Gamecube, silent fan mod!

[Insomnia]

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[boredomca]

The mod did seam to lessen the noise in the video
. To increase airflow and eliminate sound even more I personally would get another fan exactly like the one used, install it on the opposite side facing the same way and have them both running from the same power without resistor. They would run half speed reducing sound and compensate for air loss inside the case itself. To help cooling even more you could cover the vents in the rear to prevent substantial air loss making it more of a blow through.
Hope any of this helps and good job so far.

[novenary]

Even better, remove the drive and install a fat-ass heatsink with heatpipes. No need for a fan. You do need to mod the top shell though.

[boredomca]

Passive cooling, Sweet idea! Only without destroying the Shell and drive. The only problem is implementation as I can't think of anything that would fit. Possibly keep the original heatsink, drill it, run copper tubing "possibly hollow tubing with oil" like passive coolers for PC's. How would you go about marrying the copper pipe to the aluminum heatsink?

[novenary]

You should be able to use any aftermarket CPU heatsink with heatpipes, the problem is placing a heat spreader between the heatsink and the CPU and GPU. You can get away with tiny heatsinks on the RAM. I think something made for threadripper might give you the most chances of success, something like this probably.

[boredomca]

Looks completely plausible. 100 points to you

[Insomnia]

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[Insomnia]

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[novenary]

That's why I said mod the top shell. There might be lower profile heatsinks like the ones for ITX rigs, but there's none with a wide enough cold plate like this one afaik.

[boredomca]

I still think dual fan would be the cheapest and safest way without cutting up the Shell

[Sierron]

You should be able to use any aftermarket CPU heatsink with heatpipes, the problem is placing a heat spreader between the heatsink and the CPU and GPU. You can get away with tiny heatsinks on the RAM. I think something made for threadripper might give you the most chances of success, something like this probably.

Talking about overkill

I still think dual fan would be the cheapest and safest way without cutting up the Shell

I thought about the same some while ago. But if you put a fan on the side without one you'll have a fan blowing only a third of its area into the cube itself. Most of the air would be blown against the drive and probably making more noise.

I think giving the cube a new good quality fan which is having roughly the same air throughput, but a lower noise level would be enough of an upgrade to get your cube more silent. There are also fans with rubber padding. Fitting those fans into a cube is another thing ...

[boredomca]

Just a straight fan would indeed blow on the drive but what if it was shrouded like the stock fan. Could sacrifice one, it would even screw on. Using a old rewards card would do the trick in terms of routing the air away from the drive and onto the Mobo, needing only a card and scissors.

[novenary]

You should be able to use any aftermarket CPU heatsink with heatpipes, the problem is placing a heat spreader between the heatsink and the CPU and GPU. You can get away with tiny heatsinks on the RAM. I think something made for threadripper might give you the most chances of success, something like this probably.

Talking about overkill

That was mostly meant as a joke though replacing the heatsink might be something to consider if you want to improve the noise level. A bigger, more dense heatsink that spreads heat better would let you run a larger fan at a very low speed. This is the only commercially available solution I can think of right now. A full copper heatsink with thin, spaced out fins might work though.

[boredomca]

I rather enjoyed the idea. 100 points for originality.
Although at work today I thought about using passive laptop coolers like in netbooks and some Acer's. One for GPU, one for CPU and the ram if you see fit. Couple that with solid state media and you will have a completely silent GameCube that isn't an eye sore.

[novenary]

completely silent

Don't forget the whine sounds it makes under some conditions. They can get pretty loud and annoying.

[Insomnia]

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[Sierron]

Couple that with solid state media and you will have a completely silent GameCube that isn't an eye sore.

You mean an "ear sore"?

Exactly that! That was also somewhat of a problem with the new fan even though it was less noisy, it had that awkward kind of coil whine where you would definitely hear it, hence my usage of the resistor. I think the resistor I used was rated @150 ohms, I have another one which is rated @ 50 ohms. I think of buying another fan, and use 1 with 50 ohms, and perhaps that gives a better performance/noise ratio?

Better check for quality fans. If you pick random fans of ebay you won't get good quality - which ends up in whiney fans. Pick well known brands which have fans with low sona/db values.

[novenary]

I didn't mean the fan but the GC itself. No one has ever tried to identify where the sound comes from but there are some workloads that make it buzz and whine like crazy.

[Insomnia]

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[Insomnia]

I didn't mean the fan but the GC itself. No one has ever tried to identify where the sound comes from but there are some workloads that make it buzz and whine like crazy.

Yes, I know what u mean. I kept my ear (while the GC was powered on) near the gc and tried to identify where it came from. I think it comes from the power supply underneath the motherboard, that's where it's buzzing the most (HOWEVER, I MIGHT BE WRONG). I also installed rubber (anti-vibration) pads between the fan and the plastic, that also reduced alot of noise. It did require some work with a dremmel.

[boredomca]

I've never heard this sound but my main cube sounds like a jet taking off. Moves a ton of air though because of the external fan I installed due to space limitations of where I have it.