ofnuts wrote:
Hmm. in that case they are also Y splitters for SATA power connectors, and the power drain of a fan is negligible compared to your GPU. If it made a difference you would already have frequent power shutdowns due to overload.
And I would be very worried by the safety of two different current sources wired into the same machine, even to isolated and insulated parts. A French PC magazine also ran a test of varoius AC->DC converters for USB devices and no converter under $10 (7€) was even safe (no overcurrent protection, they would all catch fire rather easily in case of overload...). But well, that's your house

Thanks for the warning.
I'm going to look into having all my fans connected to the power supply, for safety reasons. It's just a matter of picking up a few splitters.
GnuTux wrote:
Wallace wrote:
Not overclocking, and IMO liquid coolers are a waste of money.
High-end video card and the CPU. It's the power supply that's creating most of the heat.
Temperatures haven't really gone out of the norm. Between 45-55c, but now I'm down to 32-40c, just with the addition of this new fan.
There is certainly nothing wrong with wanting your system to run as cool as possible. I've not used a liquid cooler but I know they're popular with overclockers. I've never really understood why people spend a lot of extra money on cooling so they can overclock their system, when they could just use that extra money to by faster components. I guess there must be some cost savings in certain instances.
My main system is also my media center so I'm interested in it staying cool, while remaining as quiet as possible. I don't use a case fan or a GPU fan. My power supply fan and CPU fan are both fairly quiet but not silent. I've seen a few fanless power supplies but I understand they have heat issues. My ideal media system would have no fans and use solid state drives, basically no moving parts.

I hear you.
I have two 120mm case fans and the new 200mm fan I just installed, one 120mm CPU and an 80mm GPU fan plus the power supply's fan, which is probably close to around 80 or 92mm.
With my AC set at 70°F my machine runs at temps between 27-35°C and without the AC the temps run a little just higher.
All in all that's pretty good.
The addition of this new fan really made a big difference, that I could see immediately. The whole system runs at about 20-25 db (which at times can seem like a chinese water torture) when everything is maxed out. I've gotten use to the sound and when I'm wearing earphones I can't hear it at all.
I'm going to add some potentiometers to the three case fans, so I can control the levels of output to them. There's an empty floppy disk bay I'm not using, with a cover plate. I'm going to mount all the pots to this cover plate, they will look factory installed when done.