Hello all - I have a Dell PowerVault 200S SCSI Drive cage and the fans
are driving me and more importantly, the others in my house, nuts. It
currently has three redundant Papst RL90DC fans, running at 12VDC. Does
anyone know of a good quiet replacement for these units? Any help is
greatly appreciated as this array must stay up but cannot continue making
so much noise.

Scott Toland

On Sun, 12 Feb 2006 23:23:23 GMT, Scott Toland
wrote:

Hello all - I have a Dell PowerVault 200S SCSI Drive cage and the fans
are driving me and more importantly, the others in my house, nuts. It
currently has three redundant Papst RL90DC fans, running at 12VDC. Does
anyone know of a good quiet replacement for these units? Any help is
greatly appreciated as this array must stay up but cannot continue making
so much noise.

Scott Toland

You might try putting baffle vents over the fan output screens.
Or if you can get your hands on some vacuum flex hosing build an
external cooler box.(I have one running on a mini-tower case that does
a good job of pulling air through the case for cooling with the
suction fan and motor in a corner closet.)
You can cobble one together out of hosing and old vacuum fan and
motors parts. Build it into a heavy plywood or particleboard case for
sound insulation. I have a heavyduty voltage control pot on the motor
to notch the fan velocity down to about the same level as the standard
vent fans used in tower cases.
Does a great job of pulling out the heat and is whisper quiet.
If you have any old AT power supplies laying around you might try
using the cooling fans out of those also. If one doesn't have the
needed velocity try using more than one. one on the intake vent of the
case and one on the exit vent. Of if possible cut an additional vent
hole in the case near the top and install a second.
I use these fans on many of the towers I build and they do a good job
without creating the noise of the higher velocity fans.

MEasure the size of the fans from mounting hole to mounting hole. Then
go to eBay and buy a few fans of the same size, looking for dba
readings in the lower 30's. You could buy them at your local
Radio-Shack or PC dealer, but they'll be $19.95 each there. Very
important: Also buy some fan guards! Otherwise you'll soon be making
a trip back to buy fans with blades still on them. Don't ask me how I
learned about this.

If the fans are going to be on for more than a few hours a day, be sure
they're the $1 more expensive ones with BALL BEARINGS. The brass
bearing ones will last about 18 months if they're on all the time.

Then swap the fans and see how that sounds. Probably a lot better.
Also feel-up your disk drives after a few hours of use. If they feel
just warm, the new fans have enough air flow. Otherwise if they're
uncomfortably hot, you might need a bit more cooling.