okay, after replacing my PSU 2 weeks ago I decided my computer was quiet enough and I'd spend no more money on it, and save it for the replacement. Anyways, today I went to my local hobby store, to pick up some rubber as suggested in the article. I was kinda annoyed, I couldn't find a utility knife there (can't find mine), or string (I've got an NMB fan 'mounted' on my video card- basically its tied on with copper wire), and all they had was 1/4" thick rubber, and it was $5 for a 4"x6" peice; I'd need 4 of them. So, I grumbled, cursed at SPCR, and handed over the money. I got home, pulled out my PSU, my foam box hard drive, and my noisy hard drive. I have 2 hard drives; 1 is a 5400 RPM hard drive which is the noisier of the two, but runs very cool (it isn't accessed much either, but my boot data seems to be on it), and the other is a 7200 RPM one, which is a 2 year old maxtor. Both are maxtors, and both whine like hell but decoupling showed huge improvement in both, but the 5400 RPM one was still slightly louder. I built a foam box for it, completey encased the box in duct tape to make it air tight, and it really quieted it down, and it still doens't have any heat problems. It also works very well if I put the maxtor in it, but I think that could well cause heat problems, and I've got too many critical files (read: porn) to risk the heat death. So anyways, I constructed the box, superglued it together (btw, when they say on the side it bonds skin instantly they're being generous; I narrowly escaped glueing my finger to my palm ), and I tried it out... so far the results seem to be very dissapointing, but then again I haven't had the best testing area yet, but still I notice an improvement no where close to the level of the foam box. Anyone have any suggestions for improving things? The box is currently far from airtight and I'd like to find something good to seal it up a bit, could use some suggestions there. No idea how well the heat will transfer yet, and the drives have no thermal monitoring (and I don't think they're fluid bearing either )

BTW, I'm also gonna use an old removable 5 1/4" drive bay to suspension mount the drives in. Gutted an AT full tower case with my dad this weekend

I'm sorry to hear about your difficulties. I guess the performance of the rubber box depends a lot on 1) the type of rubber, 2) how well the openings are closed off [back included], and 3) possibly how tight fittiing the rubber box is (probably not, but it certainly helps with conducting the heat away).

As you may have seen in my writeup, rubber worked better than foam. It's strange that you have the opposite results.

Well, the foam is 1" thick, and the rubber is 1/4" thick print carving rubber, its the same brand as you used, but its pink, not white. the foam box is completely covered in duct tape too for the rubber box I'm gonna get out my glue gun and try sealing all the edges with that.

The rubber does have 2 big advantages- with a quarter of the thickness it will transfer heat much better, and fits in my case MUCH better the box seems pretty tight fitting to me, much tighter than the foam is. I'm gonna try some more ideas on it; I'm not just giving up on $20 of rubber!

okay, thats it, this whole silent pc crap is too cheap and too easy. I'm gonna work on something, better, like a way to find all my stupid tools! Why, oh why does it have to be so damn hard to find my stuff? At least next year I'll be in a dorm room, and it will be too small to lose anything... but I'll still find a way.

You'll still lose stuff in a dorm. If your experience is anything like mine was, you won't be wondering where you left it in your dorm ... you'll be wondering who else's dorm room you left your stuff in (or who you let borrow what last).

Sorry to burst your bubble, but it doesn't get any better ...

Now, on topic:

How does the foam/rubber box compare to something like a SilentDrive or SmartDrive for noise and temperature?

meanie! I was having fun in my fantasy world there.

Anyways, I found my glue gun, but was still a bit confused. It was a large stick glue gun with a bag of mini sticks next to it... but anyways there was enough in it to get the job done... sort of. The glue doesn't stick a bit. So I surrendered and pulled out my good old friend duct tape. ( I should get a tape company to sponsor my case ) . It worked, and I guess the noise reduction from the box now isn't too bad, but its still not as good as my foam box. I'm gonna get my comp back up tonight or tomorrow and find something to measure the temps to make sure nothing overheats, as like I said, no thermal monitoring on my drives. As for the commercial products, I can make no comment since they cost a bit of money; I'm supposedly trying my best not to spend any more on this comp. But at least this is sort of an investment for testing things for my next computer.