Long time lurker, first time poster. I'm working on my 3rd P180/182 build and I thought I would share some of my mods that I haven't seen anyone post before (I'm sure someone has done something similar, I just haven't seen it).

Basically, I gutted the bottom section and created a simple bungee cord suspension system for up to 4 hard drives. Sorry in advance for the crappy pictures.



I first removed the center fan support and then the hard drive cage. I used a drill to pop the rivets and then chiseled off the remaining rivot pieces with a regular screwdriver and a hammer. You can see the foam shipping stuff that I put behind the front intakes, don't know if it will stay because I have no idea if it will have any impact on noise. <EDIT> Nope, it didn't stay!



Here you can see the 2 x 10 inch bungie cords that suspend the upper hard drive(s). I ran the hooks through the screw holes from the upper drive cage mounting rails that were removed.




I mounted the hard drives by inserting 4 long screws into the side of the drive and then wrapped the bungie around the screws. I stuck some fat rubber washers over the ends of the bungie cord hooks to help reduce vibration. Don't know if it will help, but I had the washers so I thought it couldn't hurt.



The bottom bungie mounts were a little more difficult. I used the 2 rivot holes from the removed center fan support and then drilled 2 small holes to the right for the other hooks. The ugly green foam is temporary, I just used it to demonstrate how the fans will be mounted. I have some nicer foam that will hold the front fans, which are Scythe SlipSteam 500 rpm fans that I got at my local Dallas MicroCenter.



Full view. You'll have to trust me, it looks better in person than in these pics!




I won't be using more than 2 drives in my actual rig, just wanted to show that it is quite easy to add a couple more suspended drives in this setup.



I did a pretty nice dremel job on the front intakes if I do say so myself! You can see I'll have 3 intake fans, although the bottom 2 will be nearly inaudible SlipStreams and the Kama Bay fan is a Scythe 21F that will be foam mounted at the back of the 5.25" bay. I'm expecting this to be a fairly silent setup, I've done variations of this with good effect on my other 2 systems.

I'll be using the stock dust filters on the front, I have a dusty computer room and I don't mind cleaning the filters weekly.

That's it for now, I hope to get this assembled tomorrow. I'll try to post more pics when I get a chance.

That looks excellent! Nicest HD mounting ive seen!

Cant wait to see this finished with all parts in it

Brilliant mod. Looks so nice and quiet with the foam in there!! Can't wait to see what you end up with!

Props!

Thanks guys. I'm out of town for the week, so I won't get to finish it up until the weekend.

Here are the specs of the components that will go into the P182:

Q6600 (will probably overclock to 3ghz)
Tuniq Tower 120 (scythe 21F fan will replace stock Tuniq fan)
Asus P5K Deluxe Motherboard
Corsair 520 power supply
2 Scythe SlipStream 500 rpm fans in the 2 lower front intakes
Scythe 21F fans on rear exhaust and at back of the 5.25 drive bay
4gb Patriot Vipor memory (4-4-4-12)
2 WD aaks 500 gb drives
8800 GTS 320 video card with Thermalright Hr-03 cooler
Vista Ultimate 32 bit

I did a quick and dirty installation of most of the components just to get an idea of how it will sound. I will probably duct the video card, it sits within an inch of the Tuniq Tower and I don't want that hot air blowing into the cpu. I'm probably going to have to remove the Kama Bay because I want to install a fan controller. If I do that I'll buy some modder's mesh and create a 2 bay version of the Kama Bay.

Preliminary tests of the hard drive mounts look promising, the idle noise is completely gone now and the seeks are very soft and hardly noticable. I may have to reposition them so they face front to back instead of side to side because the power and sata cables are pretty close to touching the case walls. I don't know if that would actually add any noise, but I'll probably give it a shot to find out. The case sits on my carpeted floor, so I really don't hear anything other than fan whoosh so far (and thats only because I don't have the fans on a controller yet). I still need to do a lot of cable management and clean up before the next round of photos, but hopefully I'll get them posted next weekend.

Thanks for reading!

What is your reasoning to go with the Thermalright HR-03 GPU cooler "instead of" the Accelero S1 which seems to be the de facto standard of silent GPU cooling? Of course not saying the HR-03 sucks by any means, but I just thought the S1 was both cooler and cheaper. Haven't tried any of the two my self, which is why I'm asking!

Still waiting for more pics ..

