Silencing hard drive by suspending it

[antef]

I had an old Kingwin case that used rubber grommets around the hard drive screws to reduce vibration noise and it worked great, I could hardly hear it. Sadly I'm having trouble finding this feature on new cases, especially mATX ones. Has anyone successfully suspended their hard drive via one method or another to remove vibration noise entirely? Any recommended kits to set this up for you in a 5.25" slot? A mATX case with the rubber grommets would be nice as well.

 

[stargazr]

My Rosewill Destroyer case has those. Here's a hardware link also -

http://www.frozencpu.com/products/61...13&id=AILmLZRX

 

[Blain]

Click Here

 

[antef]

That Destroyer looks like a nice case. Too big for my needs, though. That link appears to be for LEDs.

Blain, thanks for the link. 8 years old! But a sound approach I guess. I wonder if any cases provide this out of the box. Or know of any mATX cases with the grommets?

 

[sxr7171]

I have a Lian-Li from their "quiet" series. Check their website. They all have foam padding on the sides and the drive mounts have rubber grommets. Nice quiet cases, but not super quiet in the sense that you could get a quieter case or mod one yourself. But with quiet parts inside it's been very quiet. Personally I found that the choice of drive makes a huge difference. I use WD Green drives in my storage server and I can't hear them. The Seagates I was using were audible, and the worst was a WD Black drive. You can hear those clear across the room when they start up.

 

[thescreensavers]

Iirc can't you just buy the rubber things?

 

[antef]

Iirc can't you just buy the rubber things?

I think with the Kingwin, you had to use special screws that were long enough and where the threading started a certain distance below the head to allow for the depth of the grommet before screwing into the drive. Maybe with the right screws, you could use grommets in any case, but I'm not sure.

Edit: So maybe I just need something like this. But it looks like the case would require a little modification to get it to fit.

 

[Blain]

Blain, thanks for the link. 8 years old! But a sound approach I guess.
I wonder if any cases provide this out of the box.
Or know of any mATX cases with the grommets?

I know Antec has sold cases that included bands for HD suspension.

 

[notposting]

I know Antec has sold cases that included bands for HD suspension.

Yeah the Solo and I think the P150? did.

Stretch Magic works great for homebrew suspension efforts btw, find it in a crafts store.

 

[corkyg]

I have mounted HDDs with Velcro, and that also reduces vibration between case and drive. Lenovo Thinkpads use a HDD caddy that has soft rubber siderails. The drive assembly slides into a slot and mates with the SATA connector. No other contact between HDD and case. That is very quiet and shock resistent.

Minerva is right below . . . nothing beats a SSD for quiet.

 

[Blain]

Since we're on drive cushioning, the In Win Ammo uses a rubber sleeve to encase a 2.5" HD in an external enclosure.

 

[Zap]

Antec NSK3480 has the excellent white silicon grommets which are by far IMO the best available. The case can take long graphics cards and two HDDs plus one optical drive, plus one 3½" external bay for a card reader. It is also made of thicker steel so is not prone to vibrational noise, making it great for a quieter machine. Only drawback is that you need a shorter PSU, no longer than about 5.7". It comes with an EarthWatts EA380. You can go with up to a 500W EarthWatts or a NEO ECO up to 620W.

 

[Minerva]

Get a SSD?

Nothing is quieter than that and you can let it sit anywhere in the case.

 

[antef]

I would like to get an SSD for my next build. The hard drive will be kept for data. The NSK3480 looks really good. My only reservation is of course the PSU restriction. If I went with mATX instead of mini-ITX I was hoping to be able to use my current PC Power & Cooling Silencer 610 PSU. It's a great unit and would be a shame to quit using. However, I don't really need an optical drive and was considering not putting one into this system. I'm assuming that would allow a full length PSU?

 

[BTA]

Hair-ties

 

[fleshconsumed]

Hard drive suspension has been used forever in spcr community. You can get a case with rubber grommets such as P150/Solo/P180/P180 Mini/P183/P190, or you can suspend hard drive using elastic rubber bands. The latter one completely eliminates hard drive vibrations, but it's more risky because there is always a chance that your hard drive will slip out of the rubber bands or if they break. The chance is remote, but it's there, plus you always have to remember that your drive is not hard mounted when moving the case. The former method of just using rubber grommets that come with P15x/P18x/P19x cases however is good enough that I wouldn't worry about it too much. So I would just recommend getting one of the Antec cases with rubber grommets. The only problem is I don't think Antec makes those for mATX cases, so you might have to settle for full tower.