SPCR

Just thought I'd like to share my method of suspending my HDD's in my P182's lower cage.

Sorry for the crappy phone cam pics in advance.

B-E-A-UTIFUL.

What material did you use? Any difference in noise when it's all said and done?

I used stretch magic for it.

And since i was introduced to suspension 5 builds ago, I refuse to use a system without it. All of my systems use 2 hard drives, and without suspension, there is a harmonic pulsing hum that is impossible to get rid of.

Now I just have to figure out a way to cool them well

What drives are those?

Just a seagate 300 and a western digital 400.

The western digital is much quieter idle, but has louder seeks. Runs about 4 degrees hotter, or at least reports so.

Mankey wrote:All of my systems use 2 hard drives, and without suspension, there is a harmonic pulsing hum that is impossible to get rid of.

I'm guessing that your hard drives have different RPMs and the noise you hear is their beat frequency. I experienced the same thing with my hard drives- one 5400 and one 7200.

Mankey wrote:Now I just have to figure out a way to cool them well

A Yate-Loon 92mm fan fits between the front of the hard drive cage and the air grate. I have one zip tie'd in there, with its power cable going up through a hole in the upper chamber "floor" that lets it out into the two cavities on either side of the floppy bay, and from there connects to the header on my P5B, so it's Speedfan'd very low. It made a 10 C difference in temps on my 74GB Raptor and 250GB 7200.10 Seagate.

Jeff Cutsinger wrote:

Mankey wrote:All of my systems use 2 hard drives, and without suspension, there is a harmonic pulsing hum that is impossible to get rid of.

I'm guessing that your hard drives have different RPMs and the noise you hear is their beat frequency. I experienced the same thing with my hard drives- one 5400 and one 7200.

Yes, that is exactly what I am talking about, took me several months of going absolutely crazy to figure out what the problem was. This was back in ~2001 before I found this awesome site.

The beat frequency effect is even apparent with hard drive of the "same" RPM ratings. I figure that its almost impossible to keep at an exact 7200 RPM spped all the time, which really amplifies the harmonic pulsing as the speeds cross and move away from each other.

Ryan Norton wrote:

Mankey wrote:Now I just have to figure out a way to cool them well

A Yate-Loon 92mm fan fits between the front of the hard drive cage and the air grate. I have one zip tie'd in there, with its power cable going up through a hole in the upper chamber "floor" that lets it out into the two cavities on either side of the floppy bay, and from there connects to the header on my P5B, so it's Speedfan'd very low. It made a 10 C difference in temps on my 74GB Raptor and 250GB 7200.10 Seagate.

I modded the cage a bit so i could fit a 120mm yate loon on there on low. I've removed the grate, and even took off the mini door in front of the chamber.

Even then I'm seeing temps of 38-41 degrees even under minor load. Stupid restrictive bezel.

Nice work!

How are the harddrives normally mounted in the bottom cage in the P182? Horizontally using the drive's bottom screwholes, or vertically using the screwholes on the side of the drive?

Moogles wrote:Nice work!

How are the harddrives normally mounted in the bottom cage in the P182? Horizontally using the drive's bottom screwholes, or vertically using the screwholes on the side of the drive?

Vertically using the screws to the sides of the drive, utilizing the soft silicone washers as dampening. In my experience, while these spacers work well for a single drive, they do not stop the harmonic "beat" of two drives.

Mankey wrote:

Ryan Norton wrote:

Mankey wrote:Now I just have to figure out a way to cool them well

A Yate-Loon 92mm fan fits between the front of the hard drive cage and the air grate. I have one zip tie'd in there, with its power cable going up through a hole in the upper chamber "floor" that lets it out into the two cavities on either side of the floppy bay, and from there connects to the header on my P5B, so it's Speedfan'd very low. It made a 10 C difference in temps on my 74GB Raptor and 250GB 7200.10 Seagate.

I modded the cage a bit so i could fit a 120mm yate loon on there on low. I've removed the grate, and even took off the mini door in front of the chamber.

