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[How To] Made your Dell Precision 490 - 690 a silent PC


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The DELL precision 490-690 silent project.

 

The Dell precision 490 is an 10 years workstation. When it was launched was a state of the art machine for architects, mechanics and other designers. Today is an old but very cheap and still powerful enough (more powerful that i3 and i5 machines) and sometimes with equal power to i7 machines.  It worths buy a 490-690 because with some change of hardware and a little customization they will be transformed into a serial killer gaming machine. Furthermore Dell precision 690 is almost the same machine but it has a grand benefit compare to its small brother. It can support 2 Graphics cards in SLI topology. 
I am not a fun of SLI topology due to a lot bugs on a lot games . I prefer to have a single powerful and very expensive card than two medium price video cards with SLI topology. Another problem is that SLI is not supported on OS X (At least this is what i think).  Read, learn and choose wisely. 
According to the above parameter , and because SLI  is not my favourite topology, i bought a 490 instead of 690 for 2 reasons. It is cheaper (although it depends on the price you can find it in ebay, so it is not de facto cheaper) and is more portable, i mean more light, and takes less space to accommodate it somewhere on your office or at the floor below office. 
 
But this is not a crash test between 490 and 690. This is what i did and make this noise horrible machine to a normal silent enough machine. The principles of the air circulation and flow is the same on both machines. So what i did on my 490 you can do exactly the same on your 690. 
 
My first thought was a water cooled 490. But very soon i abandon that thought for reasonable reasons:
  1. Very expensive. You pay more money than the money you paid to buy an old second hand 490-690.
  2. There is not a dedicated kit for socket 771. So you must do some custom patents to adapt the water cooling pump on the 771 sockets. (No out of the box solution)
  3. Even if you manage to fit a custom kit there is another problem: You can not deal with the fan of the power supply and the fan of the memory. I mean that if you really want to eliminate the noise you have to buy a new power supply without fan. This means more money than the money you spend for your 490-690. 
  4. Even if you go with a new power supply and a patented DIY water cool module for 771 , then what are you gonna do with those tricky FB - DIMM EEC MEMORY MODULES which transmits huge thermal loads inside the case? Those DIMMS are really very hot at the working time and  make the case become a hot pan. So no solution for the cooling of those DIMMS even if you go for a water cooling expensive project.
  5. I just explain you why the water cooling solution abandoned after 3 days of research and i started thinking an alternative solution.
My final thoughts, tests, comprehensive of a fan, market research and decision:
  1. I had to make the noise to go from 55-60 db to reasonable 25-28 db and if i could manage something better then it will be something even more very welcome.
  2. I started my measurements of the db produced by my 490, by downloading an application on my android phone. There are tones of such kind of applications, but stuck with one application maybe two , just to verify that the first one was reliable. Then put your cell phone as near as your sitting position (at the same level with your ears) at the time you work with your precision 490 -690 and read how many db your application writes on the screen.
  3. It was not very hard to understand after some tests i did (no reason to write details about the tests) that the main noisy performer was the memory fan. It was a horrible fan!!!!. 
  4. Dell produced the workstations to work 24/7/365 and this is undoubtedly the reason which the precisions’ 490-790 mobo are still working without broken capacitors and destroyed north bridges. But a workstation is a machine which usually not a lot people have inside their homes. Those machines work inside noisy environments with a lot of colleagues talking one to each other and a lot of ambient noise inside atelier , industries, warehouses etc. But on the other hand you are at your home’s armchair and you want to take a break watching on e.g. netflix “The walking Dead”. That memory fan try to break your nervous system. 
  5. Dell sign contracts with NMB, Delta and Sanyo Denki as suppliers of their precision 490-690 machines. These fan manufacturers, although are huge brands with million sales per year, they not focus on home computing, but on production of fans for every possible reason that will be super reliable for heavy industrial use and that will have huge air flow according their diameter, comparing with fans with the same diameter from other “home made” brands.
  6. The principle of fan is that the more rpms , the better flow of air and the most noise. And if you want to make the fan almost unbreakable then you use a ball bearing. But ball bearings although are the most reliable, they are a standard choice of car manufacturers but it shouldn’t be a standard choice for home computing fan manufacturers. And of course they are not. But as i wrote above, NMB, SANYO DENKI & Delta are not what we call “Home computing fan manufacturers”. 
  7. Although computing started from USA and the hardware parts since a lot of years are made in China, the noiseless fans for home computing comes from brands from Europe e.g. Arctic from Switzerland, Noctua from Austria, LC Power from Germany, Black Noise from Germany etc. Those fans although most of times are made in China (but it is not the rule, because there are some exceptions) they are designed and developed from European mechanics. The shape, the angle the quantity of the impellers of a fan, the rpms and the anti vibration fix system make those european fans to be leader fans against the fight with noise.
  8. I wrote 2 paragraphs above about the principles of the fans. So what if someone reduced the rpms but made bigger the diameter of the impeller? You could have almost same or better results if for example rotate a fan of 120mm with 1500 rpms compared with a fan rotated at 3000 rpms with 92mm diameter. So rpms is the first principle of a  noiseless fan. But the less rpm the less air flow which is translated in bigger unwanted temperatures. So as you can understand is very tricky. It is not a plug and play situation….
  9. After 10 days research i realise that you can find a lot of low rpms fans but they have not serious air flow. Only a very small quantity of models of the European best brands have reasonable air flow at low rpms. So after my research i propose you to follow exactly what i did and buy exactly the same models as i bought for 2 reasons. 1)They are the best models the money can buy. 2)Some models are not only the most valuable buy but the are the best overall performers. (Yes if you search a lot sometimes you find cheap gems)!!!
 
