Case: Antec 3700bqe
ripped out the hard drive cage and stuck my hard drives in some homemade enclosures (two hot/cold gel packs sandwhiching Western Digital 80 and 120gig drives). Props to alleycat for the idea.

PSU: Seasonic S12-330, fan swapped the stock ADDA fan for a Nexus 120mm, running at 1% in Speedfan. RPM's - no idea... low.

Obviously another Nexus fan on the CPU (SI-97), and the exhaust fan is the stock 120mm that came with the BQE. Those two fans are at 5v. The stock antec fan is pretty quiet.

Sound dampening material is Armstrong Self Adhesive Vinyl tiling from Home Depot, with self adhesive and non-self-adhesive cork board over it. Props to the thread in the Cases & Dampening forum.

That's a XFX 6800NU w/ Zalman ZM80D-HP without the extra fan, Hauppauge TV Tuner (PVR-150-MCE), and Creative Audigy 2 Value sound card.

The mobile 2400+ is 35W, running at 1833mhz @ 1.35 volts. I think I have the FSB at 166.















43.4 lbs.

Looks very quiet!
I hope to be finishing my own worklog/pic thread soon.
How did you mount the 120mm fan to the SI-97? Is it suspended in front of it? Is there a 120mm to 90mm adapter in there?

Just cut the corners. I used a coping saw. Made an orange mess but was easy.

EDIT EDIT EDIT: Oh wait! You don't have to cut corners to mount the Nexus 120mm to the SI-97! I cut those corners so I could fit some soft rubber screws through the holes to mount on the back of my case as an exhaust fan. To mount the Nexus 120mm on the SI-97, you just use the included 92mm fan clips - they just extend outwards a bit more.

Badger...first off good job on your case dampening. I am looking do install some sort of dampening on my case as well and I'm still in the process of looking for the best combination of materials to use that are both readily available and relatively cheap. I got a few questions for you though...if you don't mind providing some insight.

- how thick a corkboard did you use?
- what were your before temps? (I only saw after)
- did you install dampening behind the mobo tray?
- what type of improvement did you notice with the dampening?

Thanks in advance for any info you can give me!

The thickness, ahh I can't give you an exact number. It is Con-Tact brand, self adhesive cork liner. I guess it's a shelf and drawer liner to "reduce slipping and shifting in drawers." It's 12 inches x 4 feet. Pretty thin, too, bends really easy. $6 for a roll. The self-adhesive stuff often times just stayed on the paper backing - not on the cork! There goes the self-adhesiveness. There are probably better alternatives. I recommend just getting some thick cork board, perhaps a little less than 1/4" and then glueing it down to whatever surface you're putting it on. The $6 stuff I got definately wasn't enough - I had enough for the two side panels. For the rest I used a thicker cork board that I orginally had in there. I just put that over the vinyl tiles. That stuff is thicker, maybe 2/5 of an inch, denser than the other stuff, too.

My before and after temps didn't change at all. Well, I did have just the thicker cork board in there before, and after adding the vinyl + the cork board my temps didn't significantly change. In fact, I've noticed a slight decrease in temps - I think that this may be because I duct taped off the empty space below the DVD drive, and I duct taped off the empty floppy enclosure area. This forces the air to only come in from where the front 120mm intake is (no fan there). The hard drive enclosures sit right there in the way of this, but there's about an inch of breathing room where the air is pulled over the aluminum box. I'm thinking that this may also increase that air's velocity, thus doing a better job at cooling the hard drives (I've noticed a few degrees drop) and the video card temp has dropped, at idle, from about 61C to 59C. It's right there in the path of the air... perfect.

I did install the vinyl tiles/thin cork board on both of the side panels. If you're asking if I put any between the motherboard itself and the steel panel that it's screwed to, no I did not. Didn't really see a need to.

I have noticed an improvement. Air movement noise is eliminated. It helped a lot with a certain high pitched freqency noise that my motherboard emits somewhere. I can still faintly, very faintly, hear this though at half a meter. I think it's coil whine, it's very sporadic but from what I can tell it only starts when Windows begins to load. One day I'd like to eliminate that. But I dont know if it's possible. It's not audible after a couple meters.

Since posting those pictures I have updated my rig slightly. The stock Antec 120mm fan at 5v had just a tad too much air flow noise. Then, ding ding, I remembered that I had a 92mm Nexus that I originally got for the SI-97. So, I took out the Antec 120mm, moved the orange Nexus 120mm from the SI-97 to the rear exhaust position, and put the 92mm Nexus on the SI-97. The clips were a bit stretched, but still have enough in them to hold it down. At 5v, the 92mm Nexus is quieter than the stock Antec 120mm at 5v. Probably because it just moves less air. But I haven't noticed any changes in temperature on any components.

The exhaust from the S12 with the fan swapped-Nexus 120mm is warm but I'd say about just as warm as with the original Adda fan. I don't think it's in any danger.

I'd also like to add that the hard drive enclosures I've made do a superb job at eliminating idle and seek noise. I have the WD drives on the lowest AAM setting (it's either low or high/all or nothing with these guys). I got my inspiration from alleycat in this thread http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewto ... enclosures I highly recommend it.

