Fanless computer in a stock case

   Thorougly check pipe bends and the blocks' alignment before soldering, errors will be very difficult to fix.

  Now I'll tell you about my embarassing blunder. I didn’t like the fact that soldering holes on heat blocks are clearly seen so in my infinite wisdom I flipped the blocks to make the holes go to the underside. Never do this… I had to repolish and relap all the blocks but this time with the whole system soldered and assembled… I don’t think you have as much patience, so believe me on my bare word and solder through the holes from above. That’s not so good-looking but you’ll avoid unnecessary problems.

   As you can see in the next picture the power unit doesn’t interfere with the cooling system. Before setting the motherboard and other hardware, thorougly blast the case with air to remove all swarf. Remember that, according to Murphy's law,  the tiniest metal speck will certainly get to the most inappropriate place.

   This happened to me - how did that little sucker get there...? I was almost going to scrap the board, the damn thing just didn't want to work despite everything… By some miracle I found a tiny chipping in the AGP slot.

   So, this is the structure of my noiseless computer. I don’t see any reason to give a more detailed description of this mod. Being very busy at work I was the last to write my article and my fellows had already elucidated everything so minutely that even an unexperienced man can iterate the construction if only he is not the person who can’t put his mind to anything. The design is so unsophisticated that having all necessary components you can complete the build in a week. I consider my experiment a success. One 120 mm fan is switched on 5 V; it blows towards the passively cooled (stock) video adapter, VRM MOSFETs, chipset and fanless FSP ZEN. The processor runs in normal temperature conditions. Temps exceed 60C only in hot weather; usually staying below 50C. I haven't done anything with the hard drive yet. It resides in a 5 inch drive cage, suspended on Zalman 2HC2 rubber standoffs. The computer has been working since winter and I didn’t notice any glitches.

I’ll be happy if my article helps somebody to get rid of computer noise. If you make something like that send us photos, we are extremely interested! I often visit the forum and I’ll answer all your questions. Thank you for your attention.

 Good modding everyone, SilentMods.com You may write your comments here