Time for workshop (Let the good times roll):
 
  1. I decided after calculation that i have to change the 92 mm fan memory with a 120 mm fan memory. The best OVERALL fan on the market (overall means= The less noise and also with the best airflow both combined) is the LC POWER AIR RAZOR http://www.lc-power.com/en/product/case-fans/lc-cf-120-pro-airazor/ This fan is a beast . Huge air flow with ridiculous low rpms. 
  2. At this point i have to describe you the principle of the air flow inside the case of both precisions 490-690 to understand better the concept and the difficulties to finalise it. In the most down point of the case (the acse at vertical position) there is a huge 150mm with 50mm thickness (Thickness is a major thing i will explain below…) fan which vacuum fresh air of the environment and blow this air to the 2 heatsinks of the precisions.  This fan called CPU FAN. The area behind the huge 1500mm is almost an "air sealed" compartment , which is divided from the CARD CAGE compartment (read below for explanation) and is the compartment which has  the more hot air inside the case. In this compartment there are the CPU 2 heatsinks and the memory DIMMS which are really burning and the northbridge chipset. 
  3. Above the 150mm fan (Precision at vertical position) there is another fan with 92mm diameter and with 32mm thickness . This fan called CGI FAN . CGI means card cage fan. Card cage is the compartment inside the case which is dedicated for the PCI cards , the HDDs, CDR and the power supply. It is very well isolated from the heat transfer of the compartment i just described in the above paragraph.
  4. Because those 2 compartments are divided and isolated one from each other very very well,  Dell had the advantage to put just a 92mm fan for the CGI compartment which emits a small amount of noise.  But this fan is not so noiseless. This fan can rotate with 4000 rpms which is illegal for home use and has a maximum measured db at 46db!. (Literally it is very hard to make the fan rotate with more than 1800 rpm). So i change this fan with a 92 mm fan from Arctic. This one:https://www.arctic.ac/eu_en/arctic-f9-pwm.html This fun is a huge bargain. Has the most best air flow at his rpms and on the other hand is just 4 db noisier than the most silent 92mm fan on the market when rotates at full speed. But the most silent 92mm fan on the market (a Noctua fan )which is 4 db  more silent has not so good airflow. According to my calculation this fan is very very difficult to run at full rpms. So is a de facto choice due to 6 years guarantee, silly price , super quality. (After tests i did i found the original fan rotates with 1450 rpm (idle conditions) and at the same idle conditions the new one from Arctic rotates with 1670 rpms. This happens because the new on from Arctic it just 25 mm thickness instead of 32mm thickness the original is. So the impeller of the Arctic has less aggressive angles on the flaps. These 220 rpms make the new fan to work noisier than the original at idle conditions trying to keep the same temperature inside the CARD CAGE COMPARTMENT. But if you have a video card that make the CGI compartment too hot then the new fan will be more silent because it cannot rotate with more than 1800 rpms, when the original can rotate with maximum 4000 rpms producing 46 db at those conditions. So choose wisely.   At the question: "It is better to buy and place this fan inside my case  or it is better to  stay with the default CGI fan comes from Delta?" The answer is: "Stay with the original!" The original has maximum spec 46 db but literally rotates with less rpm than the arctic at the same idle conditions. So the original produce less noise!!!!.  But why is this happens, why the original rotate with less rpm? The answer is that although the fan from Arctic has the same diameter with the original fan (92 mm) and better specification for the noise,  it has the classic commercial 25 mm thickness comparing to the 32 mm thickness of the original fan. When a fan is slim the angles of the impellers are not so aggressive (they are more “flat”) and this produce less quantity of air flow. So you have to consider that unfair comparison.  The original fan has maximum rotation speed 4000 rpm with a thickness of 32mm (means more aggressive angle flaps on the impeller ) and compare this fan with the Arctic which runs only at maximum 1800 rpms and has 25mm thickness (means more flat impellers) then you can easily understand why the original fan can cool the card cage at lower rpm makes him more silent. The maximum db of the Arctic is 24 db at 1800 rpm and the maximum db of Dell’s original 92mm fan (comes from delta) is 46 db!!!! HUGE different. But those db’s are measured at maximum rpms . In real condition the Arctic fan rotates with 1690 and the original fan with 1450. So the original is more silent!!! DON'T CHANGE THIS FAN. It will be a miss!
