The polymeric mastic would just add mass to the case thereby reducing the frequency of the reverberations to the lower freq band. The melamine would absorb the noise energy and convert it to heat (little noise/little heat). The eggcrate foam I added tends to difuse the sound waves so they don't maintain their concentrated state. To test for yourself, just take two pieces of eggcrate and hold them about 4 inches from your ears (pointy sides in) and you'll go partially deaf.
I'm beginning to realize the benefits of multi-layer noise foam like Acoustipack or Nexus for their ease of installation.

For a quick and simple suspending solution, look at my thread in the gallery.

http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewtopic.php?t=18889

As another quick recap, take some elastic thread, and run it between the holes in the HD cage. Just flip the thread to create tension, and slip in the hard drive, and it works wonders!

A little off-topic but I just got done suspending my Maxtor 120GB drive using cheap 10" bungie cords ($1.50 for 4). All I can say is WOW!
I had no idea the result would be that dramatic! My resonance problem is GONE. I also have my Sonata sitting on an old sorbothane mousepad cut in half. Now my biggest noisemaker is my 10V 80mm panaflo l1a.

Just thought I'd add a link to my Gallery post describing my Sonata. If I was a vendor, I'd describe it as triple-muffled, PSU-relocated, exhaust-relocated, HSF-exhaust-ducted and Acousti-Packed

EDIT: for those who don't want to read that huge post at the gallery, here's what I think is the most original part of it, from a Sonata modding point of view. It's the intake muffler in the drive cage. Of course the front bezel and intake area are heavily modded to allow for more airflow. Air enters the M/B area of the case only through the lowest stock opening in the back of the drive cage. The rest is blocked with acoustic foam.

This works quite well to muffle the seek noise of my 120G 7000.7 SATA, which sits right behind the drive cage on the floor of the case, on those stripes of foam than can be vaguely seen in the image (the HDD is missing in that picture).

JanW, your pictures are the most impressive Sonata mods that I have seen - very inspirational.

My own Sonata mods criteria: the case should (quietly) achieve the following:
* contain a stable, fast system (Athlon XP-M 2500+ overclocked, Radeon 9800, four HDDs, two DVD burners)
* no changes to the external appearance of the case (one of the reasons I bought the Sonata was for the living-room friendly look), unless to make it blacker
* use stock Sonata parts as much as possible
* as dust-proof as possible

Here are some simple mods which I have already done:
* stock case fan is on 5V
* taped most of the holes in the metal plate at the front of the hard drive cage to force airflow better over the drives
* disconnect the front headlamp LEDs (probably also saves 10W at the PSU!!)
* remove lower front bezel cover completely (temporary - see below!)
* insert foam block (attached to side panel) between PSU and graphics card, to force the case airflow better over the Southbridge and graphics card passive coolers (recommended!)
* separated the PSU compartment from the motherboard compartment using a sheet of card, so that the PSU is in its own duct
* place black air filters on the inside of those 'Antec' holes (functional and improves aesthetics)
* blocked small unfiltered gap at base of front intake air filter
* remove one of the 3.5" floppy drive blanking plates, and replace with a black air filter (there is airflow even with the front bezel door closed: there are ventilation gaps around the sides of the door)
* add higher feet to lift the case better off the ground
* remove the lowest 2 expansion slot covers and cover with a dust filter, to create an air intake at the lower rear of the case (gives extra help with airflow over the passively cooled graphics card)

This creates a system with good airflow - motherboard temp 29 Celsius, hard drives 35 Celsius, CPU 39 Celsius idle (62 Celsius under Prime95). The main air intake is where the front bezel is removed, bringing plenty of cool air in over the hard drives (in my opinion, the hard drives are easily the most important component to cool - I don't want to lose a HDD, but if my graphics card dies after 6 months then I am not too sad because I can upgrade). That system is still quite loud, the main noise sources being the PSU fan, and the four hard drives which, with the front bezel off, have an unrestricted noise path to the user.

I'd like to put my front bezel back in position now. But the main problem with the unmodded Sonata (assuming the PSU is separately ducted) is to give it enough air intakes to match the 100 cm2 exit hole of the case fan. The stock front bezel has maybe only 15cm2 of ventilation. Removing the bezel completely gives you the necessary 100cm2 easily. But for me that is now too much, especially after counting 30cm2 from my two lower expansion slots at the rear and 8cm2 from the floppy drive space. I think it will be OK for me to replace my front bezel if I can find another 30cm2 of ventilation. I will get 10cm2 from the standard front bezel mods (need to buy some tin snippers), and then I think I will also remove that shiny front USB/headphones socket - I'm not using it, it spoils the black look of the case, and it could provide a valuable 12 cm2 of ventilation which is out of the direct noise path from the HDDs.

