest for several hours after unplugging to let the capacitors de charge or something, check this out first if you are worried.

Undo any screws which look like they hold the casing on to the PSU, I had to bend mine open once I had removed 5 screws.

Now you can see inside, touch as little as possible there may be residual charge left in capacitors.

The fan is held to the PSU case with 4 screws or clips undo these and see if you can get the fan to move out, you may have the cut the wires leading to the fan at this point, CUT THE WIRES AS CLOSE THE THE FAN MOTOR AS POSSIBLE, we want lots of spare wire hanging ou to solder the new fan to. This is a one way ticket manoeuver.

There were three wires coming out of the PSU in my one Black (Ground), Blue (PWM) and Red (Positive). On the replacement fan there were 4 wires Black, Blue, Red and . . . yellow (Fan sensor). More on what colour wires you may have.

In the first instance, I matched the colours up soldered the wires together and this combo didn't work. So leave the reds and black matched up I connected the blue (from psu) and yellow(on fan). This works fine. The blue wire on the fan is there fore redundant in this instance.

It helped that I had a Arctic Cooling F12 as a main case fan to reference to, other wise things might have been a little confusing.

Once you have soldered all of th wire together, put 2 or three layers of electrical tape on each exposed separate wire in including any redundant ends of wires left over. Put all the screws back where they came from, nd reassemble.

Power up and enjoy the quiet. I now notice the noise from my processor fan which I couldn't even hear before, and I am smug in the knowledge that for the sake of a fan, someone somewhere didn't have to build a whole new PSUm saving resources, time, and the environment.

CARRY OUT THIS PROCEDURE AT YOU OWN RISK


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Tuesday 28 June 2011

HP XW8000 - Some Observations

HP XW8000 - Switching from Prestonia CPU to Costa Rica CPU



I am running a XW8000 with a 533 FSB Xeon, and I thought I would try a 800 FSB xeon. NO this does not work, got beep codes and a blank screen. So this would also mean that the XW8000 will not run a 64 bit system, as there are no 533 processors with 64 bit support.

HP XW8000 - Why so many memory slots?

Why is there room for 12 GB of memory on a system that will only do 32 bits (Max 3.6 GB), I belive server 2003 will use more memory than xp, and some linux distributions will take more memory but with xp you are stuck with 3.6 (see below, there is actually 4GB installed, but its doesn't all show)



HP XW 8000 - Noisey Fans / Fan Noise

When I first switched on my XW 8000 I nearly had a heart attack the fans are pretty noisey. There are the two processesor fans which arn't too bad. The main culprets are the case fan (120mm) and the psu fan.

HP XW8000 - Noisey Case Fan

Here you have two options you can use speed fan to lower the rpm of the case fan, which is very sucessful and almost removes noise all together. OR. You can replace the fan. I have swapped the original for an Arctic cooling F12, which really is silent ie no noise what so ever.

HP XW8000 - Noisey PSU Fan

No option to control fan speed here, so replacement is only option, this is a kill or cure stile manuver and void all warrrenties and you might get electrocuted learn how to swap psu fan here..

HP XW800 - Using a SATA hard disk drive.

You can only use SATA with a PCI expansion card, which I have not tried. The XW8000 comes set up as default to run on SCSI drives, of which it can take several.

It does have ide socket on the maib board, and I am running mine with a ide 7200rpm drive which works fine. If you do opt for SCSI drive you need the 68 pin ones not the 80 pin ones. SCSI does improve the performance but is VERY noisey.

HP XW8000 - Dual Core

No the the XW8000 xeon processor is not dual core, it is single core with hyperthreading, with two processors running task manager will disply four CPUs but this is just an expression.

HP XW8000 - Performance

Solidly quick but not overly snazzy. Pretty good under heavey loads, and when multitasking. With my other PC there would be waiting periods where you could have a rest, but now they are gone, I have never managed to overloasd this machine, you can runs scans, back ups, defrags and works with documents all at the same time.

HP XW8000 - 64 bit?

No I don't think so, max FSB support is 533FSB, 64 bit instruction sets start at 800FSB for 604 socket xeons. I have tried an 800 FSB CPU in my XW8000, doesn't work, and you can't adjust the BIOPS to make it work either!!

Specs of the machine used in this page:

HP XW8000

Processors : 2 x Prestonia 512KB Cache, 2.8 GHZ, 604 Socket, 533 FSB

Memory : 4 GB of DDR PC2100 with ECC

Drive : IDE 160 GB Seagate

Graphics: 2D business nvidia quadro - twin monitors.

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