  5. But who and how is controlled the rpms? Although 490-690 are 10 years old machines, they were very innovative for their era. They were 2 of the first machines ever produced which had the PWM (pulse width modulation) control on motherboard. PWM is a standard developed before 10 years from Dell which make the mobo to control the fans according to the sensors which are built-in at specific points on the mobo. So you have literally huge number of possible operating rpm. e.g from 1450-4000 for the original CGI fan ,  compared with old fashioned mobos who cannot control the fan speeds  and rotate the fans at full speeds. (If you have such a PC with an old fashion mobo the solution is, either you have to buy a fan controller to reduce the voltage of the fan (reducing the voltage you reduce the rpms) or either to custom connect your fan with the power supply with less volt than the nomimal 12 volt.) So Dell’s precision 490 - 690 motherboard control the fans very sophisticated except the fan of the power supply which is not controlled by the motherboard.
  6. I have to change the original video card with something new. The default  490-690 video cards are legacy video cards. I choose a silent model with a passive heatsink and without a fan. This make my 490 more noiseless. If you are a gamer and buy a super duper card with 1 or 2 or 3 fans consider the more noise a card like this will produce. 
  7. The most tricky part is the change of the the memory fan . The original base of the memory fan is created to accommodate a 92mm diameter fan with 25mm thickness. This means that you have to manufacture a DIY base to accommodate the 120 mm fan which i propose on paragraph number one of this section. You will need a piece of aluminium metal sheet (or painted iron sheet) , a drill to make holes for the proper air flow of the fan  and a machine to bend the metal sheet you just bought. Keep in mind that you can buy ready drilled metal sheets or you can ask me to send you ready drilled painted bases to accommodate your fan. Also at the edge of the base of the fan you have to put a flexible  pvc  (like the one i use) or something similar e.g. bicycle tube. This is mandatory because if you dont do this you will destroy dell’s principle about the cooling of the memory DIMMS (please don’t ask me to explain why will this happens, because my english is not so good to explain it to you, cause i am not a native english speaker).  See the photos to understand how you have to manufacture the DIY base or just ask me to send you one base.
  8. Although that new memory fan from LC POWER is a super fan it runs at max 1200 rpm.  Let's now compare this fan with the original 92mm memory fan which rotates max at 4000 rpm. So an the one side we have a super silent fan with 120mm diameter & 25 mm thickness rotates max at 1200 rpm producing16 db and on the other side we have the original fan comes from NMB with 92mm diameter & 25 mm thickness which rotates max at 4000 rpm and produce 46 db noise!!! The result of comparisons shows to me that although the LC Power has bigger diameter is not enough  to offer PERFECT cooling to the DIMMS, but offer as good cooling as it gets with minimal noise (Typically absolutely noiseless. I will be more specified and i will write that i measured the temperatures of the DIMMS with the original fan and with the new silent fan. I used the program running on windows called SPEEDFAN which is perfect for calibration and monitoring of fans. You can download it for free from here: http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php You can also find a perfect tutorial about the program here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VjdQStihsE  So, with the original fan and the computer at idle situation i took a measurement of  the temperatures of the DIMMS at 45-48 Celsius and at the same condition with the LC POWER 120 mm air razor fan 57-63 Celsius. 
  9. According to  paragraph 8 i had to help the 120mm fan to manage to cool the DIMMS as the original horrible noise fan managed to cool them.  It took me to take this decision 10 days. Those 10 days i worked with the memories had from 61-66 Celsius and the DIMMS are still alive. What i want to say is that this choice maybe is an overkill,  because the Dimms tested for 10 days with such those new higher temperatures and show no significant problems. But i took the decision and i bought 2 more 80mm fans with 25 mm thickness , these :https://www.arctic.ac/eu_en/arctic-f8-pwm-pst.html  These fans comes again from Arctic and they are the most best OVERALL performers at 80mm as is the 120mm fan from LC POWER . Cheap with 6 years guarantee, perfect quality and SILENT!!! YES SILENT. This model is a special model which has a special adapter , which supply you with a second socket so you can bridge until 5 fans in a row! This means that from one PWM socket of the mobo you can control until 5 fans. But be careful!! Those fans must be either identically or as close to rpms one each other as it gets. In my project i choose this 80mm fans which can have a maximum of 1800 RPM which are driven from the PWM CPU socket . To be more specific the work in parallel rpms with the huge 150mm CPU fan, because all those 3 fans (the 2 80mm fans + the 1 150mm CPU fan are bridged one each other and take the pulse of the PWM Cpu socket on the mobo. Yes i know i write some things 2 maybe 3 times with different words, but i apologise because i am not a native english speaker and i also want to explain you the very best i can… (Sorry guys) . The 150mm fan can be rotated on a maximum of 4000 rpms according to the specs of the Sanyo Denki which is the manufacturer of the fan, but its rotation is limited (because i test this with the SpeedFan application i mention above) at 2500 rpms. What i want to explain is that after 1800 rpms the small fans cannot rotate faster because that is the maximum rpm speed and maybe this obligates the huge 150mm fan to not exceed the 1800 rpms may be not. I cannot tested, but dont care because 1800 rpms for such a huge fan is already an overkill! Maybe the 150mm will goes to the maximum rpms which is 2500 (this is the limit , which is limited by the PWM socket form the board).