Maybe I will also drill some discrete holes in the front bezel (does that plastic drill neatly?) of similar dimensions to those "Antec" holes - has anybody tried that?

Other mods/tweaks still to do:
* swap the fans on the PSU - I'm planning on using a 92mm fan at the PSU air intake in place of the internal 80mm fan - I'm hoping noise from the 92mm fan will not 'leak' out of those "Antec" holes, I guess I can try out putting the 92mm fan there before I do the PSU mod
* remove unused cabling from the PSU both inside and out
* (maybe?) remove the CPU fan, instead try just ducting the CPU heatsink to the case fan
* suspend my (four) hard drives using elastic
* add damping materials to some of the metal case panels and also to the PSU mounting - I have some Sorbothane sheets which should be good to soak up some low frequency vibrations, I think I will also add egg-boxes on top for the high frequencies.

Eventually this is going into a piece of furniture (an equipment stand in my living room) so I could then start looking at baffles to reduce exhaust noise.

It's kind of hard to make out on the pictures, but if you mod the front bezel as radically as I did, you should be set:

Granted, these mods alter the bezel visibly if you look real hard, but overall end up being quite inconspicuous. I would estimate the total ventilation area to be over 30cm2 at the bottom and over 10cm2 on each side on my bezel. Using the front I/O panel as an intake seems like a neat idea.

From working with that plastic, I would think that you can drill it if you're reasonably careful. But that would clearly be very visible, and produce a more direct noise path, than removing the "wings/ducts/whatever" at the side intakes on that bezel.

I'm not sure I understand this correctly. With four drives in that cage, air can't really flow anywhere except next to a drive!? If you taped up most of those holes, isn't that metal plate your biggest air restriction in the front, not the bezel?

PS: Be warned about my numbers, I seem to measure things a little differently than you . I just looked at my front I/O panel, and I measure its ventilation potential to be: 6cmx2.5cm (15cm2) for the silver flap + two half circles of 2.5cm diameter for LEDs(~5cm2) = 20cm2

EDIT: added slightly improved image of bezel mod, since it's relevant for this thread. Thanks to IMGSpot (hotlinked picture) and ImageShack (cold? linked picture) for hosting.

Hey thanks for the picture and the suggestions.

For my 12cm2 figures, I couldn't measure anything as I am posting from work - just kinda estimated

You asked about the HDD cage taping. This is actually a picture of the Sonata II from SPCR's CES 2005 report, but the HDD cage metalwork is the same:

As you can see the metal panel has 4 horizontal slots, two vertical slots and a big open space at the bottom of the cage, below the lowest hard drive. I have taped up the vertical slots and the big open space. The horizontal slots match the gaps between my hard drives. So cool air is forced to flow over my hard drives instead of half of it going some place else. Seems like an essential tweak to me, if you care about HDD temps.

Thinking about it, it could also take some foam blocks along the top and left side of that image to block the gaps between the HDD cage and the left side panel of the case (and a third one to block the hole leading up into the void beside the 3.5" floppy drive bay). Like you say, I need to compare the total area of the holes that will be left with the total area of intakes in the front bezel, but I think it will be about the same.

I finally did the mods on bottom and side openings of the Sonata bezel, and contrary to advice in this forum, the Dremel worked great, but I didn't use a fiber cutoff disk.

Instead, I used a bit that looks like a tiny (about 3/8" diameter) circular saw blade on a shaft. Used this at pretty high speed, which admittedly caused the plastic debris to melt. This was actually good, since it didn't create plastic shavings, just larger chunks of debris that were easy to remove. It was pretty easy to cut straight using the original edges as guides, and didn't take much clean-up with a file.

The whole job, including dismantling to get at the bezel tabs and reassembly at the end, didn't take more then 90 minutes.

PS. The inner bezel was already quite open from the factory on this case that I purchased in Jan. 2005.

I did some of the mods I found in this thread (front bezel mod and power supply intake mod) and still wasn't happy with the air flow thru the case, so I went one step further. I took everything out of the case and got out my jigsaw and cut a 2.5 by 9 inch hole in the bottom of the case in the motherboard section and a 3 by 3 inch hole in the disk drive compartment. I covered the two holes with a piece of fiberglas window screen and then a hot air register filter to keep the dust out. I sealed off all the holes between the hard drive bay and the rest of the case except where the second fan is mounted (I do have a fan mounted there). I then added some new feet to the bottom of the case to lift it about an inch off the cabinet it sits on and used some self adhesive weatherstripping to seal off the front door.

