[rescue] quiet SPARCstation

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Tuesday, June 18, 2002 at 21:36:52 (-0400), Katherine Strojny wrote: ]
> Subject: [rescue] quiet SPARCstation
>
> Has anybody put any effort into reducing the noise level on their
> SPARCstation?

Not yet enough!  ;-)

Mine still annoys me, especially at night when I have to keep my audio
devices turned down low (and I hate wearing headphones of any kind).

When I turn my SS1+ off the room is so quite it takes me several minutes
to even notice the NCD Xterms (which have large-diameter slow-turning
fans).

> I got to thinking, I want to do something to reduce the dB-age on this SS5
> clone (SS1+ pizza box), like replace the PS fan, for starters.  There's
> also a lower hum from vibration that comes out through the feet and into
> the table.

I tried putting some dampening material behind on the rather large
wasted space of my desk (a corner triangle) because I noticed there were
some "hot spots" caused by reflections off the wall, but that didn't
work well unless I really smothered the fan opening so much that it
blocked air movement as well.

Recently I cut out the grille on the back of the chassis (both the
plastic and metal bits, just using side cutters and a strong grip, so
there's just a gaping hole back to the fan blades), and that reduced
some of the air turbulence, but of course it didn't kill all the
high-pitched noise from the fan.  I think it did make a small difference
in the overall sound level though -- just not nearly enough! :-)

I've been thinking of replacing the fan too, either with a variable
speed one (with a built-in termistor for speed control, eg. like the old
AT&T 3B1's had), or maybe just a slower one.  I don't have hard-drives
(not even a floppy) in my workstation so I think I could afford to run
it with a little less air flow (even the power supply should run cooler
with less load).  Your SS5 upgrade board might draw more power and
require more cooling than the SS1 or SS1+ original, but you still might
be fine with a lower-speed fan if you have air conditioning and/or the
ambient intake temperature stays at room-temperature norms.  I'm worried
about reducing the air flow in my workstation because sometimes my
office does get quite hot and I do have it stuffed full of RAM....

I haven't noticed any hum or vibration from the chassis though (even
when I put my hand over the fan opening to block most of its noise), but
that may be because I have no drives in the box....

-- 
								Greg A. Woods

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