  10. The brand new 80mm fans was accommodated at the special section at the back lower position at the case fan. Be careful when you place those fans. Check the air flow to be from inwards to outwards. What exactly do those fans is to vacuum hot air from the place where the memories are accommodated and to exhaust that hot air outside of case. Here i have to mention that those two fans also exhaust hot air from the 2 heatsinks! Before you place those 2 small fans the huge 150mm fans vacuum fresh air from outside of the case, blow the air to the hot heatsinks and at the hard disks COMPARTMENT and also a small quantity is blown to the memories and all those hot air (after cooling those hardware parts) exhausted from the holes which now i placed those 2 80mm fans. So if someone put your hand behind those 2 fans will fell hot air comes out of the case. 
  11. According to paragraph number 1 the cpu temperature is dropped at the same conditions compared to the previous conditions without the 2 small 80mm fans and because the cpu is more cool the rpms of the 150mm fan is less than before. So although i placed to more fans i have the same noise maybe less than before. I have also lower memory temperatures than before. And the machine is very very fast and can compared with a skylake CPU. Mine is more faster believe it or not. I will post benchmarks.
IN CONCLUSION:
  1. Now i have 6 fans in my case:
  2. One 92mm with maximum 1800rpms from ARCTIC with noise 24.5 db replaced the original with noise 40db and 4000 rpms
  3. One 150mm the original from Dell which will rotate with less rpms due to the help of the exhaust fans
  4. One 120mm very silent fan from LC power with 1200 rpms and 14,6 db (practically noiseless)
  5. Two 80 mm from Arctic with maximum 2000 rpms and 23.5 dm maximum noise 
  6. One original fan inside the power supply with unknown rpms (But it is enough silent)
  7. Because arctic gives sones instead dbs here you will find the conversion from sones to dbs: http://www.shuttle.eu/_archive/old/en/www.shuttle.eu/index-1095.html
  8. The case is much more silent , and remains very cool even if you pressure it a lot, e.g. video editing.
  9. Still it is not the most silent case in the world, but you can further develop the project if you insulate the case with this staff:http://www.akasa.com.tw/update.php?tpl=product/product.detail.tpl&no=181&type=Accessories&type_sub=Acoustic%20Silence%20Kits&model=AK-PAX-2 or this stuff http://www.akasa.com.tw/update.php?tpl=product/product.detail.tpl&no=181&type=Accessories&type_sub=Acoustic%20Silence%20Kits&model=AK-PAX-1 or something similar to those stuffs. 
  10. But beleive me it silent enough to work without be abused of those industrial fans.
  11. Also if you don't have bucks to invest on this old Dell precision workstation,  you can only change the memory fan which is the de facto 1st think you have to do and leave everything else as it is. The 55-58 db will goes to 30 db immediately. But if you do only this you will take the risk to burn your memory dimms. If you want my opinion, the dimms will last for ever and never gonna be burned,  but i don’t have any responsibility of possible burnings of the memory DIMMS.
  12. The cost of the whole project is silly and it is OK according to the money you spend to buy your precision 490-690. e.g. is not an overkill like the cost of water cooling. To be more specified, i payed 34 euros (38 US $) 
  13. I forgot to mention about the propriety sockets of Dell’s motherboards. The sockets of the fan are totally different from every other motherboard in the world. So you have to cut the cables of the original fans also of the the brand new fans, and use the original socket plug with the cable of the new fan. It is not difficult. You only need an insulation tape and a pliers. First you cut both cables , then you remove the insulation of both cables, you connect one with the other and finally you bandage them with insulation tape.
  14. Very important: The LC POWER fan have exactly the some colour of cables as with the Dells’ fans colour cables so it is like a piece of cake BUT Arctic’s fans , or maybe other brands you will possibly buy (although i propose once again not to change my wisely chosen fans) have DIFFERENT COLOURS. SO YOU HAVE TO CONNECT THE BLACK WITH THE BLACK, THE BLUE WITH THE BLUE, THE YELLOW OF ARCTIC WITH THE RED OF DELL, AND THE GREEN OF ARCTIC WITH THE YELLOW (SOMETIMES IT IS WHITE) OF DELL. IF YOU DON’T DO THIS YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE EITHER TO BURN YOUR MOBO OR YOUR NEW FAN.  
  15. I wish you a good luck and you can ask me to send you a DIY base for the memory with the fan fixed on the base , or just to send you only the base and to place your favourite fan.
  16. P.S. The next experiment will be to change the industrial beast 150mm fan with an 140mm fan for home computing and to check temperatures of cpu and noise and i will give you feedback.
  17. P.S.2 Once again sorry for my english, i do the best that i can ;) Sorry for any typos and for the syntax. If you dont understand fell free ask me and i will try to explain you.
 