The results: I dropped my CPU, Motherboard and Drive temperature by between 3 and 4 degrees Celcius under load. I am going to do the same to my other Sonata case, but I think I will purchase a 2.5" hole saw to do that one instead of the jig saw. The jig saw works, but the metal in the bottom of the case vibrates a great deal when you are trying to cut it and the hole ends up being a little rough. I'm also going to try and figure out how to make a better filter setup for the bottom. Right now everything is held in place with the handymans secret weapon!

I'm newly registered, but have been lurking for months. Great website!


inti,

How did this work out? I have a Sonata case and am about to build a new system in it. The intake area is one that I want to work on to funnel air over the harddrives and onto the northbridge of an A64 m/b and the graphics card areas. You seem to have the same idea. Can you give me an update?

I don't really have an update. Taping some of the drive cage holes how I described has indeed forced cool air from the front intake over my (three x 7200rpm) hard drives, so I am now happy with my drive temps. My system is on 24/7 and often runs for several weeks without a reboot. Basically I am very happy with it now and I'm not really looking to make it any quieter even though it sits in the living room.

inti,

Thanks for the update (and inspiration). I'll be modding the hard drive area as it can easily made to work better.

The holes at the top need to be covered (like the new Sonata II case), but an alternate air intake would need to be devised. I like the duct on the new Sonata II case, but it seems like it could impede airflow out the back. An opening in the back like that could just go into a small air box (to filter the air and deaden the sound) and allow the air to flow from the bottom-rear of the case over the graphics card--removing the hot air from it.

I'm looking forward to modding my Sonata case and appreciate all of the tips from others in this thread.

~Opsman

Welcome to SPCR!!!, Opsman.

Let us all know how your mods turn out!

Glad to have helped. I have learned so much from others on this site.

The basic reason why the Sonata (I) is a quiet case is because of the front drive bay door cover, and the front bezel below - both are thick plastic and allow no direct noise path for drive noises or other internal case noises (CPU heatsink/fan) to reach the user. Also the 120mm case fan is obviously good once you undervolt it - or easy to mod with another 120mm fan.

I also like the look of the Sonata I - it has clean lines and the piano black finish is very nice.

But you must remember it is a three year old design now, and it has some flaws. The main flaws are considered to be limited front air intake, no CPU cool air duct, the 'Antec' holes, and the (now) relatively inefficient and noisy stock PSU.

One particular problem of the 'Antec' holes in a stock case is that they provide most of the case ventilation, so there is not much cool airflow from the front and over the HDD cage.

In my case the 'Antec' holes are used to provide cool air to the PSU only. I have blocked the gap between the PSU and the motherboard with a simple sheet of cardboard. The result is exactly right: the PSU gets plenty of cool air from the 'Antec' holes (which I have covered with a black fabric to act as a dust filter and for aesthetic reasons). The cardboard 'duct' blocks some CPU heatsink/fan noise from emerging out of the Antec holes. The PSU runs as cool as it is ever going to, because it gets plenty of cool air intake.

If you block those 'Antec' holes then you need to think very hard about where your PSU is going to get its ventilation from - maybe a 120mm fan model PSU will not need those holes?

I see no problem with locating an air intake in the PCI card area. In my case I have unused PCI card slots and I am simply using one of them as ventilation (with a dust filter over it). I think this is a good source of cool air for the graphics card.

On the other hand, drilling through the case metal would be a 'non-trivial' exercise as we physicists like to say, as it is something like 2mm sheet steel. Personally I would not consider attempting that, unless possibly through the base of the case where looks do not really matter.

I do wish there were an easy way to duct cool air to the CPU, though.

Thanks for the warm welcome JanW.


I read a while ago that partitioning the PSU cage helps the PSU temps, but increases the case temps. That takes away from your theory that the Antec holes are supplying all of the air that the PSU needs. Since it is only getting cool air, the PSU will never need to increase the fan speed to bump its cooling so the holes could supply all of the air to the PSU with the lower volume of air that would be needed.


True, the PSU needs air. That's why I want to open another air intake (next to PCI slots or in bottom) to supplement the front intake and replace the Antec holes air volume. Gotta get my calculator out to figure out the air volume from the Antec holes.


This makes sense. As you and dn58 mention, cutting a hole in the bottom could be a good alternative to the rear hole. Either way, the Dremel will be put to good use.


Can you not route cool air from one of the front drive bays to the CPU? Of course using a non-direct airflow path would decrease the noise that gets emitted back out the front. An air filter would be needed too.

I'll document all of my mods and show you all in the next few weeks or month. It's hard to dedicate too much time to "other" projects with a 1 year old boy running around the house.

