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?)