NEW DISCOVERIES:

I discovered that it much better for cooling of the memory dimms if you put one 80mm with the air flow at a direction to the memories and the other one 80mm fan to the opposite direction , functioning like an exhaust fan. Something like a push-pull topology. Until now i use both 80mm fans as exhaust fans. They rotate with the same speed of the 150mm fan because they are bridged inline with that fan which is connected on the pwm cpu fan socket on the mobo. 

The rpm at idle condition is just 950 of the maximum possible limit of 2000 . This means less than 50 % ! And they work and they exhaust hot temperature. Practically you cannot hear them when they rotate at such speeds. 

Another very very serious piece of the silent chain you have to consider is a SSD disk. The classic plateau disks are really very noisy even at idle condition. They vibrate a lot during their rotation, and they rotate even to idle condition of the pc because they want to buffer memory. So all that vibration make the whole system very noisy. I have windows 10 disk on my hackintosh and when i boot the dell to windows the noise of the disk make me sick.

When i boot on OS X which i have ssd everything is much more silent.

 

Regards,

Pavlos K.

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You are welcome Rockey12.

Feel free ask me what you need. I continuously do trial and error test about the noise of my precision. My new discoveries:

1)Dont put a HDD on the front bay. The HDD vibrates and the bay vibrates all together and transfer the vibrations to the whole case, which is translated to extra noise. If you HAVE to put a HHD on the front bay then use 2 side adhesive sticker and apply the sticker at the perimeter of the HDD. When you put the HDD inside the bay the  adhesive 2 side sticker will fix the disk and will reduce the noise vibrations. It's easy but it took me 2 days to find out why and from where do i have extra noise emissions.

