[LAU] Any opinions on this ...

[Kjetil S. Matheussen]

pete shorthose:
>>> Contrary to the fans included with PSUs, the fans you can
>>> buy separately can be silent, especially when downvolted
>>> to 5V. So to ensure you don't
>>> overheat a fanless PSU, which can happen if it's too hot,
>>> it could be a good idea to mount a fan close to the PSU.
>>
>> That was a bit unclear. If I've understood correctly,
>> fanless PSU's turns off if they run too hot, that's
>> why you might want to add a little bit of air flow
>> through it, especially if you run a hot CPU, etc. and
>> have no case fan.
>
> This may be good advice, particularly if you live somewhere much
> hotter than the UK. However, you needn't assume the cooling efficiency
> is inadequate. Just crank the central heating up to something
> a little higher than the hottest temperatures you experience locally then run
> it under as heavy a load as you can for as long as you need to in order to
> satisfy yourself that it's safe to use sans fan. Regularly cleaning the unit
> should help too. The Silverstone PSUs all seem to have a single temp
> status LED and I'd imagine you'd see quite quickly if it couldn't cope
> with the conditions. You could abort as soon as the warning LED lit.
>
> I recognise that a device need not be truly silent in order to be effectively so,
> and perhaps taking such a risk is unnecessary, but I've bought a fair few
> "silent" or "quiet" fans in my time that were nothing of the sort. I've also had
> lots of problems with fans that seem to have (or develop) defects that cause
> noise so I'd rather just be shot of the whole spinny roundy horror show.
>

Granted, when you put your ear into the case from the outside, you will 
probably hear some air-swushing generated by that fan, so it's not 
completely silent. However, unless you mount your HD in rubber bands and 
further put it in a super-silent highly isolated box to avoid the 
remaining high-frequency blipps, a good 120mm fan running at 5V would be 
extremely unlikely to be more annoying than the HD. (if you use a HD of 
course)