The pics are at:
http://www.deckadance.com/curious/pics/ ... quiet.html

During a complete tear-down and rebuild, I did the following:

I cut out 3 fan grills
I cut a hole in the MB Tray so I could access the Heatsink screws
I replaced the rear fans with L1as
I mounted all fans with those blue decoupling rubber things
I replaced the PSU with a Noisetaker 470
I suspended the three HDDs (unfortunately, all western digital)
I cleaned everything up (it'd gottten nasty after all these months)

How quiet is it? It's okay I guess. It's definitely only half as loud. Once the heatsink thermal compound gets settled, I may 7v the fans.

Bruce

Very nice cuts. And looks like you went to work with a can of compressed air there haha.

Could you explain why you cut the hole in the MB tray?

And arent you worried about the WDs overheating? Looks like they have no way of getting some breathing air.

I know this may sound awful, but I believe that the need for hdd cooling is greatly exagerated. I may suspend a quiet fan behind them later on, but I am in no hurry. I mean, imho, not cooling your hdd's is just like overclocking your processor--it won't live as long, but oh well. know what I mean?

The hole in the MB tray is so I can change heatsinks and fans without having to remove the entire motherboard. I was thinking of swapping out the zalman because my temps have just been awful since I bought it. I took it off while I had everything tore down. I cleaned everything off with alcohol and applied a thinner layer of thermal compound in hopes that maybe I just didn't seat it well enough the first time.

Thanks for your comments

oh, and the thing is still kinda loud (not compared to what it was, not even close). Once the thermal paste settles, I am gonna 7v the fans.

Well - "too much" cooling tends to be better than "too little". Question is what youre HD temps are saying, really, at the end of the day. If they're OK, youi've got nothing to worry about .

not sure what the temps are. They are all western digitals, two are raptors, one is a 120/7200/8. The 120 is soooo much hotter than the raptors, which I found pretty strange... Half of me wishes they would burn up so I'd have a good excuse to get some spinpoints

Is there software to check the temps? I feel like such a noob for asking, but it's honestly something I haven't considered. If there IS software, then what temps are acceptable?

Bruce

MBM 5?

Oh, the joys of SMART

I use MBM5 now... What do you mean, the case temp? My temps are all fine in MBM--- I was referring to specific HDD Temp

[edit: I found a sensor that begins with W that I had not noticed before that is neither case, socket, or chip. It is sitting in the upper 50s]

Bruce

You gotta go into the main MBM page and put a check in the box that says "Scan for HDDs with temp sensors(READ THE HELP FILE FIRST)" and follow the directions. After you restat MBM your HDD's (with sensors, a lot of earlier WDs don't have SMART sensors in them) will show up at the bottom of the "Should display board sensor" list on the Temperatures page.

Thanks Ralf--I'd forgotten all about that, MBM5 is so "set it up and forget it," ya know? One of the hdd's is hanging out at 45*C, the others are at 55*C

55c is too hot for me...


Dave

Hello:

Heat and hard drives don't mix very well -- a little extra heat for a long time is as bad as a lot of heat for a short time. Excessive heat will break the hard drives prematurely.

45C for a hard drive is more than I would want to let run 24/7...just for reference, right now with in my Evercase 4252 and a pair of 18CFM/18dBA NMB'a, along with the Fortron 120 PSF -- my Seagate 7200.7 120GB is a mild 36C. (My 2gHz 2100+ is sitting nicely at 49C with it's Alpha and NMB.)

55C would be right out...

Good news is that I made a mistake, one wasn't running 55--I mistook the sensor for the motherboard chip diode for the WD--it began with a W!

I got it down to 40*C by just setting a fan behind the hdd's

hehe and here you made me worry about the dead air spot behind my sonata's drives