Hi everyone, I stumbled on this site while doing research and I have learned a lot from here. I bought a slimline s7520n from Savers for 15 dollars but when opened it up I found it had old hardware and a damaged hard drive. However I fell in love with the case, the size and the potential for use as a HTPC and moderate gaming appealed to me. What I didnt bargain for was the problems I would encounter powering up the system and keeping it cool. I thought all I needed to do was replace the hardware and I am good to go. I had a Sapphire Radeon 7750 lp card lying around, a 320Gb WD hard drive I had used for my previous build, an Intel Pentium G860 CPU and Kingston HyperX Genesis DDR3 4GB Memory I bought off craigslist. All it seemed I needed was a new motherboard and as I later found out a new power supply as the stock HP power supply was only about 100watt. I bought a Foxconn H61S mini itx motherboard and also a Rosewill CPU cooler when I found out the stock cooler would be a bit tight in the case.
The real problem I had was finding a power supply that had decent wattage but was quiet. That was the begining of my nightmare with this case as I couldnt get anything decent that wouldnt cost an arm and a leg. I eventually opted for a Solid Gear Mini ITX 320-Watts Power Supply which turned out to be very noisy and therefore unusable for a HTPC. I decided to buy a Scythe MINI KAZE ULTRA" 40 x 20 mm Silent Mini Fan to change the PSU fan. My guess is it has a lower CFM the original PSU fan (There is very little information on the PSU, the manual is really flimsy). I also bought a Noctua 40x10mm fan for the case to help with the cooling.
My question is should I continue with this project that seems to be never ending or just buy a new case (I am thinking of the cooler master elite 120). I was also wondering what would be the danger to my PSU if I change the fan to a fan with lower CFM but less noise. Can I get a PSU that would have at least 300watts that isnt noisy but would fit into the case and wouldnt be too expensive. Finally for those that have one of these cases, do I really needed to modify the case and put a 120mm fan on the side? That to me would be a bridge to far and I would just give up on the case.
I'm sure such a PSU exists I guess it's just finding one at acceptable availability and price...
btw. any reason for 300W particularly? I would think 250W will be sufficient in 90% of situations...I am running a 7750 off mine
Down-speccing your target PSU should ease the cost and the noise requirements you may have~
I would also re-emphasise what the other guy said about getting a proper CPU cooler &fan..when you say the g860 cooler was tight in the case what do you mean? height wise or width-wise? This isn't necessarily a problem - you don't necessarily want loads of space inside the case (as opposed to a taller cooling set-up that can draw in air from outside). a low profile cpu cooler with weak fan could end up with more of a oven situation in these small cases but as you say you have other fans you should be okay.
But yeah, if you are worried about noise then you will be better off with a larger heatsink and larger fan..
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