I already had the HR-03 and the 8800 GTS 320, the Accelero wasn't available when I bought that card. I don't like the HR-03, I just don't want to shell out for the Accelero since this is my wife's PC and she doesn't play games. <EDIT> I researched the Accelero and discovered it isn't compatible with G80 based cards Thanks for the tip, I am going to get one for the 8800 GT in my gaming system.

I lost one of the screws that holds the HR-03 onto the GPU, so I had to improvise.....the only thing I had that would fit through the small hole was a wood screw, so I had to put a small wood block on the other side to anchor it! It's hilarious looking, I'll post a pic of it this weekend when I get home.

What temps do you got on the HDD?

Not sure, I'll be back home tomorrow and will try to run some tests. Neither drive is more than warm, they felt about the same temp as the drives in my main rig that were reading 32 C.

Really really great with a very high "modability factor"!

Try to post some better pics so I can steal your ideas!

Great work... I like te HDD suspension you've made....

I got sick for 2 weeks, then went out of town for a couple weeks....life gets in the way sometimes.

I'm having some trouble with this build related to the dreaded Vista Sleep issue, but otherwise things are pretty good. Here is what it looks like now...



You can see the 2 suspended drives, I decided to leave them mounted this way instead of front to back. The cables gently push against the back panel, but there is no noticeable sound difference and the cabling is cleaner. I ran out of my "pretty" blue foam, so I had to keep the ugly green foam that holds my front intake fans in place. No biggie, the side panel will rarely be removed.



Notice the antec 92mm tricool fan is slightly supporting my 8800gts 320 video card while providing a gentle breeze on the G80 chip. The fan is set to low and adds no noticeable sound. Rivatuner showed my card at 60 C idle before the fan, 47 C after. It's now running a little hotter since I've been playing around with overclocking the video card a bit. I'm also a little ashamed of the yellow PATA cable for the dvd player, I had a PATA to SATA adapter in there originally but had to reuse it on a build I did for a friend. It was a PITA to get it situated so that it doesn't interfere with airflow, but in the end I think I did as good as possible with it.



Here you can see the wood block I'm using to keep my HR-03 attached firmly to the GTS. I lost 1 of the 4 mounting screws so I had to improvise and use a woodscrew and this small wood block on the back corner. The wood screw was the only thing I could find that would fit through the HR-03 mounting hole. If any of you happen to have an extra HR-03 mounting screw, I'd gladly give you $5 for it!



And the front panel with the door open. Notice I did a quick paint job on the front before putting the bezel back in place, it still looks crappy without the grills but it's better than having the silver of the case frame showing. The front door is closed 90% of the time, so it doesn't bother me much.

So now the important question....how does it sound? When I run everything at stock (no OC) it has the slightest whoosh of fan noise (which I actually enjoy, very relaxing). It can't be heard over the sound of my Dell Latitude 820 laptop on my other desk about 5 feet away, so I'd say it's very quiet if not silent. Since this is my wife's computer, it is on the other side of our desk and therefore the exhaust fans face me from under the desk. When sitting in my wife's seat, it is inaudible.

As far as the hard drive suspension, I'm very happy. I hear no vibration noise at all and only occasionaly will I hear a faint seek. The thing I've found to be most important in silencing seeks on ANY hard drive is to disable the Windows pagefile. This is only possible if you have a minimum of 4gb of RAM, but I find it greatly reduces the number of seeks and therefore helps to keep the overall system much quieter.

However...

I like to overclock and the Q6600 is a heat monster. My biggest problem with this machine is that I haven't installed a fan controller yet. Therefore my poor fans are at the mercy of my Asus P5k-Deluxe motherboard, and quite frankly, that sucks. The biggest offender is the fan in the Tuniq Tower cpu cooler, I can't seem to get it to go below 1200 RPM when I overclock. I just received some modder's mesh from FrozenCPU, so I might install a Zalman MFC2 and remove the Kama Bay, then create a 2 bay version of the Kama Bay with my modder's mesh.

Thanks to all for reading and for the encouraging comments. Feel free to ask questions, and I hope I've at least given someone an idea for their own mod.

By the way, here's a teaser picture from my current project....a silent CoolerMaster Cosmos 1000! I'll put together another thread on it in the coming weeks, hope you guys enjoy it.

Well, it only took me 5 months to get around to posting some pics of my Cosmos build, you can find it here:

http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/vi ... hp?t=49683