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Silentmaxx HD-Silencer

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Nicholas Hart
Kurtis
Quiet PC
Oct. 17, 2005

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Introduction

A couple of years ago I had to give up my dedicated computer room and move my systems into the sitting area by my front room. When things were in the old room, I didn't mind the constant hum of my firewall or my main system; I could always turn the speakers up a bit to drown it all out. When it was all moved into close proximity to the TV, however, things began to change. The little Sun SPARC classic and its noisy power supply fan became too much to take and I had to trade it out with a typical DSL router. That made things quieter, but the main system with three 80mm fans was still grating on my ears.

A new case, CPU fan, and power supply went a long way but what's that I still hear? Clicking? Alas, the hard drive! I've swapped fans, cases, heatsinks and now it's quiet enough to hear the little bugger clicking away. I looked at many hard drive enclosures, but most of them just seal off the drive making for some uncomfortably large temperature increases. It's no secret that high temperatures contribute directly to drive failure and I wasn't about to allow that.

It just so happens that Silentmaxx, producer of silent PC components, makes a hard drive enclosure that manages to cool your drive as well as make it quieter. QuietPC USA is the exclusive distributor of Silentmaxx products in North America and they were nice enough to send me the Silentmaxx HD-silencer for review. With its heatsink-ish exterior, this enclosure promises to keep your drive and your ears happy, but will it deliver?

First Looks

The Silentmaxx HD-silencer is packaged very nicely with little foam compartments for the various pieces. I pulled the main case of the enclosure out of the box and was very impressed by how well it is machined. The heatsink fins are all rounded and smooth and should pose no risks of cutting your fingers.

The surface of the enclosure appears to be anodized black while the other parts, made from stamped plate rather than machined, are all painted with a rather thick coat of paint. In fact, tt looks as though someone got a little carried away with a spray gun. I'm probably being a bit too picky, but hey, it's my job. I would prefer that the plate pieces be finished the same as the main casing for consistency but the enclosure is going to be stuffed inside your case and probably won't be seen anyway.

Enough of my griping, let's look a little closer at the individual pieces. The people at Silentmaxx are obviously very style conscious as the front and back plates have curved edges instead of a much simpler squared design. The Silentmaxx logo is etched into the front plate for a little extra show. The cover plate does have the plain square design but it fits very nicely into the grooves of the main case.

In addition to all the nice shiny metal bits, you get a couple pieces of silicon film to line the inner casing and a blue sheet of foam to use as a spacer that gets sandwiched between the cover plate and the bottom of your drive. The silicon film acts not only as anti-vibration, but also works to conduct heat from the drive surface to the Silentmaxx enclosure. A thick piece of foam rubber sticks to the inside of the front plate to make sure your drive doesn't slide around inside the enclosure.

To finish up the package you get some rubber spacers that screw into the side of the enclosure and have holes for mounting inside your case. These rubber spacers also work to isolate vibration from your drive and keep it from rattling. Then of course there are is the usual assortment of screws and, since there is no metal-to-metal contact between the drive enclosure and your case, a grounding wire to keep any charge from building up.

All in all, there are quite a lot of parts to this little unit and you should devote a fair amount of time to getting it all set up properly.

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

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