My annoyingly noisy 1.7TB Thermaltake tower

Show off your quiet rig.

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ShadowVlican
Posts: 28
Joined: Fri Jan 26, 2007 8:05 pm
Location: Toronto
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My annoyingly noisy 1.7TB Thermaltake tower

Post by ShadowVlican » Fri Jan 26, 2007 8:54 pm

Specifications:
ASUS A8N-E
-northbridge heatsink replaced with Zalman ZM-NB47J

AMD Athlonâ„¢ 64 X2 Dual-Core 3800+ S939
-cooled with Scythe NINJA w/ CoolerMaster 120mm sleeve @ 7v
-running at stock speeds with RMClock controlled C'n'Q

OCZ EL DDR PC-3200 / 400MHz / 2GB Dual Channel / Platinum XTC Edition (OCZP4002GK)
-clocked at DDR400 2-3-2-7 1T (1:1 with FSB)

Thermaltake Armor Silver Aluminum w/ Window (VA8000SWA)
-3x iCage (converts 3 5.25" bays into 3 3.5" drives with 120mm FAN)
-all fans (except PSU) controlled by Vantec Multi-Fan Controller NXP-205-SL
-all thermaltake fans replaced with CoolerMaster 120mm sleeve
-total 5 CoolerMaster 120mm sleeve FANS + 2 Enermax PSU fans
-total 3.5" drive capacity = 12 + 1x 5.25"

MSI 7300GT NX7300GT-TD256EH (passive, took design grill off)
HighPoint RocketRAID 2320 PCI Express to SATA II RAID Controller
BenQ DW1655 LightScribe 16x DVD±RW DL Writer
Enermax Noisetaker 485W EG495P-VE SFMA 2.0

STORAGE DETAILS:
NF4 SATA Controllers:
250GB (Maxtor 6L250S0) Primary OS/Program Files
250GB (Western Digital WD2500JD) Personal documents/pictures
HighPoint RocketRAID 2320:
5x 320GB (Seagate ST3320620AS) Multimedia
RAID5 cuts total to 1.2TB instead of 1.5TB
Image
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Last edited by ShadowVlican on Tue Feb 20, 2007 12:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.

nzimmers
Posts: 271
Joined: Mon Dec 04, 2006 6:13 pm

wow incredible rig!

Post by nzimmers » Sat Jan 27, 2007 12:32 am

very nice setup, but it doesn't surprise me that you are getting alot of noise

first off, is the annoying noixe mostly when the raid is reading/streaming files or is it just the spindle noise of the drives at idle?

to be honest, a big case that with all the metal and lexan and large resonating surfaces probably makes more noise than if you just had everything sitting out on your desk in the open air.

first thing to look at, how are your hard drives mounted in the case? is there any soft/vibration absorbing material between the drives and the case mounting points?

each drive is a source of vibration, and without some intervention, that vibration is going to travel all over your case, so probably a good fix would be to figure out some way to "suspend" the drives....that is to say mount them using an elastic material to minimize any vibration transference.


by the way,k how long does it take for your raid array to rebuild?

openwheelformula1
Posts: 211
Joined: Thu Sep 22, 2005 9:58 am

Post by openwheelformula1 » Sat Jan 27, 2007 8:21 am

I absolutely hate Thermaltake cases. I am glad I sold my Tsunami. That thing vibrates like no tomorrow. Cheaply made as well.

Nice speakers btw.

ShadowVlican
Posts: 28
Joined: Fri Jan 26, 2007 8:05 pm
Location: Toronto
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Post by ShadowVlican » Sat Jan 27, 2007 12:47 pm

nzimmers:
The noise is from the spindle noise of the drives at idle. During seeking and reading it's worse/louder, but I can live with it because it's not constantly doing that.

Drives are mounted standardly, without grommets or absorbing materials. The Thermaltake iCage slides into the 5.25" bays and is fastened with plastic hooks/clamps. I have done no modding to it other than changing the default thermaltake fans into quieter coolermaster sleeve bearing fans (at 7v they aren't the main producers of noise).

I have no idea how to modify these iCages to dampen the vibration from the hard drives, and I've read the hard drive forums already.

I haven't needed to rebuild my array, but verification takes a little over two hours. The data transfer rate is extremely fast (around 150MB/s read throughout the entire volume).



openwheelformula1:
Yes, perhaps I should have went for the CoolerMaster stacker, but that case is HEAVY!! This thermaltake armor is feather light for a case its size, but I guess I'm paying for it through the noisy vibrations.

Thanks, I take pride in my sound system and I'm an audiophile in the making.

amjedm
Posts: 489
Joined: Wed Aug 04, 2004 8:32 am
Location: UK

Post by amjedm » Sat Jan 27, 2007 3:28 pm

Setup does look nice :)

My Akasa Eclipse case vibrates as well and it really annoys me. I have to keep moving the case around.

skudmunky
Posts: 16
Joined: Sat Dec 02, 2006 12:49 pm
Location: Boston

Post by skudmunky » Wed Jan 31, 2007 5:52 pm

openwheelformula1 wrote:I absolutely hate Thermaltake cases. I am glad I sold my Tsunami. That thing vibrates like no tomorrow. Cheaply made as well.

