Quietest possible case

[Fallen]

I have an old KR7A-266R/XP2100+ that has become a home fileserver. The problem is the noise from the hard drives. It has 4 80Gb Maxtors that sound like a dogfight and 2 250Gb WDs that are anything byt silent. Long story short, the old Lian-Li PC60 case that houses the thing isn't much on stopping noise. I want a case that will keep all of that noise inside. I don't care how ugly it is, I just want it quiet. Any ideas?

 

[arnold873]

well i have an idea for a mod but it would be almost impossible for you to do it the MB manufacturer would have to build em like this

first the cpu and any other hot chip like the southbridge should be mounted on the opisite side of the MB
that way a very large heatsink as large as the MB in fact can be mounted with spacers to it.
the power supply can be a fanless variety and the video cards hooked up to a liquid cooling system also atteched to the mammoth heat sink
so all you would hear is the HD`s opticals and and occasional pump of the liquid cooling



in your case though (i would keep the lian case)you could try a fanless power supply and some larger case fans (which are much quieter) that push more air. just keep your heat monitor with a cpu stressor, seeing if you need more cooling -- you might even be able to lose some fans.
there is also insulator you can buy -- often used for car stereo installations taht can deaden the noise
it is a thin material

good luck

 

[Codesmith]

Any nosily rattling going on, if so there are ways to easily fix that.

You can also simply move the PC to a closet, basement etc, or set the hard drives to powerdown when not in use.

Not alot you can do if its just the normal hard drive noise. You can buy sheets of sound absorbing foam, but its expensive and I am not sure how well it will work considering you need to have air vents for the fans.

Just ordinarly sheets of foam might help.

There are enclosure's to help silence hard drives, some just prevent vibration, more expensive ($60) completely enclose the drive.

It would be cheaper just to buy quieter hard drives. I hear new WD 320GB is nice and quiet.

www.storagereview.com has a performance database which includes idle noise levels.