Hey guys. ive just fitted a new psu, from my old haggard thing, to a new antec truepower 480w, and the difference in noise is amazing, so much quiater now. this has made me want to try and reduce the noise of my pc. So, i was thinking, SATA hdd, but u guys no of any quiate ones? also any of components that wud lower noise levels, or any tricks? thanks
You mean quiet by the way Well for a start, I've heard the Samsung drives are pretty quiet, and Seagates usually are too. As for silencing them, linkage. Acoustic foam can be used in the case to cut down noise, but might have an effect on temps. Overall though, SilentPC is your friend.
Firstly quiet, it isn't a complicated word. Now onto HDDs, and there are a few brands that you could look at including Maxtor, Seagate and Samsung. The new 7200.8 from Seagate is meant to be very quiet, and the Samsung drives are often widely commented as being almost silent. I own a recent Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 10 and I must say I cannot here it most of the time. Reducing fan count is a key component in reducing the noise from your PC, think how many of those fans inside your case you actually need to run. Then replace the rest with SilenX or AcoustiFan fans. CPU and graphics card cooling systems can also be replaced with Zalman, Thermaltake (with low noise fan), Scythe or Arctic Cooling quiet cooling solutions. Taking this further you can mount all components that produce vibrations, such as fans and hard drives, on rubber grommets to prevent rattling. With hard drives you can take this a step further and place the drive inside a specialist 5.25" silent bay. To further reduce vibrations and stop some noise escaping the case thick matting can be stuck onto the case, such as AcoustiPack sound proofing. If you really want to take it further you can use a passive water cooling solution such as the Zalman Reserator QuietPC Kustom PCS
lol yeah im nakerd and bad at spelling right, sounds good. ill have a think and read through some stuff, and check my finances thanks
I've recently been looking into a new HDD as well and from all the reviews I've read the Seagate 7200.8's seem to be the drive to get. But I have read alot of good about the maxtor drives with 16MB cache... The DiamondMax 10,s IIRC.
I own two samsung hdd's. I own a spinpoint 160gb hdd that pushes 53mb/s and is completly silent. and I have a sata 80gig hdd that pushes 49mb/s and is completly quiet. To be quite honest I am extremly happy with these samsung drives and can oficialy say they have erned my respect and perform realy well. I was skeptical of these but they proved me wrong.
Seagate's idle is quiter, but seeks are louder than the Samsung. Definately stay away from WD and their non-FDB bearings (I think they're called Rotary Voice Coil). Maxtor's seeks are somewhat audible, but can be tuned. Hitachis meow and run warm so stay away from them.
i would highly recommend the seagate or the samsung spinpoints. i have one of each and they are both very very quite.
The new spinpoints are different to the older ones I believe they use different bearings and are a lot noisier, stick with the seagates for low noise levels.
Seagate barracuda. Ive got the IDE version, and i swear by the brand, great reliability, ive got a 40gig here thats pushing 3-4 years old an it still running great, they tend to get a little louder the longer you have them, but any drive will do that. Go Seagate!!
Personally all the drives I have are pretty quiet - 2x Seagate 7200.7's, a WD 80GB (probably FDB-based, not sure) and a 36GB raptor, all SATA. In my experience most new hard drives are pretty quiet but SilenX recommends Seagates above anything else.
When you get it use the hitachi HDD tool to set AAM to 128. This should reduce seek noise a little nad the tool works with almost any HDD. Your next step is to suspend it on elastic. It's a lot cheaper than a 5.25" drive converter (Like £1 total cost ) but takes a little longer. Google 'HDD suspension' and you should find many guides on the subject. BTW, it makes a MASSIVE impact on noise, once it's done you might be able to reduce the levels of AAM (to >250) and improve performance a little.
*IF* you get a samsung, make sure you dont mount them touching metal, the drvies for some reason are much noiser under seek... Mounted mine ontop of a dvd-rom now and its silent again. It might be worth looking to get a hdd enclosure to reduce the noise tbh.. SilentDrive or the SilentMax are probably the best. QuietPC sell them iirc.