I've been experimenting with an additional 92mm fan located near the upper right corner of the motherboard in my Sonata, positioned to blow air across the MOSFET's scattered around that area. (Note: the Abit AI7 MB does not have the more typical concentration of MOSFET's between CPU and I/O). This fan reduces PWM temperatures enabling a lower speed on the Zalman 7000 CPU fan.

This auxiliary fan is attached with zipties at opposite corners to two of the cable bundles, which keeps it sufficiently secure but allows some flexibility in pointing angle. The effect of this fan at an inaudible 7V is 4C/8C reduction in idle/load PWM temps. Air is being drawn in through the Antec holes judging by the TP anemometer. Without this fan there was no air flow through those holes, since the S12 PSU draws from the CPU area.

Pertinent to the current discussion on this thread, when I also remove the upper 5.25" drive bay cover (lower two bays are occupied) and open the door, the PWM temperature drops another 5-6C at idle, and the CPU temp also drops several degrees so both are idling at 31C. The TP anemometer shows a pretty strong airflow into that area thanks to this extra fan, so clearly additional intake area is welcome. Noise increase through this porthole is very minor at idle, only slightly more under load since I'm now using a quieter, slower (1900 rpm max) and isolated fan on the Zalman 7000.

I'm looking for material to make an inlet filter (wire or plastic mesh) on a bay cover to cut dust ingestion and improve the esthetics. I'll open the Sonata door for this inlet path when the computer is under load.

Let me know whay you come up with as I'm contemplating a duct from the lowest 5-1/4" drive bay to the CPU. Air will be pulled in by the CPU fan (Zalman 7000B) and I want to filter the air beforehand. An airbox baffle will be created in the bay area and a tube will go down to the CPU from that airbox. The duct will stand off of the CPU fan/heatsink ~1/2" as recommended by Intel's "Thermal Guide" document. The front door can be opened if the CPU fan is cranked up to allow more air in, but at normal CPU load there should be enough airflow behind the closed door. I want cool air to compensate for some overclocking of the CPU.

I've seen references to "modder's mesh" which I envision to be perforated sheet metal. Haven't found anything like that yet at a craft store, hobby shop or computer shop. Can any SPCR'r suggest where to find it?

If/when I start doing continuous high load activities like Folding@Home, I'm considering buying a second Sonata door to add a door-closed grill that would match up with the 5.25' bay grill

Have any modders out there tried to take a Sonata or SLK3700BQE and mod the front 5.25 bays to be horizontal behind the door, take out the hard drive cage, add a front 120mm fan, suspend the harddrives horizontal, and move the rubber feet to the side wall?

I heard that the top, bottom, and one side are all one piece of rolled aluminum. Does the bottom have the same finish as the top? How are the rubber feet attached?

Any owners of the Sonata and SLK3700BQE think its feasible to mod this? The door would be a bit awkward, perhaps it could be removed or altered and the DVD tray could be stealthed.

I think its about time a case company makes a HTPC case with the Sonata or SLK3700BQE 120mm fan design.

Yes, the bottom of the Sonata does seem to have the same gloss black finish as the sides, and it is a one piece of steel from the upper left edge to the lower left edge (lips for the left side panel). The feet are apparently glued on, but there are also three rivets through the bottom that retain the bottom of the drive cage. The front door is very easily removed.

Using the Sonata on its side in a "desktop orientation" wouldn't need all the mods you suggest. A slot-loading optical drive would work fine in either orientation, and the small Dell tower PC's at my office use vertically oriented optical drives with little rotating ears to hold the disk when the door is open (not really necessary) Do hard disks not operate properly with the cable interface end up or down?

I've seen the description and photos of another SPCR'r used his Sonata on its side, although his was in a cabinet as I recall.

Sonata Case Mods -- 5/2/05

I set out to improve the airflow within the Sonata case. My mods have all been inspired (and redirected) by you fine people at Silent PC Review.

I installed all new components into my system. It has a new, Venice-core Athlon64 3200+ processor on an MSI NEO4 Platinum motherboard. The video card is an MSI X800XL and there is 1 GB of OCZ ram installed. The two hard drives are both Seagate drives. One is a 250 GB 7200.8 model (two 133 GB platters) and the other is a 160 GB 7200.7 model. (I play games and do some video editing so it needed 2 good drives.) I left the stock Antec 380w powersupply in it.

