Elastomer Fan Mount Grommits - A Group Buy

BriceB · Post by **BriceB** » Fri Feb 28, 2003 9:14 pm

jamoore9 wrote: Okay, I'm definitely not sure what to do with those. Insert into the drive side, then insert into drive cage hole?

They fit between the drive cage and whatever the cage may be mounted onto (in the diameter of the screw hole).. pardon my french.

NOTE TO ALL FAN/HDD Grommet Purchasers:
McMaster Carr is currently out of stock on the F-344 fan grommets. They have plety of the G-410 HDD mounts in stock. If you're going to order from them I suggest calling them at (630)833-0300, or corresponding via e-mail on their availbility. If you have the time, I'd appreciate your help in helping me get rid of these things once I can find a suitable distributor

word on the samples: they didn't come this Friday.. I assume they'll be here on Monday.

I'm also looking forward to seishino's review..

Brice

seishino · Post by **seishino** » Wed Mar 05, 2003 6:21 am

Just an update...

The grommets from Silicon Acoustics haven't arrived yet, so no review today. That is all.

jinu117 · Post by **jinu117** » Wed Mar 05, 2003 2:52 pm

Well I've been using those fan grommets from SA... (bought like 40+ of them at one time and for few systems I have... one of system hogging 24 of it)... They do make noticeble difference for my untrained ear. My case which has reputation for being solid case (cooler master ATC-201) used to have vibrations induced from both HDD & FAN... (I basically feel the case with my palm and noticed it). Once the HDD was isolated (NoVibe 3), the vibration significantly reduced. After EAR, it is gone now as far as my hand can feel. I would presume this vibration noises will be accentuated in flimsy cases with less rigid caes though. It really would be case dependent is my guess. In my case however, it does make noticeble difference for fan running at 1200-1300 RPM ranges. (Even more noticeble for running at full speed but you would worry about something else at that point).
One thing I am worried about the HDD mount is that you probably need to widen up the HDD cage or counter sink it somewhat as it WILL add additional width to HDD (or reduce the space for HDD). I tried rubber grommets without doing above before and had to give up due to lots of torn rubber grommets, etc. Since Aluminum is not the easiet material to work with when bending to correct shape is involved I've been holding off on EAR HDD. Maybe some of adventurers can give us news on it.

mynci · Post by **mynci** » Wed Mar 05, 2003 3:29 pm

sorry i havent got back to everyone that wanted the grommets sooner, however i have been tracking down other options. the best i have come up with is a small company. they are UK based and are supplied by gelmec. i will have a word with them tomorrow and see if there willing to do a deal or anything. i know they will send them out just in first class post. but ill see if they do a bulk discount or anything.
i will post tomorrrow when i have news, i think they will do them for at least as good a price as i could get them to anyone for, so its definately worth the wait.
cheers.

BriceB · Post by **BriceB** » Thu Mar 06, 2003 9:03 am

jinu117 wrote:I tried rubber grommets without doing above before and had to give up due to lots of torn rubber grommets, etc. Since Aluminum is not the easiet material to work with when bending to correct shape is involved I've been holding off on EAR HDD. Maybe some of adventurers can give us news on it.

I just mounted my 2 HDDs in a standard 2x3.5" aluminum cage w/ EARs G-410 HDD grommets.. and the results are very nice

.. it was a bitch to one side of the grommet through the whole ( I used a small & dull flathead.. ).. but I did manage. The grommets also came w/ the "Shoulder Bolt" and were made out of the blue (most flexible) ISODAMP material..

When sticking the drives in.. the cage was widened @ .22", although this didn't seem to be any issue.

NOTE: This would of been nearly impossible if I couldn't remove my drive cage.

seishino · Post by **seishino** » Fri Mar 07, 2003 6:47 pm

Hi everyone!

The verdict is in, and the elastomer mounts had a *slight* edge (about 1db) over the earplug-based mounts. My theory: the earplug mounts simply held the fan too far away from the case, and the edge effect started to be an issue. Also of note is the fact that neither of the types of mounts would work with 120mm Panaflo fans and that two of the silicon mounts (which took some force to go in) were destroyed in the process of removal. The earplugs weren't strong enough a material to hold up the 120mm Panaflo without significant sagging, but worked fine with both 80mm fans.

That is all for now, just know that this is good stuff. I'll post a full story later.

