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Microfly and Hard Drive Noise

P

pjaank

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
May 10, 2001
Messages
1,114
Hey, tried a search, and nothing came up. I realize the Microfly is made of thinner metal, and the windows don't help w/ noise suppression much either. Any which way, has anyone tried some noise dampening efforts w/ the hard drive? Rubber gaskets/washers between the HD and the cage, or the cage and the case?

Of course, maybe it's just due to the Barracuda too, who knows. But, figured I'd investigate it. Let me know!
 
First, I would go to SilentPCReview for noise cancelling techniques.

I chucked the hard drive bracket that slides into the right side of the case, drilled straight through the support bar and screwed the drives in with ear plug foam on one end and glued rubber washers on the other, with ear plug foam glued to the top. I am sure it helped, but objectively I can not say how much. That bracket was an awful design, because number one it is unnecessary and number two the aluminum is going to vibrate back and forth and make a ton of case noise.

The best thing you can do, and I did this with a 74GB Raptor when I built my parent's system, is use the bottom 3.5" bay and suspend the drive with nylon bungee cord. It almost completely eliminates vibration from the drive and reduced sound noise by 1/2. You can pick up some bungee from McMaster and plastic connectors with screw holes to thread it through. There used to be a good writeup on SPCreview, but I can't find it...

You can also buy one of those suspension systems and mount it in a 5 1/4" bay. There are also some enclosure systems that will work, but be careful about heat. Barracudas of any generation should run relatively quiet and cool.

Other things you can do are silence your case itself - get some foam and seal off the holes in the front of the case. Noise is largely directional and you especially want to seal off open areas that point toward you. 3M spray on glue + volara foam or hacked up sleeping pad work well. If you use the 80mm intake on the front of the case, cut out the fan grill and the tiny plastic vents it sucks in air from. Anytime a fan is sucking againt a nearly solid surface, it creates a lot of turbulence and noise. The way they have it designed is an extremely terrible design, both for airflow and noise.
 
I'd just pick up some sewing elastic and suspend the hard drive. However, being an extremely small case, the Microfly is nearly impossible to suspend a hard drive in. There's only a few places that you can suspend the hard drive and not risk it getting overheated:

1) Right underneath the 3 1/2'' bays where there's the 80mm fan.
2) Where the rear fan is.

When I get home I'll post some pictures of my inverted airflow setup. It looks interesting, to say the least. I have two strands of elastic running lengthwise through the case, anchored to the screw holes at the back for the fan [and effectively I also have my case fan suspended] and some screw holes at the front for the 5 1/4'' bays. Its extremely effective and it puts the hdd right in the path off intake [My rear 120mm fan is an intake]. However, with some hard drives, you'll never be able to get rid of the 'whooshing' sound unless you swap out the hard drive or enclose it.
 
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