You have a problem because if you make the rest of the PC quiet that fan is only going to get more annoying. Regardless, I would swop that gfx card for a slow one (if you have one lying around) just for a while so you can focus on quieting the rest of the system. Dampening material only works when i...

Here's my 2c on the issue. For a fan to sell it needs some bling bling. It is hard to convince buyers that this plain black fan is 'really really good because it spins slowly and is quiet at 5v'. Usually this element comes by way of UV reactive colours or LED's, but the materials used here are less ...

The problem I see with having a fanless PSU is that it is forced to become an intake in a negative pressure case and an exhaust in a positive pressure case, and when you have an intake near an exhaust the exhaust air goes straight into the intake again. What happens is the air goes past the CPU, out...

I just felt that your loose use of the terms "junk" and "it sucks" was doing a major disservice to anyone that read this thread. I agree that generally people should clarify their positions beyond using blanket remarks like 'it sucks', but I don't necessarily think it is a disservice. Anybody who g...

If the CFM of the intake (front) fan is lower than the combined CFM of all the exit fans (Case, PSU, whatever blowholes) it will actually work as an air-brake as compared to no intake fan. I would say that typically the front airtake should not draw more air than a slow fan there could produce. Low...

I am interested to know now why the intake fan increases temps. Certainly if you have an intake fan there will be less air entering the case from other points. If you have positive pressure then the air will actually be exhausting from any other holes. You would think that hot air cools down when it...

Western Digital seem to have a bad rap generally and I don't know why that is. They had a patch of bad reliability with the 3GB drives and perhaps some others, but many manufacturers have had such bad patches. The 3.2GB WD I had packed up with 6 months. This is not to say I hold a grudge. I had a 1G...

Well there are some very strange figures on Western Digital's site concerning the idle noise of the drives. For 7200rpm SATA drives, the models up to 250GB are rated at 34dBA, but the 300 and 320GB are rated 28 dBA. In the EIDE versions, 200-320GB versions are 28dBA, the 160 is 26dBA, the 40-120 are...

Well it sounds like it's time for this WD model you have to be reviewed. The only way it will be quiet enough is if it is quieter than the Samsungs. And I say this because I don't believe at this time that damping the drive itself can seriously affect idle noise.

m0002a, I have a Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 80GB and the idle is too loud. It is not to loud by very much though, but I would like it to be quieter. I think perhaps you are less fussy :) My experience with WD drives has been that they don't have loud seeks but the idle noise isn't that soft. I don't e...

For me I dislike distinctive noise patterns like a hard drive's idle. The seek noises of a hard drive I don't mind so much, meaning that I don't require the seeks to be entirely inaudible, although it is nice. What gets me is the idle noise. Any high-frequency mechanical noise annoys me. So the prob...

Well after reading some more I understand that Nexus fans are easy to come by and pretty cheap, so I will be buying them. I will get a Nexus Silent 400W PSU, that will be the only exhaust fan. I have decided to get the 3000+, it's worth saving the money. It does seem that the XP/120 is rather overki...

Hello, I am a system-builder turned programmer from South Africa, although at the end of this month, April 2005, I will be moving to England. I won't be taking my computer with, which is why I have been thinking about my future system. My current system is rather noisy, and I decided that my next sy...