Several retailers offer digital voltmeter kits or modules that might work. http://www.canakit.com has several but they are probably too tall to fit in a 5 1/4 inch slot. The kit at http://www.electronickits.com/kit/complete/meas/ck104.htm allows you to separate the display from the circuit board. Bu...

Glassman - I most certainly believe you!

mrzed - I agree a soft elastic material would work better than something hard or stiff. A contrasting extreme might be steel wire. Steel wire would transmit vibrations very well. Soft materials dissipate vibration energy by convering it to heat. But I think your violin string example is wrong. First...

Glassman - isn't glass related to silicon, not silicone? The main ingredient of sand is silicon dioxide. Silicone is a synthetic polymer and although related to silicon, has nothing to do with glass.

I am certainly not a chemist so I am no authority in this....

The pitch or base frequencies of any fan can be calculated from the rpm and the number of blades. A fan spinning at 1900 rpm is the same as 1900/60 rps or about 32 rps. Revolutions per second is equivalent to hertz. That is the base motor noise frequency. That noise would most likely be vibration - ...

Hmmm.... I am running a 8500DV AIW with a ZM17 with zero problems. All TV functions work fine. I removed the old HS using the freezer method. I had to work a bit to scrape off the old glue (using lighter fluid (not for charcoal!) and a credit card to scrape with). I do not use a dedicated fan. The Z...

Wouldn't it just be easier to replace the L1A with a "next best" case fan with RPM wire? You could try the Papst (a bit expensive) or another recommened fan.

Hmm.....is the power in the UK that stable and consistent? Here in Central Texas we have thunderstorms which cause both spikes and outages. Four years ago I lost about $5000 of electronics because of a surge through the analog phone line during a thunderstorm. And we have periodic brief (less than 5...

This site has every which kind of silence-oriented PC hobbyist. I for one can't fathom buying something expensive and under-clocking or under-volting it. I also value stability a great deal so overclocking is just not appealing. I have to say though that ripping MP3s in 5 minutes is a lot better tha...

With transparent plastic I think the thing to do is paint the inside, not the outside. Scratches on the outside would not hurt the paint. I believe the look could be pretty interesting since you would have one quarter inch of clear plastic in front of the paint. Painting the inside of clear plastic ...

After several years of experimenting - I have settled on the following for my most important system: 160 Gb WD (I know - noisy!) with 25 Gb for XP and programs, 135 Gb for non-critical data like temp, swap file, video capture, etc. 2 x 200Gb Seagate in RAID-1 for everything I really care about. It i...

I think the best evidence that suspended mounting doesn't harm drives is the language in hard disk warranties. They don't require rigid mounting. I suppose a contrarian view is that warranties are now so short that the drive makers know that soft mounting has no impact on the first few years of a dr...

Maxamus - your analysis of a suspension bridge is surely more accurate than mine. The compression you mention is the downward force exerted by the cables on the pillars. The bridge is not equally stiff in both directions. It would not be trivial to lift the bridge from underneath - but the primary r...

Wim - the head on the Maxtor drive I took apart is not geared. I'd be very surprised if a gear were used because gears have "slack" and the head movement must be extremely accurate. The head on the Maxtor is essentially a "motor" that is reversible. It has a limited range of motion. The voltage to t...

Maxamus - you need to study a bit of physics. The suspended bridge analogy is not applicable in this case. In a suspended bridge the primary force is exerted by gravity creating tension in the cables. The bridge is effectively "stiff" in one direction. If by chance King Kong went underneath the brid...

Ham-solo, How are you going to mount the motherboard? Directly to a wood side panel? How will you handle the ATX connector panel? I have always been told (I don't know by who!) that grounding was important. One idea for the motherboard is to buy a motherboard tray for those cases that have removable...

Perhaps if you were nicer to your fans they wouldn't make angry noises.....

Neil - your points about blade noise are excellent. They will generate a fundamental sound exactly as you describe. However I think you have the harmonics off just a bit. A harmonic is a multiple of a base frequency. The second harmonic of 33.33 hz is 66.66 hz. The third is 100hz, not 133.33. hz. Yo...

Soft mounting to a rigid surface.....

Yes - I agree. That is the best of all.

Soft mounting helps in almost any case as many here know. But the sheet metal still is flexible and transmits whatever vibrations are not absorbed by the soft mounting.

Maxxymus - most of what I wrote is accumulated knowledge from another hobby - speaker building. It is really just acoustics. A good book that covers some of these topics is The Loudspeaker Design Cookbook. The sections on enclosure design are most relevant to this topic. The addition/cancellation th...

Harmonics are multiples of a base frequency. A fan spinning at 2000 revs. per minute (RPM) is the same thing as 33.33 rps (second). The fan will generate a base noise of 33 hz (hertz). That is very low in frequency - lower than most loudspeakers can produce well. A harmonic might be generated too du...

Vegita, I have a hard time believing you can't free up enough space on your drive to get back enough space to run a defrag. The standard things like emptying your recycle bin, deleting temporary internet files, etc. can do quite a bit. One other thing - if the file system by chance is FAT instead of...

I hope you realize the impact of that fragmented, nearly full drive. First of all existing files on the drive scattered all over the place in little pieces. I don't know what the executables for the your games look like, but probably the files are large. When you start the game Windows has to load t...

If you are an electronic kit kind of guy - you can find all kinds of suitable amplifiers here. They are generally very small and silent. They need power supplies. You might be able to find an amp that runs off 12V available from the PC PS.

The LEDs on the ZMFC1 are bright. But they are not constant brightness. They vary depending on the speed/voltage fed to that particular circuit. At very low speeds they have a subtle blink. For some reason a L1A on one of the circuits refuses to light the LED although the cicuit works fine. I think ...

Why not the Zalman ZM-FC1? It has knobs for 4 fans and switches (12/5/off) for two more. It is almost black (dark transparent blue). It doesn't fit a 3.5 inch bay. I have one and although I have it controlling just three fans (cpu, intake and exhaust), it works very well.

I found the following on Seagate's web site via their instant answers: Orientation Seagate drives are designed to operate in virtually any mounting position. However, performance characterisitcs of the drive are tested with the drive mounted horizontally (circuit board down) or vertically (on the dr...

I built my first PC following the instructions at the site listed below:

http://www.pcmech.com/byopc/

It has very methodical instructions for building a PC.

I have a slightly less scientific assessment of the DP-101 to offer. I bought one about four months ago for my kid's computer to replace a damned noisy CoolerMaster HAC-V81. I bought that before I found SPCR! The cpu is an AMD XP1700+. I have an SLK800 in my other system (XP2000). I bought the DP101...

Based on SPCR recommendations I modifed an Enermax EG365P VE FCA by replacing the stock 80 mm fan with a Panaflo L1A. I removed the 92mm bottom fan also. It is quieter and temps seem unchanged. The PS case has an air intake on the rear in addition to the hole where the 92 mm fan was. Should I cover ...