Sound Proof Your Hard Drive

3RSystem HDD Case With Spring Suspension

The hard drive cage can be removed from the side of the case, and does not require removal or modification of any other component; it slides out to the side of the case. 3RSystem uses a spring suspension solution to achieve a decoupling of the hard drive from the computer case. In short, the screws that are used to fix hard drives to the cage aren’t screwed in directly, but rather must be driven through a part of the springs. In addition, 3RSystem adds a set of rubber washers, which further decouple the drive from the cage and the spring mounts.

Mounting hard drives through spring mounts rather than directly into a drive bay eliminates the most common mechanism for passive hard drive cooling, which involves passing heat to the drive cage itself. 3RSystem added a 120 mm front fan to cool the hard drives, and to make sure that there is sufficient ventilation for them. We measured a drive surface temperature for our test hard drive, which was 10°C below the results of the Smart Drive (see next page). The Smart Drive is a drive silencer that only relies on passive cooling.

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