I had a Smartpower 350 that emitted a high-pitched whine, similar to the noise you mention. I RMA'd it to Antec, and requested that instead of replacing it with another SP350, they trade me up to an EarthWatts 380. They agreed to this. The new EA380 is much quieter than the SP350, mainly because it ...

138.

Those visual and memory tests seemed to have little to do with IQ... At least, I'd like to think so, because that's where I dropped most of my points.

It recently occurred to me that one could combine the two of these together and potentially get the best of both worlds: dampening and cooling. Unfortunately, when installed in a 5 1/4 bay in my CoolCases D8000, the drive (a WD5000YS) went up to 47C. So I called the experiment a failure and parked t...

To be clear, I'm using McMaster's 8514K55, which is 1/2 inch thick. I chose the softest kind, durometer = 40.

I have two intact slabs left, so I'll see if putting the entire slab under the disks makes a difference. If it does, I'll cut some strips and try again.

I will try to remember to take pictures when I take the drive cage out. Concerning the statement that in the best circumstances Sorbothane can be equivalent to elastic islation... Have you tried Sorbothane dampening yourself? I have seen little evidence that this is true, while my own experience wou...

I recently dismantled the Aphonos-style suspension I had set up in my D8000 (same chassis as the SLK-3700AMB). The drives in question: Maxtor 250GB DM+9 and Seagate 200GB 700.7. I never really liked the way the drives could potentially bump around in the case if shaken, and I could never quite get t...

Time for a contrarian. XP is the 2K codebase evolved over a couple of years. It is generally comparable or superior in terms of speed and stability to W2K, with the added advantage that ISVs and IHVs care more about how their products perform on XP than on 2K. XP has some really nice features that 2...

I wonder if the Evercool fan might be most useful as an intake fan, since the airflow noise of an intake fan is more muffled than that of the exhaust fan. In my main system's case (Coolcases D8000 with added Acoustipack), I have a Papst 4412FGL for intake and a 120mm Panaflo L as exhaust. I find the...

I disagree that Maxtor FDB drives are too loud. The seeks may be louder than those of recent Seagate drives, but that's what AAM is for. Even without AAM, a Maxtor DM+9 is much quieter than its Western Digital equivalents. Isolated, a DM+9 can be used to build a quiet system. In short, I demand a re...

It looks like they're linking to the SPCR article now, so our massive demonstrations paid off.

Maxtor DiamondMax Plus9. Seeking is atrociously loud. Sounds like velcro ripping repeatedly. I have a DM+9 and I can barely hear the seek noises at all. Granted, the disk is lying upside-down on foam, tied down with elastic cords, inside a Coolcases D8000 with Acoustipack material all over. But it'...

My Powerleap PL-iP3/T came with a small copper heatsink that looks exactly like that Dynatron. The default 60mm fan was too loud, so I got a 60->80mm fan adapter and added a Panaflo L on a fanmate: http://store.yahoo.com/directron/aladapter.html Attaching the adapter to the heatsink was a little bit...

I'd guess that either your P4 case had zero airflow, or the heatsink wasn't installed properly. My own well-ventilated P4 2.8C CPU (with a Zalman 7000 AlCu on lowest) gets about 28-32C idle and 45-50C load, depending on room temperature (65-75F). 65C at load is just nuts. Maybe if your room temperat...

I have a 200GB DM+9. It is very quiet suspended or placed on a foam surface. Screwed in, seeks are not quiet. But few drives have quiet seeks screwed in. Idle noise is very low. I have an 80GB 7200.7. Its idle noise and seeks are reasonably quiet suspended. However, it vibrates a lot when screwed in...

The drive CompUSA is selling is an ST380013A, which is a 7200.7 model.

http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=barracuda+iv still gives a good number of hits.

It's not clear to me if MikeC was interviewed, or they just ripped some text from his review.

Unfortunately, SPCR is not linked to prominently. It's only given a non-hypertext reference at the bottom of the article.

http://news.com.com/2100-1042_3-5096176 ... g=nefd_top

Last night I deployed a new 80GB 7200.7 to a system that was using whining Maxtor DM+ 60. The whining is now gone, of course, but there isn't blessed silence yet. The 7200.7 is a vibrating machine. When screwed in, you can feel it vibrating away. Even with ribber grommets in an Evercase, it transfer...

Unfortunately, the Seashield on a Medalist Pro does not have the same screw layout as the 7200.7, so I was unable to transfer the shield over to the new drive and experiment.

Somehow I doubt that Seagate Rep has ever done a noise comparison between the cuda V and the 7200.7. :) He didn't make any noise-level comparisons between these two models. He merely said that the Seashield was not a significant factor in reducing drive noise. Do we have evidence that states that h...

I was just talking with a Seagate rep about the Seashield, and he said a couple of interesting things that may interest some people here. Has anyone actually confirmed any of these statements by playing with their own Seagate drives? Paraphrasing: Q: I just bought a 7200.7 drive. Why doesn't it have...

A review establishing the effect on disk temperatures of the new heatpipe-based Zalman hard drive cooler combined with a suspended disk and an optional intake fan.

Today was the next to last day of summer. It was hot. Room temperature is 81F. Case temperature right now is 33C. The DM+9 is at 48C. The Cuda V is at 49C. Starting to cross the borderline of acceptability, in other words. Eventually, room temperature will return to the standard 70F. That gives me a...

I have ocasionally suffered from the problem of having two or more disks humming along at not quite exactly the same 7200 RPM frequency and resonating with each other, leading to annoyingly noticeable low-frequency hums at regular intervals. Having too many disks is a bad thing. The way I've solved ...

After suffering from the infamous periodic hum problem, I was inspired by this thread to suspend my own drives in a similar manner in my Coolcases D8000. My two disks are a 200GB DiamondMax Plus 9 and a 120MB Seagate Barracuda V. Both are very quiet idle, but exhibit some vibrations. The Seagate is ...

If the Papst move less air but is quieter, shouldn't you use it for exhaust and the Panaflo for intake, since you already have another exhaust (your PSU fan)? And having the noisier fan inside will help muffle it a bit too. A good call. Here are my reasons: The D8000 intake only fits a 120x25 fan c...

I got a Papst 4412FGL from Directron yesterday, and installed it as exhaust in my Coolcases D8000 as a replacement to a malfunctioning 120mm L1A. (It was making soft but noticeable helicopter noises... Go figure.) Anyway, the comparison is just how the specs would indicate. The Papst is a bit quiete...

Mike, I was measuring noise by covering the outlets with my hand and seeing which produced a greater muffling of the existing noise. Not the most scientific approach, I'll agree. I just looked into this again, and I think the major noisemaker was actually the intake JMC fan - that's what I was heari...

So I went and replaced the default SS-400FS fan with a Panaflo L1A. The case temperature went up a degree or two, but it's still quite acceptable (31C idle with room temperature at 27C). The L1A is _much_ quieter than the default fan, and the air coming out of the PSU is 40C (up from 38C or so). I t...

I use the sensor as a general case temperature reading. For some reason my Maxtor 4R080J0 isn't giving MBM temperature readings on Win2003, so I want to know what's going on at the bottom of the case. The temps I gave were indeed 1,2,3. I don't see any temperature reading changes from changing Speed...

My BX6-2 gives me three temperatures: Winbond 1 through 3. 3 is the sensor, located at the bottom of the case next to the disks. The other two are related to the Slot1 somehow, but I'm not sure what exactly they mean. Today room temperature is about 80F. I measured temperatures with the L1As at 11V ...