2)The 2 small 80mm exhaust fans are a de facto must buy choice. Let me explain: I had just 4 Mbytes Ram. (The default Ram as i bought my precision) Yesterday i change my Memory modules and now i have 8 Memory DIMMS with 32 GB totally ram. I also bought my precision with one CPU and now i have 2 CPUs. What i want to describe with the above story is that the extra space i had inside the compartment of the case which accommodate the memory modules and the CPUs, now is MUCH MORE LESS than when i bought my precision with its default configuration. Less space means, more difficult air flow!!!! As a result now the front 150mm fan works with 150 rpm more than before, the memory modules (which now is 8 modules, not 4 modules as it was) transmits EXTRAORDINARY heating loads to the case. So the new 120mm memory fan (The one which propose on the above post from LC POWER) can't stand to cool effective the new reality inside my case. So the 2 small 80mm fans are here to support the cooling procedure after the new conditions inside my case.

3)Although the front fan rotates with about 950 at idle conditions (very low speed) it produce noise! Yes it does! And this happens because it has a ball bearing :( Yes i know it will last forever but it is not for home computing. But by the time i can not found a 150mm "home computing" fan. All the 150 fans are either industrial with super noise, or if you find one it will not have a PWM connector. (I have explain on the above post the benefits of PWM).

4)If you find a pwm 150mm fan please mention it to me , because then we will arrive at the end of road of project the "Presicion 490-690 silence" 

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  • 2 weeks later...

well done! and many thanks for the idea and the PERFECT description.

 

i have the 490 now for years and just wanted to change (cause of the aircraft-like noisEEEEE :-).

dimm banks full with 10GB and 2 quadcore cpus and 1GB GPU (with 2 x 30" monitors full DVI) and the good old thing is getting really HOT.

 

one thing i wonder: you mentioned this two 80mm fans on the backside better to mount one blowing and one sucking:

 

i think, without any additional shields between them, they will just swirl the warm air around from fan1 to fan2 and will have nearly no cooling effect to the system.. did you test this?

 

but anyway - i will give it a try and write my experience

 

best regards

derwisch

 

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Derwish,

have a nice day!

My 490 is pretty hotter than yours, Because i have 8 dimms of 4 GB = 32 GB and they are hot like hell.  The DDR 2 FB-DIMMS are always very very hot. The most DIMMS the most hotter the case is.

Frankly after days of experiments i decided to put both  fans like exhaust fans. This means the number 3 of the below possible topologies gave me the best results

  1. One blowing one suck
  2. two sucks from outside and blow the fresh air inside
  3. two sucks the hot air from inside and blow the hot air outside

All the above 3 topologies respectively give lower temperatures than without any fans. Buy exactly the same fans 80mm fans i repeat exactly because there are similar models of the same brand. Those models have an extra optional spare socket to connect each fan with the cpu fan or the card cage fan respectively. So the fans have exactly the same rpm as the cpu fan or card cage fan respectively. And the rpm will vary according to the SMC sensors of the logic board (mobo).

Keep in mind that the FB-DIMMS have normal operation temperature until 95º C  !!!! So if you see temperatures like 85º C don't worry. It is normal.

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  • 2 weeks later...

hello again,

so i'm finished with the change - it needed approx. 4hrs. (without having all the work of evaluating!).

 

ok - results: more heat than before - less noise than before

especially the dimm temperature is very high now (90°C and up) regards derwisch

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Hello derwisch,

dont worry about the dimm temperatures. They can survive until 95 Cº. Every FB-EEC Memory module works with high temperatures. Its the error correction technology which rise the temperature. Don't care about the memory modules. It is the only hardware part which has a life time warranty. 

From which fan (CPU, CGI, or Memory) do you take the pulse to drive the added 80mm fans? I guess you take the pulse from CPU or Memory fan. It is wrong. You must take the pulse from the CGI fan because the CGI fan rotates with 1650 rpm, the memory with 1200 rpm and the CPU with 950-1100 (it depends on the load of the cpus). So if you take the pulse from the CGI fan the new 80mm will rotate with 1650 rpm thus you will have lower Memory temperatures. Also you will have a small buffer in case of the CGI rotate much faster e.g. 1800 due to the rising of the temperature inside the case because the 80mm can rotate until the 1800 rpm which is the maximum possible rpm. 