Even then I'm seeing temps of 38-41 degrees even under minor load. Stupid restrictive bezel.

The bezel design is indeed poor. In an "empty" Antec Solo case, I see 41 degrees for my four Seagate 7200.10 320GB drives. This is with two 7V 92mm Panaflo fans in the front of the case and a full speed Scythe 120mm fan in the rear. Other than the drives, the only thing in the case is a Seasonic power supply (with its own 120mm fan). The room temp is 21 degrees.

If I crank up the Panaflo fans, the drive temps drop about 1-3 degrees. But then my external drive case becomes quite noisy.

Honestly, some or perhaps all of the issue is the drives. I also have two 74GB 10K Raptors in a Lian-Li EX-34 drive cage with a 7V ADDA 120mm fan (stock Lian-Li). The drives run at 24 degrees. Same room, same ambient. Different case, but also limited air flow.

My lesson was for Antec builds to pick drives very carefully.

I'm thinking about doing this for my P180B.

I don't want to drill holes in the drive cage (did you have to drill those holes?). Would it be bad to suspend the drives with Stretch Magic, but have them oriented vertically, i.e. about the same as they are now but suspended instead of screwed to the silicone grommets?

I honestly cannot hear my HDD's anyway, so maybe I'm not seeing the point in this????

Ryan Norton wrote:Would it be bad to suspend the drives with Stretch Magic, but have them oriented vertically, i.e. about the same as they are now but suspended instead of screwed to the silicone grommets?

I don't think it would be bad to do that.

I think it would be hard to suspend them vertically, because there is very little clearance. Literally a few millimetres. Hopefully in the next revision they will put some holes in the side, but for those of us stuck with the current version it's a bit of a pain.

Unless you were thinking of hooking under and around the drives? It might work, but it would be harder to remove and re-install the drives.

PS. I have to agree, nothing compares to suspended HDDs for noise.

How do you prevent movement front to back with this setup? Or do you rarely move your pc? I will pack mine up monthly for road trips and suspension systems always cause them to knock around a bit.

Suspension is not ideal for systems that need to be moved a lot. You might be able to use screws and/or metal bars to attach the drive more firmly to the elastic. I found that worked quite well and had the added advantage of the metal being quite effective as a heatsink.

Who else has suspended his hard drives in the P182? Can you post some pics?

Not nearly as neat, but it works:



The HDD suspension has two sides which were cut off from a left-over HDD encasing from work.

Mankey,

it is possible to have 3 HD's suspended in the lower HD chamber?

why didn't you do that?

Justchill wrote:Mankey,

it is possible to have 3 HD's suspended in the lower HD chamber?

why didn't you do that?

Yes, it would be possible to have 3 suspended in there. I really have no need for 3 hard drives, as I have a (louder) server box with 3 terrabytes that I keep in a totally different room for my mass storage reasons.

I just run 2 drives in my main rig to have faster file processing capabilities when doing audio/video, etc.

I've ordered some stretch magic. What thickness did you use?

Where did you make your knot? I can't see it on the pictures..

I believe i used .8mm. I made my knots on the far side of the cage, when its in place in the case, you cannot see them at all from the "show" side.

I've just suspended the first of my hard drives in the 5.25" area, and its really reduced the noise from my main OS hard drive, and whilst my WD GP drive is very quiet I can notice its vibrational noise even mounted on the rubber grommetted trays in the upper HD cage.

I've just been sat with the lower cage trying to figure out how I could suspend my 2nd drive in it and having searched the site and found this I think I will take a similar approach and get my drill out and make some holes so I can mount them as you have

Only problem I'm thinking of is that there is very little ventilation in the lower chamber as my PSU's fan is only spinning around 400rpm normally so barely moves any air over the hard drives which is why I moved them to the upper chamber originally...

Think I will have to try and find a way to fit a 120mm down there, maybe re-arrange the cables a bit better so I can fit a fan in the middle slot, although its in a really awkward position!