[tlug] Bitsa Woes

[CL <az.4tlug@example.com>]

This past weekend, I decided to create a new torrenting machine out of 
the bits left over from my recent desktop machine overhaul which has 
provided me four more cores with which to produce meaningless economic 
calculations and multiply simple programming errors at over twice my 
previous speed.  But, instead of a quiet data monster, I have a roaring 
dragon sitting in the corner and it is probably the noisiest box I have 
ever built in all of my years of hammering hardware together.  It can be 
heard in all rooms and both floors of the house.  Color me unhappy.

The main culprits are the fans in the video card and the CPU fan, both 
supposedly rated at a max 30Db.  I'd guess the real noise output is 
close to 80Db (but all of my noise measuring experience is motorcycle 
exhaust noise measurements for SAE and those produce a much lower bass 
note than a PC fan).

A friend who is an EE suggested that the brand new 400W power supply 
(rated at max 27Db and probably operating well below that) I'd had in 
the closet is probably the culprit and says things will quiet down "a 
whole lot" if I install a power supply with a higher output -- he 
suggests a minimum of 650W.  Does this sound less counter intuitive to 
the collective wisdom than it does to me?

The power supply is being asked to power:  The mobo, 8Gb of DDR2 memory, 
and 2-core CPU, two 120mm case fans, CPU fan, video card and fan, 3 
internal SATA HDDs (2.0, 1.5, and 1.0Tb), two ISA CD/DVD R/Ws, a Blu-Ray 
player, and five remote USB SATA HDDs totaling 6.0Tb (hey, it's a 
torrenting and movie machine).  It may not be up to the task, but what is?

I used a 400W PS because I had one, PC Depot is 21 km away, and I live 
in Ibaraki-ken where no one sane drives on Sunday because of all of the 
lost tourists and half-blind local baa-chans and jii-chans running loose 
and piling into Jusco.  Does it seem logical that more watts will equal 
many fewer Db?  If so, how many more watts seem logical?  I tried adding 
the peak rated wattage of all devices, but that didn't work right.  Is 
there some rule of thumb or seat of pants way to come up with a required 
power number?

--
CL