Too much noise from my Zorro Case!! Argghh

[scottxxx]

Compared to my Shuttle SN45G, my Zorro case is like a helicopter on fire, so ordered a few accessories and went about improving looks and reducing noise (and hopefully a bit of heat). The idea was to chop out the nasty stamped grills and replace them with chrome fan grills and fit a fan controller (Hardcano 9) to control them with. Oh, also decided on an orange acrylic psu cover, two more cathodes as they were cheap - thought I'd be crazy not to.

Here's the specs:
Black Zorro Case (450W Eye-T PSU I think) - 2x80mm rear fans, 1 LED 80mm sidepanel fan, all standard. PSU has 2x80mm fans, one on the front and one on the back.

Athlon XP2500+ Barton, Coolermaster Aero7+ Lite
MSI K7N2-L, 2x256 PC3200 Kingston Hyper-X, Gf4 Ti4200 128mb DDR
M-Audio Revolution 7.1 Sound Card
40Gb IBM Deskstar 7200rpm hard drive & 80Gb WD 7200rpm drive
Other misc. bits (CDRW, DVD-ROM, Zip, Floppy)

I chopped the 450W psu rear grill out without too much fuss and put on a shiny chrome grill, cleaned it all out and stuck on the acrylic cover. With a bit of squezing it fits perfectly. Then installed the thermaltake hardcano 9 - unfortunately there were some little plastic bits on the side, just behind the blanking plates, so dremmelled them out and managed to fit it in good enough. Connected up my hardcano so the side panel is on FAN1, rear fans are on FAN2 and my two cathode inverters are on FAN3 and FAN4. After tidying up my now impressive twenty-something molex connectors its all fitted and working.

The problem is it doesn't seem any quieter, even with the fans turned down. The hardcano doesn't seem that great - turning the fans right down makes them spin a tiny bit slower, and having them all on full doesn't make the case any noisier than the slowest setting. The coolermaster aero7 is turned down so you can't hear it above the annoying hum, which I'm assuming is coming from the psu.

I didn't get round to chopping out the fan grills as I couldn't find any decent way of doing it with the tools lying around. So my first question - how can i chop these out fairly easily, and what tools/bits do I need and will it make that much of a difference?

Secondly, how can I reduce the droning (I'm guessing comes) from the psu without replacing it completely or spending more than I did on the entire case + psu (£30)? I was thinking some thermally controlled case fans might do the job, but would probably be expensive. My other possible source of noise could be my GeForce4's cooler, which I could maybe replace with a zalman but don't know if it would fit or would be worth it.

Finally, why is my PC so hot??? I can't really overclock it as its reaching 65C under load, and about 54C idle. The cables are all hidden away in the 5 1/4" bays as far as possible, and there's plenty of ventilation and a decent CPU cooler.

Thanks guys
-Scott

[Applecrusher]

as for the cpu being hot... try and reseat the aero 7 and make sure you got some 'thermal compound' under it!

[Lexeus]

I got the same prob with noise. I switched to watercooling but my PSU fans are still making my system noisy.

The best thing for cutting out the fan grills would be a dremel tool

[unrealrocks]

With a system like that I'd take out all the case fans, and run the Aero7 on low. Ive got a similar system like that fine.

Zalmans are well worth it, or if your wanting a cheaper option the Arctic coolers are good.

PSU, I wouldn't start chopping and changing inside that although if you do then thats your choice. I have an Enermax and FSP PSUs in my systems, Zalmans and Aero4s or GlacialTech AMD coolers in all my systems and I can sleep with all 4 on and in the same room as me!

[Falcon2004]

I have a coolermaster Areo 7 too, and i got a few stupidly high temps at first, just reseat it and make sure you use a good thermal compound (ie. Artic Silver). Its a bugger to get to sit correctly but onces its on right its works like a dream. I was getting simular temps to you but after chaging my thermal gunk and re-seating my Hs & fan i get around 37* idle and about 43/44 under load. (And thats OCed)

Falcon

[scottxxx]

Thanks for that. It looks as though its seated ok, but the thermal compound is really cheap - I bought some Arctic Silver 5 from ebay but it got "lost in the post", so looks like I'll have to buy some more. Hopefully after some Arctic Silver and refitting the heatsink I should be getting more normal temps. I won't mind the noise as much if I'm getting 3200 for the price of an XP2500

[Falcon2004]

lol, Its surprising how much difference the Artic Silver makes...lol