can u make the fans on the xbox quieter

[tamgunner]

hi guys is there anyway of making the fas on the xbox less noisey?

[on_the_jazz]

You can buy quieter fans but if anything I would say you want to mod them to go faster since xboxes almost always run too hot.

[chroma]

Noise is acaused by a number of factors.

Stability.
If the unit istelf is awkwardly placed it will vibrate, increasing the noise, laying it flat ( _ as opposed to | ) and level will decrease the ability of the unit to vibrate and therefore cause less noise.
Experimenting with pads and mats can also aleviate vibration to a greater degree.

DUST! as dust builds up on a fan it will begin to generate more noise too (as you'll see later) so vacuuming and hosing out the insides with air will help.

As for fans themselves, it comes down to a combination of factors.
Fans tend to use cheap brush motors with nasty unbalanced small plastic blades set in nasty ball bearing bearings.

Motors 101:
a basic dc motor has a +ve and -ve feed that goes into the housing and connects to brushes (usualy spring loaded graphite) these connect to the commutator (a ring with contacts on it and a rod going through) the commutator feeds the current into the magnetic coils attatched to the rod (just coiled copper wire) this is all housed in a permenent magnet. slap some cheap bearings on either side and the entire internal gubbins can rotate freely.

How this all works is that the +ve and -ve feeds contact the commutator and give the coils a certain polarity, this causes the coils to torque in the magnetic field (provided by the permanent magnet) till the poles can align, as it turns the commutator moves causing the contacts to move to another coil and that coil tries again, and so forth.

The failings of this should be readily apparent, brushes will have friction (causing noise) the bearings are cheap allowing rod travel and vibration (more noise) and the insides wont tend to be balanced, decreasing the stabilirt of the unit (again more noise)

Brushless motors operate by reversing the principles, theres a rod with a permenent magnet attatched (far easier to balance) and this is driven by coils on the outside. the problem is it needs AC to run, so it uses fairly complex electronics to make a "digital comutator" hence the fact that theyre more expensive.

Bearings are also of importance, cheap ball bearings have lots of contact points which transfer vibration, sleve bearings on the other hand are just sealed tubes of oil which means theres no contact (untill the oil leaks or evaporates through use)
So a high quality brushless motor with high quality bearings will run almost silently.

Blades 101
Blades are used to move air, there are a lot of things that make this process noisy.
Firstly theres balance to consider, as things rotate they tend to wobble of not balanced this causes vibration which equates to noise. so you want your fan blades to be extremely well balanced.
Size also matters, the bigger the blade is the more air it will move and the slower it needs to go to move adequate ammounts of air, which leads us to speed.
Speed determines the pitch of the fan, higher RPM's lead to higher frequencies of sound which are more perceptable and annoying.
The grind is also important. a flush ground blade (/) will work, but if you grind a blade to more of a curve you get more surface area (meaning a bigger fan in the same space) which as you know means you can move the same air at a slower rpm.
The problem is that curved blades are harder to balance and are therefore more expensive to manufacture accurately.

Then theres bearings in the fan housing to consider, just like motor bearings some are better than others at maintaining stability and running silently.

In a nutshell, you want as big a fan as you can fit, powered by the highest quality brushless motor you can find, spinning in the best bearings you can source.
None of them will be particularly cheap, hence the proliferation of noisy fans!

[tamgunner]

how do u mod the fans?

[cgscott]

how do u mod the fans?

Buy new ones tam. If you want more air going in you could cut the grill on the chassis where the fan sits. This flows more air in.

A fan doesnt cost much from fleebay anyway.

[johnboy1974]

i cut away the grill at the back where the hot air flows out, my box is much much quieter and cooler to the touch too. as it exhausts the hot air quicker there is less problem with rrod too. mine was problematic with rrod but had no problems for two years now since i done this mod. heres my you tube video of it.
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehRDA21vvgQ]YouTube - my xbox360 overheating rrod modification[/ame]

[Time2Play]

nice mod mate