Have you tried installing the drive to listen to it for yourself? Lots of people are happy with their JVC motors Samsung drives. Use "search" to find the survey where everyone reports their model of drive and their subjective opinion of its noise level. You could always just return the drive and eat...

Do you have an Apple store near you? Wouldn't it be simpler to just walk into a store and listen to one for yourself? No disrespect to SPCR staff, but my own firsthand experience would trump a website review any day (modulo sample variance and longevity issues, if a website can accumulate that kind ...

I can confirm what you've seen. I have a background process monitoring my SP1614N temperature, and it's only ever reported temperatures of 14, 16, 18, 25, 27, 28, 29, 31, and 33 C, going back to August 2004. If anything, I've kind of been worried that the drive is under-reporting temperatures, but (...

Placing HDs in the bottom of the case is a fairly common thing around here. Make sure you put it on an antistatic piece of foam, ususally your mobo will come with a piece of it. If you want furter isolation place a piece of regular foam or rubber underneath the static foam. If you can poke around y...

FWIW, the EverCase 4252 link on the recommended page no longer works; it's been changed to this.

I agree that isellsurplus.com is "slow". I ordered on Sunday, they didn't ship until Friday. They get an extra day for MLK Monday (no mail/FedEx/etc.), but still ... Not a good choice if you're in a hurry. I ordered 3 of these fans from them ($26 shipped); I didn't see the "free shipping for orders ...

The Antec SLK3000-B can be added to the list; it has room for front and rear 120mm fans (it only comes with a rear fan).

Thanks, folks!

This is probably a dumb question, but I'm a building a computer for the first time (total n00b). :oops: I just bought a Seasonic Super Silencer 400W A3. I want to just plug it in to the wall and see what it sounds like. So that's what I did. I plugged it into the wall, flipped the power switch, and ...

FWIW, if you haven't ordered yet, and are thinking about it, isellsurplus is having free shipping today, no minimum.

I've found that the CPU HSF vendor websites are pretty good at providing compatibility tables with their products; e.g., here . Are there similar resources available for things like whether or not a PSU will fit a case, or if a PSU will conflict with some HSF? For example, there was a recent post so...

I have a 6-year old P2-400MHz. All it needed was a new HD (which it needed anyway, because 8GB isn't as impressive as it used to be) and a new fan. Dumb question.... what would one do with such a system? I'm not joking, I'm curious. It's actually quite useful. Besides this old P2-400MHz machine, I ...

I have a 6-year old P2-400MHz. All it needed was a new HD (which it needed anyway, because 8GB isn't as impressive as it used to be) and a new fan.

What kind of buzzing are you talking about? I have a two 7200.7's and I haven't noticed any buzzing.. but then again, my system is quite loud as it is now. I believe they are takling about the Seagate periodic self-testing that it does when it is idle for some amount of time. The MBM logging (other...

I now wish I had saved every strip of eggcrate foam I ever got in the mail. Can't seem to find that stuff in stores and I don't like the idea of buying it online. I used to save all packing material "just to have". Then we moved towns, into a smaller apartment :( But in my new office (I work at a c...

Have you tried suspending it or laying it on foam? I had a hum when I first got the drive, but discovered it was due to case vibration. The old stock drive was a 5400RPM drive; the Samsung is a 7200RPM drive. I'm guessing the (old 5-year-old) case was only designed for hard-mounting the slower 5400R...

I had my Spinpoint suspended in a 5.25" bay, then moved it to rest on foam. The advantage (for me) is that with the drive at the bottom on foam I can point an undervolted fan at it for a drop in temps (31C in 5.25" bay, 27C on foam, 16-18C on foam with a 7V fan directed at it). The only disadvantage...

I don't think my elastic suspension made a whole lot of difference compared to the rubber grommets supplied with my case. Am I the only one not impressed by the performance of an elastic suspension? Is my drive unusually noisy? In my experience, the elastic will only get rid of vibration noise (HD ...

My Sony DRU-510a CDRW/DVD+-RW is pretty quiet when burning DVDs. But I suspect it's because it's relatively slow (1x/2x/4x), far slower than my noisy CDRW burner (52x, although I think "x" might be different between CDs and DVDs?).

I know there's been plenty of discussion about this, but I don't recall anyone actually experimenting, simply because many people report success with elastic / StretchMagic / whatever other material is very cheaply available (less than $3 for all you'll ever need). If anything, I would speculate tha...

Where is your fan drawing air from? The case itself. Apparently, any air flowing over the drive is better than none. My temps are nicely cooler with this configuration. Is your 5.25" bay uncovered or something? Yes, top and bottom: I meant to ask if your 5.25" bay was uncovered as in being exposed ...

What kind of temperature changes did you see with this setup? I tried something very similar but didn't really see any improvement. Where is your fan drawing air from? Is your 5.25" bay uncovered or something? In my setup, I had the fan in an external 3.5" bay left uncovered to the front panel, poin...

The back of the desk is covering up the power supply exaust on the case. I am thinking that is where a vast majority of your heat is comming from. You're absolutly right, the area behind exhaust fan is reasonably cool. The area behind the psu exhaust is incredibly hot! Is that some flavor of Dell c...

Depends on what you plan to do with it. Check out mythtv.org; they have a bunch of guidelines on what to expect from different kinds of hardware.

I haven't seen any mobo-integrated RAID5 SATA controllers. Glancing through newegg, they are somewhat pricey (US$200+). So price will be a consideration here (if it is at all), assuming $100/disk. For two disks' worth of data, you can either spend $400 for 4 disks at RAID10 and max out your storage,...

My drive (SP1614N, IDE not SATA) sitting on foam doesn't make any noise I can hear. I would think your first fight would be against heat, not against noise. Off-topic: why not just run all 4 drives in a single RAID array (3 data disks, 1 parity)? That way you end up with 480GB of storage, with strip...

I am suspecting that the Seagate runs a little hotter than other drives. In one machine that sits on the floor (Dell Dimension Optiplex GX1 running Linux), I've tried various things with its Samsung SP1614N: - Suspended in 5.25" bay with sewing elastic; 29-31C - Sitting on foam at bottom of case, 5V...

What is the temperature of your HD? HD overheating has led to weirdness in my system until I figured it out.

but but but ... it has the mosquito buzzing noise when the monitor is turned "off" (e.g., front panel power button, but "real" power button in back is still "on"). So is it still a matter of just twiddling with the refresh rate or brightness control or something?

I have a Viewsonic VP171b LCD that has a discernible high-pitched mosquito-buzzing-like sound.