xbitlabs Silencing and Cooling Systems for Hard Disk Drives

Kaleid · Post by **Kaleid** » Fri Feb 26, 2010 12:51 pm

A roundup can be read here:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cooler ... undup.html

I only skimmed it through swiftly and I seems they didn't softmount, but it still can be interesting to many SPCR readers.

bozar · Post by **bozar** » Sat Feb 27, 2010 10:29 am

Quite a big difference acoustically, almost enough for me to swap my Himuro for a Quiet Drive. Guess I should mount them all in enclosures first and then suspend them....

andyb · Post by **andyb** » Tue Mar 02, 2010 4:59 pm

Quite a big difference acoustically, almost enough for me to swap my Himuro for a Quiet Drive. Guess I should mount them all in enclosures first and then suspend them....

Dont bother wasting the cash, chances are the actual difference is in the realm of a single Db when measured accurately, which X-Bit (for all of their excelent reviews) dont do.

I wont go into the reasons why their measuments have little to do with each other, or anyone elses reviews of the same drives, but rest assured that although their intentions are sound (ha ha), their Db measurements are way off of being accurate.

Andy

sxr71 · Post by **sxr71** » Wed Mar 17, 2010 4:29 pm

^^^ Totally agree. It's easy to generate a bunch of numbers without any real meaning and it seems to happen very often in the silent PC business. Every time I look at fan CFM vs. noise numbers I feel like laughing. I feel like laughing even more when people cite those numbers.

Same for audio. These things are far more subjective than can be expressed with a set of numbers.

tim851 · Post by **tim851** » Wed Mar 17, 2010 5:16 pm

I've installed about a dozen Quiet Drives by Scythe and ALWAYS, in any combination of hard disk and PC case, did it lead to serious vibratons that were grotesquely loud.

However, since they are physically smaller than a 5.25" drive, they can be sandwiched into a 5.25" bay with foam, between a dvd-burner and the case top for example.

A Western Digital Caviar Green (1 TB, 1st gen) decoupled in a SQD is really inaudible. A Caviar Black however remains somewhat audible, even in a dampened P182. I'm talking about a very, very faint whoosh noise, that probably even the majority of SPCR users would consider neglectable, and a much more perceivable seek noise, that is definitely quiet, but not silent.

JazzJackRabbit · Post by **JazzJackRabbit** » Tue Mar 23, 2010 5:15 am

bozar wrote:Quite a big difference acoustically, almost enough for me to swap my Himuro for a Quiet Drive. Guess I should mount them all in enclosures first and then suspend them....

Assuming the test results are actually accurate, I'd go the opposite way. All I care about is idle noise, seeks do not really bother me. If the the difference in idle noise is so little between Himuro and Quiet Drive, I'd rather take Himuro and its lower temperatures over Scythe Quiet Drive. Guess this will be my next experiment.