by synthjoe » Tue Nov 29, 2011 3:04 pm
It is a standard AT PSU, not ATX (lacking soft power button feature and a different power connector). The blue wire (actually five wires in a cable, amongst them yellow, black and brown, plus a GND yellow/green wire, I believe) is going to the front mains switch, since the d8b is hard power-switched, hence no standby mode.
Fan is needed to move air through the whole of the PSU box (+/-16V regulators get acually quite hot, plus the video card, MB and HDD needs some cooling, as well), so I would not recommend using a fanless PSU. Also, make sure that the fan is actually able to do its job, as the large (16cm) fan mounted on the top/bottom of some PSU designs will in most cases face the bottom plate of the CPU box and they're not able to generate airflow, at all.
I was considering heatpipe cooling for the CPU (heatpipes going to the case, as directly to the outside world as possible), but they're difficult to get for socket7/PGA370. So finally I settled for a larger PIII heatsink with a fan running at much lower speed (about 1/3rd), it does keep my CPU cool enough and practically noiseless. Finally I've found that the CPU fan and my HDD accounted for most of the disturbing noise, so I've left the original PSU (temperature controlled in my relatively new desk, anyways) intact.