I used the shoe laces to weave back and forth through the slots in the side of the 5.25" bays, pulling the laces tight and leaving a 1cm gap to stretch and slot the drives in.
In case it matters the drives are:
3 x Western Digital WD500AAKS
1 x Samsung HD103UJ
When I booted the system I noticed quite a bit of vibration coming through around the the top compartment (where the motherboad/drives are).
Now a bit of background on the system, as mentioned the case is a Lian Li PC-V2000 which houses a dual AMD Opteron system. I have 2 x Opteron 246HE (2.0GHz, 55w TPD each) and a Supermicro PCI-X SATA controller installed. The video card installed is an XFX 7800GTX, which besides during boot up is quite quiet (although I'll be removing it anyways and be running the system without a video card). The CPU's are passively cooled using Thermalright HR-01 towers, the only case fans used are 2 x 120mm Nexus fans (set to 7v/lowest speed using a Speedfan) at the front of the 5.25" bays to blow air over the drives into the the motherboard compartment. There is also 1 exhaust 120mm Nexus. The PSU is an Antec 550w EPS12V unit.
To get a base line reading of the vibration I unplugged the power from all the drives and booted the system. I then plugged the power back into the drives, which is when I noticed the vibration.
I think it could be a couple of things:
1) The laces may not be suitable - too taught / not elastic enough?
2) The support legs for the motherboard + the screws attaching the motherboard to them are loose or damaged. I've tried fixing this but they keep sinking.
Should I be using some sort of rubber washers (o rings) to dampen the motherboard? Can I buy newmotherboard supports anywhere for Lian Li case?
Any other ideas what it could be in general?
I'll take some pictures later. I know once the vibration has been solved this is going to be one quiet server