BriceB · Post by **BriceB** » Sat Mar 08, 2003 12:52 pm

Seishimo,

Good stuff! Now for the HDD grommets? I forgot to mail 'em out last week.. expect soon

Anyway, I just finished posting my mod. The Fan/HDD mounts REALLY worked out well. Let me know when you writeup the full story, and I'll include a link to it.

For now.. I'm locating distributors..

Brice

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Wed Mar 12, 2003 12:13 pm

Interesting, I ordered grommets for both fan and HDs, shipped UPS ground, my order was $17.47, no shipping charges are listed.

The really BAD thing about this sight is you could spend more hours wandering around here than at Home Depot.

I measured a standard 80mm fan diagonally and it came up around 4.25 inches. Reason I did that is to see if they had any flexible duct material, like dryer vent hose, that could be attached to 2 80mm fans, say one from the CPU HS, and the other to an exhaust fan. No such luck.

Tin snips and nibblers are expensive!

Thanks for the info.

seishino · Post by **seishino** » Wed Mar 12, 2003 2:33 pm

Life always gets in the way of modding.

I'm sorry people, I bought my first car this week. Well, the first car I've officially owned in the state of Massachusetts. Long story short, It's been really busy and I haven't had time to do a writeup. Still, my previous assessment stands: if you want the ultimate in sound-absorption, get these things. If you're on the cheap (fun!), get the earplugs. If your fan is undervolted, don't bother (I couldn't get any readings on 5v panaflos that were above background).

GamingGod · Post by **GamingGod** » Mon Mar 24, 2003 5:25 am

Anyone whos providing these things, im interested. I need one set of hardrive mounts and 2-4 sets of fan mounts. How much are these selling for (per set)?

Post by **Ralf Hutter** » Mon Mar 24, 2003 5:39 am

GamingGod wrote:Anyone whos providing these things, im interested. I need one set of hardrive mounts and 2-4 sets of fan mounts. How much are these selling for (per set)?

Look at my post in "General Discussion>Grommets". I posted the McMaster-Carr part numbers for the G-410 and G-411 HDD grommets. Look at the McMaster page for pricing.

dgouldin · Post by **dgouldin** » Mon Mar 24, 2003 7:25 am

BriceB: have you decided on a distributor? I'm also interested in getting some of these and would really like to support a fellow forum member.

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Tue Mar 25, 2003 11:40 am

My order of fan and hd grommets showed up in about 4 days from the NJ wharehouse to NY. My fans and hs from SVC took twice as long. Now I have a weekend project.

dgouldin · Post by **dgouldin** » Sun Mar 30, 2003 9:13 am

BriceB: still haven't heard back from you. Any news?

rompil · Post by **rompil** » Sun Apr 27, 2003 5:55 am

BriceB

Where did you get these? I have searched the web for an outlet and come up empty. The grommets are no problem McMaster-carr has those but the shoulder bolts.... EAR wants a minimum 1500 pc order.

Thanks for the help!

LH · Post by LH » Sat Jan 29, 2005 12:02 am

BriceB wrote:...The EAR model we're looking for is the F-344, and is part #5801k6 at McMaster-Carr website. I talked to the guys at EAR & this is what they recommended. As for HDD Mounnts, the guys recommended the G-410 for silence, and the G-411 for HD performance... although they both will have similar results.

I know it's kind of late to ask, but I'm curious...

"...G-411 for HD performance..."? Can the use of grommets really affect the performance of a hard drive?

On a side note, I've been hesitant to try decoupling because I was worried that it might result in errors, since the drive isn't really stable during reads and writes (kind of like trying to hit a moving target), but I don't think anyone has ever reported errors due to decoupling... I'm going to try grommets first and if that isn't good enough, then I'll put the drive on foam.

Post by **Ralf Hutter** » Sat Jan 29, 2005 8:15 am

LH wrote:
On a side note, I've been hesitant to try decoupling because I was worried that it might result in errors, since the drive isn't really stable during reads and writes (kind of like trying to hit a moving target), but I don't think anyone has ever reported errors due to decoupling... I'm going to try grommets first and if that isn't good enough, then I'll put the drive on foam.

As with most everything here at SPCR, this issue has been discussed at length before. Read this thread:

http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewtopic.php?t=12844

and also read this Seagate whitepaper:

Seagate pdf

LH · Post by LH » Sat Jan 29, 2005 12:03 pm

Thanks for the info, Ralf.

I should have used more/different search words other than "grommets" and "performance"...

Elastomer Fan Mount Grommits - A Group Buy

Shoulder bolts for the Ear grommets