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Need a quiet PC? Look at Your Hard Drive(s)

S

strugs

Junior Member
I bought a new AMD XP based system in January and have been chipping away at the noise problem. First I swapped the heat sink that sounded more like a cheap hair dryer (Volcano 6) that came with my system for a Thermalright AX7 equipped with a Panaflow fan. Much quieter. But I was still surprised at the overall noise coming from my case. After unplugging the intake, exhaust, and power supply fans, I concluded that it was actually my hard drive that was causing most of the racket. I confirmed this by sending windows into "standby" mode which spools down the hard drives. The noise was not so much due to accessing, but just ambient whirring noise from the HD spinning.

The hard drive in question is a Maxtor 7200 RPM 40GB drive. I did some searching on this and other forums and read about the Seagate Barricuda drives. Most people said they were virtually silent. Someone I work with said he would buy my Maxtor, so I went out and picked up the Seagate yesterday. WOW - what a difference. When I first hooked it up, I was surprised when I was able to format it - I thought it was not working - it is that quiet. After reloading my OS and all my programs (what a pain) onto the new drive, I am so pleased. This change was at least as effective at bringing the noise levels down as the Heatsink.
 
I went through the same thing as you, replacing all my fans first, then putting the PC in standby mode. My 40 gig maxtor and 27 WD were the main noisemakers. I now have 2 40 gig seagate drives which made all the difference.
 
yup. I swapped in a batch of panaflos only to find noise still a problem.

Didn't even realize the main source of noise was the loud-ass WD 18gb drive. swapped it for a seagate barracuda IV and have been happy since.
 
i just packed my case with accoustic foam and switched all fans to low flow temperature sensitive(useless feature cept for they always run at ultra low rpm)


 


<< Aren't Maxtors known to be noisy, btw? >>



Yep. At least they're known by me to be noisy -- probably by others, too 🙂.
 
My experience with IBM drives: I had a 30GB 75GXP in one of my systems (it's generally quiet with undervolted Silencer case fans, a Silencer PSU and a 20dB AddA CPU fan), and it was pretty quiet. As many have had to do, I had to RMA it when it began to have problems, and IBM replaced it with a 40GB 120GXP. From a reliability point of view I was very pleased to get the 120GXP, but it has a very noticable high pitched and annoying whine.
 


<< i just packed my case with accoustic foam >>

is that something you can find at home depot?

<---- looking to quiet a delta SHE fan


<---- getting ax7 and panaflo for next comp
 
yup HD do make lots of noise. I have to live with 10K SCSI drive noise for its performance aspect. 🙁 I could never see myself going back to IDE drives.
 


<<

<< i just packed my case with accoustic foam >>

is that something you can find at home depot?

<---- looking to quiet a delta SHE fan


<---- getting ax7 and panaflo for next comp >>




sorta, i got my last roll from a home depot like net site which i don't know if they still exist😛 they had all sorts of accoustic dampening materials for use in houses or buildings i think. from the eggcarten shaped foam to skinned foam.. different thicknesses etc. mine was 1/2" skinned pretty dense self adhesive. stuff was also far cheaper then the stuff some pc cooling sites now sell😛 i just cut it up and stuffed bits wherever it could possibly fit. works like a charm. wish i could find the site again though🙁
 


<< What about the fluid bearing Maxtor hard drives ??? >>



From what I have read, they are around 2db quieter than the BB versions.
 


<<

<< What about the fluid bearing Maxtor hard drives ??? >>



From what I have read, they are around 2db quieter than the BB versions. >>



Thanks for the info. I guess it would be a safer bet to go with the 60gb Seagates then. I wanted 2 60gb drives to RAID them and was wondering which were the more quiet.
 
just got a couple maxtor fluid bearing drives. never had a seagate, but they seam to be really quiet to me. my fans are FAR more noisy than my hd's. The noisiest thing is my p/s exhaust fan, and the case fans. My hd's don't seem to make noise at all, except when writing, and then it is a low pitch noise, not very audible.
 
Yeah those Seagate Barraccuda IVs are totally silent. I can't even hear mine under heavy disk I/O and I have to look at the LED to see if it's even doing anything.

Also some people claim that they're slow because they're quiet but that is just not true. My drive is extremely fast and I've used a lot of other HDs so I have a good comparison to work from.
 
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