Pentium III and silence :-)

[arjepsen]

Hey. Just wanted to share my latest hackings with you guys.

For some time I've been trying to silence my d8b and HDR. I've put BeQuiet atx psu's in both, and that helped a lot! Particularly the straight power 10 I put in my HDR! I'm VERY picky when it comes to noise from fans, but the fan in that psu is as close to silent you can come, while still having a fan moving. (I didn't want to go with fanless psu's, since I think it's good to get some hot air out of the cabinets.)
I've also done some work on the cpu cooler. The stock cooler uses a very small fan, and is just not very effecient. I tried various other fans at lower voltages, but the heatsink got quite hot, and I didn't like that.
I found that the largest cpu cooler that seemed to fit on these motherboards, were the "arctic cooling copper silent 3".
The heatsink is nice, but I wasn't too happy with the fan - it was quiet, but I could still hear it.
Fortunately I realized that this heatsink was big enough to fit a 80mm fan.
Unfortunately it is also too big for the HDR, since there's a small mouse/remote/footswitch pcb placed right above the cpu spot.
I managed to find a relatively quiet 80mm fan that was only 15mm hight, but I still felt that the temperatures were a bit high, and the airflow was still not too good with the mentioned pcb pretty much covering half the cpu fan.
In the end I decided to move the pcb elsewhere, so I could optimize the cooling.
Luckily I got my hands on an opt-24 card, so I could pretty much remove the i/o card cage. I made a piece of thin plywood to cover the opening, and fit the small pcb on to that one. Then I remove the card cage entirely, and packed the card cage pcb in a safe non-electro-static plastic bag, so it wouldn't touch anything inside (since it's now floating freely in there).

Anyways, in the middle of all this, I started wondering if there would be any benefit to having a bigger processor in the HDR. I remembered reading about someone using a different motherboard, which could use a pentium III.
I couldn't find that motherboard on ebay, but from searching around I came across some adapters, that would allow using a coppermine cpu on a mendicore socket 370. They were made by a company called "powerleap", and I managed to find such an adapter on ebay, plus an 800mz pentium III coppermine cpu.
It was a bit tricky to fit, since the adapter basicly is a pcb and small socket that sits between the old socket and the new cpu. This means that the top of the cpu sits quite a bit higher than it normally would. This makes it hard to use the clamps to hold it in place, and a bit dangerous, since the coppermine cpus have the core exposed - making it easy to crack.
However, after some hacking, sawing, filing and jumping up and down in frustration, I managed to fit it in.
It is now up and running, and I can safely say, that the new processor absolutely makes no difference in the speed of the gui that I can tell. (it still seems to scroll a bit "choppily").
(My HDR does boot rather fast, but that's due to the CF card I'm using instead of a harddisk).
However, the coppermine cpus were made with a newer technology, that meant they didn't run as hot as the older mendocinos. I'm still testing it out, but so far it's running much cooler than before - and that is with a noctua 80mm fan running at only 7 volts. Now the HDR is practically free of fan noise!!!
Now my only problem is, that there's this whining noise coming from the front panels.. not entirely sure what makes it yet.

Anyone else noticed whining noise in their HDR???

[Bruce Graham]

Wow.. What a ton of work! Congrates on making it work

The only noise I have experienced on my HDR that resembles of what you speak, is the HD in the removable caddie, but I am sure that is not what you are hearing.

I'm just starting to move to SSD's, but waiting to see how the CF test works

Cheers
Bruce

[funk]

thats a load of head itching, well done you.
i run two Hdrs linked and like bruce, my only noise is my hard drive but now and again i can hear the cpu fan bearing wearing away higher and lower every 4 or 5 seconds or so, (it use to clatter away all the time but i took it apart and it was dry as a bone, i cleaned and relubed it, and its been fine since) my studio is in the bedroom when i go down stairs i can hear the same high low rumble faintly through the ceiling, as my two hdr's are on the floor........ ( on saying that i have just realised the problem, and a cure for it ! ) but more to the point, recording in the same room as the unit has no effect on the sound at all with good mics, so cant be that bad,
Im not sure how another system runs but my "gui" ( thinking my monitor view here ) does not scroll choppily, it all seems to run quite smoothly, only when i run the two and i have not got the hdr2 linked as TC chase does it get choppy,

i think we are all intrested in an alternitive motherboard, any work here has to be good, im looking right now at getting a hdr with a naffed board to try just this, in a strange kinda anorak way im looking forward to it.
great work keep going.

[rmrosa]

Hello I am new to this forum but I am curious to know what kind of CF to ide and compact flash cards you used on your silent Pentium III HDR. Mine is also noisy and I am thinking that CF might be a better bet for my HDR without Large Disk Bios than SSD sata disks.
The HDR motherboard supports I think ATA/33 or ATA/66 hard drives but as far as I know most of the CF to IDE adapters only are able to go up to UDMA 2 (ATA/33) even thought my board at boot recognize the hard drives as UDMA 82?! The stock flat cables seem to me of 40 wires not 80...

What are your suggestions for CF to IDE adapters and for compact flash cards?

I am also considering changing the CPU cooler and fan. Is the Arctic Silent 3 + Noctua 80mm fan still your favorite?

Why did you choose a 800W PSU?

Thanks in advance
Best Regards
RR

[arjepsen]

Sorry for a long reply time.

I'm using Sandisk Extreme with my HDR. I have updated the bios, so I can use the 128gb cards.
Yeah, I still like the arctic heatsink - just be aware that you have to do some work for it to fit, since the small pcb above the cpu is in the way, and then have to be relocated.

For an adapter, I could suggest this one:
https://www.amazon.com/Monoprice-Compac ... pact+flash

I think you mean, why I used a 800 mhz CPU?
Because running it at the slower clock speed means it's running quite a bit cooler, than the original cpu.
However, it's a bit of a hassle, since the cpu-adapter is needed, but it can work.

[toddpierce]

Thanks for sharing your latest hackings with us! They are tricky! In addition, I am also interested in an alternative motherboard, so what would you suggest?

[arjepsen]

That one is a lot more tricky!
The MackieOS is VERY selective about the hardware.
I don't know all the details, since I haven't tried other motherboards.
I do know it needs to see the same chipset as on the original motherboads, and I think it needs to have ISA-slots too - at least for the midi board to work. It's also somewhat selective about which graphics cards will work.

Unless you want to spend money on testing various old motherboards, I think your best option is to use the original. (that's what I'm using).
I do remember somebody writing about having luck with another motherboard and processor, but I don't remember the details.