Silentmaxx HD-Silencer

Reviews: Cooling

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Nicholas Hart
Kurtis
Quiet PC
Oct. 17, 2005

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Test Setup

The test system consists of a Pentium 4 2.8c Northwood CPU (800 MHz FSB), a DFI LanPary PRO875B motherboard, 2x256MB Micron CL3 DDR400 and 2x512MB Kingmax CL2.5 DDR400, Seagate 200GB ATA 7,200RPM 8MB hard drive and an up-to-date installation of Windows XP SP2.

To test the drive at load I used "Bart's Stuff Test v5.1.4' which writes to the drive at 100% utilization. I let the program run until the drive temp stabilized with an ambient room temperature of 22C. I placed the thermal probe on the PCB side of the drive near the spindle. Idle test was done with the drive, well, idle. Go figure.

I don't have a sound pressure meter so my sound tests are totally subjective. This isn't exactly scientific, but should prove sufficient for our purposes.

Testing

Drive Temperatures
(Show All Graphs)

Idle

Load

Standard Installation

Silentmaxx Installation

°Celsius

100

Idle

Load

Standard Installation

Silentmaxx Installation

44.5

°Celsius

100

I'm surprised how little temperature difference there is between idle and load, although maybe I shouldn't be, the drive spins full speed whether its doing anything or not. Regardless, the temperatures are a good deal cooler with the Silentmaxx enclosure.

As for sound, I can't say I noticed any difference. That could be due to the design of my case, though. Without the enclosure, the drive is located centrally in the case instead of right up front. This distance will have an effect on the perceived sound level. With the enclosure, the drive moves forward in the case and the face plates on the Enermax CS-718 case are perforated so they don't insulate as well as a solid face plate would. Now, compared to having the side panel of the case off and my ear next to the bare drive, I can say that the Silentmaxx HD-silencer will lessen the noise coming from your drive. But it won't silence it. There are hard drive enclosures that use thicker foam between the drive and the case, but they generally don't have good cooling properties and effectively let your drive bake in its own heat.

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Page 1: Introduction / First Looks
Page 2: Installation
Page 3: Test Setup / Testing
Page 4: Conclusion

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3 User Comments

1 - Posted by blackjet on November 2, 2005 - 4:52 am

When i saw this i had high hopes.....my long term plan is to have a silent (or at least inaudible) computer, hopefully without having to resort to water cooling. The only thing i havenâ€™t been able to find a good silencer for is my HDD yet. Is it possible to buy a silent HDD rather than trying to silence a noisy one?

2 - Posted by Rich on November 2, 2005 - 7:51 am

some HD have dynamic noise control. Basically they slow down so they don't make as much noise, but they also don't perform as well either.

3 - Posted by Frosty on November 3, 2005 - 3:32 pm

i know kurtis use to have his in his(computer) room, but just out of curiosty why did you have to move it out, or did i miss that part?

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