Almost Silent 3700BQE need more mods! Please Help

[brianLp518]

Here's the specs:
1. AMD Athlon 2800+ Barton undervolted @ 1.425V at startup
2. Zalman CNPS7000A Cu @ ~1300-1400RPM (stock fan)
2. 2 x 512MB Micron PC3200 Dual Channel DDR RAM
3. Epox 8RDA3AI nForce2 Ultra 400 (w/ passive cooling)
4. Antec SLK3700 BQE with 120mm fan grills cut out front and back. Stock Smart Power 350W PSU. Rear 120mm @ 5V.
5. NEC 3500A 16X DVD-Burner
6. Lite-on 52X CD-RW/DVD Combo
7. Seagate 80GB 7200.7
8. Rosewill Radeon 9700 (Passive heat sink)
9. SB Audigy Gamer

Just added:
1. (2) 120GB Seagate 7200.7 HD's in RAID 0 array (don't know why I didn't go with the samsung SP's).
Soon to add:
1. 80mm L1A fan in the SmartPower 350W.
2. front 120mm fan

Temps and Readouts on 8RDAVCore:
CPU Temp: 45C
MB Temp: 38C
Input Voltage to CPU: 1.408V
PSU Fan: 1757RPM
CPU Fan: 1750RPM (Was @ 1300 until the two 120GB HD's were added)
80 GB HD Temp: 39C
120 GB HD Temp: 44C

Before I installed the HD's, the noise level on my computer was perfect... couldn't even tell it was on... Now it has an eminating hum to it, which kind of annoys me since I spent so much time researching and building...

Just had a couple of questions and concerns:
1) What's the easiest way to decouple the 3 HD's in my case? Should I remove the HD cage and suspend them vertically from the 3.5 Floppy cage?

2) Is there a better fan to put on my Zalman CNPS7000A besides the stock fan? It seems rather loud, even on the lowest setting... (I'm a noise freak).

3) Should I mod the case in any way? One of my main focuses is gettin the PSU fan to subside (from the increased power draw) which I hope to fix with the Panaflo L1A. Secondly, I need to get the "hum" from the 3 HD's to go away... It's KILLING me!

4) Is there any way to do the elastic suspensions within the 3700's built in HD cage?

5) Worst case scenario, should I just scrap all 3 HD's (the two 120GB's are a little less than a month old) and get a super large IDE HD (200GB+) and a WD Raptor to do my video editing on?

6) What should I do first? What should I do last? What shouldn't I do? Help!!!


Thanks a lot.

Brian
SPCR Junkie

[Tibors]

2) Is there a better fan to put on my Zalman CNPS7000A besides the stock fan? It seems rather loud, even on the lowest setting... (I'm a noise freak).

Look at the end of the review of the Zalman 7700. There is a description and some links how (and with which fans) to replace the fan on the Zalman 7700 and 7000 coolers.

1) What's the easiest way to decouple the 3 HD's in my case? Should I remove the HD cage and suspend them vertically from the 3.5 Floppy cage?
(...)
Secondly, I need to get the "hum" from the 3 HD's to go away... It's KILLING me!

That is what I'd do. With suspension you get rid of 90% of the idle noise. I have only one 7200.7 suspended per computer. By adding sound damping material and using a bottom air intake instead of a front air intake, I get rid of all the idle noise and the periodic buzzing noise. I can only hear the seaks if I listen very carefully and upclose.

[brianLp518]

By adding sound damping material and using a bottom air intake instead of a front air intake, I get rid of all the idle noise and the periodic buzzing noise. I can only hear the seaks if I listen very carefully and upclose.

Thanks Tibors... I was wondering what you meant by bottom air intake... You mean block up the front 120mm air intake and physically cut a hole in the bottom of the case??? This makes sense, but what tools would I need to cut a hole in the bottom of my case? I only have tin snips. Thanks.

[brianLp518]

I've been reading up more on SPCR, and I think I'm goin to buy some "stretch magic" substitute called "elasticity". Michael's doesn't carry stretch magic anymore. I will try to use the 3700 BQE HDD cage to do this... Don't know if it'll work... I'll post an update

[Tibors]

My cases are Sonata's, so they had bad front intakes anyway. Plus I wanted a large dustfilter. I used a drill for the starting hole, and then cutted a large hole with tin snips.

You might want to create the suspension first and add sound damping material arround it. Then listen how it sounds with a front intake. Before you start working on a bottom intake.

Creating a good bottom intake is a lot of work. Just a round hole below the bottom disk isn't more effective than the front intake. I put a piece of soft carpeting below the cases. The filter is housed in some filter chamber, so that blocks part of the noise. The opening isn't right at the bottom front, but more to the middle. To make room for all this I had to remove the complete drive cage. It's all still in a ghetto mod / cardboard construction fase. When I have time, I'll create the filter setup from more durable materials and write a decent description.