According to the new levesl of the noise,do you believe that it worths to do all these modifications or no? Do you feel that it worth it? We need your feedback.

For me was a defacto "must do something" for the noise like fighting airplane. I could not concentrate to design on AutoCad.

P.S. Yeah i know the modification is a pain in the @ss. 4 hours it is very very less for the project.

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  • 2 months later...

You are welcome! My Card is Nvidia GT 610. But don't buy this card because i have read that it is not compatible with the bete releases of macOS Sierra. Maybe will be compatible with the final release, but it doesnt worths to take the risk. When i say doesnt works with sierra i mean with or without OS X nvidia drivers. 

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  • 4 weeks later...

Hi, thanks for the great post you made!

 

I picked up a Precision 490 yesterday and its indeed ridiculously loud.

 

My cpu and cgi fan are not too bad but this may change later when i add the second cpu. (I got two X5160's, but sadly im missing one heatsink wich i cant seem to find anywhere)

The biggest issue i got is cooling the ram (I got 4x 1gb and 4x 2gb modules btw), they get hotter then hell and the fan seems eol sinds its ratteling and screaming bad.

 

How did you connect your fan to the mainboard? im guessing you hotwired the new fan to the Dell connector?

And I was wondering about the upgrade from 92mm to the 120mm fan. Does the larger fan (plus mount) fit just as well inside the case? 

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You are welcome.

Its very easy to find a heatsink. Try here http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/sis.html?_nkw=Dell+Precision+Heatsink+490+0JD210+690+T5400+SC1430+CPU+JD210+JOBLOT+x2&_id=121948220014&&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2658

The ram it is no an issue. Those rams are FB EEC rams and all those rams that are server and workstation rams although they have a heatsikn it very normal to work with tempertures fro min. 72 to max 84 °Celsius. 

The issue is that the fan which try to cool them is a horrible fan with 4000 rpm. The less diameter of the fan the more noise at the same rpm with a bigger diameter fan. So exchange this 92mm fan with an 120 mm fan but keep i  mind these:

  1. You have to construct a custom fan base to accomodate the bigger fan. You can also find bigger custom bases on ebay but they are expensive and they have no name fans . take a look here: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Dell-Precision-490-Memory-Fan-Noise-Solution-Quiet-Down-That-490-/262113660133?hash=item3d07310ce5:g:5lMAAOSw9mFWLpfy
  2. Buy a fan with 120mm diameter which is from a good european brand with reputation e.g. Noctua, LLC, Arctic which fan must be a DE FACTO PWM fan. Pwm means that the fan can read information from the mobo and adjust its rpm automatically. Because Dell has propriety plugs for the fans, you will cut the Dell's cable and the new fan's cable and you will join them together. 
  3. Just kep in mind that sometimes the colour of Dell's fan cables with the colours of the new 120mm fan although they have the same colours it is not RIGHT to join them colour with colour but you have to exchange the colours at the joining phase. Google is your best friend, other way do trials and errors tests. 

I stay at your disposal. Good Luck

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  • 1 year later...

Thank you Theoprofil, this description is really useful. I've upgraded RAM to 32gb and added two 80mm Arctic F8 PWM PST fans to assist the memory fan. I've connected the PWM wire to the memory fan. You advised against it here:

On 6/13/2016 at 11:08 AM, Theoprofil said:

From which fan (CPU, CGI, or Memory) do you take the pulse to drive the added 80mm fans? I guess you take the pulse from CPU or Memory fan. It is wrong. You must take the pulse from the CGI fan because the CGI fan rotates with 1650 rpm, the memory with 1200 rpm and the CPU with 950-1100 (it depends on the load of the cpus). So if you take the pulse from the CGI fan the new 80mm will rotate with 1650 rpm thus you will have lower Memory temperatures. Also you will have a small buffer in case of the CGI rotate much faster e.g. 1800 due to the rising of the temperature inside the case because the 80mm can rotate until the 1800 rpm which is the maximum possible rpm.

But according to these threads:
https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/458292-pwm-splitter-with-different-rpm-fans/
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-3429704/proper-pwm-splitter-control-fans-rpms.html
the PWM does not control RPM directly, so if the memory fan spins at 80% of its max. RPM, the Arctic F8-s will spin at 80% of their max. RPM, not at the same RPM.
It works for me.

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