The main mods were:
--Front bezel mod: open up bottom of bezel to allow more airflow into the case
--Bottom hole: open up more airflow through the case
--Cover the Antec holes: force air to be brought through the case to cool it more efficiently
--Hard drive cooling: efficiently have intake air flow over drives to cool them
--Insulate air gaps: prevent unfiltered air from entering case

After my mods have been completed, my idle case temperature is 39 degrees C and my fully loaded CPU temperature is 49 degrees C with a case temperature of 43 degrees C. That is pretty impressive to me. Room temperature is not great because the office in my house is in the back between the garage and the utility room, which has the washer/dryer and is also fully insulated. That means that the little air duct in the ceiling cannot supply the room with enough cool air. I haven't measured the room temp in there, but it is noticably warmer than the rest of the house (and it is near summer-time in Texas). Rest of the house is cooled to 77 degrees F.

New front bezel intake


Bottom of case with painter's tape on it. I wanted to center the new hole on the stamped "AntecDesign" (pencil used to highlight this)


The Antec holes in the sides are 3/16" in diameter and there are 91 holes per side. That translates to 2.7 square inches of area per side (5.4 inches total area). My 80 mm diameter hole has 7.8 square inches of area available, which is equal to the size of the powersupply exhaust. The holes in the side do not allow enough air to get to the powersupply and thus it draws it in from the DVD drive bay area (and some from the front bezel area).

The hole was drilled in the bottom and then aviation snips were used to cut out the 80 mm hole. An old fan body was used to allow an 80 mm fan filter to be easily mounted. (Note the padded, double-sided tape used to insulate the fan body.)


For the hard drive area, I used a hard drive package. It is closed cell foam that I cut into an 'L' to fit behind the drive rack. Now all air has to flow around the hard drives without going over them into the floppy drive area or behind them into the wire space AND, as an added bonus, the wires are all hidden behind the foam.


Shows the foam installed behind the drive bay and the power/SATA wires for each drive.


Here are the SATA drives installed with the wires neatly behind the foam.


I have added weather-stripping around the DVD drive bays and the floppy drive carriage. See it?


Near final look before closing it up.


Now all air is filtered and enters from the front bezel and the hole in the bottom. A few other holes were covered with weather-stripping or padded, double-sided tape was used (under the 120 mm case fan). No overclocking has been done and an ATI Silencer has not been attached to the video card, yet. I am pleased so far with the performance of the case (and the computer).

That's a very nice job, and very good use of the noodle in all the improvements/mods that you've made. You seem to have a pretty good grasp of the various cooling/quieting concepts, and if this were a term paper or some such, I'd give you an "A" to "A+".

Thank you. It's too bad my first grades were B's or I'd get an A for the class. I learned a lot from this thread and this forum before I started doing permanent modifications to the case.

I still have to cover up the Antec holes in the left-side door properly. I have the arcylic cut, but need the time to afix it properly...since it will show more than the other side. The blue painter's tape over the holes now is kind of tacky. /cues rim-shot

I can't believe I haven't posted these pics here yet.

http://www.anycities.com/user/trpltongue/sonata.html

I opened up the lower bezel and ducted the PSU as well as semi-suspending the HDD's. In the pics I hadn't suspended the HDD's yet. My case sits horizontal so suspension for my 4 HDD's is *tricky*.

Russell

For my next Sonata mod I'm going to magic it into a P180!

It's going to be an expensive mod though

Sorbothane drive tray mod ver 2



Requires sorbothane, scissors / round pipe i.d. 12mm (depending on if you want octagonal or round grommets ), round pipe o.d. 5-6mm, longer M3 screws depending on thickness of sorbothane.
Works great in any orientation!

Drive looks really good Chris, is it managing to stay cool enough ?

Yes, I've managed the case flow so air is forced to flow past the drives. They run at 38°C with a small amount of airflow, ambient ~22°.

Hrm... I got a question about the PSU/Venting mods people are doing to Sonatas. I'm currently trying to decide how to go about quieting mine right now. I see some people are covering up the Antec holes, I'm assuming so sound doesn't escape.

What I was considering was actually leaving the antec holes open, and isolating the PSU from the bottom of the case. This way all the air the PSU will be sucking in will come straight from the outside and should be cooler than the internal case air normally would be. As a result, I could put in a quieter fan in the PSU (and maybe slow it down too)... This should also help lower case temperature as well (I'm guessing) as internal airflow coming from the front bezel will be dedicated to the Vid/CPU... Am I wrong in thinking this?

EDIT: I'm stupid, I missed several posts in this thread discussing it. Don't mind me. *goes off and reads some more*

OK, the more I read, the more I see that the consensus is that you want to keep the front closed off (well, not closed off, but with a convoluted air path) to keep sound inside the case. But, if you open it up to get better airflow, you should be able to slow down the fans, and as such the need to worry about sound escaping out the front should be reduced, no?

Ravlen