£10 Process to Achieve FAN Silence Nirvana for any upgraded SKY+ HDD

If you have recently upgraded your SKY+ HDD but want the FAN to run quieter, I have a working solution for you. After some research and hands-on myself (new FANs, FAN-Mate2, resistors, etc), I can truly say I have found the most satisfying solution. I am happy to share this with you. This solution should work with all 7200rpm HDD or even 5400 ones with FAN noise problems.

I have a Samsung 1614N in my sky+ box. Its a 160GB, 7200RPM and 8MB cache. The HDD is extemely quiet, the best around, even quieter than Maxtors. But ...

The fan is constantly on and loud even though the box is cool. So to get the FAN noise down I did this. Its now so quiet like its not there even though its on all the time. And the important thing is the box is cool and quiet.

The idea is to run the sky+ fan at 5V. The fan can still kick-start and will run continously but at a lower speed (about less than half) and also quieter (less than 3-6dB). Flow rate is more than sufficient to achieve cool-down of an always-on sky+ box like mine.

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Go to Maplin and get these items:

1. Fan Multi-Connector Cable ZM-MC1
http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=34544&TabID=1&source=15&WorldID=&doy=17m2

2. Power supply Y-Cable
http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=10951&TabID=1&source=17&WorldID=&doy=17m2

£10 Process to achieve 'SKY+ FAN Silence':

1. Power SKY+ down. Remove necessary cables. Remove the cover of the sky+ box (you would already know how to do this as you have already installed a new HDD if not go to www.hummer.co.uk for instructions)
2. Take out the power connector to the HDD.
3. Stick in the correct end of the Y-Cable into the power connector from (2)
4. Stick one of the two ends of the Y-cable into the HDD.
5. Stick the end of the Fan Multi-Connector cable to the second end of the Y-Cable
6. Take out the 2-pin connector of the SKY+ fan
7. Stick in the FAN 2-pin connector into the 5V connector of the FAN Multi-Connector. (You may have to shave off some bits of the fan power connector before you can connector it in.) Make sure you connect both together in a way that u line up the black to the black wires and the red to the red wires. Otherwise fan direction may be reversed. You dont want that.
8. Use Velcro to 'bend' the long cables around the HDD to the back.
9. Put the screws back on the SKY+ box. Power up.
10. Welcome to FAN Silence Nirvana

Have fun!

Eye in the Sky

 

Over 100 reads of this and not a single well done post.

Well done mate.

 

Well done for the time you have spent, but I'm a bit dubious about running the fan at a lower voltage, or at a reduced speed in the warmer summer temperatures. I would rather try to find a fan that is temperature controlled.

Sky must have had a reason to change the firmware ?

 

I agree with Nick, nice idea but time will tell how effective the mod will be.

I'm sure it would have been much easier (and cheaper!) to tap into the 5v wire from the PSU directly.

Useful information though - well done.

A. Dork

 

Has anyone reported a mod for quietening the FAN in the Sky+ 160 box?
Crappy thing buzzes loadly the whole time the box is on.

Thanks
Nigel

 

Having just upgraded to a V2 box, plus a 200GB disk, the "noise" problem was my next step... Mine sounds like a gas fire on full burn! (full details to be posted when I'm happy it's OK) "Eye in the Sky" mentioned the solution I chose, though not fitted yet, namely a Zalman Fan Mate 2 (from http://www.quietpc.com/uk/casefansacc.php#fanmate) to reduce the voltage from 11v to 5v - so if need be I can turn it up to balance quiet with cool. I'm hoping to fix the "control" outside the box, but this will probably mean cutting a hole in the base... I'm also using Temperature-sensitive sticker's - these permanently change colour to record the highest surface temperature reached, from 37c to 65c (£1 each from http://www.quietpc.com/uk/harddrive.php#tempsticker) to check the disk and inside the case occasionally...

 

Hi, I sell 60mm 8dBA fans on Ebay called Silnex. They go into computers. They are silent, as far as I can tell. I think they should slot in without any problems. I'm going to try it when I change the hard drive. If you do a search for ebay member masterjee, just read the feedback from others.