emusonacid!

After plugging the orginal fan back in - it seems that this was acting as an exhaust - so I've now switched the fan round so air is blowing out.

Cheers,

Andy

Your posting seems to indicate that airflow might be improved is this true? Nice job BTW.

Hi Rod,

Thanks for your post. Yeah, I think putting the fan in the wrong way seemed to blow the air out of the power supply unit cover grills - and then come out of the grills by the hard drive.

I wasn't sure which way the fan was meant to be inserted so I tried to pay as much attention as possible to any little detail and I could definetely feel the air coming out by the hard drive.

My main concern was that although airflow may improve around the insides of the sampler - eventually the PSU would get hotter and warm the air. I imagine warm air around a sampler isn't a good idea so I decided that maybe it would be a better idea to reverse the fan and pump the heat out.

I've been examining my original E-MU fan. It's a SUNON KD1204PKS3. DC12V - 0.6W

Interestingly - the Silenx fan is 12V and 0.48 Watts. Its a very efficient fan considering the lower amount of watts. Very well designed.

Oh - I forgot to mention - as regards to the fan power supply on the motherboard. I used a knife on the fan's plug - sliced off the notches (which are meant to secure it into place) and placed it in a position that left an empty pin on the far left of the four pins. The 12V pin was the only pin I needed to be concerned about.

Thanks again for your post,

Andy

Sorry I meant was the new fan better for airflow (cfm) than the old?

I've googled the specs and the silenx is reportedly lower but only fractionally.

http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/acatalog/info_2524.html

http://www.sunon.com/BUSNB003.nsf/LSSearch011?OpenAgent&Seq=1&a=40X40X20&b=please_selected&c=12

Hi Rod,

No worries, I misunderstood that to. The new fans rating is 6 cfm but I'm not sure about the old one. I don't know how to work it out but I've had a little search and the most info I could find was this:

http://www.ace-systems.nl/Menu/Electron ... S12-40.htm


A few details are here

air flow: 13m?/hr
current: 0.07A
speed: 6000rpm tolerance:
noise (at 1m): 25dBA

I had the KD1204-PKS3 version fan in mine.

Hope this is of some help,

Cheers,

Andy

Cool, thats great research.

I think that the fan inside the E-MU was pretty good but maybe noisey because of age.

I've very happy with the sound now though


:-D

I think your info may be more accurate, the sunon data seems optimistic on the dbA (it all depends how far away you measure I guess ). I was considering an 80mm fan on the psu side but given the potential for resonance and the simplicity of the silenx I'll probably copy you.

Your stats for the sunon work out at 7.65 cfm.

Just realised your stats are for the pks2. faster, louder, more cfm and watts.

Hi Rod,

I have to admit - the 80mm fan looks really good.

I have the old type of power supply do I didn't want to go that extra bit further and run an 80mm fan. Also, I'm a bit worried when it comes to drilling holes.

The best success I've had so far is with the E6400 classic. The fan on that really makes a lot of noise. When I upgraded from my ESI-32, I couldn't believe the difference. But again, to be fair, these fans are quite old now and there's certainly no harm in replacing them. Maybe they were good when they were newly installed. The 5000 Ultra improved in sound but was pretty good to start with. The hard drive is now clearly louder than anything else.

I've been thinking about a quieter hard drive.

Something like the 2.5 inch FUJITSU MHT2040AT in a startek 3.5 frame. Low power consumption and

Acoustic noise (at 1 metre idle) 24 dBA typical
Acoustic noise (at 1 metre idle) 2.3 bels

http://www.fel.fujitsu.com/home/v3__pro ... =fsp&wg=13

I read a post on the forum and these look very good.

I was also thinking about the molex silent case but it seemed that you need to fit the case horizontally. upon investigation, the E-MU only has a vertical mounting pattern. So again, maybe more drilling is involved.

Cheers again,

Andy

p.s. Have you heard of any whisper quiet drives?

Other than the CF solutions and flash drives I think you've identified the best option.

Just tried an 80mm fan that I had with a PC case. It's not an ideal fan (relatively high rpm / high noise) and I've just mounted it using the plastic centre pin style mounts and only at two points (holes already in grill, had to rotate fan to get two holes with the right spacing). Seems to exhaust a similar amount of air to the original but is much, much quieter, and none of my feared resonance from the psu cover. With masking and perhaps a little ducting (a lot of air is bouncing back off the sampler side and back through the side grill) it should be an effective quiet solution. Perhaps a 60 mm might be more efficient overall (psu cover masks some of the 80mm) and mount more rigidly (presuming the hole spacing hits lucky). That said as my emu goes nowhere I wouldn't be worried about the current mounting, it certainly couldn't rattle less. Now to find a low wattage quiet fan....

Hey,

I've been away for a while, I am actually thinking of selling my whole studio. I like to contribute a few words to Andy's post.

Removing the cover is dead simple indeed and the original fan is blowing out. I replaced the original 40mm (fast spinning) fan with a slower running Zalman 80mm quiet fan, this makes a hell of a difference. Also putting the (maybe already quiet) new harddrive in an enclosure (like the one from Molex that I used) also kills all remaining noise. This is a nice recipe for a silent Emulator.

cheers
Ronald

Hmm, that zalman fan looks ideal on the power consumption front...

I've just been reading the last few posts. Cheers guys, thats some good information. I'm going to have a look into the bigger fans when I get more time in the future. If I do decide to do any modifications, I'll post some pictures on this chain.

I've briefly had a look for areas when I can install a larger fan but unfortunately, I only have one available hole already on the side of the E-MU. I'd need to drill another hole to mount the fan securely.

Oh and cheers Roonsmit, I read a link to your post before I started working on my fan. Excellent post!