Fairlight-CMI

Has anyone ever tried to deal with physical noise their CMI3 makes ?

I am tempted to have a go at replacing the fans with something moder and 
quiter, and was wondering if anyone else had already done this ?

Thanks,

Arron

Hi Arron,

I have done so successfully with various PCs. I am still planning to make
time to do the same for the CMI, There are a few simple rules to follow:

- The easy part: use quiet fans to begin with.

- See how they operate at full speed, and whether half speed will do the
cooling job provided you use enough fans. In my PC I have replaced 2 fast
fans with 4 similar fans all running at half the voltage (2 pairs
serialized), this cuts the noise significantly, as a bonus it lengthens
the life of the fans. You may get away with this trick even on the
original fans without removing them from the mainframe.

- Clean the fans from dust and other 'debris', it adds to the noise.

- insulate the fans from the casing by placing them on small rubber
insulating rings (between the screws and the fan casing.

- Use insulation in places where there is hardly airflow, but space for
noise to escape (the drive compartment for example). Cooling for the drive
compartment is provided by the roster (is that the right word ?) on the
lower right hand corner, just below the drives. Also, using noise
absorbing rubber on the side walls of the interior will reduce high
frequency noise (done so on my server with 5 harddrives and 8 fans)

Was it you that had the MIDI box with the MFX2 ? I thought about that
issue this morning, how did it go ?

Best regards,
Harald Feldmann.

> Has anyone ever tried to deal with physical noise their CMI3 makes ?
>
> I am tempted to have a go at replacing the fans with something moder and
> quiter, and was wondering if anyone else had already done this ?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Arron
>
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>

Hi,

 I have a series 3 which I put modern SCSI 4 gig drives into. This enabled
me to remove about 2 small fans which were used to cool the big drives which
came with the series 3 originally. In fact the drive bay is big enough for 4
drives.
 This then leaves us with I think 6 fans + 2 small ones for the power
supply. Now I may have this number wrong here but I can double check this.
We have to be sure of what voltage the fans require. I would then replace
the fans with Papst silent PC fans with rubber mounting. I would then put PC
sound insulation foam on the inside of all of the CMI white panels. This
should make a dramatic difference. In fact could we not run the 6 Papst fans
at 1/2 speed ? What is the easiest way to do this?
 I had Peter Wielk replace my 11X fans and I put foam material on the inside
of the panels. There was quite a difference in the noise. If you are lucky
enough to have a WFM-32 RAM card then I would think 3 fans would be
sufficient for a series 3. I would be interested to hear what others think
about this.

Regards,


James Thomson

On 9/7/04 9:25 am, "feldmann@xs4all.nl" <feldmann@xs4all.nl> wrote:

> Hi Arron,
> 
> I have done so successfully with various PCs. I am still planning to make
> time to do the same for the CMI, There are a few simple rules to follow:
> 
> - The easy part: use quiet fans to begin with.
> 
> - See how they operate at full speed, and whether half speed will do the
> cooling job provided you use enough fans. In my PC I have replaced 2 fast
> fans with 4 similar fans all running at half the voltage (2 pairs
> serialized), this cuts the noise significantly, as a bonus it lengthens
> the life of the fans. You may get away with this trick even on the
> original fans without removing them from the mainframe.
> 
> - Clean the fans from dust and other 'debris', it adds to the noise.
> 
> - insulate the fans from the casing by placing them on small rubber
> insulating rings (between the screws and the fan casing.
> 
> - Use insulation in places where there is hardly airflow, but space for
> noise to escape (the drive compartment for example). Cooling for the drive
> compartment is provided by the roster (is that the right word ?) on the
> lower right hand corner, just below the drives. Also, using noise
> absorbing rubber on the side walls of the interior will reduce high
> frequency noise (done so on my server with 5 harddrives and 8 fans)
> 
> Was it you that had the MIDI box with the MFX2 ? I thought about that
> issue this morning, how did it go ?
> 
> Best regards,
> Harald Feldmann.

On Fri, 09 Jul 2004 16:06:03 +0100, James Thomson
<jamesthomson@mac.com> wrote:

>Hi,

Hi James,

> I have a series 3 which I put modern SCSI 4 gig drives into. This enabled
>me to remove about 2 small fans which were used to cool the big drives which
>came with the series 3 originally. In fact the drive bay is big enough for 4
>drives.

Indeed it is.

> This then leaves us with I think 6 fans + 2 small ones for the power
>supply. Now I may have this number wrong here but I can double check this.
>We have to be sure of what voltage the fans require. 

In fact, the voltage is irrelevant. If the fans are DC (Direct
current) types you can serialize them and run any two fans in pairs at
half the voltage. I'm not sure how this would work with AC
(Alternating Current) fans. I've never tried them.

>I would then replace
>the fans with Papst silent PC fans with rubber mounting. I would then put PC
>sound insulation foam on the inside of all of the CMI white panels. 

In fact I use thin (4 mm) rubber undercarpet for this as it is rugged
on one side and has a dispersing surface on the rubber side (I should
post some photos somewhere).

>This
>should make a dramatic difference. In fact could we not run the 6 Papst fans
>at 1/2 speed ? What is the easiest way to do this?

See above ! :)

> I had Peter Wielk replace my 11X fans and I put foam material on the inside
>of the panels. 

Foam is nice, but rubber is even better. It's heavier though.

>There was quite a difference in the noise. If you are lucky
>enough to have a WFM-32 RAM card then I would think 3 fans would be
>sufficient for a series 3. I would be interested to hear what others think
>about this.
>
>Regards,
>
>
>James Thomson

I also left a message for you regarding your keypad on the holmes
pages.

Best regards,
Harald.