In an effort to reduce noise (and because I can't help tinkering
) I decided to do something about the noise from the fan. The noise would arise from either a loose fixture, noisy bearing, or just be wind noise.
Loose Fixture: I took the case apart and noticed that the actual fan is mounted via 3 points. However, there was only one screw...the other two holes were empty (see maroon arrow).
To secure things better, I used Blutack (good ol' blutack
) to serve as extra adhesion (see blue arrow in second example) as well as find two other similar screws to ensure that all mount points were catered for and the fan was better mounted.
Noisy Bearing: With the fitting sorted, I ran the fan without replacing the case and found it to be very very quiet....no need to do anything here then
.
Wind Noise: This left wind noise as a problem. Noise increased when replacing the casing which suggested that turbulence was creating a lot of the noise.
One issue is that internally, there is a "cavity" where the circuit board is which acts as a pocket, creating more turbulence and reducing effficiency of the fan. So I taped over it with silver tin-foil tape (see green arrow).
I chose tin-foil tape as the wind coming out is fairly warm-hot so I needed a temperature resistant jobbie (plus, this tape is quite thick and sticky).
With the hole taped, wind noise was slightly reduced when the casing was reapplied. However, the final thing causing turbulence was the excessive "bars" across both the inlet against the Wii and the outlet. I simply removed most of the bars on the inlet side (as this is against the Wii case, so wouldn't be accessible) and also removed alternate bars from the front side (see orange arrows) to increase space for airflow (and thereby avoid enough gap that would allow small fingers to enter).
Overall: 15 minutes to do and yes, it
does reduce fan noise noticeably
.
EDIT: just for completeness, noise level with my mods is now only
+7dB with fan on.......which is a 2dB cut in the loudness
.