Silent power supply: ways to modify a computer

Before those who had to collect a quiet or completely silent computer, there was a major obstacle - to install a noiseless power supply. It turns out that if you can fight with other sources of excess sound, then the rustling created by the power supply fan often becomes an insoluble task.

For example, if the noise is generated by a video card, then it can be changed to silent analogs or you can purchase a motherboard with integrated video. Although this procedure will reduce the performance of your computer. Then the annoying fan of the case can also be replaced by a more massive quiet, say, the company Zalman. This will reduce the overall background without degrading performance. And, finally, the CPU cooler can be easily replaced with a more bulky one, which will passively cool a not very powerful "stone".

Even a low-noise hard disk can be replaced with an SSD or HDD with a larger capacity, but with a lower speed at lower frequencies.

Thus, having put your strength and spending a little money, you can significantly reduce the hum from the computer, and with large investments to assemble a completely silent enclosure of the system unit.

However, the most difficult task is the power supply unit, since it participates in the powering of all the devices in the system unit. Even if separately the devices take a little electricity, then their joint work shows a decent value. The exception is only the components of nettops or laptops that have low consumption.

You can solve this problem in several ways. For a computer based on low-power and small systems, you can apply an external noiseless power supply. These are motherboards that have a Mini-ITX form factor. For them, there are compact cases that are equipped with an external power supply, reminiscent of a standard power supply from the laptop. The advantage of this system is its compactness, low heat dissipation and complete absence of noise. However, in this case, you will have to sacrifice performance: these devices are rather weak and have limited capabilities.

The second solution can be the installation of a quality fan, for example, from Zalman. And you get a noiseless power supply. In this case, you need to arm yourself with a soldering iron, since the fan located in the power supply is usually soldered. At the same time, it is recommended to break the power supply and solder to the wires standard plugs (3-pin). This will insert a resistance in the rupture, which will help regulate the fan speed.

The most expensive and radical solution will be the purchase of such a device as a power supply with passive cooling. It turns out that this is possible. In these devices, the cooling function is assigned to the power supply enclosure, which usually has a massive ribbed surface, which is involved in the heat exchange process. The power supplies from FSP and the same Zalman are well shown. The only drawback of this design is its high price. But the result justifies the investment. As a result, you get a completely silent power supply, which will achieve complete silence without the need for modifications.

Also, attention should be paid to limiting the maximum power of such devices. If a conventional power supply unit can have a power reaching one kilowatt or more, passive cooling devices rarely reach 500 kW. And for modern high-end gaming machines with energy-intensive video cards such parameters of the power supply will not be enough.

So, if you want to get a quiet computer, the choice of the way to achieve this goal remains with the user.