SGI: Hardware

Not a groundbreaking piece of news, but I can confirm that the original PSU fan of the O2
can be easily replaced by a practically noiseless Noctua NF-R8-1800 fan.

Fan specs: Noctua NF-R8-1800, 1800 rpm, 53 m3/h, 17 dB(A), 80x80x25 mm

Noctua website:
http://www.noctua.at/main.php?show=prod ... d=9&lng=en

This type of fan is widespread in PC computer shops (at least in Hungary), that's why I am writing this post.

The fan works very well in a 200 MHz R5k O2 with a single 18 GB r10k SCSI drive and an AV card.
I operated my blue toaster at full CPU load for hours without having any trouble.

One can sleep 4 meters away from the running O2, only the HDD is whispering when getting closer.

Cheers,

Zsolt

Yup, it is really worth upgrading the PSU fan with a Noctua or something similar .

szzsszzs wrote: Not a groundbreaking piece of news, but I can confirm that the original PSU fan of the O2 can be easily replaced by a practically noiseless Noctua NF-R8-1800 fan.

Thanks for the little kick in the butt there ... quieting down the O2 has been a "back shelf" project for me for ages, this post finally triggered some action.

Yes, the Noctua is very quiet. Now I have to look at the green light to see if the computer is running. O2's aren't so noisy anyhow but still ... maybe the best ten bucks I've spent this year. Silent - good !

grazie

The second source of noise, in my case, was the hard disc drive. However, since I replaced it with the Seagate I am using know the computer became really quiet, hehe

Thanks for the tip! Ordered the fan, installed it & it works like a (very silent) charm

Does it move as much air as the original O2 fan? Would it be safe to upgrade a 400MHz R12K system this way?

The original fan can move 80 m^3/h, but this one moves only 66% as much. The O2's PSU also adjusts the voltage of the fan according to the temperature, so it probably won't run the new fan at full speed because it's calibrated for the old one. [IIRC, there's a potentiometer inside the PSU to adjust this.]

The best way to see if it provides proper cooling would be to get a few of those cheap $2 thermometers from eBay, attach the sensors to various chips inside the O2 (CPU, CRIME, MACE, GBE), run the O2 for a few hours at full load and write down the temperatures, then replacing the fan and repeating the process.
Anything over 70°C is probably very unhealthy.

I did something similar with an Arctic F8 TC, though I rigged it to run at max speed instead of being temp controlled. Still inaudible though, and
with a Fujitsu MAS3036NC disk (36GB 15K), the system is silent. Spec is R7K/350, 512MB. To reduce power consumption even more (it's just
a gateway machine), the unit has no AV module and no CDROM. Keep meaning to install a Gbit NIC, not gotten round to it yet though.

Ian.

Just replaced the O2 fan with the Noctua. Is there anything further I need to do? Though it seems to be running ok.

Did you adjust any of the potentiometers to increase the fan speed and if so how?

I didn't do anything, just connected it up as normal and that's it. Note that nowadays I use the other version of the F8 which doesn't have the temp control, so no need to meddle with the cable.

To clarify: I've never used the Noctua that's the subject of this thread, I use the Arctic F8 instead. Basically the same idea though.

Sad to report though I stopped using the O2 as a gateway a while ago, as I couldn't get the Phobos GigE card working properly, and I wanted better speed than 100Mbit. Thus, I built a Zenyal-based uATX box with a simple uATX board (and Intel model that has two GigE ports), Pentium G2020, silent fans, etc. However, I've done further fan mods since then for other people.

Ian.