You may or may not be able to power down a drive that way if it's mounted. In particular, an ext3 partition may be receiving periodic journaling updates on a rapid basis. I'm running XFS, or, it would indeed power up when the journal comes due, assuming ext3 actually needs to hit the disk. When it ...

Apparently one of my six disks is responsible for this continuous, revolving, thunking noise. It actually reminds me of a light house, the way it works. The light goes around in a 360, always blinding you at the same time. Same deal, and just as continuous and predictable, but with sound. Ugh -- Ma...

I actually just yanked the plug on the front 6cm fan in the case and the nasty 2cm fan on the Celeron's HSF. So far, so cool. Too bad that thing doesn't have a temperature sensor in it. I'm perhaps the only SPCR'er who has no idea what the temperatures on any of his equipment is like. I use "the fi...

Celeron 333MHz? Slot 1 Pentium III? Oh boy, I am all over this topic! Yes, I just discovered the Celeron 333MHz is also Slot 1. I had forgotten. It was in operation for over a year before I finally took it offline as I just moved last weekend. I actually just yanked the plug on the front 6cm fan in...

Yeah, I read your rationalization right after I posted my "consolidate" recommendation. Your logic seems reasonable; pardon my minimalistic tendencies, they just come to me naturally as a single-room-dwelling student. ... I wish I could have five computers. It's loud ;) edit: That probably isn't ve...

There are a number of HD isolation or suspension methods that have been often used without creating problems. At this moment my main HD rests on a piece of backpacker foam,totally not fastened to a thing. That's a temporary situation,yet I'm not having trouble from it. The rubber grommet mount thin...

Get some fairly thick carpet,put all the machines on it. You could put foam or even bubblewrap underneath. Get the machines lined up and do a carpeted plywood panel to put on the wall behind them all. Excellent. It is SERIOUSLY time to consolidate. You could assemble a setup with a multi-terrabite ...

The referenced shock mount page applies mainly to a different situation,Arcade Games with internal computers that need to be shipped under some possibly extreme circumstances. These need to arive in a plug and play state. You have stationary stuff in a house and the CLASSIC issue of seeks resonatin...

Retake on sound problems two rooms away: 1. Is it vibrations transmitting through the case feet? 2. Is it vibrations resonating the case causing narrow-band noise (case material's natural frequency) transmitting through the walls? 3. Or is it fan noise transmitting through the walls? I believe I ge...

... as for how this applies to your problem, i would concentrate on the hard drives and decouple them as much as possible. suspension via elastic is by far the best method, and if you do it right it's fairly safe too. if you do that and change your noisy fans to quieter ones (with airflow mods to m...

Don't Hifi Stands use conical shaped feet to minimise transfer of vibrations and the like to/from the wooden floors (same on speakers to avoid losing power from speakers through floor) ? Maybe you need to invest in a decent stand that can support your collection of antiquated hardware :P 5 PC's was...

Some suggestions in this thread will certainly quiet your computers.....but they miss your real problem, a mostly bare room with hardwood floors. You'll hear your computers in such a situation, no matter what. A large piece of heavy carpet under each computer will help.....towels (heh). Heavy drape...

Here's a link to a Nexus P3 HSF. A bit expensive especially if you have to buy enough of them for all your PCs, but being that they are from Nexus (rumored to cherry pick their fans from suppliers) and are rated at 19 dBA. Nexus doesn't use their "famous" fans on their own heatsinks. Actually their...

Good luck in your efforts to quiet down your PCs. I know I've been recommending some relative expensive components like the Zalman 7000 and Scythe Ninja ($30 - $40 each), but let me make one more "expensive" suggestion: Ouch. That's expensive. ;) Get the SeaSonic S12-330 PSU. It is a solid PSU that...

I used to run 2 Spire WhisperRock IV's on an ASUS CUV4X-D, dual P3-866Mhz. Same heatsink as the WhisperRock V but with a regular fan instead of that inverted fan. I've seen that board. I passed it up for the 370DLE, but nearly got one. (The 370DLE I bought off Ebay came with two matched CPUs and a ...

My first thought, as I'm running a couple of CPU's of this vintage myself, is that you should be able to get away with running any of them fanless as long as you have a half-decent heatsink on them, and a good thermal interface. I've been running a socket 370 celeron 1.4 fanless for years now just ...

I've searched the forums for potential active and passive cooling options for my Socket 370 CPUs (dual P3 Coppermines ~ 25W) on a Supermicro 370DLE mainboard and a Celeron 333MHz on an Intel BX(?) chipset board. The latter I suspect I can cool passively with a HSF upgrade and a disabled fan. The for...

Regarding the grommets I've read elsewhere that while they can potentially reduce vibrations and thus noise, they are by no means a "silver bullet." Also when used with a DVD Burner it can cause write errors, not sure why on this point, but I have sent that stated many times over in this forum. The...

The bar towel I have is actually quite thin; only 1/8" thick. I don't really have that much vibrations coming from my case, and the real purpose is so that I can easily slide my PC in and out while I experiement with a couple of things. I suggest a good quality towel that is "lush" enough to feel v...

Having carpeting will definitely help cut down on vibrations transmitted thru the floor. I live in an apartment with wood floors and I use a Guinese bar towel that I got for free (Woohoo!!!) which I put under my PC. Personally, I hate carpeting, so rugs would be an alternative. Good, so I am on the...

I just moved and my half dozen computers are all running on a wood (or wood like) floor. The entire house has wood floors. The sound from the systems suffers from an echo effect. What's more, the floor boards seem to vibrate and it can be heard pretty clearly in every corner of the house, upstairs a...