It's watercooled, and it's not exactly shy on power...
An Opteron 185, BFG 8800 OC2 GTX, 2 GB of Mushkin Redline, a 150GB Raptor, 4 Hitachi 7K250s. I realise that the latest Intel quad cores pee all over this in benchmarks, but I'm not upgrading to one of them yet. And really at the end of the day my PC has to be fast enough for my needs - which it is. And it also has to be silent, look great, be tidy, and also I want to squeeze every bit of performance out of it. Not because I need that 5% extra, but because I enjoy it.
Watercooled with AquaComputer stuff - but that's not really what I'm in this forum to discuss
I'll be replacing the radiator with a bigger one, a ThermalChill PA120.3. This means removing the drive racking in the bottom of the case. Currently there's 7 drives in there. I can drop 2 of those (a PATA 200GB and a PATA 120GB, they're getting old anyway, and I can scrape by with just 1.1GB of storage for a while).
So I'll have lots of free 5.25 bays, and 5 drives to house.
The V2000B comes with 7 5.25 bays. One of these is used by a DVD drive, another by the contoller for the pump. Ideally I'd like to leave 1 more 5.25 bay free, so that I can later fit an Aquaero. But that's not essential. Eventually I'll move onto bigger drives, probably 500, 750s or 1TBs, but the upgrade I'm about to start is already costing 500 quid, can't stretch it any further.
So I need some way to house these drives, almost certainly they'll be going in the 5.25 bays.
At the moment the only noise in the case is the Corsair 620W PSU (inaudible), 4 Nexus fans (inaudible at 9V), and the hard drives... which sound rather loud. It's the seeks rather than anything else that annoy me the most.
The first thing I looked at was an Icy Dock enclosure. It takes up 3 5.25 bays, and holds 5 drives. Exactly what I was after.
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/pimg/HD-017-BT_400.jpg
Except the pictures I can see of it look a bit cheap and nasty. I have no interest in hot swap at all. Getting rid of all the power connectors is a real bonus, it means I need less cabling, and cabling is another nail I'm going to be trying to hit on the head with this upgrade.
The next thing I looked at was a top end enclosure (or maybe even a watercooling one like AquaComputer make) for the Raptor, and a Lian Li 5.25 bay for the other 4 drives.
http://www.aqua-computer-systeme.de/sho ... /25107.jpg
http://www.lian-li.com/product/EX-34-b.jpg
The watercooling box, I think though might look nice. But it won't do anything to kill the noise and vibration. Nor am I interested in cooling my Raptor any more than it already is. Data loss isn't an issue on it. The drive can fail if it wants, I'll just RMA it. Besides, the data Google showed earlier this year puts some questions on heat = failure. As long as I stay comfortably within Western Digitals operating temperatures I'm happy.
The Lian Li bay I think will maybe be better than the current rack in the PC, but isn't going to do the job.
Next on the list was a very simple (and cheap which is attractive just now) thing. These decoupling mountings from CoolTek.
http://www.cooltek.de/images/produkte/600300730_l.jpg
I don't think they'll be the best thing around, but they appear to leave space around the hard drive, which will help cooling, I can see exactly what they're doing, which should help prevent my case be the vibration amplifier it is right now. And let's not forget they've got to be the cheapest option around.
Next up on the list was the Smart Drive 2002 enclosure. It gets a very positive review at this site http://www.systemcooling.com/smart_drive-03.html SPCR have reviewed it before (a previous revision perhaps) and it comes out with a much less glowing review. Elsewhere other enclosures have performed much worse in tests, and the reviewer has said they were better than the Smart Drive. In addition, it costs the earth, so 5 of those are out. I'm also inclined to completely trust SPCR, over the years I've found the reviews here to be spot on.
And now I'm rapidly running out of ideas....
An ideal solution would be -
Doesn't look cheap and nasty.
Does not cause extra heat in the drives (not concerned if it cools them down really).
Kills seek vibration coupling.
A bonus if it reduces general noise.
Improves cabling - or at least doesn't introduce more cables.
I'm up for all ideas. But it looks like unless the CoolTek decoupling mounts are absolute rubbish then they're the best bet.
Thanks in advance for any replies!