Project = success. Dead quiet. Silent to all but my ears (isn't it always that way?)

thanks badger! great detail in your response...thanks a million. Just out of curiosity...did you consider acoustic products from McMaster Carr...I keep seeing that name mentioned around this site about them.

Good job,

One little thing... I doubt the cork does anything. Agreed, it's too light to do any panel vibration damping. It's also too dense to absorb any airborne vibrations/noise. The vinyl does all the work in your setup. I've tried cork in several different ways. The best use, imo, is simply as non-slip feet -- like for a Novibes3 placed on the bottom of the "floor" in the case. Certainly doesn't have any noise-reduction quality I could discern.

I kinda figured as much. I'll have to find so foamy stuff I suppose. Oh well, not in a big hurry to anymore... yet.

Snowman59-I've read a little about the McMaster Carr a while ago. I don't remember what it is anymore. I didn't consider it. Although I suppose now, if they have a foamy type product that I'm looking for, I might consider it.

Neat looking system, and I'm sure those enclosures add some weight! Despite what's been said about the cork, I do think that it's helpful for isolating the drive enclosures fom the case. I found some dampening material in a car audio shop which should work well for cases. It's vinyl on one side and kind of soft on the other side, about half a centimetre thick, and quite dense. It's used to stop engine and road noise from entering the car's cabin.

Thanks for the credit, I'm glad you've had success with the enclosures. I have to admit, I was surprised at how effective they are. I'm particularly interested in your setup, as I haven't tried stacking them. Do you leave the system running for long periods? Your temps look great, which drive gets warmer? Feel free to PM me if you've got any comments or questions.

Alleycat - I run the system pretty much 24/7. After being idle for a few hours, with both harddrives on the entire time (Speedfan's SMART monitoring doesn't let the second drive spin down), my temps right now are 40C for the 80gb (my main OS drive) and 37C for the 120gb data storage drive.

The 80gb, because it's always being accessed, is always warmer than the 120gb. I have the 80gb drive on top, the 120gb is the bottom drive. I have never seen, even on the hot summer days during load, either drive above 48C.

The one thing I wish Speefan had was the ability to disable SMART monitoring of a drive so I could disable it on th 120gb drive so it could spin down and stay cool(er). I use to just close Speedfan altogether, then the drive would spin down (and upon startup be a very cool 23C-25C), but I can't do that anymore because the Nexus in the S12 is being controlled by Speedfan - if I close it, the fan ramps up to the default 12v, 1100 rpms.

Hopefully soon I can get a pick of the whole system as it now stands (92mm Nexus on SI-97 and the 120mm Nexus as exhaust, as well as a better shot of the hard drive enclosures.)

EDIT: one thing I'd like to add about the drive enclosures. Previously, I've run them just on top of eachother, metal to metal. Right now I have a piece of the cork board in between them. I think having the cork in between helps prevent the heat of the hotter drive moving to the cooler drive's enclosures. Although having them metal to metal may of course just act as a larger heat sink and help reduce temps. I haven't really experimented with this - just something to consider.

Actually, I take back what I said about the drive temps. Do you think they are a bit high, or were they always like that? I've never been able to get mine above 39degC. I would guess that the cork between the enclosures has an insulating effect, if anything. To cool the enclosures as much as possible, I would probably set them up to form a 'tunnel' from the intake, perhaps by standing them on their sides.

I know, those can get a bit hot. I would switch them to their sides like you're talking, but there isnt the room with the video card right there.

We'll see though - those high temps (49C) were with the harddrive enclosures in the extra 5.25" drive bays at the top of the case, during summer, when we didn't have central air conditioning. Now it's winter, it's naturally colder, and by next summer the room temp won't increase as much with AC.

The first image is of the system now. It's so, so quiet. The second picture is of the hard drive enclosures, you can make out where the cables leave. I have a friend that has a grinder and he ground down a few milimeters about two and half inches wide, just enough room for the cables to come out without pinching too tightly.

Hi,

I'm surprised no one else hasn't pointed this out yet... Are you sure the Nexus in the PSU is actually spinning? That 1% on the Speedfan sounds little and in any case the RPM's are too low for the motherboard too read them. Have you checked that at which level does the Speedfan shows RPM's?

Yes I have checked that the fan is spinning. Also, because I'm using Speedfan, at startup the Nexus in the PSU is always at 12v until I log in and Speedfan loads, then it drops it to 1%. That avoids the problem a lot of the Nexus's have with starting at low voltages. And I have looked and know it's spinning.

Speedfan can't read the RPM's at 1%.

At 5%, it's an audible 970-987 RPM's.
At 4%, it's an audible 907-917 RPM's.
At 3%, it's an audible 835-840 RPM's.
At 2%, it's slightly audible, Speedfan reads 706 RPM's before only reading 0 RPM's.

Have you had any problems with the tiling ?

I put some in my rig to (several layers on top of each other) and it does not stick all that well. Some (sides & top) would actually fall after a while ...

Had to use extra strong glue to make the whole damn ting stick ...

Yeah, it doesnt stick well at all when it's hanging from the top. I haven't had any problems with the sides, just the top. I eventually just threw it up there between the PSU/DVD drive and the ceiling. Some duct tape on the back helped in some spots.