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Cyclone PCI expansion-chassis fan-noise comparison
Anyone who is in the market for a PCIe expansion chassis for their Mac Pro–specifically the Cyclone expansion boxes–should be warned that the cooling fans that ship with these units are INSANELY loud. I consider them to be unusable in an editing/grading environment where you expect clients to be sitting in the room with you.
Based on advice I got from Dustin Cross over on the REDuser forum, I swapped out the stock fans in my Cyclone 2707 expansion chassis, and replaced them with “SilenX Effizio” silent fans from NewEgg. The difference is absolutely astounding!
Here’s what the stock fans sound like, from about 1 foot away from the front of the Cyclone:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/149705/cyclone_fan_noise/stock_fans/cyclone-2707_stock_fan_noise.mp3
And this is what it sounds like with the SilenX fans installed, from the same distance away:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/149705/cyclone_fan_noise/silenx_fans/cyclone-2707_silenx-fans-front.mp3
And just for reference, this is what my 2010 8-core Mac Pro sounds like alone, from the same distance:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/149705/cyclone_fan_noise/macpro_fan-noise/MacPro-fannoise.mp3
These “silent” fans inherently move less air than non-silent fans, but the stock Yate Loon fans that Cyclone ships with these units appear to be WAY overengineered, and more intended for I.T. based environments than post-production environments. Dustin has reported that he uses these fans in the Cyclone unit his remote DIT cart, and it has never overheated or failed, even in harsh, hot locations.
Total cost for this fan replacement is around $30. You’d be nuts to not do this, if you plan on buying one of these chassis’ for use with Resolve.
These are the fans I purchased:
(80mm – front fans – you need two of these) – https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835226034
(120mm – rear fan – you only need one of these) – https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835226042The important caveat to buying the 120mm fan is that you need to buy a 3-pin power extension cable for it (like this one), because the cable that ships with the 120mm fan isn’t long enough to reach the power connector on the Cyclone motherboard (if you’re using the stock chassis, that is).
I’m not sure if the Cubix chassis’ have the same fan noise issues, but you definitely need to do this if you have a Cyclone!
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1 Reply
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This one should be a sticky, if possible.
I see Jigsaw and BHPhotoVideo have the regular and one with “Quiet fan”.
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