Nice speakers btw.
loudest thing in my Tsunami is definitely my Zalman 9500 running at 60% speed, I don't have any problems with vibration. Right now, sitting 1.5 feet away from it, it's barely audible above ambient noise (and its 9PM here)

ShadowVlican
Posts: 28
Joined: Fri Jan 26, 2007 8:05 pm
Location: Toronto
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Post by ShadowVlican » Wed Jan 31, 2007 9:05 pm

skudmunky wrote:
openwheelformula1 wrote:I absolutely hate Thermaltake cases. I am glad I sold my Tsunami. That thing vibrates like no tomorrow. Cheaply made as well.

Nice speakers btw.
loudest thing in my Tsunami is definitely my Zalman 9500 running at 60% speed, I don't have any problems with vibration. Right now, sitting 1.5 feet away from it, it's barely audible above ambient noise (and its 9PM here)
you must have very little inside your case

i blame the vibration on my 7 hard drives... it's really annoying for someone like myself

i have ordered long USB and DVI cables in hopes to move the tower further away

i'm also planning to build a case for the tower, if you get what i mean... i've to research which combination of materials can block/absorb sound (stealing the idea from P180 with metal/plastic combinations)

skudmunky
Posts: 16
Joined: Sat Dec 02, 2006 12:49 pm
Location: Boston

Post by skudmunky » Thu Feb 01, 2007 6:45 am

ShadowVlican wrote:
skudmunky wrote:
openwheelformula1 wrote:I absolutely hate Thermaltake cases. I am glad I sold my Tsunami. That thing vibrates like no tomorrow. Cheaply made as well.

Nice speakers btw.
loudest thing in my Tsunami is definitely my Zalman 9500 running at 60% speed, I don't have any problems with vibration. Right now, sitting 1.5 feet away from it, it's barely audible above ambient noise (and its 9PM here)
you must have very little inside your case

i blame the vibration on my 7 hard drives... it's really annoying for someone like myself

i have ordered long USB and DVI cables in hopes to move the tower further away

i'm also planning to build a case for the tower, if you get what i mean... i've to research which combination of materials can block/absorb sound (stealing the idea from P180 with metal/plastic combinations)
yeah, 7 hard drives would definitely cause quite a bit of vibration. I've only got 4 hard drives, not as much vibration there.

I did have a side fan that pushed 40+ Db, thing drove me nuts so now I have it running at about 800 RPM, its essentially inaudible. Never buying those shiny chrome fans again.

ShadowVlican
Posts: 28
Joined: Fri Jan 26, 2007 8:05 pm
Location: Toronto
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Post by ShadowVlican » Thu Feb 01, 2007 4:28 pm

i'm sure i'll have a lot less vibration if i had a super heavy steel case, like the coolermaster stacker series

too late now :lol:

ASSEMblerEX
Posts: 10
Joined: Tue May 20, 2003 3:15 pm

Post by ASSEMblerEX » Wed Feb 21, 2007 12:59 am

I used to have 2tb+ in one case.

I now have a 5TB storage. However, I had to give up on
a single case design.

I would warn you away with a large HDD population in one case
based on my experience.

Some problems with my single case setup (16 drives):
Notes: All the drives were suspended in bungees.

Vibration: Even isolated,the similar drives in a raid array vibrate in sync and make it near impossible to silence.

Power: The need to make custom power rails for the drives, the large,hot PSU

Cramping: Made a large good case useless. 4x raid cards in close proximity to a large gpu. All the cables going from the same relative area
to the hdd units.

Fan Noise: Even at low noise, I had 8 fans just for the HDD units.
One 19DB noise source is a hell of a lot different than 8.

Hot Spots: All those drives with their cables and cards made the case rise
in temperature

What I did:

I took older parts and cases, and soundproofed them.

You'd be amazed how quiet you can build when you have
a simple setup with no cd-rom / floppy/ hot gpu to deal with,
just simple onboard video and a silently cooled cpu.

The question is to use a motherboard with 64-bit pci
so you can use higher capacity sata raid cards.

It's basically 1x8 port raid card versus 2x4 port cards, with the loss of 500gb in capacity using the dual 4port. However, you won't need a
64-bit pci motherboard.

As to 12 and 16 port sata raid 5... I don't know if I would trust 12 drive raid 5, but I would go with a 8 drive raid 5 for sure.

It's twice the challenge to go silent when you have high terabytes...

Lawrence Lee
SPCR Reviewer
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Location: Vancouver

Post by Lawrence Lee » Wed Feb 21, 2007 9:42 am

1 x 320GB (Seagate ST3320620AS) is bad enough... you have FIVE. I feel for you, friend. If it was me that tower would be in a different room and there'd be holes in the walls where the cables would come through and connect to all my peripherals.

ShadowVlican
Posts: 28
Joined: Fri Jan 26, 2007 8:05 pm
Location: Toronto
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Post by ShadowVlican » Wed Feb 21, 2007 4:45 pm

>>ASSEMblerEX
nice to see someone else who has dealt with this problem.... it is indeed very hard to silent/quiet this monster tower :lol:

i know firsthand how quiet a slower/lower capacity computer can be... i built one for BT specific purposes.... it would be SILENT (not quiet, SILENT) if it wasn't for the hard drive's low motor noise (if i replace it with a laptop 2.5" drive, it would be dead silent 8) )

doing the same with my tower is proving to be a difficult task, i'm still gathering materials in attempt to build a wooden case to enclose my tower inside (with ventilation holes of course)

>>Amourek
yea i wish i had a nearby room to use :(

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