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Home Brew Hard Drive Silencer/Cooler
infodragon writes "As I was looking for ways to silence my system I ran across this article demonstrating a sandwich approach to silencing and cooling a hard disk. Quite a novel idea compared to other silencing techniques!"
if you want "No More Hiroshimas" then I say "You First. No More Pearl Harbors."
With performance increases of new CPUs getting smaller and smaller these days, tweaking is almost pointless (ie getting a P4 2.6 to 3.0 is a far cry from the old days of getting a P2 300 to 900) so noise is a huge factor for most and justly looked at. Especially since cpus now dissipate like 90W of power and need a monster noisy fan to cool it, having that humming under your desk may be ok for you, but for most they would rather not have it, just ask anyone who works in a real IT lab with a 100k BTU cooling system running over their head to keep a 200 node cluster cool, then you'll know the value of a quite room :)
To bad that the thermal solution of every hardisc is optimized to transfer heat to the sides. The botton wont have any contact with the aluminium because of the circuit board, thus cutting off airflow and heating the chips even further, while the top of the HD consists of a thin sheet of metal that doesnt get much heat.
It would be MUCH more useful to use some heatsink stripes like from an amp, but them on both SIDES of the drive and put it into a 5.25" bay.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
It has a soothing, droning quality. In my home (office) I have a PC that sounds like a harrier (sp) in the midst of full-throttle vertical take-off.
It has a desperate need for cooling with two athlons, four hard drives and two cd/dvd media drives (in a mid-size tower) -- I need all the fans I can get...
Anyway, I like the noise...It gives me a sense of controlling some level of power, power that requires this level of noise to tame...
You know back in the day, we had a light on the front of the case that indicated when the hard was being read. It was used as a way of determining when the computer was really locked or was just slow as hell -- waiting on IO. After a while a person wouldn't even look at the light, but learned to listen for the drive.
Nowadays there is no light on many cases, and the drive noise is all that is left -- when you can hear it.
I mean, how the hell else am I suppose to know when Winblows is thrashing or the lastest game has locked?
Anyhow, am I the only one that finds a computer's white-noise calming and smoothing?
P.S -- Why the hell don't many newer cases come with a fucking proper reset button!
Instead of trying to make my PC quiet, I just moved it out of my room and into the hall closet.
VGA extension calbes are my friends.
So how much of the heat reduction is due to the aluminum plates, and how much is due to the fact that the hard drive now sits in front of stream of cool, fresh air instead of a stale hot air pocket at the top of the case?
I'd like to see a comparison where the drive is mounted in a practical manner where you can actually move the case without the need to open it up and remove the hard drive first.
And even if the plates are securely fastened to the bottom of the case, it'd still be more informative to provide heat measurements with the hard drive alone positioned in that same location.
Sorry, just being a smart-ass. Computers are migrating into newer places, like the living room. Try watching a movie with your girlfriend without her commenting on how much louder your computer is (with the Athlon, 5 fans and the 2 120 gig drives) then the old fashioned stand alone dvd player. Vibration is annoying. Thank god for Zalman and their ilk, because once you go PVR you'll never want to go back.. ;-)
Quack, quack.
I have to look at the power lights to see if it's on.
..........FULL STOP.
On a disk where there is not much write access, ever tried using a large flash drive such as a 2 GB USB flash drive? Sure, it's expensive but there are no moving parts to fail. Oh, and no noise :)
You mean something like this ? ... Zalman
Well, so far Dell, HP, and generic. All coils will have some magnetic vibration, and all capacitors have some electrostatic vibration, with a rapidly changing signal. We've got some EE profs here and it seems that this noise can be greatly reduced but not eliminated. It really is very faint anyway.
If you reduce the ambient noise enough, you can hear all kinds of things. Even LCD panels make noise, especially if they're fluorescent. There's a point where you have to say, good enough!
I read an interesting article where these automotive engineers worked for months to eliminate every source of noise they could from the inside of their prototype car. The engine was inaudible, the fans, silent. Wind noise was reduced as far as possible.
When they had someone test the car, his first question was, "Why are the tires so loud?"
=mortimer
You may have already tried it, but suspending the drives with gasket or any elastic straps in your 5 1/4" bays does wonders. I would never use a directly coupled drive (even with rubber grommets) again. The drives do run hotter since none of the heat can conduct through the sides, but it is extremely effective. The difference is truly dramatic.
Start with a quiet drive and then suspend it and you may not need an enclosure. In any case, the best system is to enclose the drive and then suspend the enclosure. Although MikeC on SPCR did some testing and found that a suspended enclosure was not much quieter than the suspended drive alone, at least in his system.
No matter what, it's likely that hard drives will remain the most difficult to quiet noise source. Ramdrives are the way to go for a silent system.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.