Lownoise / Noiseless Asrock ION 330

Thanks for your review. What about the temps ?

I'm at about 55 degrees C for CPU and 70 degrees for the GPU chipset.

Looks stable, but Ican't monitor when running XBMC.

Got my 330HT a few days ago. The box is great, but as said XX times it is far from silent. Especially the high pitched noise is very noticeable.

Here is what i have done to minimize the level of noise:

I removed the "hood" and CD/Hard-drive (very easy). Source of the noise is 80% the little fan. Rest is the large chassis fan at the back, and a small portion of harddrive sound.

The high pitched sound is in my case produced by the fan making the heat sink "sing". I noticed if i put my fingers on the heat sink to stabilize it. The noise was totally changed and the high pitched noise was gone.

The small fan is kept in place with 4 screws into the heat sink. I removed 3 of the screws (the fourth is tricky to remove without taking out the motherboard). With only one screw keeping it in place i squeezed a rubber washer between the heatsink and the fan to make space between the fan and sink. See picture for details.

I also squeezed a few rubber washer into the heatsinks to stabilize it and make the "singing" disappear (see above picture).

At the large fan i removed the 4 screws and fitted rubber washers between the fan and the chassis.

I put the cd/hd back and put the hood back on. The box was now alot more quiet. You could still hear a "woshing" sound, the high pitched is gone.

A few days later i found and old Fan Mate II. I put the small fan on the Fan Mate and placed the regulator on the outside. This finally made the box "silent". I can still hear it if i walk up to the box and listen, but it's far from how it was "out-of-the-box".


I have no temp readings since i cant get the sensors working on my ubuntu install. The system is very stable and i haven't noticed any problems after doing this.

This quick mod is warranty-friendly as everything can be reversed.

Hope this can help someone else with a noisy 330HT.

Very interesting,
To monitor cpu temp I have had to patch the coretemp driver that doesn't manage ATOM cpu. I followed the tuto given at post 28 of this link:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1199797&page=3
After that I have installed the sensors-applet that displays GPU and CPU temp in the GNOME panel.

In the review on PCtreiber.net i've read that the Bios-Settings for the fan just have an effect on the 50 mm fan on the backside of the case. So the only possibilty to regulate the small CPU-Fan is a fan-control like the fan mate.

Why not disconnect the small fan and set the fan speed of the fan at the back al little bit higher. That what the airflow would still be present. The CPU has a heatsinkThe question is, will it be sufficient.

What temperature can the CPU handle?

Does anyone know of the AsRock mobo has a pci-e slot available?
Was wondering if one of the new Broadcom Crystal HD boards could fit in/on one.

nope none available


http://benchmarkreviews.com/images/revie...rboard.jpg

s0032824 Wrote:nope none available


http://benchmarkreviews.com/images/revie...rboard.jpg

ah , so. Thank you for the link!

Back on topic:

Why not disconnect the small fan and set the fan speed of the fan at the back al little bit higher. That what the airflow would still be present. The CPU has a heatsinkThe question is, will it be sufficient.

What temperature can the CPU handle?