Next, throw away the Sunon fan. Get yourself an 80mm fan that pushes a lot of air for the noise level. The actual noise level at 12 volts isn't as important as the ratio of airflow to noise, because the automatic fan throttling will adjust the fan voltage according to the CPU temp. I used a cheap Evercool 80mm fan, which pushes 29 CFM at 12 volts.

Instead of mounting the fan inside the shroud, fit it to the other side of the shroud. This will encroach a little on your drive bay space, but I found it was not a problem with a modern CDROM drive with a standard 185 mm depth. I used a little electrical tape to seal up the small gap between the fan and the shroud. This mod gives a 25mm gap between the fan and the radiator, which helps eliminate the dead spot in the centre of the axial fan.

The radiator itself is fairly restrictive, which reduces the airflow through it because axial fans are not very good at creating high pressures, which are needed to overcome high resistances. The solution to this is to fit another fan on the other side of the radiator. This creates an area of low pressure on the outside of the radiator, which helps move air through the radiator. It is important that both fans are identical, otherwise the resulting system will be less efficient, and noisier too. I used another Evercool of the same type, and held it on with some very long case screws. The screws have to go through the fan frame, the case back, and into the threads in the fan shroud. This takes either very long case screws, or some self tapping screws with a suitable thread.

When running both fans at 5 volts, my XP1700 ran in the mid 30s, a vast improvement in temperature, and with noise levels reduced to almost nothing.

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