Hi, just come across this thread. I've actually tried moding the CPU fan on my PC as it was too noisy when running X1. Just to say my knowledge of practical electronics was (is) close to zero. Can at best solder a guitar lead. So everything in this post should be read with this disclaimer in mind. However, I decided to have a go and after reading up, have wired in a resistor and the fan is less noisy now. Note that the PC's motherboard actually needs the fan to be spinning otherwise it shuts down. I am now getting a bit more adventurous and planning to build variable resistor so that I can actually vary the fan speed and also bolting on a fanless CPU heat sink (which in combination with a slow speed fan) should both reduce noise and keep the PC cool and running. So it is not hard to do, a website called bit-tech.net shows a similar mod under heading 'Adding Fan Speed Control'. To begin with, maybe experiment with a potentiometer until you find the lowest setting at which V700R fan can run. A radical solution would be to build a fan simulator which is also something I'm considering. This circuit would output a pulse 'tricking' the V700R's motherboard into sensing a fan there. There is a very old post with some schematics hardwarecentral.com. This however still leaves the question of actual cooling. The fan is there for a reason probably, and you would then need to operate the unit with the top off just as a precaution or affix a fanless heatsink (or both). Out of the two a safer solution would be to slow the fan down as much as possible, and either mod the casing, for instance by punching holes/removing sides, or by taking top off, with heatsink optional.... All of this of course if you fancy a challenge - you could simply buy an audio interface without in-built fan.